He drove in silence for a few minutes. The town was already visible in the distance. The dirt road, the adobe houses, the barren hills in the background—everything the same, everything different. “I’m not leaving, Mom.” Carmen squeezed his hand. She didn’t say thank you. It wasn’t necessary. Canelo barked once from the back of the truck, as if he understood too. Months passed. Carmen’s house was the first thing he did. Rodrigo renovated it with his own hands. He called two bricklayers from the town, but he mixed the cement himself, carried the cinder blocks, and climbed onto the roof.
The new walls were made of the same mud as always, because Carmen wouldn’t have it any other way. “My house is made of earth, just like me,” she said. But the roof was sturdy. The windows had new glass, and the doors had locks that opened from the inside. The windows were always open. Always. Carmen didn’t close them, not even when it was cold. “The air has to come in,” she’d say. This house had been closed up for too long. Canelo was sleeping inside now, on an old blanket next to Carmen’s bedroom door.
Not at the entrance, not outside, inside. Carmen put his food bowl out for him every morning, just like before, but now she added a little piece of chicken or cheese. He earned it. She told Rodrigo, “That dog waited for me longer than any Christian.” The vegetables grew back. Tomatoes, chilies, squash, cilantro, quelites (a type of wild green). Every morning Carmen went out to water them with an old watering can that Rodrigo had bought her a new one, but she hadn’t wanted. “This one still works, don’t be a spendthrift.” On Saturdays, she went back to the town fair with her usual little table, her vegetables arranged in small piles, and Canelo lying under the table swatting flies with his tail.
Rodrigo built his house next door, small and simple, facing his mother’s house. Every morning he crossed the yard and had breakfast with her. Coffee brewed in a clay pot, handmade tortillas, eggs from the chickens Carmen had started raising again. They didn’t talk much; there was no need. Breakfast together was their conversation. Lupita lived with them. After the hearing, where she testified against her own parents with a firm voice and trembling hands, the judge asked if there was any relative who could take care of her.
There wasn’t one. Graciela’s mother had already died. Tomás’s family lived far away and had never had contact with Lupita. There were no aunts, no grandparents, no one. The judge looked at Lupita and asked her directly, “Who do you want to live with?” Lupita didn’t hesitate. She turned to look at Rodrigo, who was sitting in the living room. Then she turned to look at Carmen, who was watching her from a bench at the back of the room with moist eyes, and answered, “With them, with my grandmother and my uncle.”
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