Fiction

The Urg moaned again, a loud rusty protest just as our episode resumed, and I threw my arms into the air. “Is this going to go on all day?” my little girl voice rising too high in my excitement, a shrill ache, like too much sugar at the bottom of my teeth.

At a shop called La Boutique off Monk Street and Breakfast Avenue, where businesses rarely lasted more than half a year’s lease, the muralist Eduardo Salamanca bought a dark brown shirt with an airbrushed image of the revolutionary Zapata. He walked out wearing it, with his old shirt in a plastic bag, and asked himself what else was in store for the day.

With her mother, The Daughter was different. She would express herself loudly, stretching herself above her five-foot frame, trying to match herself to the majesty that was her mother, never quite measuring up, but never giving up. They enjoyed this combat of wills, mother and daughter, though sometimes, this contest would end with one or the other stomping off to cry silent tears of frustration.