The kisses have become the extent of Marcela and Arturo’s intimacy, and her signal to begin her daily routine. She lets out the breath she has been holding in, the remnants of Arturo’s morning scent, and walks down the hall to the girls’ room where her five daughters toss and turn and slobber and smack their lips to their dreams about boys and flowers and dances. She flicks the light switch and clears her throat. It is all she needs to do to wake the oldest two girls, who will then wake the remaining girls with their fighting over the bathroom and the brush and the costume jewelry that they sneak to school in their book bags and put on while riding the bus to the Santa Rita school compound which houses grades K through 12.  

When Henry Hemmings needed a transistor radio in March 1971, I insisted that he take mine. We were at the long sink in the bathroom during the break between evening study halls.  Henry was trimming his goatee with a safety razor and I was applying a marginally effective acne medication to the left side of my face. Henry was sixteen and I was fourteen.  We were both in fourth form at the Nathan School, but Henry was already a starter on the football and basketball teams, which made him the coolest guy in our class. I was the only Asian student in the school, which made me more of an oddity than any kind of cool. 

He began to love her when she was nine and had breasts the size of tangerines. She was still in her impetuous phase—she dashed about the house in her underclothes, shrieking with laughter. He was her cousin, her big brother; he was fifteen years older than her. Nobody saw anything suspicious when he clasped her under the arms and spun her—squealing and kicking—in a maypole circle, then pressed her to his chest.