“After that, we add the pork,” she said, and she reached into the bowl and grabbed some of the meat with her fingers, then plopped it on top of the masa. She spread it out a bit. “Then comes the rolling! My favorite part.”

It was like watching a magician. One second, la hoja was flat on the wooden board, and then, three quick movements, and she was folding the excess husk up and tucking it under the tamale. Into the empty pot it went.

Héctor watched her make a few more, his heart racing. It looked effortless. He bet she could assemble a perfect tamale with her eyes closed.

His nerves gnawed at his stomach. What if he wasn’t good at this? What if he let down his abuela? His family? His whole PEOPLE?

You gotta do this yourself, he thought.

Héctor grabbed an empty husk from the pile in front of him, then scooped some masa with a wooden spoon. His hand shook as he spread it over la hoja. It didn’t seem to cover it all that well. He looked up at his abuela.

“Un poco más,” she said, then pointed at a spot he’d missed.

“Ugh,” he groaned.

“It’s okay, papito,” Abuela said. “I don’t always get it right either. It takes practice.”

He used too little puerco the first time, but she gently corrected him. He tried rolling it up all neat and tight like she did, but he couldn’t manage that well either. His first tamale? Kind of a huge mistake.

Yet Abuela was still smiling at him. “Not bad,” she said. “For a first-timer. And it’ll still taste good in the end anyway!”

Héctor winced. “But who is gonna eat a tamale that looks like it was run over by a truck?”

“Héctor, it wasn’t that bad. I promise.”

He scowled at the lumpy, uneven tamale in the big pot.

“Nieto, why do you make that face?”

Héctor looked up. Abuela held a husk covered in masa in her hand, one of her eyebrows raised.

“It’s nothing,” he said, grabbing for some more masa. It wasn’t even the tamale making that was frustrating him. Well, it was that, since he had talked a big game to Papi, and this had turned out to be a lot harder than he had assumed it would be. But he still couldn’t get the image of Carmen fleeing the carnicería out of his head.

“I just want to make them right,” he finally said.

Then he smiled.

But it wasn’t that good of a smile, either.

He tried focusing on making more tamales, but before long, he could tell Abuela was staring at him. He glanced over at her, and sure enough, she had that look on her face again.

Eyebrow up.

Lips pursed.