Start by breaking down the chicken. Toss the pieces into a large frying pan sizzling with butter. Fry the chicken skin side down until it’s golden. When the skin crisps on the outside, it’s time to add the broth.

            “Ma?” Charlie’s footsteps stop at the kitchen’s doorway.

            Before I know it, my hand whips a wooden spoon in his direction. I hear the spoon bounce off flesh and a blur of snowmen pajamas disappear up the stairs. I should feel bad. I didn’t mean for it to hit him. I just can’t have him here, not today. Today is all about her. Her Christmas Day tamales.

            Cover the chicken and broth. Simmer for fifteen minutes. Set the timer.

            Chop half an onion, one sweet pepper, three celery sticks. I let my wrist do all the work, my pointer finger tucked under the bolster like Anne Burrell says. My Lucía loved that stupid TV show where Chef Anne takes terrible cooks and teaches them. She would binge watch that show instead of doing her homework, and then she would police me and sharpie my finger whenever she saw me mishandling the knife, like Chef Anne does. Luce isn’t into cooking, but she is passionate about following rules.

Was.

We didn’t find out she was sick until it was stage four. We brought her home. She died in the TV room. And now she’s dead. It happened.

            There’s blood on the cutting board. It’s flowing out of my thumb. Didn’t even feel it. I’m mesmerized by the bubble that forms at the tip of my thumb. Lucía cut herself too, a small prick from the utility knife as she was shaping a Styrofoam ball into the nucleus of a DNA cell for a science project. The next day, the cut was still bleeding. When her Band-Aid seeped blood the third day, we took her to the ER. \. We thought she needed stitches.

            I throw away the bloodied chopped-up vegetables, rinse my thumb until the bleeding stops, grab a clean cutting board and start over: onion, pepper, celery. Sauté the vegetables, add two cups of long rice, four cups of water and two tablespoons of achiote. Close the lid.

Wait.

            I used to be a patient person. I never minded waiting in traffic or in line. Nothing you can do. But now, if I have a minute to myself, my brain plays the same movie over and over. Stitches. Bleeding. Doctors. Stage 4. TV room. Dead. It happened.

            The timer beeps.

Place the cooked chicken on a rack to let it cool. The cold of the metal rack makes the hair on my forearms stand on end. At the funerary home, when I kissed her good-bye, Lucía laid on a metal table. It was too cold. Luce doesn’t like the cold. Neither do I. No matter how many years we’ve lived in Seattle, my Latin blood craves the tropical warmth of Costa Rica. My baby girl inherited that. That and a love for dancing. When she was around seven, she would steal my skirts and move all the furniture in the living room to open up the dance floor, where she danced for hours and hours. Back then, we lived with my parents, so there was always a steady supply of Latin music, and Luce did not discriminate: salsa, cumbia, merengue. It drove me crazy—the drums drilling, the trumpets shrieking, my raided closet a constant mess. But she was never freer than when she danced. Or happier.

            About a year ago, Luce stopped dancing, said it made her too tired and sore. I thought it was the beginnings of teenage angst.

            Masa. I have to make masa. The entire Maseca bag goes into a large stockpot. Pour cold water a few drops at a time. I dig into the mix and the masa hugs my fingers, warm and cold at the same time, like floating in the Costa Rican sea; the surface water warm while the undercurrents flow cold. That’s funny. I don’t like the ocean. I’m terrified of waves.

            When Luce was six, we went to Costa Rica to visit abuelita. This was before I met John, when it was just me and Lucía. Well, the two of us and my parents. We went on a day trip to the beach with my cousins. We rented a mini-bus, and prepared a picnic that would have lasted us weeks. The kids buried each other in the sand and sculpted mermaid tails. I worked on my tan and allowed abu to feed me every five minutes.

            Before leaving, tía Greta called us together and the whole gang posed for a picture at the edge of the water, our backs to the waves. One… two.. something knocked me off my feet and I was underwater, eyes burning from the salt. I reached to my right and grabbed a little limb. I held onto it as hard as I could, my own feet splattering. I didn’t know which way was up. Tío Beto pulled me up to a painful gasp of air, dark spots pulsating in my line of sight. There were screams and chaos all about. “¡La chiquita! ¡Que suelte a la chiquita!” Tía Greta yelled in my face.

            I was holding Luce under water. Tía touched my hand and I released my little girl into a circle of aunts and uncles that pulled her out into the beach, coughing. I don’t really know how it happened, but the coughing turned into laughter and soon everyone was holding their bellies and brushing away tears while I was paralyzed in place. I hate the ocean. I hate the waves.

