Party Girl by Lynne Ewing

face.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    “I’m making dinner.” She smiled and pulled the carcass of the chicken she was plucking from the steaming water. “You remember the jalapeño chicken that Abuelita used to make?”
    “Yeah,” I said, and sat down watching her.
    When she had finished plucking the chicken, I said, “Mom, how come you loved Pocho more than me?”
    “What?” She lifted the chicken from the water like a newborn.
    “You always held him and hugged him and gave him kisses that I wanted.”
    “You didn’t need me,” Mom said. “You were always cleaning and helping and silent like you had nothing to say to me. You had your own world from the day you were born, and I thought you were happy with it. Pocho had nothing but tears.”
    “I kept my tears inside me,” I said. Then I told her about the old woman on the bus.
    She nodded. “When I didn’t find you home this morning, I took the last pennies from the teapot and went down to the church and lit candles. I prayed to Blessed Mary to take pity on another mother. Somehow I knew you were going to be okay, so I came home, and, well, this is what I did so we could have a dinner. There’s not much food in the house.”
    “You knew I was coming back?”
    “I felt it in my heart.”
    She came to me and gave me a kiss. Her breath smelled of coffee, and that smell made my heart so happy my mind started spinning a good future for all of us.
    “Where did you get those clothes?” she asked finally.
    “The hospital,” I said, and lifted my sweater.
    She drew in air in a long hiss.
    “I’m done, Mom,” I said. “I quit the life.”
    She wrapped her frail arms around me. I tried to hug her back, but my body felt stiff from the stitches and pain.
    “Go lie down while I make dinner,” she said, and puckered her lips for another kiss.
    I awoke to the smell of chicken frying and went into the kitchen. Mom had set the table with Grandma’s white china, then lit candles in old seashells and set them around the room. Her hair was long and waving down her back.She kept pushing it behind her ears to show off the fiery opal earrings.
    Nando came through the door and smiled awkwardly like he was meeting us for the first time. His collar was wrinkled as if he had tried on a tie, taken it off, and tried it again before finally deciding against it.
    We sat at the table. Mom placed a platter of fried chicken in the center of the table and poured a glass of water for each of us.
    “I don’t have anything else to serve,” she said. “No vegetables.”
    Nando took a big bite.
    “This is the best chicken I’ve ever tasted,” he said. “It doesn’t need anything else.”
    I took a bite, the peppers burning my lips and tongue. “It’s just like Grandma’s,” I said.
    Mom smiled and sat down, spreading a linen napkin across her lap. “Now, doesn’t it make more sense to use those poor chickens for dinner than to sacrifice them to some Santería god?”
    Nando looked at my mother. Then he looked at me.
    His mouth dropped open and the bite of chicken fell out.
    “You killed Consuela?” Nando cried.
    “Consuela?” Mom looked from him to me and back at Nando. “Your bruja?”
    Nando put his hands over his eyes.
    Mom spit her bite of chicken onto her plate. She understood in a flash of clarity that Nando had never had a West Indies girlfriend, only a pet chicken named Consuela.
    “I didn’t see it was always the same chicken. I was too drunk to see.” She kissed him and stared into his eyes. “Too drunk to see the truth.”
    She left the room and came back with a soup tureen. She placed her linen napkin in the bottom of the tureen, then piled the fried chicken inside.
    “Get the shovel,” Mom said.
    I met Mom and Nando at the corner of the yard, under the avocado tree. Mom nodded, and Nando dug the hole.
    Mom placed the soup tureen in the hole, then took the shovel and worked until the hole was filled. I think Consuela was the only chicken of