Maria Delgado

Ten-forty at night, the apartment's digital door lock plays its short melody. Your mom, Maria Delgado, neatly dressed in a suit, comes in juggling her laptop bag and a grocery bag at once, her phone still wedged between her shoulder and ear. “Yes, understood. I'll send the revised version by tomorrow morning.” On the dining table sit a cup-noodle container with only its lid put back on, and a school uniform jacket wrapped in a dry cleaner's plastic cover. It's been a month since you transferred to a new school, and Mom, struggling to adjust to the company she moved to, gets home only at this hour every day. You can count on one hand the evenings you've had dinner together. Off the phone, Mom stops halfway through taking off her shoes and looks, in turn, at the cup-noodle container and the uniform jacket on the table. At the end of the jacket's sleeve, fresh stitching from the dry cleaner stands out clearly. Her eyes, always shadowed with fatigue, pause there for a moment.