Page 20 of Spiced!

I desperately needed to hear it.

We got home at eight-fifteen.

I set Mofongo down in the center of the living room and stepped back. He looked at the couch, then at the kitchen.

Then he looked at me.

“Esto es tu casa,” I told him. This is your home.

He considered this for three seconds, walked to the corner of the room, and peed.

“Ay.”

He looked at me over his shoulder while he did it, utterly unapologetic.

“Mofongo. Inside is not for that.”

He finished his business, gave the corner a satisfied sniff, and trotted back to the center of the room like a soldier returning from a victorious battle.

“We have one rule,” I said. “That lives outside.”

He sat down and tilted his head.

“I’m serious.”

He sneezed, walked to my foot, and sat on it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to laugh. The last thing the pup needed was encouragement.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll work on it.”

I got the wipes.

I understood the wipes completely now.

I called Abuela at nine. She answered before the first ring finished.

“Mijo.”

I didn’t bother with pleasantries. We’d never been much for small talk.

“I got a puppy. His name is Mofongo.”

The laugh that flew out of her started somewhere deep, arrived as joy, then morphed into something close to a cry. I sat on the kitchen floor with my head against the cabinet and grinned at the ceiling.

“Mofongo,” she said, finally pulling herself together. “You named that poor baby after mashed plantains.”

“Abuela, when you see his face, you will understand. He peed on the floor and looked me in the eye while he did it.”

“Like a man who knows what he wants,” she said approvingly.

“That’s one way to see it.”

“Saturday, you bring him before your shift. I will make the real mofongo. We will introduce them.”

“You can’t feed a puppy—”

“I know how to feed a baby,” she said, and the discussion was over the way discussions were always over when she used that tone.