he handkerchief.
The note.
The company money he fought for.
The pig he sold without saying a word.
My mother cried all over again hearing it aloud in church, and so did more people than I expected.
Afterward, one of my younger cousins came up to me outside and said, “I always thought he was just serious.”
I told him, “He was. He was serious about love.”
These days, I am older than my father ever got to be.
I have children of my own, and I keep a folded copy of Antonio’s note in my desk drawer. Not the original—my mother kept that until she died, tucked inside the same red handkerchief. But a copy, in his rough handwriting, with the line that built the rest of my life:
Do not be ashamed.
Every December, I buy several full sacks of rice.
Not one or two kilos.
Full sacks.
I take them to families in our old neighborhood, or to teachers who know which children have started arriving at school with the look I used to wear on the walk to my uncle’s house.
And inside each sack, beneath the rice, I tuck an envelope.
Sometimes it has grocery money.
Sometimes school supply money.
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