No one really knows what happened that night.

​

I was told by the missionaries next door that they’d stopped by earlier that day, Bible and incense in hand, to pray at Abuela’s bedside. She had been chanting again, over and over, like a stuck record.

 

Matar, matar, matar.

 

Her arms had gone stiff. Her legs too. The body forgets itself when the soul moves on. Even her bowels had let go. But her mouth? Her mouth still moved. For three weeks straight. Same words. Same rhythm.

 

Matar, matar, matar.

 

My mother said it was an old prayer from Catholic school. Something Latin. Something memorized back when girls had to kneel in skirts and keep secrets from nuns.

​

Google says it means “kill, kill, kill.”

 

The missionaries stayed for dinner, praying over her tiny, bird-boned body one last time before stepping out into the biting cold, Bibles tucked beneath goose-feathered jackets.

 

Abuela and Tía Lucía were left alone.

 

That was the first red flag.

 

Tía Elena had left the week before. Said it was for business. Something about the gallery in Florence needing her. But everyone knew she couldn’t look at Abuela like that. Couldn’t watch her fall apart in slow motion. Not anymore.

 

She’d started smoking weed in every room of the house. No more pretending. No more it’s just incense from Morocco.The smell of sandalwood followed her like a prayer gone wrong. She wanted out. And really, who could blame her?

 

My mother, who prayed dutifully by Abuela’s bedside for weeks, had already boarded her plane back to New York. I watched her cry at the airport, rosary in one hand, Catholic guilt in the other. She’d said her final goodbyes through tears and prayers and that kind of mother-daughter ache you don’t ever really name.

 

And I followed shortly after—back to London, back to my half-finished illustrations and a mountain of unopened emails. My goodbye was quiet, almost invisible. I was the only grandchild called to visit Abuela at her deathbed. But the visit felt strange. My grandmother had hated me for years.

 

She hated the weight I put on in college. Hated that I wasn’t married. Hated that I smoked weed with Elena. Hated that I never carried red lipstick in my purse, as a lady should.

 

We’d made peace at the end, as I fed her spoonfuls of soup and ice cream, just as she had once done for me when I was a baby. But the memory of your grandmother hating you doesn’t just disappear like steam on a mirror.

 

My Tío Migo, Abuela’s only son, left his retreat early. One of those silent ones, where you’re supposed to find your truth in the sound of your own breathing. He was supposed to be there the next morning to say goodbye.

 

Too late. Always too late.

 

And then there was my Tía Camila. Legendary in the family for holding grudges. She could fight with people who weren’t even in the room.

 

She never came. Said the past was the past. Waved at her dying mother over Zoom, sipping gin in sunglasses like she was on vacation.

 

“Ahora sonríe, Mamá,” she said. Smile now.

​

And she did. Like a wolf in a silk robe. I didn’t believe a word of her farewell. But her red lipstick looked perfect.

 

So when the veil between worlds thinned, when the air shifted and the breath in the room changed, it was my Tía Lucía who stood there—the only one left to hear Abuela’s last “Matar.”

 

If I were to believe Lucía’s version of events, then it was the ghost of her son who came and took my grandmother away that night.

 

I was in the kitchen, my hands buried in soapy water, scrubbing plates no one had the appetite to eat from. It was late, and I was exhausted, worn down from another night of Abuela’s chanting.

​

And then, as if summoned by a dream, Israel appeared.

​

He looked so real I forgot to be afraid. My breath caught in my throat. He walked in quietly, as he always did when he was alive—shoulders slightly hunched, eyes carrying that soft sorrow he never managed to leave behind.

 

“Israel,” I called after him, my voice trembling with disbelief. “¿Qué haces aquí?”

 

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn.

 

I followed him, barefoot and dripping water on the floor, into Abuela’s room. She lay there, folded into herself the way the very old do when their spirit has begun to loosen from the body.

 

“Israel, mi hijo,” I pleaded, my voice softer now, as if I might scare him away. “¿Qué haces aquí?”

 

He did not speak. He simply bent over her and gently gathered her into his arms like a child. And then they were gone. By the time I stepped into the hallway, the house had swallowed them both.

 

Silence. Stillness. And I knew.

