Issues
Most people knew her for her iconic arroz con pollo, the raspy voice, the baggies of crystal, her cig dangling from mouth, chopping plátano, setting down paper-plates on the plastic table in her living room for the hungry travestis to eat.
Sometimes, my words come at the same time as seeing. The idea that one is not interior to the other.
Kajol lines swept under an angled eye in a singular motion: inherited muscle memory. Deep inhales stop working for childbirth and fear. Pain sneaks in.
Can it be feminist, she wondered as she spread her thighs, to want this? Can I still be on the side of liberation?
She tells me I am a loving human being the same day he tells me I am selfish and spiteful. She tells me I am brave the same day he tells me I’m a coward.
This painting, it makes me think of her. How she’d press her cheek against the small of my back and
listen to my breathing.
So I was good with bleeding, respecting it as admonition, as the body’s means of telling a truth. Bleeding, how the body keeps its contract with honesty.
Did he suspect when he watched me shoot hoops in the park? Or when he told me, a million times, to pull up my baggy jeans?
Two days before she gives birth, the 38-year-old watches a breastfeeding video from a national health institute, but it’s hard to practice without a baby.