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I know now why I keep thinking about her. Dreaming about her.

She hasn’t left my mind for several days now, and every memory links back to her. She’s my source of comfort in times of crisis. She was my everything when I was growing up and has become a grounding force since she’s been gone.

She is my grandmother. But I never called her that. I’ve always called her Mamá, not Mami, because she was more than a mother to me.

I will never forget the day she sat me down on our front porch to read.

I used to not be able to read. Letters would mush and jumble and cause a mess. Mamá was never happy with average. “You are not a ‘c’ student,” she would say. She would say this in Spanish because she learned no English, not even in the last year she was here. The year before she died.

One day, she bought a green Nacho book. It was the book used to torture children to read in the Dominican Republic. Almost every household had one, and passed it from children to children, erasing the answers from the last child.

Education was everything. Crucial, vital, she would say. She would say this in Spanish. “You are smart,” She said. “Your grades don’t show it yet.”

One day, after doing all her chores, she pulled that hellish book from thin air. The cuticles around her nails had rolled too far back from years of laundering with bare hands and bleach. They never grew back. It made her nail bed look so long.

Her dress was flimsy and floral. She had sweat around her temples. But the kitchen always made her sweat. The spots on her arms and legs lifted from her skin. They were like landmarks created by the sun. The scorching sun on an island in the middle of a big ocean.

It was still out, but it was waning. Mamá knew she had a few hours. She knew everything. She would always wear a slip underneath every dress and skirt. But when she sat or bent over to pick up trash from the floor, it would show. She tapped her lap and gripped the book tight with her right hand.

Her hands were smooth and contrasted against the liver spots on her arms. It was oddly beautiful.

Her lap was more comfortable than any of the chairs in the house. She had the weight of eight live births and one dead all over her body. The weight was not kind to her, not to her bones, nor her hips and definitely not her bones. She would die many years from then when cancer would make her bones so weak she wouldn’t be able to walk and sit, only lay. But for now, her chest was a pillow, and her legs cushions, and she knew everything because she was magic.

She called the breeze when she rocked on the chair. It rolled in through the gaps in the iron gate. It dried her sweat. One day a bull came in and slammed the door. The next day we had the gate. It kept us safe. She gave us love. The book didn’t seem so awful then, not with the breeze, not with her.

Her words were magic. Or was it her voice? It was soothing like the breeze she called and demanding like a sergeant. It rejoiced with every correct word and pushed for more. That night when the electricity went out, the evening grew cool, and she finished her chores, Mamá cast the reading spell on me and lit the fire for writing.