“Your hair's a rat’s nest,” the woman said, her imitation silk kimono gaping to reveal a bony chest and the inner edges of small, torpedo-shaped breasts. She held an ashtray in one hand and a gold-tipped cigarette in the other. The child ran a hand through her halo of dark hair.

Every few months Mom made a trip to Kam Man Market to restock the pantry essentials: bottles of fish sauce that stunk like Bruce’s football socks, shrimp paste that smelled of sweet fermentation, among an abundance of other condiments that would make all my classmates pinch their noses.

Fire crackles, short and cuppin’ heat in curled hands. Room is warm, is small and tired, and sittin’ crouched by open hearth is Daddy, sleepin' at baby’s side—both tucked away by the fire-place, tryna suck in that warmth.

Latine Monsters, edited by Ofelia Montelongo