Family Lore

by Elizabeth Acevedo

I’d always hoped my mother would ask me the big questions: What did I believe was my purpose in life? What steps did I plan on taking to become myself? Mami didn’t ask about the professors, or whether or not my roommates were dicks. She wanted to know the price of a plantain that I couldn’t even cook because my dorm room didn’t have a kitchen.

So many times, she’d offered her mother the opportunity to actually mother. Oh, Pastora had been dressed in skirts and fed, but she hadn’t been raised. And her mother still used every opportunity she could to make her smaller than she was.