Blake, Marisa: ... maybe it means a part of you wants to cry and run. All I know is an artist's heart is the worst kind of thing to have around here. An artist's heart doesn't help you survive. It makes you soft. Breaks you from the inside out, little by little. I don't want to be broken. I don't want to be in pieces. There's too much of that around us already. What I need is a heart of steel, a heart that is cold and hard and numb to the thorny pricks of pain, the slashes of tragedy.

Chico flicks something at my face, and I shoot a tiny piece of tortilla back at him, straight into his eye. He rubs at it and laughs. He's sitting across the table from me, wearing his stupid powder blue shirt again, when we hear Mama's cell phone ring. "Man, don't you have any other shirts? That tiny thing barely fits you. You look like a damn belly dancer or something," I laugh, pointing at the visible fleshy rolls around his middle. "Shut the hell up, man. It's my favorite one, okay," he says. "You see what it says here? American Eagle, okay? I'm an American Eagle. So go fuck yourself," he adds quietly. He looks over at me, waiting to see my reaction. "No, not like that, man. Remember what I told you? You got to put some force behind your words. Stick out your chin. Lunge forward a little, like a dog being held back by a chain." I demonstrate, but Chico shrugs and pulls at his shirt.

I've tried to teach Chico how to curse and insult properly, especially since he has the size to pull off the whole threatening thing. But Chico is too timid when he curses. Chico is too timid with everything. He broadcasts his weaknesses to the world without meaning to. Like even now. He pulls at his shirt self-consciously, across his round belly, so I know my comment cut right to his insecurities. If I were the kind of guy who wanted to break him, I'd just keep bothering him about it. But I love Chico, so I don't. And I remind myself to lay off him a little.

He launches a fat tortilla crumb back my way and it lands in my hair. I shake it loose as Mama's cell phone rings again in the next room. We hear her answer, and then her voice goes from calm to frantic. "Lucia, [foreign language 00:02: 29]. I'll call Dona Agustina, but you just stay calm. You need to stay calm. I'll be there in a few minutes. It'll be okay, I promise." Chico looks at me. His left eye is still red and teary, his finger mid-flick as worry creeps onto his face. "What happened?" he whispers.

I go to the open arch that separates our small kitchen from our only slightly larger living room crowded with the oversized red velvet couches Mama got for a good price before I was born. Mama was proud she'd haggled the guy for an hour asking him, "Who wants to sit on velvet in 100 degree humid weather?" Turns out Mama did, because she thought those couches looked like they belonged to royalty and she prized them, even if it meant we had to get up every five minutes to cool off. Mama is pacing by our older-than-dirt television, cell phone pressed to her ear. "What's going on? Everything okay?" I ask. I brace myself for the news that someone has died or been killed or kidnapped. "[foreign language 00:00:03:44] is coming," she says. A big smile spreads across her face and her eyes go wide with happiness, erasing the worry for a moment. Before I can ask any more questions, she's on another call explaining to Dona Agustina that my cousin Pequena has gone into labor at home, and that Tia Lucia can't move her or get her to the hospital, and to please, please hurry over there.

Pequena is 17, two years older than me, and she's my cousin, but not by blood. Just like Tia Lucia is my aunt, but not by blood. And Chico is my brother, but not by blood. Blood doesn't matter to us, unless it's spilling. We're family. There for each other, no matter what. And so a moment later, Mama is shouting at us to lock up the house over the sound of her motor scooter starting up and zooming out our front patio, as she rushes to Tia Lucia and Pequena. "Come on," Chico yells, as he pushes past me in the kitchen. Chico's been dying to meet Pequena's baby, constantly staring at her belly and asking her how she feels whenever we're all together. At first, I thought this was...