 

Abuela was gone.

 

Israel had come for her.

 

I don’t believe Lucía. No more than I believe the moon is made of sugar.

​

She tells a beautiful story, but underneath? There’s something tangled. Something with teeth. Something dark that doesn’t like the light.

 

You see, my mother has a saying: Porque somos latinos.

 

Because we’re Latin.

​

When life unravels into absurdity, as it often does, she shrugs, lights a cigarette, and says it again.

 

Because we’re Latin.

 

It’s her bandage. Her banner. Her way of explaining the unexplainable. It means devotion. It means pride. It means no one apologizes until they’re dying. And even then, they whisper it through teeth clenched like fists.

 

Ask my mother why Tía Camila once shit in her hand and chased her through the garden.

 

Because we’re Latin. We get angry.

 

Ask her why Tío Migo brought a Moroccan belly dancer to Abuela’s funeral and offered her his dead mother’s earrings.

 

Because we’re Latin. We love beauty.

 

Ask her why Tía Elena bathes naked in a kiddie pool under the full moon.

 

Because we’re Latin. We talk to spirits.

 

Ask my mother not to cut in line.

 

“Ay, Sarasin. We’re Latin. We don’t wait in lines.”

 

She doesn’t say it to make sense. She says it so she doesn’t have to. It’s her way of explaining every contradiction that makes our family who we are.

 

We are passionate. We are different. We are lively.

 

Because we’re Latin.

 

We love too hard. We curse too loud. We ghost people we adore. We rage and dance and guilt and celebrate—all in the same afternoon.

 

Because we’re Latin.

 

Yes, my family—the Bolívars—they bend time. They live outside it, above it, beyond it, like the rules don’t apply. They fight like telenovela villains, love like poets, and judge each other with a fervor typically reserved for God.

 

A family dinner could turn into a courtroom or a confessional. Someone’s always crying in the bathroom. Someone’s always dancing in the kitchen. Someone’s always packing a suitcase, slamming a door, or returning like a prodigal ghost.

 

We’re not normal. We’re not gentle. We are stories walking around in bodies. We are theater, church, tragedy, comedy, y toda la novela completa.

 

When Migo is happy, he throws a Seven Deadly Sins party. He and his friends indulge in the best food, wine, drugs—everything—all on his dime. Then he disappears into silence for a week and eats nothing but rice and air. My mother calls it rehab.

 

Because we’re Latin.

 

Elena drinks her own urine, convinced the Earth will cure her of the weight she can’t seem to lose. She smokes with saints and diets with demons. She has new revelations every week. None of them stick. But she swears she’s changed.

 

Because we’re Latin.

 

And my mother. Ay, mi madre. She once didn’t speak to me for three days because I said my father had a point—it was wrong to donate expired mole to the church picnic. But when my boyfriend broke my heart, she called me every evening for weeks, alternating between “men are pigs” and “you’ll never find love if you keep eating bread.”

 

And their behavior makes sense to me. Because I am one of them. There is no in-between with us. No gray area. You’re either the savior or the disgrace. The golden child or the cautionary tale.

 

So when Lucía told her ghost story, I believed her. I wanted to. It didn’t matter if it was true or not. Death is so unnatural to those who are still living. Grief needs magic to pass. And stories are softer than facts, especially when someone you love is gone.

 

But then I went to see Migo. I sat on his velvet couch and told him what Lucía said about Francisco, about the last “Matar.”

 

And he laughed. That dry, beautiful laugh of his. Like I’d just said I still believed in fairies. Like I was twelve again, asking if angels wore shoes.

 

So I snapped back. “If it’s not true, then what really happened?”

 

He looked at me—not like I was stupid. Like I was innocent. Like that was worse.

 

“I was mad at her,” he said. “Lucía knew I was coming. She could’ve waited. She didn’t.”

 

Then he went quiet. Took a slow sip of his beer. Didn’t look at me again.

 

And I thought about it the whole ride home. About what it means to wait. About what it means to leave before someone can say sorry. About whether rage can kill. Whether grief can lie.

 

And that’s how I ended up, on the eve of my grandmother’s death, wondering—really wondering—if my aunt had killed her.

 

Because we’re Latin.