The night Abuelita left this world, I communed with the dead. Or maybe, after hearing the news from Tía Alicia, my cousin Chente had come over with a half-empty handle of tequila, and we got so damn pedo I just started seeing shit.

It’d taken a whole minute of homeboy’s indecipherable calls and fist banging before I tiptoed toward the front door of my apartment. Over the past couple months, a swell of tweakers and other locos had been roaming Albuquerque’s streets, stripped of whatever shelter or stability they’d known, which meant unexpected door knocks brought with them the potential for some suspect encounter, the type I’d rather live without. Throughout the years, learning to navigate the tides of my city, I’d developed a strategy of treating these cabrones and their chaotic behavior like troubling thoughts: ignore their presence until they leave your ass alone.

But waves of embarrassment splashed into my cheeks once I realized the vato yelling outside my apartment was Chente, the cousin I hadn’t seen in what felt like a generation, come to drown me with his cheap spirits. That was a habit homeboy had, bringing booze, but typically he saved it for himself, which was why, upon meeting him, people assumed he slurred his words, why our family reasoned he made such pendejadas like dropping out of high school, dropping out of the marines, selling fake Indian jewelry under a fake Indian identity to gabachos in Santa Fe out of some one-week girlfriend’s truck.

Yet I knew those parts of him came from another place, a small and deep spot within the cracks of his bones. I knew his words came out all under-baked ’cus of the stutter he fought to overpower and that his decisions only reflected the absences in his world—a nameless father being the biggest. I knew all that shit ’cus we were the same age and spent too much time growing up at Abuelita’s while our parents waged the wars of their lives—Pops tripping through the divorce with Moms—Tía Alicia, my father’s twin, not stable enough to leave her mother’s casita between merry-go-rounds with men. It was in this space, under the gaze of our short but towering señora, that me and Chente tried to figure out how we fit into the puzzle of our family, how our muertos were never really dead, how our dumbasses should listen to them every once in a while.

But at twenty-six, those childhood days with my cousin at Abuelita’s seemed as tangible as smoke. The only thing that hadn’t faded was my understanding of this vato slumped against the doorway, liquor in hand, face losing the fight against gravity. I just had a soft spot for our family’s youngest borracho. It was something I couldn’t shake—much like my fear around the stories of ancestor spirits and otherworldly presences our grandmother whispered to us while wrapped in colchas at the foot of her bed.

Look, holmez, Chente said. No other way to put it—bitch’s gone. Not really a surprise with that dementia shit. When mom told me, I was all like, fucken finally—y’know?

Those were the first coherent words he’d given me since handing off the lukewarm bottle and collapsing onto the tattered couch I’d lugged around upon graduating college. By that point I could’ve bought a new one. Life was going good for me then. I’d scored a full-time gig at the Hispanic Cultural Center over near Barelas—that South Valley varrio jammed between I-25 and the Rio Grande with the abandoned railyard where Hollywood gabachos had started filming drug deal scenes—and I was earning enough skina as the head curator’s assistant to pay rent for this dinky-ass studio, get groceries, and buy shots for the carnales at bars downtown.

But I refused to let go of this stain-ridden couch that creaked and sank whenever someone sat on its geometric upholstery—that turquoise Indio rip-off kind. It was one of the first things I’d gotten with my own money, copped it from a garage sale run by some widowed vieja whose unblinking eyes and fading copper skin reminded me of Abuelita. Countless people had imprinted themselves onto the fibers of that couch, spilled every emotion on it. So even though the chingadera was well past its expiration date, some piece of me couldn’t help but embrace the history threaded into it.

You better drink up, foo’, Chente said. Can’t get through nights of life ’n’ death without something to relax your soul. Ya tú sabes.

I gave a louder than expected snicker followed by a harder shake of my head, as if to toss out the excitement of hearing homeboy’s voice for the first time in months and make room for the hurricane of grief starting to drizzle between my temples. But watching my cousin make himself at home, spreading his narrow limbs over my couch, compelled me to feel, if only for tonight, that things were in the right place. I shut the door while Chente motioned for me to hurry up and get drunk, flailing those arms illustrated with random doodles blended into him over the years via makeshift needles and whatever tattoo instruments he could get his hands on.