            Add the chicken broth to the masa little by little, massaging the mix until there are no crumbs, moist enough so it’s malleable and dry enough so it won’t stick to my hands. Since Luce’s death, I can’t bring myself to touch Charlie. I should. He’s only six. But this visceral heat rises from the pit of my stomach every time I see him playing. Or laughing. Or hugging his dad. And then I get mad at John because this is not his grief, it’s mine. She’s mine. And hatred seeps in, like the broth in this masa, immersing me in memories of John and Luce, like when she was five and he bought her a scoop of Oregon Strawberry ice cream in a waffle cone and she smiled so bright… Lucía, the bringer of light.

            When the dough is ready, I cover it and let it rest. I’m not certain if you’re supposed to let this dough rest, though. I remember making tamales with abuelita and my cousins. A dozen of us around the long wood kitchen table and the fire oven creating a smoke-filled sauna that masked the sweat and dust and salty skin of children who’d been playing in the sun all week on Christmas break.

            This is my first attempt at cooking tamales alone. I’m not a good cook. I never liked cooking, especially Costa Rican food. Since moving to the US when I was fourteen, I’ve done everything I can to keep that part of myself hidden. I shed the accent and the food. But it’s Christmastime; Luce loved going to my parents’ house on Christmas Day and eating tamales for breakfast.

            Clean the plantain leaves and cut them into rectangles. Clean them front and back with a wet towel before wiping them down with a little oil in the sponge. My fingers trail over the strings of the leaves, up through the air before combing down over them again. I’m amazed at how the leaves come to life. It reminds me of her hair. As a child I would go to school with wild hair, uncontrollable frizz, pigtails at different heights. My mom never had time to help me get ready for school. She bought me an alarm clock instead. When Lucía was born, I swore her hair was not going to be a weakness bullies targeted her for. I woke us up hours early to make breakfast, bathe her and braid her hair. A little Barbie doll in my hands. Acute Myeloid Leukemia Barbie.

            It happened.

            When that stupid little cut wouldn’t stop bleeding, we took her to the ER. She got one stitch. I should’ve asked them to test her right away. I should’ve been suspicious. I should’ve asked, pestered, doubted. Instead, I dropped her off at my parents to watch La Sele play a World Cup game against the British Virgin Islands with Tito, my dad. Lucía came alive talking strategy and players with her grandpa.

            When I was a child, back in Costa Rica, my dad used to take me to soccer games and then he would disappear—sitting right there next to me, but unreachable. It infuriated me to see Lucía lose herself to a game the way my dad did. I suppose I should have been grateful that they got to share that time together. I can still see them together, her face pitched up, hope emanating from both.

            The Instant Pot screams—the rice is ready and that quickly I’m home again, making tamales. It’s December 24th. Eleven months ago we found out Lucía was sick. A cut that wouldn’t heal. A stitch that turned into a mystery, that turned into a blood test, that turned into a bone marrow biopsy, that turned into one, two, three oncologists…

            Not everybody uses eggs in their tamales. Tamales are meant to keep, and hard-boiled eggs become rubber when frozen, but Lucía loves hard boiled eggs. Set the water to boil in a medium sized pot. Open the can of garbanzo beans and the frozen peas and place them in two small bowls. Pull the chicken apart; the succulent white flesh gives in without resistance. The dark meat, on the other hand, is not so easy to separate. I tear it into big chunks using my fingers, juices running down my wrists. The mangled meat goes into yet another bowl. I’m running out of counter space. The rumbling of boiling water is my cue to put the eggs in. Set timer for ten minutes.

            What came first, the chicken or the egg?

            I never wanted to be a mother. Not really. When I found out in my senior year of college that I was pregnant, my very first thought was: Don’t be.

I’m angry at God for doing this now, fourteen years after I thought it. Fourteen years of derailing my career, six of those years spent as a single mother back with my parents, putting up with their disappointment and shame, and the last eight of those years in a two-story house with a white picket fence. For six of those eight years, Luce was her little brother Charlie’s best friend. I never wanted to be a mother and here I am, wondering who am I if not Lucía’s mom, while Charlie is being ignored for the umpteenth day in a row because I can’t stand the cadence of his steps, his sticky hands full of boogers, his constant nagging. I just can’t. I am so angry all the time. My jaw hurts.

            Hardboiled eggs. Done.

