Rubén returned to the kitchen, picked up the chenille blue bathrobe and took it back to bed with him. He got under the covers and, wrapping the bathrobe up in a ball like a pillow, brought it up to his face. ¡Chingao, hombre! It still smelled of la Esperanza, not like any kind of perfume or nothing, but a feisty smell. EEE! Just like her! What a know-it-all she was, too! And how that woman loved to fight!

But for some people, fighting was good and led to good things. Back in college, if it wasn’t for la Esperanza who led the protest, they never would have had one Chicano Studies class offered on the curriculum. If it wasn’t for la Esperanza, who would have known about the struggle of the United Farm Workers on campus? Who would have ever told him about anything at all? How would he have known about Salvador Allende of Chile removed by a military coup, or heard Victor Jara, the protest singer, or been told about his beautiful guitar-playing hands being smashed by soldiers’ rifle butts?

Then he met this white chick, just before they finished college. She drove a new little sports car and the worst trauma of her life had been living with braces through high school. Her folks thought Rubén was such an “admirable young man,” putting himself through college on grants and by working, and still being able to help out his own family up in Los Alamos. His father had died when he was twelve and he, as the second oldest of eight, had been helping his mom and familia get by ever since.

Her father offered Rubén a job with his business after college, and la Donna was pretty and loyal and most of all, really wanted him. She thought Rubén was just … everything.

Rubén really didn’t know nothing about what love was, he had said to himself at the time, kind of as an excuse for dumping la Esperanza just like that. He didn’t know nothing about soulmates or kindred spirits, except to say that he never forgot Esperanza, ever, even during his marriage. And here he still was, smelling up her bathrobe, rubbing his nubby morning face into it, the coffee boiling over on the stove and his tears flowing like they had never even flowed when his father died in the tractor accident and Rubén speaking softly to the robe, saying, “Oh baby, why did you have to go … ?” And nobody answering him but a single crow outside, calling for him to get up and start the day.

Instead of a jacket for that brisk Viernes Santo, Loca insisted on wearing the robe over her red plaid Pendleton shirt.