Shit, good to see you too, ese, I said while fishing through cabinets for the leftover Dixie cups my boss had let me take home after some exhibit opening earlier that month.

Órale, cuz. You got a problem sipping from this bottle? Think your hood-ass primo got some kinda disease, huh?

Nah, joyo—it ain’t like that—

Then knock that shit back ’n’ get the fuck over here, perro. You got your whole life to drink from cups. But tonight’s Bela’s first night in the spirit world ’n’ we gotta celebrate that shit right. Don’t waste any more time, cuz.

I’d already stopped my search once Bela slipped from Chente’s lips. Hearing that word tossed me from my body into the abyss of remembrance. As a chamaquito, my cousin had trouble pronouncing abuela, which was one of the first signs of his stutter, but Tía Alicia ignored it due to a lack of funds for speech therapy while Abuelita shrugged it off as timidez. So, Chente was left to battle the defects of his voice alone, pinching himself or punching his cheek whenever a syllable refused to build itself. He’d mostly won, but I could still pick out glitches in his face: a jerk of his lip, a chomp of his jaw, a tight wink of an eye. Some people judged these twitches as the consequence of a skante addiction, which was why—combined with those tattoos on his shade of skin—employees stalked my cousin’s ass around pharmacies and cop cars slowed when passing him on the street.

But Chente’s way of speaking, along with that self-made collage on his flesh, always lit a candle within my chest, a heat that burned and soothed, much like the tequila I was now pouring down my throat. It all seemed so innocent to me, but maybe that’s only ’cus homeboy’s government name was, y’know, Inocente. His naming was for our Tío Abuelo, who, of my grandmother’s twelve siblings, looked after the family once our Bisabuelo’s heart stopped in the middle of wrestling an escaped calf to the ground. Abuelita used to say her father worried himself to death. The calf would’ve found its way back sooner or later, she believed, but the ranchero felt a constant pressure to secure his borderland property after all those threats from gabacho cowboys and the Texas Rangers.

Our Bisabuela, confined by her Spanish-speaking tongue, shoved the estate’s responsibilities onto her eldest, my cousin’s namesake, along with the terrorization, which arrived with a piece of paper, a legal contract that gabachos with guns and badges handed over to him. The vato worked his barely-schooled eyes through their language, peeled it away letter by letter to try and understand how the gringos planned to fuck them over. But after too many months marked by cattle with slit throats and infections from a poisoned water supply, the OG Inocente ended up signing over his father’s tierra. Never able to forgive himself, he carried the family through that time, moving them to Del Rio where he sacrificed his health and body to labor at nearby oil rigs.

Following those years, the OG Inocente continued to give himself away, supporting any relative that could use it. A couple years back, I’d learned he helped Abuelita escape the fists and spit of my grandfather. Our Tío Abuelo drove up to Albuquerque in a single night and pulled his sister and sabrinos away from their Southeast-side hellhole, getting clipped in the shoulder by a bullet that only missed his head ’cus my grandfather, a Korean War Vet, was all cross-eyed borracho.

Through tears she wiped with hooked, arthritic fingers, Tía Alicia had told me about this night from her childhood. I didn’t ask or want her to, but I didn’t stop her either. I just felt bad. We were sitting together over coffee she insisted on brewing after I dropped off a bruised, puke-stained Chente from another night in a detox hold at the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. Besides, I never knew what to do with all these biblical tales cast around a family member I’d never meet, this ghost of a man.

But the more me and Chente drifted apart, the more I started questioning our histories, wondering things like what went through Tía Alicia’s head when naming her only child. Was she thinking of those same stories? Did they help her forget about her son’s unknown father? As she gave birth, did she see the vato who held together a family despite the too-early responsibility of it all? What did she expect from that name? After years of my cousin continuing to fuck up, the only answer I wanted to believe about his name was the least painful one—that Tía Alicia just liked the sound of it. Inocente.

Before I knew it, me and Chente were swapping swigs and stories like boxers in the twelfth round, relying on the one-two punch of booze and banter to prolong death’s reentrance into the conversation. We laughed and threw each other slices from our love life, how unsuccessful mine was, how he’d been bouncing around the state with different women—like that gabacha from California who called him papi in her VW van outside the Santa Fe Walmart—or the rich Mexicana in Las Cruces who bragged about having a Cartel-tied uncle—or that fine Burqueña chola with a juicy culote who slapped his face and showed him how to eat panocha like a real-ass vato.

