I wished with all my heart that I had been able to help him more, when he was younger. When it might have made a difference. But the past, as I knew only too well, could not be repaired.

It could only be transcended.

“So now you want to show me mercy? The old woman who wouldn’t lift a finger to save you?” She laughed, soft and dry. “Try again.”

“Avoid playing games of chance for money, young lady.” His eyes twinkled. “Yes. You have a question. So, ask it.”

From the San Gabriels to the Mexican Border, Southern California is people. Anglos and Chicanos, Asians, Blacks, Slavs, Armenians – heaps of Armenians! – you name it. They come from everywhere, and they bring their languages, their foods, their feuds and their passions with them. It’s wild and dynamic and scary, and I love it.

It’s home.

I shook my head angrily, dispelling the memory that clung and reeked like Dace’s pinche weed. Through my still-clenched teeth I said, “I’m not seventeen anymore, and you are fucking with the wrong goddam woman!”

I was a twisted lump of metal caught between the hammer of Abuela’s relentless, immigrant ambitions and the anvil of my parents’ broken dreams. I had no power to outrun my dark memories, nor any way to keep them buried. They were part of me.

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple Buds, handing me one without asking. “She sort of blamed me for making you trans. They all did, for a while.”

“Blamed you.” My family is SO fucked up!

Not being at work first thing on Monday morning felt like a step down a path I did not want to take. Abuela’s path. “You must take care of this,” she’d told me. “Of him.”

Well, screw that.

“I think she knew there was nothing for you here. Not as a man, but even less as a woman, if that’s how you decided to live.” When I didn’t meet his eyes or say anything, he asked, softly, “Was she wrong?”

We had to be trained to care. Tricked. They made themselves look adorable, or maternal, or sexy.

Of course, we taught them that. We did it first.

It was the smell of childhood. Once, it had been the smell of “home.” Even now, the odors, so familiar, were triggering an avalanche of memories.

Carmen Morales has a good job, good friends, and a future full of promise. But she also has a past.

“Well, speaking of lesbians,” Haley said.

“Were we?” asked Kiko.

“We were. Anyhow . . . Does your mom know about you and Gabe?”