The comadre pulled up in front of the house and rapped on the front screen door. Dogs started barking near and far. Then the peacocks that Mr. Charles was mating or breeding, or whatever he called his business, woke up too, and started letting out those strange cat-in-heat sounding calls that they’d been making for weeks. (She didn’t know the new neighbor’s last name and since she didn’t know him hardly at all, she didn’t feel right saying just “Charles” to him, even though that was how he had introduced himself to her one afternoon. Just like that. Just like an Anglo to be so forward with a woman!)

The comadre got goosebumps. All the animals around were really going crazy. Then she pressed her nose against the screen and caught a glimpse of La Loca running to her room to hide. Sofi came out from around back where she had been hanging up clothes on the line—soaked and half-washed as they were.

As soon as the comadre got into the house, she asked Sofi what was so important that Sofi had got her away from her quehaceres just to tell her. The comadre wasn’t really doing no chores when Sofi called; she just wanted to heighten the drama of the “emergency call” for when she repeated the story later to the other comadres.

“Come on in, comadre,” Sofi said, still sounding mysterious and full of importance all of a sudden, like a changed person actually, since the comadre had never known anyone more self-sacrificing and modest than la pobre Sofi. Especially when you considered all those years she had worked to support her four girls without no help from no one and with that … man having abandoned her just like that when the girls were so small.

You know, la pobre Sofi had never had one moment of fun all those years while she was alone, no birthday or New Year’s Eve fiestas, no Christmas posadas. She did not attend one wedding reception, baptismal party, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, or high school graduation fiestas neither. No quinceañeras for none of the girls’ fifteenth birthdays. Nada. Well, she hardly had been able to attend even a velorio or a funeral for that matter, although she always tried, out of respect for the defuncto’s family. But everyone understood. She was alone with four children. What could people expect?

And just about the time her girls were teenagers, la comadre still remembered so clearly how that nice-looking Eusebio from up north, Mora or Las Vegas or someplace, who had spent a year coaching at the high school, had been so taken with Sofia. All of Sofi’s comadres were sure that he made excuses to go to Sofi’s Carne Buena Carnecería. After all, he was always eating out. More than likely he didn’t even know how to cook!