Fog Lights by Nadiyah Ngah D. Windson is an original painting in the private art collection of Nivea Castro.

The minute the news of Lolita Lebrón’s death from a lung infection went public, chismosos started a rumor that my ‘baby’ brother Theos was next.

Many of them were office workers, freshly middle-class but still wearing the stench of poverty on their heads like a mother’s lochia on her newborn’s frantic fontanelle. They clung to these bloated dreams for their daughters, as if they would supplant their own unfulfilled ambitions.

Moments of bliss seldom collide, but the instant a warm, sweet fritter went soft on his tongue, Hill noticed the painting — silver hair, blazing eye, skin the hearty brown of good bread — half shoved behind the door.

Ezzeldine didn’t understand what it was like to be an actress surrounded by male directors and male everything. Why should she be the one to lose the part? The sacrifice wasn’t fair. Nothing in the world was fair for women.