Upon seeing the charm that seemed to surround my new life, I couldn't help but feel frustrated, with the feeling that all of it was fake, like some kind of staged luxury to impress me, to buy my soul, to tempt me into accepting the lies that I might hear from my mother's lips.
I brushed my hair at the enormous vanity, which alone was larger than the bed I slept in at Aunt Elena's house. I went to the bathroom and did the same with my teeth, using, for the first time, one of those electric brushes. I dressed in one of the three dozen dresses I found in the walk-in closet, which was larger than my room at Elena's house, and then I left, determined to confront my mother and the lies she was surely planning to feed me.
It wasn't hard to find her after asking the first maid I encountered, hea
