Watercress Soup

Translated by Marvin Najarro She comes out of the supermarket with a bag full of vegetables, she has bought a bunch of watercress to make soup, her friend Joaquín told her that for the cold days of the long American winter, watercress soup is the best. Maria used to eat watercress only in salads and in meat patties, to which she sometimes adds chard or watercress, but lately she has been mix them with tofu. She takes a handful of grapes and eats them one by one; she enjoys this fruit only in December because it reminds her of her…

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Pomegranate Molasses

Translated by Marvin Najarro He wakes up, looks at the clock, it is twenty-two past four in the morning. He hugs the sheets and stretches out on his bed; he gets up and boils water to make coffee. He brushes his teeth, and while the water is boiling, Cecilio looks out of the window; a pitch-black darkness on the other side, soon to give way to dawn, reminds him of the last days of summer. Soon it will be time to put away the summer clothes and begin to air the winter ones, which he will keep in bags, and…

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The Air-Dried Corn Cobs

Translated by Marvin Najarro Whenever he can, Perfecto tells anyone he comes across that his entire family lives in the United States, and that he brought them all a long time ago, got papers for all his children, and that he even has grandchildren born in the United States. But the truth is different. Perfecto’s reality is similar to that of thousands of undocumented immigrants; he is ashamed to admit that he doesn’t have papers, and the fear of deportation makes him lie consistently about his life in the country. He emigrated more than thirty years ago when he was…

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Bertita’s Dreams

Translated by Marvin Najarro In the mornings, Bertita and her mother split firewood in their neighbors’ houses who hire them, usually elderly persons who were left alone because all their children left for el Norte. Twenty-year old Bertita wears her one-year-old daughter in a shawl attached to her back, her other two children who are five-and seven-year-old, are in charge of stacking the firewood so as not to leave a mess. When things go well, they are able to get lunch included in their pay; a few tortillas that they dip in an herbal soup, or in cooked beans, on some occasions…

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Martina’s Smile

Translated by Katrina Hassan The first time Arnold beat Martina was their first night together. She’d left home with him because her family wanted to send her to her aunt Dominga’s in the capital. Her parents wanted to get rid of the lazy good for nothing guy that kept lurking around their daughter. Martina’s dad nicknamed Arnold “The Jobless Good For Nothing.” Her mom grew up herding cows and making tortillas for the whole family and told Martina she wasn’t to marry until she finished studying. Martina’s mother had always herded cows and fed the workers in the valley where…

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