Damn, Chente, I said. You been on one. Out here like some kinda pimping vagabond.

Vaga-wha?

It’s like an adventurer, man, a free spirit—I dunno.

See, foo’? You don’t even know whatchu mean when you use them boujee-ass college words!

Whatever, joyo. Wouldn’t kill your dumbass to read a fucken book.

You ain’t wrong, primo, you ain’t wrong. A free spirit sounds tight, though. Low-key reminds me what some sexy Navajo hyna said when we were tripping on peyote…

Although I rarely believed the words pouring from my cousin’s mouth, I didn’t question them much. It was enough to experience how much homeboy wanted me to trust his yarns. He’d widen his eyes and open his palms as if the details were spoonfuls of medicine. I always accepted, bopped my head in time with his song. Maybe it was ’cus I recognized how, in the face of so much failure, Chente stayed on his grind, kept trucking through the many junctions where a mistake swept away any step forward—like the moment a teacher found an eighth of mota in his backpack—or the time he went A.W.O.L from bootcamp to hunt down that puto who scammed Tía Alicia for three hundred bucks—or that day an Acoma ruca cursed and kicked his lying-ass out after she learned of his scams and bogus Pueblo identities. Yet this life of his also filled part of me with shame. As far as I was concerned, that shit could’ve easily happened to me. We shared blood, vices, a pendejo sense of romance. Plus, we were both shaped by unstable parenthoods and carried lessons from the same Abuelita. But why had his asteroid been knocked out of orbit and not mine?

When we killed the tequila, we moved to the leftover chelas in my fridge—when we killed those, we stewed in silence. Chente had his legs kicked up on my couch, head leaning back with his eyes crunched as if struggling to remember the items of a shopping list. I sat across from him on the edge of my mattress, separated by a wobbly coffee table I jacked off some street corner.

While stuck in the quiet, I noticed how bright the tripod of fluorescent bulbs attached to the ceiling fan was, buzzing that type of bluish glare you feel while waiting at the DMV or walking through the hallways of your shitty public school. Except for the windows overlooking the complex’s parking lot and the bathroom light with that pull switch attached to what looked like an old shoestring, this was the only source of illumination in my apartment. I rolled onto my stomach and buried my head into a pillow. With my vision all dark and woozy, the reason for Chente’s visit burst through the floodgates of my thoughts for the first time that night.

Abuelita’s mind had passed long before her body. Once the señora started slipping, the structure of her speech dissolved sentence by sentence, memory by memory. She would jumble her Spanish and English, cramming together syllables into nonsense words, which, when there was still a spark left behind her eyes, splattered an expression of bewilderment and frustration across her face that hollowed out my stomach, making each visit more agonizing. My grandmother was the only one left in our family who could speak both languages fluently. She managed to hold on to her lengua through all the slurs and bruises, all the hurdles of judgmental bosses and teachers and government employees. It killed me to think of how we were losing something larger than a family member.

I only managed to see Abuelita once during that final year, stopping by the home she refused to move out of, but only after Pops suggested I put in some damn effort and say goodbye. My father, on account of him being Abuelita’s least financially and emotionally erratic child, had been handed the full weight of ensuring her existence withered away as painlessly as possible. I could see it dragging him down. His posture was slouching more and more, as if the reading glasses he’d started wearing on the daily were too heavy on his nose. The few days I pulled up to his pad, either to do my laundry or help him store boxes from Abuelita’s, I couldn’t help but notice the files and forms and records quilting his dining table, just as messy as the dishes piled up in his sink.

Yet he kept acting all typical: reserved, content with wordlessness unless talking about UNM football or reciting military strategy he learned from some boring history book. My ears would grow hot as a habit to blame my father for his passivity, for letting the world do whatever it wanted to him, fought with a newfound feeling of pity and heartbreak. When he asked me to keep Abuelita company for an hour or two, just this once, I figured it was the least I could do for his sorry ass.

