Jenny

My mom bought a BMW when I was kindergarten, rust colored with ecru cloth seats, lightly textured maize by the weave fabric. We had driven straight from my school to the Sears in Glendale. My mother and grandmother sat in the front and for once their heads could be seen over the dashboard. German engineering and ingenuity accommodating even women of Mexican stature. From the back I stared as they excitedly unwrapped the cassette tapes they had just purchased.

As usual my mother and grandmother had made identical music purchases, two of each cassette, three each in total, and my mother excitedly put one into the tape deck of the new car. She turned up the volume and stated with an upward pitch that she “loved this song.” I watched the road from my view in the back, crooking my neck to look in-between the two front seats. My grandmother removed a butterscotch candy from her mouth, wrapped it in plastic and dropped it in the space between her seat and the passenger door.

My mom said to me, “Your grandpa always said I looked like her.”

“No, you are prettier,” my grandmother retorted, never giving Oscar the last word—even when he was absent.

My mother, wearing red sunglasses shaped like hearts sang along.