Her eyes are furrowed in concentration as she deftly navigates the child-safe machete, demonstrating fine motor skills well beyond her five years of age. Maybe there is an early focus on knife skills in gang families.
“Morning,” I tell the kitchen.
Her father is also still in his jammies, looking scrumptious, hair mussed from sleep, barefoot in a pair of black athletic shorts and a faded black t-shirt, pouring what looks like pancake batter into a giant griddle.
“Morning,” he and his daughter chime.
“Coffee?” he asks me, in a delicious voice still scratchy with sleep. I nod. “We just brewed this pot, and there are mugs in the cabinet right above.”
“How do you take your coffee?” Frankie asks me.
“Just milk,” I say, and she gently places the knife down, hops down from the step stool, and runs to the fridge. “Thanks, angel,” I tell her, while I pour myself a cup.
“How’d everyone sleep?” I ask.
“Great,” Frankie says, hopping back up onto the step stool.
“Good,” murmurs Dominic.
Like a true leader, Frankie begins to delegate. “Can you start chopping the strawberries?” Frankie implores. “I’m running a little behind,” she says, while taking the plastic knife and dedicating a singular focus into precise cuts.
“Please,” her dad reminds her.
“Please,” she nods.
“Of course,” I answer, and I weave in and out between her and Dominic, digging out a knife and bowls and berries and serving spoons in a content morning silence. Dominic briefly smiles down at me as I squat down to find a cutting board in the cabinet below him, and I resist the urge to rest my hand on his back as I stand up and move away.
“Hala,” Gloria reprimands, as she and Ben walk into the kitchen, and we all freeze as if we’ve been caught doing something very wrong. “I thought I told you I was doing all the cooking.”
“We were up already, Lola,” Frankie tells her. “And I was starving.”
“Next time, come and get me, not your father,” Gloria tells her.
“He was already here when I woke up.”
Gloria glares at Dominic, who holds his hands up. Some pancake batter flies off the end of the spatula he’s holding. Ben hip checks him away from the stove, taking the spatula from his hand.
“Everyone except for Frankie—please have your coffee outside on the patio right now,” Gloria announces to the two people it applies to.
Gloria takes the knife from my hand, and Dom and I shuffle outside.
We sit on two lounge chairs next to one another, facing the ocean, sipping our coffee. It’s a gorgeous morning, just a few clouds in the sky, still cool from the night.
“I thought I was an early riser, but you got me beat.”
I see his broad shoulders shrug from the corner of my eye. “Frankie has woken up at six o’clock in the morning every single day of her life since I sleep-trained her at four months old. It’s a five-year habit for me now.”
I hum.
“I like it, though,” he adds on. “It gives me a lot of time with her before she goes to school, or before I start work. That time in the morning, that calm. It’s a good way to start the day.” He looks at his watch. “I have a call in an hour, and I’ll have had a whole morning with Frankie already.”
“How are you working this week?” I demand to know how one conducts gang meetings or torture over video conference.
“Most, if not all of my work is remote.”
“What about jobs that require more of a… physical presence?” I ask, because I can very stealthily inquire about torture.
He frowns. “What is it do you think I do?”
