Cockfight. María Fernanda Ampuero

go silent: the dad, dressed as a soldier—Lieutenant Mitchell Ward.

      “He went to Vietnam.”

      The two of them, Diana and Mitch, say the words at the same time, like a single person with a voice that is both masculine and feminine: “He went to Vietnam.”

      He went to Nam.

      Nam.

      The shadow reemerges, that suffocating lack of light, silence like an angry sea. The three of us hug our knees and look at the record player. The Doors play, we like them. We sing a little, and Diana translates: People are strange when you’re a stranger / Faces look ugly when you’re alone. Mitch puts on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, and during the song “Madame George,” I lie down across Diana’s legs. Mitch rests his head on my stomach. We play with one another’s hair.