Page 37 of Spiced!

“Mijo.”

“Mamá. Everything okay?”

“Everything is fine. I just felt like calling.” Her voice had the warm quality it always had. “How are you?”

“Good. Busy. I got a puppy.”

“A puppy?” A brief pause. “What kind?”

“Beagle mix. His name is Mofongo.”

Her laugh was a sudden burst, a heated blanket wrapping around my whole being.

“Mofongo,” she said. “Your abuela must love that.”

“She cried,” I said. “The good kind.”

“That sounds like her.” A pause. “Send me a photo.”

“I will.”

We talked for twenty minutes about her neighborhood, the weather, and a cousin’s wedding coming up in the spring. The conversation had the comfortable shape of all our conversations. It was warm on the surface, careful underneath, and, sadly, never quite arriving at the thing that lived below the surface. When we hung up, I stood in the market aisle for a moment with my hand still on my phone.

The thing below the surface was always there.

It had been there since I was eight years old.

The surface had been built carefully over it, brick by brick, through good years and panadería mornings and Abuela’s kitchen and dancing. All of it was real, all of it was good, all of it was true.

And all of it was built on top of something that had never quite been resolved.

I noticed, standing in that market aisle, that I suddenly wanted to tell Brendan about the call. Not about the thing below the surface—he wasn’t ready for all that, and honestly, I wasn’t ready for it either. Besides, we’d spoken twice in person and a handful of times by text, and it was not the right moment for something with that weight.

Still, I wanted to tell him about the call, about my mother’s laugh, about the fact that she’d asked for a photo of Mofongo, and that I was going to send it. I wanted to tell him that the call felt like something, even if I couldn’t fully say what.

I didn’t text him.

But I knew I wanted to.

I sent my mother a photo of Mofongo instead, the one where his ears were doing their most dramatic work. She sent back three heart emojis, which was the most digital communication I’d ever received from her. Frankly, I was shocked she knew where to find emojis, which somehow made them even more special. I stood in the market aisle and looked at three small hearts from a woman three islands away and felt something complicated and familiar move through my chest. Then I bought cilantro, went home, made dinner, and let Mofongo eat a piece of chicken he wasn’t supposed to have while I told him about my day.

“She has my laugh, my mother.”

He put his head on my foot.

“Yeah, I know.”

Chapter 9

Brendan

My clinic day started with a perfectly healthy ball python named Congresswoman, whose owner was a man named Dale who had strong opinions about the political implications of his snake’s name and explained them at length while I examined her. The Honorable Lady, as he insisted I refer to her, submitted to my exam without complaint.

“Her mouth looks good,” I said. “Shedding on schedule?”

“Like clockwork,” Dale said. “She’s very reliable, unlike actual congresspeople, in my experience, but that’s a whole other—”

“Diet’s been consistent?”