Samuel Buentello was 14 years old when he left the Rancho Nuevo in South Texas, the only home he’d ever known. In 1945, the road to nearby Hebbronville, a ranching hub 56 miles southeast of Laredo, wasn’t much more than dirt. All Buentello had was a paper sack of belongings and his mother’s tearful blessing.

It’s nearly midnight in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday, February 14. The temperature has plunged to 10 degrees, but my husband, Adrian, and I are not yet worrying about how we’ll keep our toddler and baby warm if the electrical grid fails, which it will within hours. We’re not thinking of the hill outside our neighborhood, which will become so dangerously ice-slicked it will effectively trap us in our home. We’re not taking stock of our meager food and water supply, calculating how long it will last. We're laughing.

Marilinda Guzman was eighty-two years old, and the things her mother had never told her could fill the condo building that rose like a tall, sharp-elbowed gringa across the street from her own little house. Marilinda, her mother had never said, arranging the yellowed lace mantilla around Marilinda’s wedding-day face, you will be happy with Roberto. Her mother had never curved a cool hand around Marilinda’s cheek and promised, Mijita, your life will be swollen with love. Neither had she revealed, in solemn, confidential tones, Marilinda, on the fourth day the moretónes become bright as flower pollen, and that’s when you will be able to cover them the easiest with makeup.