Page 56 of The Grumpy Defenseman
Mamá Rey hugged me like she knew me.
That was the first thing.
She had never met me before in her life, and she hugged me like I had been promised.
“Mija,” she said, which was a word I had not earned and she offered anyway.
She put a plate in my hand before I said a full sentence. Pan de polvo with my coffee. Enchiladas verdes with three kinds of salsa ranked by the amount of apology she offered when she handed them over. A small bowl of arroz con leche she pushed toward me with a look that suggested I would be eating it whether I wanted it or not.
I wanted it.
“Where are your people from?” Mamá asked me.
Not where are you from?
Where are your people from?
The Mexican-mother question, asked in the Mexican-mother way, was a question about who had shaped you before she decided whether she was going to shape younow.
I told her.
Kansas City on one side. Minnesota on the other. A mother who had been a nurse and a father who had taught high-school science. Both gone inside two years of each other, when I was twenty-four.
Mamá listened with the complete attention of a person who had decided my answer mattered.
“Your mother knew you were good at pictures?”
“She did,” I said. “She bought me my first camera.”
Mamá nodded once. Satisfied. Then she moved to the counter, came back with a bag of pan de polvo, and pressed it into my hand with both of hers.
“Take. For tomorrow. You eat when I am not here. Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Mamá. Not ma’am.”
My throat tightened before I could stop it.
“Yes, Mamá.”
Bella caught my eye across the kitchen and did not say anything, because Bella understood that this was one of the things a prosecutor learned not to interrupt: a person discovering, in real time, what it felt like to be fed by someone who expected nothing in return.
Later, I stood near the back door with a paper plate in my hand and watched Mack let Celia’s youngest steal the soccer ball from him for the third time. Celia laughed from the patio, one hand on her hip, the other holding something bright and cold. Sierra stood beside Mack, trying and failing to look like she was not charmed by the fact that he was letting a six-year-old destroy him at yard soccer.
“You’re terrible at this,” Celia called.
“I’m building confidence,” Mack said.
“You’re getting beaten by a six-year-old.”
“Development takes many forms.”
Bella leaned against the doorframe beside me. “This is what hedoes. Shows up, pretends he’s not soft, then lets a child destroy him at yard games.”
“A noble sacrifice.”
