Doña Lolita looked to be in her late fifties. Her coal black hair, which was entirely gray at the roots, was pulled into a tight bun. Her thin lips were coated with hot pink lipstick, far too bright for her complexion. Her eyebrows were pencil drawn on top of the gray eyeshadow that was poorly applied to her eyelids. Her brown eyes were the color of cola. They sparkled out from the mayhem of her makeup and acne scars. The lard-rich food she had cooked all her life had made her body and face plump. The feel of her was a strange mix of discipline and mothering.

“You can have this, too … And this,” she said, placing three more items she collected from around the store in front of Aria.

“Thank you so much,” Aria said, looking her straight in the face, totally overwhelmed with (and even more guilty about) the care she was being shown.

“OK, is everything OK?” she asked, wanting to know if she could leave Aria to eat on her own.

“Yeah, it’s wonderful,” Aria replied.

Satisfied with her efforts, Lolita went to sit with Pedro and Consuelo at one of the other little tables in a corner by the meat counter. She had fed them too. At another table, a group of four women sat playing cards.

Aria watched the men eat and talk to her. They were speaking in Spanish so she couldn’t tell what they were saying.

Pedro and Consuelo bore furrows on their faces. Their clothes and skin were covered in splatters of bright white paint from whatever job they had been able to find yesterday. Their jeans and work boots were coated with cement dust and their calloused skin and bodies were beaten by manual labor into a kind of crudeness where all elements of mercy were lost. Pedro was friendly. The cruelty that life had shown him had not corrupted his propitious attitude. Consuelo was less congenial. The luster of his heart and inherent goodness was withheld behind a cautious demeanor. He spoke absolutely no English and followed his brother around as if doing so meant the difference between life and death.

Aria could tell from their body language that this was not a lighthearted conversation. They were talking about how to navigate worst-case scenarios in case the police got involved with what had happened to Aria. In the emergency of the moment, Pedro and Consuelo’s conscience had trumped the care for their own safety. Both Pedro and Consuelo were illegal immigrants. They could not afford to exist in the eyes of the state.