Physically, I looked a lot like my mama, though I was even more squinty-eyed. And, as a kid that age does, I understood that my whole being was tied to her and her life. But unlike my grandmother, I didn’t see that as punishment. My mother and my family life seemed completely normal to me. It was normal for her not to work, or for me not to see her for days at a time, or to see her drunk or in a shouting match with my grandmother. It was normal that my brother had only made it to second grade and barely knew how to read or write, or that he had a record with child protective services. I didn’t feel confused or abandoned, and I didn’t suffer any more than a kid who doesn’t get what he wants for Christmas. But I guess that in the eyes of my aunt Veronica, my mama’s older sister, I must have seemed vulnerable. And maybe it was as a kind of restitution that she took me on vacation to La Serena in the first place.

We stayed at a campground called Las Licitas, some thirty kilometers north of the city and almost totally isolated by dunes and rocks. They chose a site looking out over the coast for the three tents they’d brought, two bedrooms and a kitchen. It wasn’t that they especially liked to camp, as I’d assumed; rather, it was what they could afford, and they preferred to pay less and spend almost a month with the beach a couple of steps away. The day we arrived, they set up the tents while I went to play on the beach. I didn’t even put on swim trunks, I ran in my underwear to get my first taste of the ocean they’d told me so much about on the way there. I noticed that the underpants embarrassed them a little, but I also realized they let me be. I’m sure they saw me as a little animal, as wild as he was wounded, who needed to be indulged. I saw them as three total strangers, but they seemed to know a lot about me, who I was and where I came from.