“This is Belèn, she is fourteen and she is my oldest sister’s daughter. This is Neva, she is fifteen and she is Belèn’s sister. Over here is C...nchita, and we call her, Chita. She is the oldest at seventeen. She is my sister and I am so happy to have her here. She was there in Laredo to attend school and she was being taken to the whorehouse too, before Miguel rescued them. Then over here is my sister’s baby girl, Ynez. She will soon be fourteen but she looks much older with her big tetas!“Over. ‘Jesus Christ!’ I thought immediately, feeling completely over come with angst and stunned mindlessly, feeling like a complete fool, and worse, like someone who had invaded someone else’s privacy and whom was about to be caught. But there was no way out of this one. I knew that whose ever footsteps they were, there would have been no way for me to have successfully left the closet as I found it without being discovered snooping. And yet at virtually the same time, I thought that I should have. It was a sound that he had missed ever since… The children were eating good food and it showed in the new brightness of their eyes and smiles on their faces. Their initial shyness had disappeared and they were now impatiently waiting for ‘Uncle Jim’ to come home with Aunt ‘Bet’ny’ each evening. Although he still pretended to insist on the necessity of his evening solitude, it was soon clear to her he was just hiding behind a façade and would often spend that time playing with the children. After getting dressed and struggling into the lastpair of my jeans that I could now wear, I came back downstairs and foundMom just finishing cleaning up the breakfast dishes. "Uh, Mom", I said,"Uh, like, uh, there's no reason to rush into this doctor thing. like, uh,it can wait awhile." Mom just looked at me for a moment and then got thissmile on her face as she said, "I was wondering how you'd feel about that.So if that's the case there's some shopping that we need to do." Uh, shopping? What.