Dolores Reyes was amazed at how much shit a body could expel. She cleaned up after her mother again, only this time she removed Pilar’s nightgown without replacing it with a fresh one. All concerns for modesty fell away as the old woman lay nude beneath pale blue sheets and a snowdrift of blankets, wearing nothing but a Depends diaper and a simple silver cross. The beaded chain with the tiny silver crucifix had been dropped off last week by Tessie DeLeon, her mother’s closest friend, one of a handful of women in Pilar’s prayer circle.
