Beef

An ofrenda uncharacteristically lit up during a hot May day. A red toy with peeling paint. An old dollar bill. A black and white picture of a cradle. A wide smile so rarely seen on a color one.

Manuel holds a uniform just like his own to his chest. It's the third time he has unfolded it and folded it, searching for fleeting remnants. But his baby boy's smell is gone. It had been gone for a long time. The only signs of his son ever having inhabited that pair of trousers and the shirt are the stains and holes in it, frozen in time forever like the pictures he's staring at with his lips pursed and his eyes shutting closed every time the smile and the eyes in the photograph begin to move.

Maybe it's his tears making them flicker. Maybe it's the desperate need to see something other than himself in that room move.

He touches the frame as if instead of red plastic he could find the rough edges of a face that resembled his, wanting to cradle it one last time.

The ofrenda is not the only thing haunted by the choir of furies that was his son. Children of different ages are looking down at him: babies clenching their tiny fists, boys with sewing machines and headphones, kids in the pool learning how to swim, young men who didn't want their picture taken anymore. They're all him, and they're all living on his walls for him not to forget his face.

Manuel Varga folds the black-and-white uniform one last time for that day, and puts it next to the ofrenda, hoping that wherever his Nacho is, he's not cold.

And he's loved.