Those eyes, those words, anyone would have broken down and talked, even me. So I spilled about being a foster kid with seven others in a tiny house in Western Massachusetts, where I really had learned Spanish. About how I loved Tia, my Bolivian foster mom who worked in a dry cleaning store as a seamstress, how she taught me to sew, how I adored her even though she was tough, how at twelve I took care of the other kids while she was dying. How for years after her death I bounced from group home to group home, convinced there was no such thing as family for me ever again.

Evening came on fast, and we packed up to leave. As I wrapped my arms around him on the motorcycle, shame and embarrassment about my lies mixed with exhilaration at telling the truth, or as much of it as I could bear. I shivered in the chill breeze whisking down from the mountains, but soon my skin warmed, amber from the sunset’s glow, my bare thighs tight against his.

We tooted along the outskirts of a dusty town, the last before the city’s glowing lights. Suddenly he braked hard, fishtailing in a circle and dragging his sandaled foot in the dirt. We putt-putted toward a cluster of adobe homes, smoke rising from outdoor ovens. He got off the bike, the front of my body cold where he had been, a lick of fear trembling my hands that clutched my knees.

“What are you doing?”

He ignored the question as he rooted around in one of his saddlebags, pulling out a ball of twine. “Stay on the bike.”

A scatter of chickens pecked at the dust, their heads jerking as they hunted down stray nubs of corn. A rooster stood chained by one leg with a wire tight to the base of a twisted palm, no lead at all, not one inch to move around, his ball-bearing eyes bugging and half-mad. Omar crouched down and snatched it up, binding its regal red comb under one arm, so with all its yowling and kicking it couldn’t peck at him. He unwound the wire from the rooster’s leg where it had worn away rubbery flesh to gristly bone. Still holding him fast, he wrapped a length of twine loosely but firmly around the bird’s other leg, then tied it to the same tree, this time allowing it a generous lead.

Head drooping, the rooster haltingly lifted its formerly chained leg, stopping short in midair as if expecting the usual agony, then—quivering—extended the ravaged limb and took a step, then another, and another, before running around the full length of its lead, flapping its bright orange wings. Red wattles shaking in joy, it strutted and crowed at the top of its lungs.

Looking back, that was the moment when the door opened for me. My dried-up heart took on warmth, acknowledged this flash of sunshine and expanded, as much as I tried to stuff it back and away. The thing I swore I would never let happen was happening, had happened. I was a goner. My mouth was dry. I hugged myself warm again; I couldn’t look away.