It took me years to realize that my mother would never see me as her daughter. It didn’t matter if I looked and acted the part of the sweet girl perfectly; to my mother I was a demon pretending to be good. Wily. Ready to destroy her whenever she let her guard down. At thirteen, when I finally understood that no matter what I did my mother would never love me, I acted even sweeter. Cloying. “Mamita,” I called her, smiling grotesquely. I turned her crucifixes upside down, scratched the eyes out of her Virgins. She slapped me, pulled my hair. “Leave me be!” she’d scream, and she’d hit me harder.
