I did not.
Licenciado Arriaga, the family notary, stood pale beneath the funeral tent. He had read the will twenty minutes earlier: “To my granddaughter Mariana Salazar, I leave my savings booklet and all rights connected to it.”
She left my father nothing.
That was why he was furious.
My grandmother had raised me since my mother died in an accident when I was five. She taught me how to make red rice without ruining it, how to check electricity bills, how not to sign papers without reading them, and how to look people in the eye when they tried to scare me.
A week before she died, in the IMSS hospital, she took my hand with her thin fingers and whispered:
“When they laugh, let them. Then go to the bank.”
At the time, I did not understand.
Now, staring at the booklet on her coffin, I began to tremble.
I took a step toward the grave.
