She married our father in a restaurant, not even a church. She wore a silver skirt and jacket and pillbox hat to match. After the ceremony, she was called to the phone, an old boyfriend wanting to know if it was too late. It was. My father took a picture of her on the phone, the wedding ring shining on her finger. She remembers being in love, but only how it made her feel and not what she felt for him. She has stored the ring in a crack in the wood in the wall, so she can pull it out with something thin and sharp if she wants to, a knife blade perhaps. He photographed just her legs, upright against the bathroom’s tiled wall while she lay in the tub. Her legs slick with soapy water grew cold from posing so long. Her back began to ache. She never asked him to hurry, but just closed her eyes in the tub and imagined her legs were not really hers, and tried to stay still for him. She says she tried to stay still for too many years, that’s how she always felt, as if he were making her hold a pose and it ached. She slapped herself in the face with both hands for being so stupid, the slaps leaving red welts from her wedding ring. That’s when she took it off and put it into the crack in the wood in the wall.

I’m alone with Ma Mère and I ask her what my father was like when I was small. Was he bald then too? I can’t imagine him with hair. But she doesn’t answer my question, instead she says, “When you were a baby, we went to the beach. He held you high above the waves because you were scared of them. The ocean was rough. I thought the both of you would be knocked down. But when he brought you back to shore there wasn’t a drop of water on you.”

John doesn’t look like he’s trying to muster up energy anymore. He’s sitting on the curb, wiping his forehead with his apron. When he sees me he invites me to sit on his lap, but I shake my head. I’m hungry. I’ve come for some Hershey and ask for it.

“I’m all out, kid,” he says.

Manolo won’t get out of his car. He is drunk and unable to move. There are green and amber liquor bottles all over the floor, wedged under the gas and brake pedals, crammed into the glove box that now can’t be closed. Tickets pile up under the car’s wipers.

“We’ve got to move him,” our mother says and we try, we put it in neutral and push, our mother steers, but by the time we get to the other side of the street where the parking is legal, the spaces are already taken. We keep pushing him down the avenue. The dog jumps on the hood, splaying her paws, trying to dig in with her toenails. We go crosstown.

“Let’s keep going,” our mother says, thinking it best to park the car right in front of the river where there are no signs restricting the parking.

“Wake up, we’ve given you a view of the river,” our mother says through the window to Manolo. Manolo sits up, runs his hand through his hair and then looks at himself in the rearview mirror, smiling. He gets out of the car and admires his view, saying he doesn’t know why he didn’t think of parking here himself. He takes our mother and dances with her and the skirt of her dress flies up when he spins her on the rotting wooden pier. The heel of her shoe gets caught and she falls and she laughs and the sun is setting now and she points to it and shakes her head and looks over at us standing on the street. While she still sits where she fell, she waves and points again to the sunset, wanting us to see what she sees.

On our walk back home I count the hot dog men. There are more out there than you think. Somehow they are strategically placed on every third street corner like pieces of a chess game.

“I’m tired, let’s take the bus,” our mother says. But we don’t have enough money for everyone to take the bus so our mother takes it alone. We jump alongside when we can, holding on the windows with our fingertips, looking in at her, smiling while she covers her mouth and tries not to laugh, and waves us back down to the ground, afraid one of us will get caught up under the wheels and be dragged crosstown.

At home we are swearing that even the poreless parts of us are sweating—eyeballs and nails and navels and tongues. We’re afraid for Ma Mère, who isn’t hearing, who won’t answer our questions, but simply sleeps all day. At night, though, she says she doesn’t sleep, saying she’s too hot. When we walk by her on our way to the bathroom she says “hello” to us and sometimes lifts her fingertips in a wave. One night I stop and I sit on the floor by her chair. I don’t say anything. She just starts to talk.

“That day we went to the beach, he fell asleep with you under the crook of his arm on the towel. The plan was to head back home before dinner. But we stayed. We couldn’t bring ourselves to wake you. He slept with a smile on his face the whole time.”

“How can you remember all of this and I don’t remember any of it?” I say.

“It’s not so much to remember,” she says.