“Then cook.”
The kitchen is a narrow corridor pretending to be a room.
A dented refrigerator, one sticky window, a sink with chipped enamel, and an old stove with only three reliable burners. You open the cabinets and feel rage rise like heat under a closed lid. Barely any food. Pasta, oil, stale crackers, rice. In the corner, hidden behind tea tins, you find two fruit cups and a packet of animal crackers wrapped carefully in a dish towel.
Lidia’s stash for Sofi.
You make rice, eggs, and whatever vegetables are still decent enough to cut. Sofi sits at the table watching you with solemn concentration while Teresa complains from the other room that you take too long and waste too much. Verónica wanders in only to ask whether Damián knows you were at “the asylum” longer than expected, then smiles when she says the word.
