“Okay.”
“Do you want me to look after it?”
“Yes, please.”
“Have you heard from Coby?”
“Not yet. But I have a good feeling. I feel he might nd out for me. I might be seeing Daniel in a few days! What are you making there? It smel s good.”
“Wel , I’m doing my best, with what you have here. I guess I was lucky to find an onion.”
“Mercedes bought that. How’s Graciela?”
“She’s the same. Working hard.”
“I’m jealous of her.”
“Of what?”
“She’s elegant. She has nice clothes. She has your child.”
“You can have al those things.”
“Coby said you’ve had a hard life.”
“Did he say that?”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes. Have you?”
He put a lid on the pot and lowered the heat. “This has to simmer. Let’s wait on the sofa.”
He cleared the sofa and stretched out, and I lay down on top of him. “Did you? Have a hard life?” I asked again.
“I don’t know. These things are relative. We were poor, it was a tough neighborhood. My father was violent. He broke my arm once, and it lowered my pro le. I cried when my pro le came in. I wanted a ninety-seven, but I lost over twenty points because of my arm, because I don’t have total flexibility. That’s why it hurt so much yesterday, when that asshole grabbed it.”
“Why did your father break your arm?”
“I was bad, he was frustrated. I set a shack on re with some of my friends. We were al frustrated, we fed each other’s frustrations and made them worse. But some things were pret y good. My father was okay in his calm moments. My older brother’s a great guy.”
“What did your parents do?”
“My father had a lot of jobs. My mother made pot ery. She could have done a lot more with her life, but she never had the opportunity.”
“It’s sad to think of you living with someone who hurt you.”
“I don’t think of it that way at al . It al made me who I am. I can’t imagine a di erent past, I have no idea who I’d be or whether I’d like that person.”
“Are your parents stil alive?”
“My mother died while I was in the army. My father’s stil around, but he’s in poor health—he’s in a home. He was forty- ve when he married my mother, and she was only twenty. So he’s pret y old now.”
“How did he break your arm?”
“He pushed me down some stairs. I was bad, too. I kicked him, I bit him. I was total y out of control. But he was bigger, and he had a belt.”
“I was so spoiled al my life. My parents were so protective. I was their only child, they real y doted on me.”
“I can’t imagine not having brothers and sisters.”
“Yes, I real y did want a big family. But on the other hand, I liked get ing al the at ention.”
“How come your parents stopped at one?”
“They waited awhile to have me. And they were busy with their careers by then. They real y invested a lot in me—I guess they weren’t too keen on doing that more than once.”
“Invested, how?”
“Just, you know, trying to give me the best of everything. Get ing mad if my teachers weren’t perfect. Being involved in my life. My father started reading the newspaper to me when I was four. That continued right through the years, we were always looking at articles together and talking about them. He and his brother used to go to refugee camps, to do volunteer work, and they took me along. I was lucky, I had a great childhood. At least until my mother died.”
“Was that hard?”
“The rst week was terrible, and I did some pret y crazy stu . I kept thinking there was an invisible star sh clinging to my chest, this cold, self-satis ed, smirking star sh. I took shower after shower trying to get it o . Then I tried ice cubes, and I can’t remember what else. I had to keep my arms against my chest al the time, under my shirt, otherwise the star sh feeling came back. Then I sort of got involved with things again, I got back into life. It was strange …People respond in di erent ways to things. After Daniel left, that’s when her death hurt me, years later. I had a delayed response, I think. What about when your mother died?”
