The back door rattles in its aluminum frame and both of us turn and see our mother come out onto the porch and shade her eyes. She wears a pink little tailored jacket she designed and cut herself. She must see us, but for some reason turns around and goes back inside. Then I can see her movements through the window, only the shape of her walking behind the screen, and I wonder if she is dusting the pane or watching us.

Greta rubs the side of her head into the back of my hand, wanting me to scratch her.

Maybe you shouldn’t keep those stereos out where Mom can see them.

She doesn’t know.

I wouldn’t be so sure.

He ignores me and goes over to the cage and the dogs clamber excitedly against the wire and he opens the door—keeping them back with his shoe—and calls to Greta. She hesitates beside me but leaves my side and enters through the door. He snaps the cage door shut and the links clatter and settle and he comes over and hits me in the face. The dogs circle and bark and throw themselves against the chain link and it rattles and ripples and then they fall back to the concrete ground.

In the car I pretend not to feel any pain. I taste the salty blood in my mouth and my tongue traces the folds of flesh that have torn against my teeth. We drive silently, past where the Taquería on Bundy is now a Starbucks and down Santa Monica westward by the car dealers where it is all bright sidewalks and concrete with only a few anemic sapling trees and I can see weeds growing from enormous cracks in the sidewalks here, even from my window. Though it was sunny at our house, we hit the marine-layer overcast that creeps in west of Twentieth Street.

He glances over at me, but I ignore him.

Don’t look so hurt, Junior, you’ll get over it.

I’m not hurt.

Sure.

The wind whistles through my window at the crack between the glass and ceiling.

Maybe afterwards we’ll get some Häagen-Dazs, he says after a while.

I do not answer. We used to go for Häagen-Dazs on the corner of Vincente and Barrington, and it was so popular and crowded then that you had to get in line and hustle to make sure the ice cream boy or girl saw you. The tables would be full and all the people in the warm night drifting outside and licking their cones. Still Mom would stand there shivering and hugging herself against the wind that to us was not cold. Tomas and I would hover around the inside café tables like vultures, forcing people to leave. That Häagen-Dazs is not there anymore, only a Coffee Bean where all the young movie-industry types sip their blended mochas.