            Wash the carrots. Peel the carrots. Chop the carrots into circles; are they called circles? Medallions? Discs? Julienne the red bell peppers. How is it I know the word julienne but not what the carrot circles are called? I should start watching cooking shows again.

            Near the end, the Food Channel was on nonstop. She would half-write, half remember the recipes she liked, and John would cook them for her. John’s a great cook. When he’s cooking, the world disappears, kind of like my dad does with soccer, except it doesn’t piss me off because I know he’s cooking for her. For us.

            When he first joined our family, John was so patient with her, so present. He was just there, cooking, laughing, noodling with the guitar in the background while Luce did her homework. He let her get used to him, to his smell, his voice. Just day after day, being present. And it worked. She spent her last days watching the Food Network in the TV room while he cooked anything and everything she told him to, even though she didn’t eat any of it. She couldn’t. She died while Bobby Flay outcooked a Mexican chef that thought his abuelita’s cochinita pibil was unbeatable. Two brown people down. It happened.

            “This is America,” my mom said, over-enunciating, when I called her to tell her about the leukemia. “They have the best doctors, the best technology, she’s going to be fine, ponelo en las manos de Dios.” She was so calm that I believed her. Ma has an unwavering faith in the United States of America. She bought into the dream and justified any “left turn” by putting it in the hands of God. And fuck me if it hasn’t worked for them.

            When we came to the US our life savings were strapped to our bellies in skin-colored fanny packs under our shirts. My dad, a Jimmy Hendrix fan, chose Seattle as our destination, said this place “gave him good vibes.” We were among the fortunate, not running from Maras or war or poverty; it was plain good ol’ ambition. My mom and dad put their savings to work and rented a two-story place. Home upstairs, restaurant downstairs. They cooked tacos and burritos and tortilla soup because it was easier than teaching our neighborhood what Costa Rican food was all about. Still, every now and then, they snuck Salsa Lizano into their recipes. As the years passed, they added a few Costa Rican dishes because “You can take the Ticos out of Costa Rica, but you can’t take Costa Rica out of the Ticos,” my dad parroted every time someone would ask what that thing in the menu was.

            I hated all of it. I hated waitressing after school, the aroma of chicharron forever stuck to my hair, my feet swollen from doing inventory, organizing and re-stocking every Sunday evening. I hated the sombrero my dad wore while singing “Cumpleaños Feliz” mariachi-style whenever a patron was celebrating. I hated being asked what part of Mexico we were from.

            Ponelo en las manos de Dios, my mom said.

God gave me Luce and with her my heart expanded and my dreams shifted. The first time my parents held her, their disappointment in me melted. She was their American Dream—that coveted blue passport was her birthright.

            “But this is America!”, my dad yelled at the third oncologist that confirmed the prognosis. The doctor’s eyes shifted from my dad’s to mine, as if I could do anything.

            She was tired all the time. Her platelets were shit. She died. The American Dream is dead. It happened.

            My vegetables are julienned and circled and each in its own bowl. All I have do is fill the tamales.

            Transform the dining room table into an assembly line. The bowls full of multicolor ingredients and the plantain leaf rectangles sketch a skeleton of a Christmas tree, the one I didn’t put up this year.

            Set up two plantain leaves on top of each other, like making a small cross. Place a scoop of masa in the middle. Add one heaping tablespoon of rice, a few pieces of white and dark chicken meat, one carrot circle, a bell pepper slice, three garbanzos, a handful of peas, a slice of hardboiled egg. Fold the leaves like French doors on top of the masa. Put two tamales together, their openings against each other and wrap them with twine, like wrapping a present with a ribbon. Repeat.

            Again.

            One more time.

            She was sick. We brought her home. We set up a hospital bed in the TV room and I slept on the couch next to her. I can see her empty bed from the dining room table. It still smells of sun-dried sweat and ocean salt and recently rained-on sand with hints of granizado con doble leche, that sweet red syrup that colors the snow cone and something else, something I can’t define… just her. The same smell she had in the creases of her neck when I first held her in the hospital almost 14 years ago.

            I hear the garage door open. John’s home. It must be past 5pm. Keep wrapping tamales, gutting out the bowls. Scoop, fill, wrap, twine.

            The garage door closes and I hear murmurs. There’s not that much masa left so I go for the “tonto,” the last tamal, the “big dumb one” that gets stuffed with everything that’s left. Out of the corner of my eye I see Charlie rush past. It surprises me—how small he looks. He’s got my dark curls and John’s grey eyes that turn green in the sunlight.

