“You’re too thin,” she announced, studying me across the small dining table like a doctor assessing a difficult case. “Even models aren’t this thin. No man wants a stick figure.”
I nearly choked on my rice. “Mom. Did you seriously just body-shame me?”
“I’m not shaming. I’m observing.”
“You literally just said no man wants a stick figure.”
“It’s true.” She spooned another heap of rice onto my plate before I could protest. “Men like something to hold onto.”
“In this day and age? Really?” I pointed my fork at her. “I’m going to be a lawyer in one semester. I could sue you for this.”
Her eyes lit up with amusement. “Ah, so now my daughter is a lawyer and wants to sue her own mother? The woman who gave birth to her?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Eat your food first. Then we’ll discuss your lawsuit.”
Sunday dinners at my mother’s apartment had become a sacred routine. Even during the seven years we’d worked for theValdezes—when we spent most of our days at their estate in the guest house Hector had converted for us—we’d always kept our own place. This place. The two-bedroom apartment in a quiet building in Queens that Hector had given us as part of Mom’s employment package.
The living room was modest but bright, with windows that actually let in light. The kitchen was big enough for my mother to cook the way she loved to. Two bedrooms so we each had our own space. Hector had furnished it too, back when he’d hired her seven years ago. Found her selling flowers on a street corner in Manhattan, picked out a single bloom—some rare orchid his late wife had loved—and decided on the spot that she should work for him instead.
My mother liked to say Hector Valdez saved our lives. She wasn’t wrong.
Back then, Mom’s hands had trembled so badly she could barely hold the flowers she was trying to sell. The panic attacks came without warning, turning her into someone I didn’t recognize. We’d been bouncing between shelters and cheap motels, and I’d been watching her disappear a little more each day.
Then Hector showed up, bought a flower, and gave us both a future.
“How’s school?” Mom asked, pulling me back to the present.
“Good. Just one more semester.”
Her face lit up. “One more semester.” She repeated it like a prayer she’d been waiting years to say out loud. “Mija, I’m so proud of you.”
Her words tightened something in my chest. I focused on my plate, pushing rice around with my fork because looking at her would make me cry and we’d already cried enough over this journey.
“Thanks, Mamá.”
“Your father would be proud too.”
I nodded, still not looking up. My father had been dead for ten years, gone before I’d even finished my first semester of law school the first time around. He never got to see me drop out. Never got to see me work just to keep us housed and fed. Never got to see me go back.
Maybe that was a blessing. Maybe not. I don’t know anymore.
“Eat,” she said again, gentler this time. “You need your strength.”
I ate because arguing with my mother about food was a battle I stopped fighting years ago. Besides, her arroz con pollo was objectively perfect—the kind of perfect that made you understand why people said food was love.
After dinner, I helped her clean up despite her protests. We worked in comfortable silence, her washing and me drying, falling into a rhythm we’d perfected over three decades of being each other’s primary person.
“You’re working too hard,” she said eventually.
“I’m fine.”
“You always say you’re fine.”
“Because I usually am.”
She handed me a plate, her dark eyes serious. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, you know. Not anymore.”
