It wasn’t as though I’d forgotten the danger. To ride, whether in the front or the back of a bike, is to enter into a contract with yourself: “Yes, I understand the risk, and I accept it because if the worst were to happen, I would leave this earth in the midst of experiencing the best parts of it, and isn’t that the most any of us can ask for?

The early nights felt like this: the peaceful lull of skin on skin, puffs of milky breath. My mind wandering, circling, ruminating. My body—unfamiliar and reconstituted, still bleeding. I felt scraped open, raw, exquisitely receptive to the world. Sometimes I thought, I am somebody’s mother. The thought shook me, rendered everything else unrecognizable. I sparked with creativity.

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.