            I cannot help but resent John now. For talking me into having Charlie, the baby boy who demanded so much, too much of my attention, distracting me from Luce. I blame him. I blame them.

            I put the tamales in the large stockpot and take them back to the kitchen. I fill the pot with scorching hot water, and I crank up the heat, lid on.

            “Hey, did you hear me?” John follows me into the kitchen, “Did you hear a single word I said?”

            I turn to face him while I set my timer for half an hour. The tamales need to boil before they’re edible. And then they’ll last forever, well, as long as forever can be.

            “Sorry, what did you say?”

            John’s eyes zoom in on me while he bites his lips. He looks away and says, “It smells good in here, your mom would be proud.”

            I sense a hint of a smile forming in his face. I nod, turn toward the dishwasher and start filling it with every single utensil we own.

            “Do you need help? Charlie and I can—”

            “No.”

            Even though I rejected his help, he starts piling dirty dishes next to the sink, “It’s good to see you out of the TV room,” he dumps a few unused plantain leaves in the compost bin, “I was thinking we could—”

            “I’m busy,” I pull the plantain leaves out of the compost and clean them with a towel. I know I won’t use them and they will definitely not keep, but I can’t help myself.

            John ignores me and strikes, “How would you feel about a Christmas tree?”

            “What?” I crunch the plantain leaves in my hand, now they’re really useless.

            “A Christmas tree, by the living room big window?”

            My cheeks are burning up, “I don’t care,” I say.

I turn around and pull the cooler out of the walk-in pantry.

            “Then, pretend,” he jabs.

            “Then no. Fuck Christmas. There’s no Christmas. How can you even—”

            “But you’re making tamales,” he points to the pot as if I don’t know what those are.

            “For her!”

            “For her?” He’s holding his breath and I notice the thin line on his forehead change directions, from worry to anger.

            My timer shrieks and I realize I’ve been digging my nails into my palms. I should leave. I make a bed of paper towels at the bottom of the cooler and put the tamales in a neat pile. No time to let them drain. This will have to do. My fingers burn as I pass the tamales from the stockpot to the cooler, but the pain soothes me.

            I roll the cooler on my way to the garage. John grabs my arm as I walk by. He grabs my arm so hard I can feel my veins beating against his hand.

 “Did you hit Charlie with a spoon?”

            “What?”

            “Did you throw a wooden spoon at my son?”

            “Your son?” I roll my eyes at him and I do it right to his face so he can’t miss it.

 “He’s terrified, he thinks it’s his fault.”

            My lungs deflate. I want to yell that maybe he’s right. “You don’t know what I’m-”

            “Enough!” He raises his voice, “Fuck. Yes. It hurts. Luce died and it’s unbearable. But we’re here. He’s here! He doesn’t understand why this happened.” John lets out a groan that reverberates in my teeth. “It’s been eleven months, love, and it’s Christmas Eve. Charlie’s just a kid. Don’t make him mourn his sister and his mother.”

            I pull my arm out of his grasp and open the door to the garage, “I have to go.”

            He takes a deep breath, “Do whatever the fuck you want” he says without emotion and walks away.

            I roll the cooler to my car’s trunk. Luce’s hospital emergency suitcase is still here. I get in the car and drive.

            The streets are mad with last-minute present seekers. I daydream of driving over people that have the nerve to celebrate this Christmas.

            The cemetery is quiet. An icy breeze engulfs me as I open the car door. I wonder if it’s going to snow.

            The wheels of the cooler hum as I walk in the narrow pathway that connects the main entrance, past the Sacred Heart Columbarium, and opens into the Cabrini Sanctuary. My phone light illuminates just enough to guide my next step. I don’t remember the pine trees being so tall or their imposing shadows that block the light from the lampposts by the driveway. I smell the scent of the wet pine.

            I see the smooth black and sepia marble stone, her name carved in cursive—her own handwriting.

            It happened. It happened. It happened.

            The ground is frozen. A thin layer of rainwater has turned to ice in the dirt. I scrape my hands as I dig. My nails shake with every motion, shards of dirt ratchet outward. I take it. I deserve it. I want to yell and shake the Earth but my mouth is so tightly shut I taste blood. The sound of cars passing by blends in with the rustling leaves of the trees. The noise quiets my brain. I take it as encouragement. So I dig. And dig. And pant. And dig. Dig out the worms that feast upon her. Dig as punishment for my incompetence. Dig until there’s a hole big enough for her tamales because tomorrow is Christmas, and I cannot bear the idea of Lucía not having tamales for breakfast on Christmas Day.

