—We’ll see you there tomorrow, to spread the ashes, Esperanza said. —Bright and early. I don’t like traveling in that campo at night with all those small roads. They’re an accident waiting to happen.

While Bobby and the driver unloaded the car, people from Pura’s neighborhood gathered around them to see if they would get anything from the Dominican Yorks. Esperanza and Dallas stood in front of the small cement house. Its walls peeled open like burned skin.

—Hey, Pura, Esperanza yelled through the iron gates that locked Pura in. —Ya llegamos. Esperanza looked around to her street and across to the building that had once housed the clinic where she’d first seen Santo.

Dallas held Consuelo against her hip while Consuelo played with her hair.

—Qué linda! Y cuántos años tiene? a young woman asked Dallas, as she sashayed out from the house next door. Fanning herself with the daily paper. Her hair in a tight tubi, waiting to be set loose that evening for her night out.

—Un año, Dallas said and realized that the young woman assumed Consuelo was hers. The thought made her hold her with pride. She noticed how the men standing in front of the colmado across the street were staring at her like they would a full-fledged child-bearing woman.

—La llave, Pura yelled to her granddaughter, who had lived with her ever since her mother moved to San Pedro to work in la Zona Franca.

—Corre…que llegaron! Pura yelled in excitement and stood on the other side of the locked gate, extending her arms through the bars to touch the sister she hadn’t seen in over a decade. Pura, who took care of her parents until their last days and who lived her entire life in the same house.

Bobby carried the large bags onto the front porch. He piled them on the corner, tearing off his long-sleeved shirt, leaving on his short-sleeved T-shirt and exposing his trim and muscular body.

—You’re so tall, the young woman in the tubi said as she walked around him, as if studying a good slab of cow meat in the market.

—¡Vámonos! Don Chan slammed his hand against the hood of the car to get Bobby’s attention. The clinic they’d worked out of in 1965 had been turned into a colmado. Pura’s house brought too many painful memories to Don Chan. —Let’s go now, he said.

—But don’t they want to eat? I made so much food, Pura yelled out to the van. —Don Chan, qué sinvergüenza eres…, she yelled out to him, not offended that the old man was being aloof.

—Bobby! Don Chan yelled again.

—Bendición, Tía, Bobby said and gave Consuelo a long hug and kiss good-bye. It was the first time he had parted with her since her birth.

Dallas walked into the room she and Consuelo and her mother would sleep in. It was her cousin’s room. She had to be careful not to flail her arms or she would hurt her knuckles on the ceiling fan. Inside the room, there were two small cots, a dilapidated bureau, a small window decorated in flowery curtains, facing the food market. Two folded towels. She recognized the sheets that her mother had sent, on the bed. At the end of the hallway, there was a small shower, sink, and toilet. The door was unhinged. A thin piece of white fabric divided the room. The door propped on the side.