My mother’s phone calls always brought news from our mountain. Estefani and her siblings never returned from Mexico City after their mother Augusta died from AIDS. Sofia, Estefani’s grandmother, who’d run the OXXO by the Pemex gas station, had packed up and left to go and care for her orphaned grandchildren.

My mother told me that Paula and her mother had really disappeared. No one ever heard anything about them again.

I also knew that Maria’s gunshot had healed and that she and her mother were still on our mountain.

I have a case of the misery, my mother said.

Oh, Mama. Please don’t tell me.

I’m all wrong inside.

This meant she missed me, but she’d never say it.

Some mornings Julio and I would go out to the garden and spend the whole day there.

He’d lift me up onto the bronze horse and I would ride it.