But during the visit, my grandmother spent the whole fucken time meowing like a toddler at her animatronic therapy cat sitting along the window sill, wedged between the storyteller muñecas some Jemez boyfriend had made for her back in the day. Feeling like a grade-A pendejo, I attempted conversation, asking her what the creepy little shit’s name was, but she just coughed into the air like my question had been a fart. Susana, a nurse who’d agreed to take care of Abuelita (at a discount to repay the señora for teaching her English when she arrived in the states decades ago), shrugged at me with a smile, as if to say, at least you tried, culero!

My grandmother’s flesh was nearly as gray as her kinked hair, gray enough that blood vessels peeked through like blue marker stains. As she ran her hands along the robot’s nylon fur, whispering gibberish into its ear the same way she used to smother me and Chente with kisses and stories of our family, I wondered if she believed this thing was really alive. I thought back to when she reminded me and my cousin that life extends beyond living, that something is only ever gone when you stop talking about it. When we’d laughed at her claim, she frowned as if we’d said a dirty word right before grabbing our cheeks and squeezing real hard. As me and Chente screamed in unison, she explained that the marks she gave will fade from our skin, like all wounds do, but the memory will stay within us. Abuelita said if she were to recall this instance in the future, we would feel a pulse around our jaw, hear each sound as clear as those wails, connect with a part of ourselves we assumed we’d forgotten.

I wanted her to recount that moment then, to stop spewing nonsense and tell me she still remembered. I wanted a reminder that the past existed, that there was access to a time when the whole world was an unobstructed horizon. But my grandmother didn’t give me shit, so I just ate the time away by examining the storytellers around the mechanical cat, studying the faded red circles brushed onto their cheeks, some painted to resemble suns, others looking like sucked-on cough drops. I thought about how, in my research for an exhibition on Pueblo potters, I learned this type of sculpture had only been around since 1964. That meant they were younger than Abuelita, younger than Pops, younger than me and Chente’s childhood belief that they were timeless artifacts, passed down by generations of Nuevo Mexicanos through all the colonization and war and shifting borders.

My cousin always had an obsessive fascination with that idea, which I understood led him to believe his unidentified papi was actually some Indio, why he thought he could sell counterfeit jewelry without any consequences. But it turned out the storyteller only entered existence as early as color TV or the Ford Mustang, which confirmed to me that my cousin’s approach to life was all wrong. I thought that if the dumbass stopped pretending, then maybe he could get his shit on track and we could live as close as we did as boys, take on the world’s desmadres together again. As Susana shuffled me out Abuelita’s door, saying it was the señora’s naptime, I promised myself that whenever I saw Chente again, I’d give him the reality check he needed.

Stacked next to where Chente was slumped, swirling in his drunkenness, were a couple of Abuelita’s boxes I’d told Pops I could store while he cleared space in the garage. One of them had candles scribbled on the side in my father’s sloppy handwriting while the other read misc stuff. I stumbled over to the candles box, convinced that lighting up some of Abuelita’s veladoras would be a fitting gesture for the occasion—or at least a remedy for the burn of those lightbulbs and the standstill in our conversation. I stabbed at the tape with my car keys, piercing bullet holes into the cardboard, creating a sound that caused Chente to jolt up and reach for a gun he didn’t have.

Dafuck you doing, ese? he gasped. I thought we were getting shot-the-fuck-up.

I made a motion toward the box, mumbling something about burning candles for our dead grandmother.

Shit, you got Bela’s velas? I haven’t seen those in forever, holmez!

Any sense of alarm had evaporated from Chente’s face, having been replaced with wonderment as he joined me and started riffling through the box like some kid beneath a Christmas tree.

Órale, cuz! ’Member these? Bela got ’em for us at that Mexican grocery over in Barelas.

