Status Updates From Las manos pequeñas

One Wednesday night we stole Marina’s doll without her realizing, and she woke up in a panic. Now she was unprotected, like us. Now she tried to love, and her hunger had no object. For a minute we thought she was going to tell on us, but she didn’t. She could hardly even move.

If the adult wasn’t watching, we hit her. Never very hard, usually just softly. She’d crouch down to pick something up and we’d stab her butt with a sharp pencil. She’d flinch and we’d laugh. Like a glass, her face filled up with humiliation. So full of thoughts we couldn’t guess, so proud. Warm and dark, her eyes filled with tears she never cried, she’d yank at her dress and pull it hard,

the cadence of the words had changed now. They were like an accusation, a shameful secret, something that flowered just below the skin’s surface, like a swamp plant; now the words were moist and they grew. The other girls’ existence made it impossible for her to inhabit the suburbs of the words. When she was dreaming the words she felt like they spent their time there, above her face, and that they were as old