Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa by MICOL OSTOW

and Ana all sing in the choir, and they are very cute standing up in front of the chapel. I’ve heard them practice around the house, but it’s different with the full backing, the organ, the whole shebang. Lucy smiles at them appreciatively from beside me in the pews. Even José is here, freshly shaven and showered, scowling and detachment kept to a minimum. He’s okay, I’ve decided, though he definitely marches to his own rhythm. Rosa plays the organ and beams at her girls. My mother chants the hymns quietly but surely to herself, making me wonder what else from her childhood she’s retained but never shared.
    We split up afterward, my mother, Rosa, and the girls in one car, José, Lucy, and me in the other. I almost can’t believe he’s coming with us to Eva’s, but then I remember that he’s friendly with her sons, Carlos and Juan.
    Eva and her husband, Héctor, live in Bayamón, a large metro area just southwest of San Juan. It’s a quick drive that José obviously knows well. The car ride is quiet. I stiffly balance a pot of rice on my knees that clanks dangerously every time we turn a corner.
    â€œSo, what did you think of church?” José says, teasing. I know he thinks being Jewish is something tantamount to being an alien.
    I shrug. I don’t get the way some people are all uncomfortable around religions other than their own. It’s not as though just sitting in church calls my entire religious identity into question, after all. Or at least, it shouldn’t. “It’s not the first time I’ve been to mass.”
    â€œYou were there for Grandma’s funeral,” Lucy says, and again—again—I want to protest that in fact, my grandmother’s not dead.
    And then I remember. And I can’t believe it because, of course, I got it wrong. Again.
    Eva and Héctor’s house is big, bigger than Rosa’s. It’s also in a development, which I’m realizing is standard for most middle-class families. Héctor is “in business,” though I’m not really sure what that means. He used to work with Rosa’s husband, before Rosa’s husband died. This also is pretty common, the whole tight-knit family thing. Living together, working together.
    I think of my father’s family back in New York, grinning at each other through tightly clenched teeth and clutching at their highballs. The idea of them all working together is enough to make me snort with laughter.
    I think about sharing this with my mother; she’s in the kitchen, of course, hunched over a pot of something or other. I think she’d appreciate it, but maybe not right now.
    There’s melee here, but not quite at the level of the post-funeral chaos at Rosa’s when we first arrived. Still, the house is clogged with people, and only a handful are faces that I recognize.
    Carlos, Juan, and José immediately disappear into someone’s bedroom to talk sports or whatever it is that teenage boys do behind closed doors (I honestly couldn’t even guess). Dora, Ana, and Pilar head off to play computer games with three other little girls vaguely within their age bracket. I have no idea who these girls belong to. Amalia fusses in the living room, setting up a communal buffet. I stand awkwardly in the living room, shifting my weight from one leg to the other. I should be doing something helpful, but what? The kids don’t need looking after. Amalia has got the table covered all on her own. The kitchen is overflowing with bodies. I suppose I could, um, vacuum or something, but that seems like more of a post-party, cleanup thing.
    â€œYou are Gloria’s daughter, sí ?” A man with the weathered face of a raisin leans in, reaches out to pinch my cheek. It’s all I can do not to jump. Families are all the same, I guess, with the in-your-face-ness and the awkward vibes. Huh.
    â€œ Sí , er—yes,” I reply.