“?Quieren algo de beber?” Lupe asked, gesturing for them to sit.

Mr. Kim rested the bags on a round dining table and slid two chairs out for themselves while Lupe poured glasses of orange juice. Thirstier than she had thought, Mina sipped gratefully as Lupe sat down with them, observing the children watching television, laughing. The eldest daughter lowered the volume.

“No saben lo que le pasó a Mario,” Lupe whispered. “No sé cómo decirles.”

Mina recognized enough words to piece together that Lupe hadn’t told the children about what had happened to Mario.

“?Cuándo fue la última vez que . . . escuchaste de él?” Mr. Kim asked.

Tears spilled out of Lupe’s eyes. Mr. Kim pulled a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket. The second girl, without the baby, and the boy rushed to her, putting their faces on her back, their arms around her shoulders.

Unsure of what to do next, Mr. Kim and Mina stared at the dining room table. When Mina glanced up to see the mother and children holding and comforting each other, she could feel her heart, which she had worked so hard to ignore, tear in two.

“Lo siento,” Mina said. “Lo siento.” One of the expressions she had learned from Hector and Consuela.

When Lupe finished blotting the tears from her face, she inhaled deeply through her mouth. Her daughter wiped away the hair sticking to her face and kissed her mother on the forehead with such tenderness that Mina felt a heat rise from her chest and she couldn’t help but cry. Mr. Kim’s eyes rested on Mina—a shade too long.

He now knew. This was her sadness, too. She was mourning someone, a family.

The following week, Mina and Mr. Kim sat side by side on the couch as Lupe served leftover chocolate cake on paper plates printed with rainbow confetti. Yesterday had been her eldest daughter’s birthday. The two girls ran in circles around the small living room, bopping each other with helium-filled balloons, while the little boy, five or six years old, held the baby.

Lupe had received a phone call from Mario at a detention center in the morning. Describing the conversation, she clapped her hands, eyes upward, thankful to God. Tears leaked out of her eyes. Having heard stories of briberies and beatings, even murders, she only needed to know that he was still alive.

Mina could sense Lupe’s guilt, the guilt that perhaps all parents feel when somehow they lose their child, no matter the age or the circumstance. That guilt was a vertical and endless wall made smooth from hands and feet attempting to climb it. Occasionally a memory together—the laughter, the squeaky voice, a kiss on the cheek—would serve as a kind of ridge on which to hoist yourself, but still you’d fall somehow. There was no way to rest.

As they left the party, Mina pulled herself into the van beside Mr. Kim. “Does she know yet how long he’ll be there, in the detention center?” Mina asked him.

“No. But could be weeks, months.” He turned the ignition a few times. The engine choked. “I spoke to Mr. Park about getting her a job at the market.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said.

“She has a neighbor, a nephew who’ll help her with the kids while she works.” He tried again. This time, the engine groaned to life. “It’ll be hard, but it’s not hopeless.”

“What about her? Is she or the kids at any risk? Of being deported?”

“Yes, of course.”

Outside the car windows, men cruised on low bikes. Tires glinted like the steady throb of lighthouses in the dark. Mina couldn’t help but wonder what each person living in this city did to get by. How many of them lived like her, underground, and how many had stories like hers? How many risks did people take, on and off paper, to survive the brutalities of what they could not change about their lives? America, to many abroad, represented the only way out—not a solution but a chance to keep hope alive and burning.

But some days she felt like she was living inside of a lie.

“Do you want me to take you home?” Mr. Kim asked, breaking through her thoughts. “Or back to the store?”

“Oh. Are you going back to the store?”

“I don’t have to, I can also just go home. I can drop you off.”

“Okay, well . . .”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“If . . . if you could take me home, that would be nice.” She was hesitant to tell him where she lived. She didn’t know why. “I live near Wilton and Olympic. Is that out of your way?”

“No, not at all.”

“I can take the bus.”

“No. It’s fine.”

She asked him to turn right onto the dark, tree-lined street on which she lived. She became self-conscious of being in this car alone with him, a man—concerned that either the landlady or Mrs. Baek might see her and get the wrong idea.

But what was the wrong idea? What would be so shameful about her and Mr. Kim or any man for that matter? She was an adult. She could take care of herself, make choices about her body. But still her heart raced. Perhaps she was simply terrified of wanting more from this life—more feeling, more joy, more pleasure—knowing that it could all be taken away at any moment and that still she’d have to survive. Was she strong enough?

“A couple blocks on the left,” she said, pointing. “Right there.”

He pulled up in front of the house, which had all the lights off inside. The landlady must have already gone to bed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No problem.” His hands remained on the steering wheel as he stared through the windshield. He gulped. Was he sweating?

As she opened her door, Mr. Kim said, “Do you . . . do you want to get dinner sometime?”

“Oh. No. No, thank you.” She smiled, hopping out of the van.

“You’re not married, are you?”

“No. I just—”

“Just thought I’d ask.” He nodded, lips pursed. “Have a good night.”

She shut the van door and waved goodbye through the window. She walked up the broken driveway to the house, afraid to look behind her because she knew he was still in his car, making sure she got inside safely. She opened the front door and rushed toward her bedroom.

She switched on her lamp and lay down, face pressed against the pillow.

She liked Mr. Kim. His polite, big-hearted demeanor. His warm smile.

The smooth skin of his arms. The thick black hair on his head.

But why would anyone want to be with her, a widow who had lost her child? She was damaged goods, as far as she could tell. It would be too much work to get involved with anyone now. Besides, she could never afford to lose anyone again.

She couldn’t sleep at all that night, thinking about him, about Lupe, her children, Mario, and then about Mr. Kim again. Her mind, like the streetlights, let off a steady beam until the morning, when she could hear the birds singing, and the sky turned purple and yellow, like a fresh bruise outside. That was when she finally closed her eyes.

Mina caught glimpses of Lupe in the store, stocking items as Mina had done when she began working at the supermarket. They’d wave at each other or smile and say hello with a silent understanding that they shared something, something that might be too significant, even dangerous to speak of. Mina yearned to ask her about Mario but didn’t quite know how.

She had wanted to learn Spanish for many reasons and now for this one in particular. How would the shape of her feelings, thoughts change if she could say them out loud? If she could hear them? If someone else, who might understand, could hear them, too? By only speaking Korean, her world, and the world of what was inside her, felt limited to the few people she spoke to each day, or the people whom she couldn’t quite trust at church. How could the shape of her life change if she had more people that she could reach with words?

She’d have to learn on her own. She could get a book. But, no, she should learn English first.

But why should she learn English when no one around her used it? Every single person at the supermarket spoke Spanish or Korean or both. Perhaps Mr. Kim and Mr. Park, the owner, spoke English, but that was it. In Koreatown, she managed to do almost everything in Korean. And since she rented her room under the table, completed all her transactions in cash, she didn’t even need a bank account yet. Even if she did open one eventually, there would be a Korean bank to help her, a Korean accountant.

At the end of her shift, she walked to a bookstore a few blocks from the supermarket, where she picked up a Spanish language book. Standing at the bus stop, she flipped through the text, trying to decipher the diagrams.

Dorothy swims in the lake. / Dorothy nada en el lago.

Dorothy drinks orange juice. / Dorothy bebe zumo de naranja.

A sudden gust of wind, speckled with dust and dirt, devoured her as the bus approached. Mina showed her pass to the woman with the round face and perfect bob.

“Aren’t you cold?” the driver asked.

“No, no. It’s okay.”

“It’s freezing out there.” She mimed shivering, crossing her arms to keep herself warm.

Mina smiled, making her way to the back where she could study her book.