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Porque la piedra en esta mano pesa más que lo que aguanta tu corazón.
The bar was two stories below street level, its wooden walls curved to resemble the bow of a ship.
No chicharrones de pollo, no arroz con gandules, no steaming pot of sancocho—just a little piece of chocolate, like a beggar, and a glass of liquor, like a puta.
You couldn’t leave a daughter behind; she was yours no matter where you were. And although she didn’t know what they would do if they were
ever together again—they weren’t the kind to talk or laugh, or even sit beside each other for long—she still craved her girl, as unthinkingly as a seabird longs for the sea.
She had thought of Penelope as she rode
away from the neighborhood she had moved to as a girl, eighteen and fresh from the red-earth campo, looking for life. How will my daughter find me? she had thought as the taxi plunged farther into Brooklyn, although it had been years since Penelope had stopped looking.
But she’d had no noble reason to return to Brooklyn besides that she didn’t want her father to die. In her time away she had conquered nothing. She had merely found a way to be.
they’d had such wide lives in their small towns—sports and parties and social clubs and leagues.
She slept with a few of them, just to prove that she could, and even after she knew having sex with white boys wasn’t the victory she had expected it to be, she kept finding them, fucking them, and turning them away.
It felt good, and it was a thing she could control: she could choose someone and have someone and then return to herself, safe.
Samantha is fantastic, but a wife is too close to be a friend.”
“Ya empezaron a llegar.”
Se parece igualita a mí, Mirella thought, staring at
‘Mami! Me casé con un morenito.’”
Why steep in someone else’s disappointment? Why linger where you aren’t wanted?
“It must come from your mother,” he said. “Daughters get either their courage or their fear from their mothers.” Marcus made a face after another swig of gin, as if he were shocked by his harshness. “I know being a mother isn’t easy—believe me. Samantha’s always saying I can’t quite grasp how differently you love a child when you’ve grown one with your own body. The bond—it’s carnal.” “Is it? Then where’s Samantha now?”
“I never believed any of that stuff—the primal bond, mothers and daughters. It sounds like a convenient excuse, a way for a mother to always defend herself—But I gave you life. As if that matters. As if I care.”
Who left their children alone during snowstorms, then returned and assumed their place?
Why did women have children they would someday hate?
Hija— I am here. I have another life. I bought a house. I am not the same. Come see me. Write to me. Call me. Knock on my door. I am ready now for you. We could try again. —Mami
‘Oigan! Que vengan para ’ca. Hice un sancocho y me quedó bien rico!’”
lady in the attic, ha ha! Ignore her, Marty, ha ha—
They had gotten life all wrong, she and Ralph.
¿Qué te dió ganas de cocinar?
No seas tan boba.”
“Qué no se pierde para all
He smiled at her, and it seemed like the opposite of a smile from Marcus: uncoded, clean.
“Ah, you see, Mami, there’s a big difference,” she said. “You’re nothing to me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already dead.”
This breaks my heart
She couldn’t say whether she had once loved her mother, only that she had once pined for her mother’s love.
