Cafe con Leche

When I was a 5 years old, my mother used to tell me that she prayed for God to make her children white as snow.

“Ay, mi blanca nieves...” she would sigh as if the title were some prize.
The purest of blood; a direct daughter of Cortes himself.

If only she knew how desperately I wanted to look like her.
Film star beauty, La Doña incarnate.
I remember going outside and smothering myself in mud, just in an attempt to do so. Smushed berries together to recreate the natural, inimitable tint of her mouth.
My father caught me, and threw me in the tub like a hound, the self I longed to be, whom I got to be for a few fleeting moments;

Moments, where my outside matched my inside, down in a ring at the bottom of the tub. The silence that followed thicker than his accent.
“La única razón por la que no se ve indía es por mí”
I looked my more like my mother in that moment than I thought;

Too young to play in her make up box, but not too young to inherit the disappointment she wears on her face.
My mother was always her most beautiful when she was suffering.
Film star beauty, my mother, the performer, a natural at playing the role that she wasn’t.