Sure, she did hear of something like that once, in the newspaper or maybe it was on the radio, and not to make any excuse for such a woman, the mother was only human and anyone is capable at some point when pushed into a corner like a rat to devour her babies in order to save them, so to speak.

Sofia didn’t like to think of these things, and that’s why she didn’t want to think of La Llorona. But how was it that Loca had heard of her?

“She has been coming to see me since I was little, Mom,” Loca said, as if in response to Sofia’s thoughts. “And she told me today that Esperanza is died. She wanted you to know, Esperanza wants you to know.”

Then, as if a baseball bat had just struck her across the back and taken the wind out of her, Sofi stumbled over to the couch and fell on it. Fe tried to revive her mother, and then just held her until she came to and when she did, it hit Fe, too, that her sister was dead and all three women began to wail and moan like Cihuacoatls, holding each other and grieving over the loss of Sofi’s oldest child.

So some time passed, months in fact, understandably, before Fe gave the news that she had come over with that afternoon, which was that she thought she was in love again, and was fairly certain that setting a wedding date was not far off for her and her cousin, Casey. In the meantime, having moved out on her own and knowing now that soon she would have her own home and she hoped her own familia, it had dawned on her that with regards to cooking, she did not know so much as how to boil a pot of chicos.

Even if Loca was not someone she would for any other reason go to for instruction about nothing, it was Loca whom she had gone to see that afternoon specifically, to ask her for cooking classes. But all of this, as I said, was postponed, indeed, nearly forgotten after Esperanza’s family got the message she had sent to them via La Llorona, Chicana international astral-traveler.