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In my hazy pre-school and kindergarten memories , my mother is kind , and lovely , and still very sad . On a sunny late morning , probably a Saturday , we walk together to the bus stop near my abuela ’ s house , and she takes me to our local library , where she struggles to pick a novel for herself , but quietly oohs and aahs to me in the children ’ s section about picture books and YA novels and characters like Anne Shirley and Francie Nolan and how she hopes that I ’ ll love them someday , too . Then we take another bus to what I think was some kind of Hello Kitty store where she would buy glassy , pale pink candy for us that had pictures of the Little Twin Stars on its packaging . She is strict , firmly instructing me to stay close to her and to sit as still as I can , and reminding me to always thank the driver when we get off the bus , but she never gets angry or raises her voice . On our way home , we stop at a favorite Italian restaurant , a tiny family-owned place , and we get pizza and garlic knots for dinner . When we get home at night , we still can ’ t seem to sleep , even a er a long day of activity . We are in our adjoining bedrooms , and tucked into my bed , I can feel her loneliness ( which is neither acknowledged nor assuaged by my abuela ) through the wall . The radio is on , set to the city ’ s premiere oldies station , and I feel happy and proud when I recognize songs that I like by Donna Summer , The Supremes , The Jackson Five , The Ronettes , Leslie Gore . We listen to the radio every night , and it has only just occurred to me , 30 years later , that my mother might have put on music so that I wouldn ’ t hear her if she began to cry .
But in much clearer memories , my mother is up late , and she ’ s happy where she is . It ’ s a er 11pm on a school night , and she ’ s sitting comfortably on our living room love seat , doing her hair . If it ’ s a wash day , she ’ s sectioning and setting her ‘ coarse ’ black hair in large mesh rollers ; otherwise , she ’ s combing and pinning her hair into a doobie , so that she can wrap her head in her protective silk pañuelo , and then move on to trimming , filing , and buffing her nails . Her tape-recorded episodes of the soap operas and telenovelas that she follows are playing on our tv and vcr , and I ’ m sitting a few feet away , on the couch , confused and thoroughly entertained by her shows , and by her elaborate and delightfully incredible explanations of Why Erica Kane is Doing That . I am blithely unaware of how much is riding on my mother ’ s hair and nails , of how easily she could lose her relatively well-paid office assistant job for looking even a little unkempt while having skin just a shade too brown .