My cousin held up two veladoras, one in each hand, a grin wrinkling its way through his cheeks. The candle on the right held an image of Pope Benedict in one of his silly-ass hats, praying with a face scrunched tight. As seven year-olds we thought that was the funniest shit ever ’cus it looked like the voice of god was taking a massive dump. On the left, Chente gripped a shorter one encased by navy-colored glass with a black and white sketch of some skeleton wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey. I was a huge fan when we were younger, knew every player’s name, but only ’cus Pops did, too, so my ass thought this cheap veladora somehow captured everything I needed to connect with my father. But when I begged Abuelita to buy it, she just brushed me away like some fucken mosca. My world felt all shattered till Chente tapped me on the shoulder. He shook the pooping pope candle and bounced his eyebrows, which I knew meant he planned to distract Abuelita and the cashier with some good catholic boy bullshit so I could dip out with my prize undetected. It was the first time I’d stolen something. Pops never acknowledged the candle sitting on my bedstand, so I stopped liking the Cowboys and ended up hiding the chingadera in Abuelita’s closet, disgusted with myself. Eventually the grocery store got bulldozed to make room for some development that was supposed to revitalize our city.

Can’t believe Bela never noticed you nabbed that shit, cuz.

But look at this, I snapped, nodding at the box as I dug through it. How could someone keep track of one goddamn vela in this clusterfuck?

Me and Chente decided to unpack that clusterfuck and polka-dot the entire apartment with candles. There were your obligatory Católico ones: three or four Guadalupanas and several blue-eyed Jesuses (on the cross, in the crib, white-robed). Then there were the pungent medicinal ones with labels claiming to bring romance, a strong immune system, or fidelity to your home. The rest were a patchwork of colored wax in either cracked ceramic or finger-printed glass with random images ranging from Bill Clinton to Quetzalcoatl to some unidentified chamaco who might’ve been one of our tíos as a child or just some homie who died too soon. We placed them on every surface, tripping over ourselves, giggling like two plastered teenagers about to pull some prank on a friend.

After mapping our memorial, Chente said we should shut the blinds and spark each veladora before hitting the lights. He wanted to bask in the radiance of their flames all at once. I nodded my head without a second thought, mesmerized by the delight coursing through me.

You ready, primo? my cousin asked upon lighting the last one.

I told him I’d been ready my whole fucken life, not knowing what I meant. It just sounded right in my liquored-up head.

Then go kill that shit, cuz.

Once I flicked the switch, it felt as if we were floating. It was a sensation of being above and below, of falling into water. As we drifted through the glow, I remembered that I’d touched this sensation before. It was there one Christmas Eve, after everyone had fallen asleep, when Pops walked me through our varrio to show me the luminarias each family had placed along their roofs and porches. It was there on my first flight home from college, when Albuquerque’s cityscape waved up at me through the dark. It was there when me and Chente took a midnight drive to the desert and christened an old truck he’d scraped all his money together for, years before some culero in his circle stole and sold it for some skante. Together we leaned back on its hood, against the windshield, and discovered all the stars we never knew existed.

My gaze wandered over to my cousin who was sunk into the couch, staring at the honeycomb of veladoras on the coffee table. Muraled on the wall behind him were not just his shadow but many others, each with a different silhouette. Some appeared to be wearing vaquero hats or rebozos, others long dresses and jorongos—stuff I imagined our ancestors wore. Maybe it was just the angle of all those little flames or my wasted vision, but these figures didn’t vibrate along with the candles. They remained static, as if watching Chente intently. I anticipated the fear to rush into me, the kind that hit whenever I thought of Abuelita’s ghost stories and imagined some spooky stuff happening in the dark. But I stayed calm, allowing myself to watch these forms coat the wall and shield the room like one of our grandmother’s colchas.

Yo, Chente finally said. This some real Día de Muertos shit.

What? I blurted out, not meaning to sound as offended as I did—though I was upset, partly ’cus the dumbass had ripped me from my meditations, but mostly ’cus I’d given in to the same pointless shit he kept fantasizing about.

The velas, foo’! It’s like we made some ofrenda. We even got tribute with the liquor. Where’s your water ’n’ salt at, cuz?

Fuck you talking ’bout, pendejo?

Ain’t you supposed to be the smart one in the family? Don’tchu work at some fancy-ass museum that shows this sorta shit?

No mames, perro. This isn’t some cheesy ofrenda.

But look around you, joyo! It’s fucken perfect! Like we’re guiding the spirits on their journey. They must be all thirsty. We need water.

Chale, man, can’t these candles just be candles?

Why you being all wack ’n’ shit, cuz? Don’tchu know ’bout them ancient-ass Aztec traditions back in Mexico? That every light in an ofrenda holds a spirit going on a journey back to the realm of the dead? We must’ve got thirty-sum velas in here! That’s like our whole fucken family tree! Now even Bela’s in here somewhere!

