I don’t know his name, Ana. I don’t even know his face. I remember, most, his hands, cracked and dry. How his nails were long and underlined with muck. How he tasted of stale smoke, smelled of grass. I knew he was a marero because of the 13 on his forearm. There was a portrait of the Virgin Mary extending up from the numbers, and I kept my eyes on hers, pleading up; they seemed to know there was little worth seeing in the earthly realm. He was just a teenager, Ana. This fact made it easier to forgive or at least spread blame. The war made a family out of orphaned boys. So did a country that didn’t want them either. Deportation. Mara, 18th Street, these were the parents who wanted them. If this makes you think to hate the country that birthed you, to hate yourself, remember that the guns bore US seals. That the last man your grandfather saw before a bullet to the face had just returned from a Georgia training camp.

The man who made you, and undid me, came as a warning. Your uncle, my brother, had a little store and he paid dues. But then there were some rough months. There was no money. He’d missed two months of payment. When they came the third month, they beat him up. I was the only warning left.

You are not of the man who raped me. I decided this as soon as I knew I was pregnant. I don’t believe a person is a person until they’ve arrived, announced themselves as such. I believe family is whoever we point to. I did not just have you. You did not simply happen to me. I chose. I saw the possibilities and I chose and I would not judge the woman who chooses differently. I decided I would be your mother and family, and you would be of me. I tell you this story but I do not call him your father.

Did I tell you about the day you were born? You were a month early, not too early for the doctors to consider you premature but early enough that you looked frail and tiny, smaller than all the other babies in the hospital. To me, you were a speck, a feather, and I was afraid you would die. It’s a horrible thought, I know. But probably the first thought in every mother’s mind: So many ways I could fail at this. I was afraid to hold you, even. I was alone in the hospital and the nurse must have thought me tragic because she prayed a rosary over me. Out of politeness I didn’t ask her to stop. But I remember I thought, for the first time, My God. Nobody asked you either, Mary. Nobody asked if God could build a temple out of you, if you wanted to turn your life into an offering.