The first day they’d been in the home, Gloria had served their food in a separate part of the house, a little room off the kitchen, where the two of them could eat out of sight. But Nancy had swept in and said no, no, they were now part of the family, of course they had to eat with her and Roberto, and they had all eaten together in mostly silence as Roberto glared and Nancy directed questions that her mother answered with a quiet humility Ana had never seen in her, and she wished they could just eat, alone, in the little room so she could just stop … performing. But that was years ago. Now she liked being around Nancy. She wanted so badly to be Nancy. Not of here but with a not-of-hereness that evoked curiosity and interest, maybe humor, like when Nancy went to the mercado and her Spanish was met with amusement, with kindness. Nancy in a huipil, her hair in ribboned braids. Nancy telling the Indigenous artesanos at the market how beautiful they wove. Nancy with the not-of-hereness people smiled at, just a little bit of smirk. Said here, come, take.

Her mother wasn’t the doting type. Ana had made her a card once, for Mother’s Day, and written Thank you for sacrificing everything for me. “Is that what you think?” Gloria asked her that night. “That I’m supposed to sacrifice everything for you?” Ana hadn’t understood what she did wrong, what she could have possibly said that was wrong. Her mother apologized shortly after, thanked her for the card, told her that she loved her, that she was tired. She knew her mother was tired. That’s why she helped. That’s why she worked.

That’s why she walked the blocks around Doña Nancy’s colonia watching the rich kids kick balls around the skeletons of new construction feeling so much older, too old for shrieking, too old for candy-sticky skin, too old for looking so free. Until a boy said hi one day, asked her age, until she replied with her new accent and, yes, of course, they were the same age.

Go play, her mother would say in the early days. Go play, Doña Nancy would say, showing up from the mercado with a wooden ball on a string attached to a bucket. A doll. A Jacob’s ladder.

Doña Nancy taking her to Cristalita to eat frozen strawberries with cream, sugared strawberries, everything strawberry in the city of strawberries, then buying her a doll. I’ve never seen anyone treat their maid like she’s their child, her mother muttered when Ana got back home with her gifts. I’m not her maid, she protested. Her mother smiled.