A drum started to bang inside my head, compelling me to stand over Chente who just gawked at me with a furrowed, questioning brow. I knew it wasn’t the right time to fulfill my promise, but I couldn’t help it. The hurt of our loss surged through my blood, mixing with the booze and the longing for my cousin to come back, to grow the fuck up. I started rambling about the history of Día de Muertos, how it was propaganda enforced by twentieth century Mexican elites wanting to assert their own baseless claim that catholic rituals really had Nahua roots. I told Chente this holiday actually appropriated and extorted native identity, promoted a romanticized narrative that smoothed out oppression. Then I gave him evidence, citing the talk an esteemed professor from Mexico City gave at the Cultural Center, schooling everyone with documents and artifacts that demolished this bourgeois colonizer myth.

Damn, ese, my cousin said. Who the fuck cares ’bout some bitch acting all high-’n’-mighty, telling us what’s wrong with our way of life? This ain’t her family. It’s ours.

You just don’t fucken get it do you?

What’s there to get? Smartasses like you always tryna prove we don’t know jack-shit? What am I supposed to do with that?

Chente peered up at me, eyes quivering in the dancing light. It seemed like he was genuinely asking, really wanting to know what this all meant. I saw in his face the companion from my past, that desperate stare he’d give me whenever Abuelita put him onto her lap and recounted the love she felt for her brother, Inocente, while I tugged at her skirt, whimpering on the floor, tryna climb what felt like a mountain. But I shoved it away—that memory, those desolations we shared. The only thing I wanted was to claw out from this pit of rage.

You’re supposed to stop fucken up your life, I said.

Well, primo, Chente responded, looking back down at the candles. Those things you think matter won’t help me with the shit I gotta deal with.

What shit? You mean scamming gabachos ’n’ fucken random hynas?

Nah, man, he said into the glow. I’m just tryna survive.

The drum clanged harder, pulsing an unbearable ache down my throat. I told my cousin to leave—get the fuck out, puto—a desire to be alone, to scream, overwhelming me. The vato glanced up and frowned at me, but as he read my face his own started collapsing until his whole head bowed. It occurred to me then that Chente understood the weight of my command better than anyone I’d ever meet.

Yo, primo, I got one more thing to ask.

Fucken what?

You got an extra suit for the funeral?

I shoved my cousin into the darkness outside without another word.

Abuelita’s funeral happened over a week later. I was tardy, stopping by a Blake’s on the way to kill some extra minutes, eat a green-chile cheeseburger in my car to delay witnessing the spectacle of my family dressed in black. I’d avoided anything to do with this shitshow, creating as much distance between it and me by submerging myself in work organizing an exhibit opening for some artist whose formless, mud-made sculptures somehow symbolized the exploitation of migrante farmworkers.

When I arrived at the funeral home, located in the parking lot of a depressing Southeast-side strip mall, everyone had their heads down in prayer. I slipped onto one of the fold-out chairs and scanned who was in attendance. There were no real surprises. The tíos y tías lined the front row, one or two accompanied by whatever ruca or vato they’d been hooking up with (only one of them still had a spouse). Pops was seated closest to the wall, next to his twin, their shoulders leaning against one another. I couldn’t help but notice how similar his and Tía Alicia’s slumped bodies were, almost perfect reflections. Beyond Abuelita’s six children, not much other family had shown up, just some distant primos here and there. Most of those who came were from the varrio. A mix of pride and embarrassment showered me, a rainfall I’d felt many times throughout my life. It sprang from the sight of our scattered, greying family against these community representatives, bright and distinct shades on our neighborhood’s canvas.

But I couldn’t find Chente among them. I spent each second of the ceremony bouncing my leg, tryna locate his shaved head. Once there was a pause in the procession, right before we headed for the cemetery to relinquish Abuelita’s body to the earth, I hurried over to Tía Alicia, who was still by my father’s side. Startled, my aunt clasped her hands together and exclaimed that she was so glad I was able to make it. I tried to stop my face from cringing by hunching my shoulders, as if to say it ain’t that big a deal, then nodded at Pops and gave his shoulder a squeeze—a custom we’d developed in place of hugs. I turned to Tía Alicia and asked where her son was. She dropped her head like someone cut the string holding it up, and Pops mumbled some excuse before shuffling away. My aunt led me back to the chairs and had me take a seat. She sighed, inhaled, and held the breath for what must’ve been a painful amount of time. I placed a palm over her knee and asked again what had happened.

