Page 9

“I’m home,” I call.

“In here,” my mother answers back.

I slip my shoes off by the door and hang my coat on the hook beside hers. Her bag is ready to go, her comfy sneakers nearly sitting by the bag, with her badge and stethoscope draped over them.

The house smells like onions, garlic, and whatever cleaning product they use at the hospital. It’s a smell that has followed my mother home for as long as I can remember. She swears she showers before she leaves work, and I swear the smell still emanates from her pores.

She’s curled into one corner of the couch wearing navy blue scrubs, one leg tucked beneath her, folding laundry while a telenovela plays at a volume that would concern the neighbors if they weren’t watching the same thing.

She glances up. “You’re late.”

“I was at work.”

She smiles without looking away from the television. “I made empanadas.”

“Gracias.”

“Eat before they go cold.”

I roll my eyes at her, because I think it doesn’t really matter how old I am, I’m always going to be her child. Even if I’m in my mid-thirties and we’re basically roommates who see each other a few minutes a day, right after I get home from work and before she leaves for her twelve-hour shift at the hospital.

She laughs. “Come here.”

I walk around the couch and kiss the top of her head.

She catches my hand before I can pull away.

“Cold.”

“Yes, it’s raining.”

“So wear gloves.”

“Mamá, I’m not going to be the ridícula who wears gloves in October. In Seattle.”

“Te vas a enfermar.”

“You say that every year and I haven’t even gotten a cold, so…”

I head toward the kitchen while she resumes folding towels. The covered plate waiting on the stove has my name written across the foil in black marker. There are only two people living here, and somehow my mother still labels the leftovers. Maybe it’s a force of habit, from having to label everything at her work.

Behind me, someone on the television slaps someone else, hard.

“She deserved it,” my mother announces.

“You always say that.”

“Ay bueno, es que it’s true.”

The house is small enough that we can have conversations from different rooms without raising our voices. We’ve been doing it for years, more often since she switched to nights a few years ago, just as I started my online witch shop.

“Busy today?” she asks.

“A little.”

“Coffee people or witch people?”

I smile. “Both.”