Page 56 of The Grumpy Defenseman

My phone buzzed.

Bella: Sunday at Mamá’s still stands. Before you ask, yes, she is making enough food to negotiate peace in three countries.

Me: I wasn’t asking.

Bella: Your anxiety was. Bring bread. Real bread. Not sad grocery-store bread with trust issues.

Me: Copy.

Bella: Sierra asked if you’re coming. Mack pretended not to care and then asked what kind of bread you were bringing, which is hockey-man for emotional investment.

Me: That family sounds exhausting.

Bella: Correct. Wear comfortable shoes.

I stared at the screen for a second longer than necessary, then looked down the hallway where Evan had disappeared.

Me: I’ll be there.

Bella: Good. Mamá likes you. Don’t ruin this for me.

Chapter twenty-four

Samantha

Iwent to Mamá Rey’s on Sunday because Bella had been threatening it for weeks, and I had run out of useful excuses.

Also, because some part of me, a part I had been trying very hard not to examine, suspected I needed warm food, loud family, and at least one Mexican mother calling me mija before I could survive whatever came next.

Mamá Rey lived in a house on the south side that smelled, from the driveway, like cumin, warm tortillas, and a lifetime of Sunday afternoons.

Bella was already there, barefoot and laughing at something her sister Celia had said. Celia stood by the stove, one hip resting against the counter, holding her child, who bore her eyes and Bella’s opinions. Sierra, Bella's older sister and Mack's girlfriend, was outside on the patio with him…, who had been handed a plastic soccer ball by one of the kids and was now losing to a six-year-old with the grave concentration of a man defending a championship title.

The television was on in the other room, a soccer game nobody was watching. Somebody’s child was shouting at the dog through a screen door that had not closed all the way since the 1990s. Somewhere in the kitchen, something sizzled in a pan, and the sound alone made my body loosen by half an inch.

Mamá Rey hugged me like she knew me.

That was the first thing.

She had never met me before in her life, and she hugged me like I had been promised.

“Mija,” she said, which was a word I had not earned and she offered anyway.

She put a plate in my hand before I said a full sentence. Pan de polvo with my coffee. Enchiladas verdes with three kinds of salsa ranked by the amount of apology she offered when she handed them over. A small bowl of arroz con leche she pushed toward me with a look that suggested I would be eating it whether I wanted it or not.

I wanted it.

“Where are your people from?” Mamá asked me.

Not where are you from?

Where are your people from?

The Mexican-mother question, asked in the Mexican-mother way, was a question about who had shaped you before she decided whether she was going to shape you now.

I told her.

Kansas City on one side. Minnesota on the other. A mother who had been a nurse and a father who had taught high-school science. Both gone inside two years of each other, when I was twenty-four.