She told me Chente had been locked up, letting the sentence vomit from her mouth. The vato got busted by an undercover cop posing as a tweaker who was supposed to buy some skante off him. The city had recently pledged to crack down on the problem, calling the dealers a plague on our neighborhoods, adopting a commitment to putting them away fast, no matter the cost. The public defender pushed him to take a plea deal, that five years no probation was a gift from god.

I felt cold, like I’d been left outside all night. I never thought he’d go that far, that he’d actually listen to those cucarachas in his crew who always tried to get him to flip their shit. I couldn’t help but think of the suit he’d asked to borrow. I didn’t have one to loan, but I could’ve given my cousin a few bucks.

Tía Alicia kept shaking her head, believing it was only a matter of time, that she’d been such a terrible mother.

Where did I go wrong? she pleaded. What couldn’t I do right?

Hating myself, I put an arm around my aunt, much like I’d done that night she gave me the story about Chente’s namesake. I told her he’d be alright, though I doubted those words. I told Tía Alicia her son had always been a survivor. I told her Abuelita would guide us from above, help rescue our Inocente.

I drove behind my father and aunt toward the tail end of the procession. Ahead of us the caravan  snaked through Albuquerque’s streets, headed by the hearse carrying my grandmother, as if she was a magnet strong enough to pull the whole varrio along with her. Outside my window, cars and people stood waiting at intersections and alleys. I knew we were just holding up traffic, making people late for shit, but part of me believed they too had come to pay their respects, that somehow the city, through its thousands of eyes, was watching over us, seeing Abuelita off on her ride to another world.

The caravan dissolved when it arrived at the cemetery before reassembling itself as we all lined up to bury my grandmother with handfuls of dug-up soil, members of the family positioned at the end to complete our final goodbye. One by one, the attendees grabbed what they could and sprinkled it on Abuelita’s casket, some reciting a prayer or private message for her. Once they finished, the mourners gathered at the other end of my grandmother’s grave, where her head rested, reminding me of those figures that had loomed above my couch behind Chente the last night I saw him.

When it came time for me to sew my own piece of the blanket that would coat Abuelita into Albuquerque’s landscape, I couldn’t bring myself to look past the edge of her grave. I felt the same feeling that had kept me from visiting her, a feeling I was angry not to have gotten over. There was so much guilt painting my insides that even the decision to grab two fistfuls of dirt, one for myself and one for Chente, seemed wrong. But something guided my hands into that pile of earth—something I couldn’t explain. Maybe it was the heaviness of Pops’s and Tía Alicia’s shadow behind me. Or maybe it was a force from some entirely different place. Or both. Who’s to say? All I know is that I asked for forgiveness as the dust trickled through my fingers like grains in an hourglass.

Later that night I dreamt the clearest dream of my life. It goes like this: I am driving to pick up my cousin up from prison; I make my way through Albuquerque, pass by Barelas, and notice how different it’s become over the last five years with gentrification in full swing; I arrive outside the barb-wired facility rooted in the nothingness of New Mexico’s desert; I see he is waiting for me outside the gate, tryna form a smile under the bags of his eyes; I am jarred by how much he has changed, how his beefed-up muscles look like armor, how his skin is plastered with new tattoos, none as playful or delicate as the ones I used to know; I hug him, and his body collapses; I am, in this moment, the only thing standing between him and gravity’s hammer, and there is a pain in my heart, but it is the good kind that makes you feel alive; I throw his few belongings in the trunk and ask him where he wants to go; I wait as he sits in his thoughts, sorting through a question he must’ve not heard in a very long time; I suggest we go pickup flowers and visit Abuelita’s grave; I watch him grimace, mull it over; I see him as that child again, the one I love, and just before his mouth opens, the dream ends. But I still carry with me the words I hope he will say. Simón, primo, that sounds real nice.