Two years ago, only six months before the accident, my parents had come over for Christmas Eve dinner, bringing Maribel a dress from Dise?o y Artesanía that my mother insisted they wanted to give her.
Maribel had made the bu?uelos that year because, at fourteen, she wanted to prove her independence and her capabilities. She first claimed she wanted to make the tamales and revoltijo de romeritos, but I argued they were too complicated. Besides, they were the main part of the meal. I thought, If they don’t turn out, what will we eat? I told her, “Maybe you can make the bu?uelos.” Bu?uelos had what? Flour, sugar, salt, eggs, milk, butter, baking powder, cinnamon. No more, no less. How bad could they be?
Early in the morning, she got out a bowl and fork.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m making my bu?uelos.”
“Already? They don’t take more than half an hour to prepare.”
“I know.”
“Do you also know that it’s eight thirty in the morning?”
“Yep.”
“But we’re not eating them until tonight.”
“Mami,” she said, putting her hand on her hip.
“Maribel,” I said, putting my hand on my hip the same way.
She rolled her eyes.
“Come back around six,” I said, shooing her out of the kitchen. “I’ll be finished by then and you can have the kitchen to yourself.”
At six on the dot, she came back and announced, “Bu?uelo time!”
I was wiping down the counter. My food was ready, heaped into bowls that I’d covered with foil and put in the refrigerator. “Do you want my help?” I asked.
“You told me I could make them.”
“You can. I’m just asking if you want help.”
I knew the answer, though, when she pulled out a bowl, set it on the counter, and lined up her ingredients next to it.
“So you know where everything is?” I asked, before I left her alone.
“Mami,” she said, “I live here. I’ve lived here all my life.”
“That doesn’t help your father,” I said. “Try asking him where anything is.”
Maribel dipped a finger in the sugar and licked it.
“Okay,” I said. “Call if you need anything.”
From the next room I could hear her humming as she measured and poured and stirred. I heard drawers opening and closing, and the clank of spoons against the inside of bowls. I heard the dough hit the counter and her little grunts as she kneaded it and rolled it out. I was sewing a button onto one of Arturo’s work shirts when she walked out with flour on her chin.
“Are they done?” I asked.
She sat next to me and laid her floured hand on top of my knee. “It’s going well,” she said solemnly, as if she were a doctor who had emerged from the operating room to deliver an update.
She disappeared again, and I heard the crackle of the oil as it heated and the sighing sizzle as she dropped the flattened discs of dough in one by one. She’s doing it, I thought. My girl.
My parents came over for dinner that night and we ate, flush with the merriment of the season. After everyone was finished, Maribel hurried into the kitchen, where her bu?uelos waited on an oval platter covered by a dish towel. She brought them out proudly and, like a perfect hostess, carried the plate around, holding it over each person’s shoulder while they helped themselves to the desserts. The bu?uelos were golden brown, and the cinnamon Maribel had sprinkled on the top of each while they were still warm had melted into the dough like tiny amber crystals.
“You made these?” Arturo asked in disbelief.
“All by myself,” Maribel said.
Arturo looked at me.
“She did,” I confirmed.
“They look wonderful,” my mother said.
And I saw Maribel, looking over all of us, her face ripe with pride. I saw her growing up before me. I saw the family she would have one day and the food she would make for them. I saw her entire life in front of her, waiting.