Mia

Chapter 1

I awake drenched in sweat, alone in the big bed.

For long seconds, I don’t understand where I am, what day it is, what season, what country even.

In panic, I wonder if my children are in their beds and need my protection—from what?

But no, they are nearly grown, taller than me.

By the quality of night beneath the streetlights beyond my windows, I gradually realize it’s winter.

I’m in Minneapolis. By myself. As I wait for my heart to calm, the dream recalls itself to me.

Then, for a long time, I lie thinking of her with a hatred that turns inward, coiling back on itself.

She’s younger in the dream than when I knew her; closer to her mid-forties, the age I am now.

I watch her step from the narrow doorway of the mail service into dazzling sunlight, stride up the steep cobbled street on two strong legs.

My silver bracelet flashes on her wrist, a package that I know is mine bundled under her arm.

When she reaches the corner, where a wrinkled campesina sits on a wooden crate selling roses, she stops.

For the duration that good manners stipulate, they exchange pleasantries in a Spanish that I comprehend without any stutter between words and meaning, as though it were my first language.

What color? the old campesina asks when at last it’s time to get to business.

Orange, the American woman says. Ah, that’s a nice color, says the campesina approvingly, her eyes disappearing within her wrinkles, as the younger woman smiles disdainfully—of course it’s a nice color—gazing down the bridge of her fine nose.

Here the dream shifts. I am suddenly aware of my own presence, my gaze lingering on her face.

Like a camera panning closer to its subject, I know now that it’s me dreaming her: her perfect teeth, the lovely angle of her strangely unscarred jaw, her neck.

From at once far away and near to her, I feel my heart leap and begin to race as she says, They’re for my daughter, these flowers.

And for a single beat—the flicker in which every person is capable of self-deception—I am suffused with extravagant joy.

She’s remembered me! She’s gotten me a gift!