            I feel her. The veins in my hands pulsate. I push as hard as I can against the ground. She’s here. My baby is here.

            “Luce,” I exhale and close my eyes, “feliz navidad, mi princesa.”

            Like a movie rolling in my eyelids, I see her: baby feet dancing in the air in the maternity ward, a swollen toddler’s thumb from that time she tried to grab a pretty bee from the lavender plants at my mom’s, the red and brown blur of a twirling girl in my fancy crotchet skirt, an open mouth laugh and a half eaten apple where a front tooth is still stuck, a trick-or-treat night with John who’s bought her a Belle costume and is dressed as the Beast for her, a siblings secret followed by a kiss that Luce plants on Charlie’s forehead, a bedsheet fort in the living room haunted by the giggles of kids, a white and brown snow man that Luce and Charlie made last winter when they jumped the gun and built it on a day that barely snowed, Lucía sleeping in a hospital bed, Lucía getting treatment, Lucía celebrating being in remission and joining the dance group again, a loud argument about a pack of cigarettes I find in her room that she’s holding for a friend, a mother-daughter day at the mall to find the perfect prom dress, a week of secretly crying on John’s shoulder because our Luce is going off to college, a stern reprimand because her phone bill is too high, a sweet embrace when we find out the long conversations she’s been having over the phone are with Charlie so he won’t feel so alone, a visit over Christmas with her boyfriend from college, a weekend of sopita de pollo because she got drunk after breaking up with said boyfriend, a family party at my parents’ restaurant to celebrate she got into grad school, a visit to her new house in Boston, or DC, or California, a dinner to introduce us to her partner and a hard conversation where they tell us they don’t intend to marry because marriage is an imbalanced contract that propagates the patriarchy or something like that, the birth of my first grandchild who wears yellow instead of pink or blue and is baptized with a gender neutral name like Rory or Alex so they can choose who they want to be when they’re ready, a fight with my parents over that, a packed church where a beaming Charlie holds Luce’s child as their godfather, an evening with my mom where the three of us teach Luce’s child how to make tamales for Christmas Eve.

            I open my eyes and I see her. She’s in front of me. It’s her but as a grown woman, she smiles at me, her hair turning grey, lines drawing in her beautiful face with each ticking second. She grabs my hands and pulls them out of the hole I just dug. She mouths something to me.

            “I can’t hear you,” I yell.

            She mouths it again, slowly.

            “I can’t,” I hyperventilate, “Lucía, I can’t!”

            She lets go of my hands, her own hands freckled and paper thin by now, “Don’t!” I reach for her hands as if reaching for a life raft, but my hands go through hers and she giggles. For a split second, I glimpse the real her, her 13-year-old bright little self.

            Old Lucía leans over the hole and smells the tamales. This time I can tell she’s saying gracias, Ma. Her white hair starts to disintegrate.

            “No!” I stutter, “Un ratito más, por favor.”

            She stares at me. She looks like abu now. Specks of her cheeks are flying away like little snowflakes of light that fall upward in slow motion.

            We cover the tamales with the loose dirt. She nods my way and a few more specks disperse.

            “Stop. Don’t move” I command in my Mom’s voice.

            She does. She stops, but the disintegration process does not. More and more specks float into the sky. Her wrinkled lips move and then dissolve. My Lucía is translucent now.

            “Please,” I bargain, “I have to— I can’t. I’ll go. I’ll go and you stay. Please!” I make my move and jump to hold her, to embrace her as she is, fractured, but still her.

            She splinters in my arms.

Snowflakes fall in the right direction now.

            I park in front of my house. The snow is already several inches thick. My parents’ car is in the driveway. Through the window, I see them moving, decorating a small plastic Christmas Tree. John is in the kitchen by himself. And Charlie, Charlie is staring at me from Lucía’s bedroom window.

            I get out of the car, and walk towards the house staring back at him. He opens the window and grabs a handful of snow. He molds it into a ball and aims it at me. Bullseye. It hits me in the throat, and it breaks the dam. He disappears from the window.

            My legs shake so much I cannot hold myself upright anymore, I breathe in the cold air hoping it will freeze the tears that are pouring out of me.

            “Ma?” he opens the front door, “Did she like the tamales?” He’s wearing the ugly Christmas sweater Lucía gave him last year.

            I reach for Charlie and grab his warm hands. I take him in, his smell, my Charlie, winter snow, rubber duckies and hot agua dulce. I meet his eyes. I try to speak.