Another Name
The letter began with a confession. “My real name is Evelina Morales.” My breath caught. Line by line, the story unfolded: she was the daughter of Mexican immigrants, born in Texas, raised in Chicago, playing piano in smoky underground clubs at midnight. On stage, they called her “Eve Hart.” Until that moment, I had only known the grandmother in family photos; now I felt as though I were reading the biography of a stranger. Eve remembered everything—the bite of cheap whiskey, the hum of neon, the ring-shaped stains left behind on tables after the crowd had gone.
The Night She Folded Her Dream
“One night,” she wrote, “I set music and family on the scales and quietly lowered the lid of the piano.” She chose the sound of her daughter’s breathing—my mother’s—over the roar of applause. She turned off the lamp on the music stand, washed away the smudges of the black keys from her fingertips. Yet deep inside her ears, the rhythm never stopped. Dreams can be folded away, she told me across time, but the creases never disappear. One day, you’ll trace those creases with your own hand.
