M’ija, you stink of privilege. Your Spanish words are clumsy now, like hail stones bouncing off your sweet abuelita’s tin roof. You live in the polished districts of sedate happiness and complacency.
You ascended, went to a fancy school and shed your west side accent. Was it hard to put all that distance between your roots and your future? You, ruca, who drives the lesbo Subaru and stuffs onion bagels into her mouth, you are a mystery now.
And your poor sweet mother, the way her proud strong hands stunk of onions, dirt and labor, struggled so that you might have better. What have you given back to them, those sloe-eyed ancestors who dared to dream? Do you still talk to them in your sleep?
How easily you forget. When do you come home to remember the hours over the comal? Do you see your old friends, tus primas, with children hanging off their hips and the sweat of commonness on their brows? Do you think you made a fortunate escape?
La Virgen help you, querida. We don’t know you anymore.
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