Today, Heinrich is pretty well trained—the man has been here four times already—and the dog always catches Tomas below the elbow. You have to know how to take it or you could dislocate a shoulder. Our mother pretends not to notice each time the dog leaps at my brother and digs teeth into his arm, but I always catch her staring out the window. She had not wanted him doing this, but Tomas finally managed to assure her it was safe. She relies on him to tell her how things work in America, and it has become easy for him to convince her of things. Now she likes the dogs as much as Tomas and me—in particular, Tomas’s favorite breeding dog, Buster, the only one he did not give a German name since he refuses to sell her. She is a bitch, but he named her the masculine Buster because he had always wanted to name a dog Buster. Since Tomas often does not come home at night, our mother feeds Buster and so Buster no longer sleeps with Tomas but goes into her room and curls up at the end of her futon. At first she complained about the dog’s smell and hair in the sheets. She still does complain, but actually she has become used to Buster’s company.

Sometimes at night I will pass by her bedroom on the way to the bathroom and if the moon is out you can see Buster curled up at the edge of our mother’s bed, on the sheet’s wrinkled shadows; or at times even on the small edge of mattress by our mother’s pillow, her hind leg hanging over the futon edge. Sometimes our mother has a hand on Buster’s neck, as if she were her husband. It seems strange that our mother would like Buster so much considering what the dog did to Saint Elmo and Sister Teresa. Saint Elmo was our mother’s white cat, who was sweet: everyone liked him because he would go up to strangers and rub his head against their legs, and his gums against their shoes. She called the girl cat Sister Teresa after some Spanish nun who founded the Carmelites, Mom’s religious order. This cat was skittish and shiny black and liked to hide behind the couch. Saint Elmo and Sister Teresa got along with the dog all right if a person was around. But one day I came home and Buster had Saint Elmo in her mouth; the cat was still crying. Buster wagged her tail as she looked up at me, all proud, and was surprised when I kicked her and tried to get the cat out of her mouth. But it was too late.