Stories from The Moon / Cuentos de la Luna

The last time I saw Grandma she was walking down the stairs of her house in a white dress and white heels. She was singing something about a rose and smelled of dried Hibiscus petals. She had a little glass bottle on her dresser with a liquid-pistachio-green-something that she’d put in my hair. Grandma collected frog figurines, sang to the plants in her garden, threw birthday parties for her miniature Dachshund; she even made my father smile. She never talked about her parents dying in a car crash, how she was separated from her two siblings at age seven and sent to live with an aunt who didn’t love her. How this same aunt didn’t open the door the night she decided to finally leave Grandpa and thought she could somehow, go back home. The last time she combed my hair, she said she’d like to live to see the year 2000. Grandma died in 1999.