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    “How did he know you needed a job?” We were listening to María Castro on the radio. I remember because I thought Mom looked like her, the way she was driving, her back off the seat, leaning forward. She looked like María Castro. She said they were talking and she mentioned that she didn’t have a job, and now on top of the house bills she had to pay medical expenses. That’s when he offered. He told her she could clean his house.
    “Did he give it to you at the beginning or at the end?”
    “What do you mean give ?”
    “After you were laughing or before?”
    “What do you mean laughing, Luz?”
    “I saw you laughing. I heard you.”
    “He told me right before I left. He gave me his number and said I could start next week.”
    “You’re going every day?”
    “Not every day. Maybe three times a week.”
    “Where does he live?”
    “Somewhere on the south side, past the highway. He said he has a garden and doesn’t have time to take care of it.”
    “A garden?”
    “Yes, Luz, a garden!”
    There was a hat she never wore on the floor of the passenger side, made of white straw with a blue ribbon around it. I grabbed it and put it on, pulled the top down over my eyes and thought of Dr. Roberto’s “garden.” I could see Mom clipping whatever bushes and plants he had. The sun beating down on her skin. The droplets of sweat sliding down her face. And Dr. Roberto calling her from the back door, “Cristina, come inside. Take a break. Have a cold drink with me.” Mom turning around, her back straight, looking like María Castro.

EL MELÓN

    P api would go hunting on weekends and ask me if I wanted to go with him. He’d grab the rifle from under his mattress, where he kept it, and take me to the backyard so I could practice. “Hold it like this,” he’d say, with his right arm wrapped around it. He’d point to the melons on a stump against the fence at the far end of the backyard and say, “Shoot like if it were the head of something you hate.”
    The rifle was too big. When I’d wrap my arms around it Estrella would stare at me like if I were a jackass. But eventually I found my way, which wasn’t the way I was supposed to do it. Instead of holding it with my arms I tried holding it against my body. But when I pulled the trigger the force knocked me down. And when I put my cheek against the butt, so that I could look at the pointer and center my aim on a melon against the fence, it’d knock me down. My cheek would puff up like if I’d been punched, and Papi would laugh and help me up, telling me to try again. “Ándale, otra vez.”
    I had to keep my legs open. That’s what it was.
    “Keep your elbows up también ,” he said. But the rifle would slip out when I did that. It was too heavy, and the only way I could do it was if I held it against my body, so that it’d become a part of me. I had to push into it. And when I figured that out, all of a sudden those melons exploded. The pins and needles in my fingers were nothing compared with being knocked down. I learned to lean into it and not pull away. Pushing into it is what kept me from getting hurt.
    But there you go. That’s how it is.

LA PALMA

    M y arms and legs were open like a star facing the sun. That’s how I used to lie under the tree when Mom was cleaning the house and Papi was either working on the truck or mowing the yard. Back then my hair was long, down to my waist, and for some reason, the bangs around my face were always curly like a bad perm. I’d try to comb it after I came out of the shower, but when it dried it would bunch up. So I just let it run wild and do whatever it wanted. Estrella would comb it down and I’d have to use my neck muscles to keep my head straight. Mom said I should let it be, that maybe when I got older it would unravel. Maybe when I got older I wouldn’t seem all over the place. “I’m not all over the place,” I’d tell her. But she said I was. She’d say sometimes I was easy because I