Page 75 of Ask for Andrea

We stayed with my mom for a week after that, soaking in the sunlight of the little kitchen and the home that, unlike the police station or the cabin, felt like a safe haven.

I didn’t linger on goodbyes. And neither Meghan nor Brecia talked about making their way back to Colorado and Utah to see their parents one more time. Knowing there would be reunions with our loved ones in the future made those final farewells feel less dire.

The three of us spent those last moments searching my memories for a link. Looking for someone who would welcome me into the matrix that held my grandparents and great grandparents and everyone who had come before them.

We finally found it in El Salvador. I’d only been there once—when I was just a baby. We’d visited my mom’s sister and her two daughters, Rocio and Erica. Both were close to my age—and still very much alive. But on that short trip, we’d met dozens of others, some friends and some relatives. As I replayed the memories from that trip to San Salvador for Brecia and Meghan, I saw introductions to second-cousins and half-brothers and one great aunt.

I felt silly as I called out to the people in my memories as they greeted my mom with big hugs and reached for my rosy cheeks. What was I supposed to say? “Hello, are you dead too?”

The memories stayed the same until my chubby one-year-old self was hoisted into the arms of my great aunt—Marcia.

“Can you hear me?” I asked her softly as I watched my baby hands grab at her graying hair.

As I said the words, I instantly felt the memory change. Meghan and Brecia suddenly faded away, and I knew that Marcia was looking right at me when her eyes opened wide in surprise and she said my name. Not Skye—the anglo-sounding name I’d insisted on when I got to middle school—but my birth name: Estela. Stars in the sky. “Ah, mija, Estelita. ¿Cómo puede ser?”

“Go,” I heard distantly from the edges of the memory. And for just a moment I lingered in the feeling of being loved from so many different places in time.

I imagined Meghan, finally wrapping herself into the memory of her grandmother like a warm blanket.

I thought of Brecia and her Aunt Nelly.

Then I let myself be folded into the memory, into the arms that were waiting for me.