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breakthrough, our turning point. I try not to think of tonight as a lost opportunity for Delia and me.
    At seven, we get to our knees, pray before the religious shrine Ma’s set up on top of the TV—a few porcelain figurines of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, laminated prayer cards in wood frames, plastic rosaries. On the floor, an arm’s reach from me, in front of the TV screen, stands an infant-sized ceramic statuette of Santo Niño, the baby Jesus Christ. All good Filipino Catholic families have one, but I haven’t seen ours in years. He still looks weird to me, with his red velvet cape trimmed in gold thread and a crown to match, silver robes, brown corn silk hair curling down his face past his shoulders, the plastic flower in his hand.
    When Eric was small, he thought Santo Niño was a girl: I caught him in his bedroom kneeling on the floor, and Santo Niño was naked, his cape, robes, and crown in a small, neat pile by Eric’s foot. For the first time, I saw how he was made: only the hands and face had been painted to look like skin; everywhere else was unglazed white, chipped in spots. “See,” Eric said, his finger in the empty space between Santo Niño’s legs, “he’s a girl.” I called him an idiot, tried to get it through his head that he was just a statue, a ceramic body that meant nothing. “Santo Niño is a boy,” I said. “Say it.” He wouldn’t, so I took the Santo Niño from Eric, held him above my head. Eric jumped, reached, tried to get him back, knocked him out of my hands.
    Ma heard the crash, ran upstairs and found pieces of Santo Niño scattered at our feet. Before she could speak I pointed at the pile of clothes on the floor, told her what Eric had done and said.
    I tried putting Santo Niño back together in my room, and listened to Eric getting hit.
    But my brother had a point. This second Santo Niño, the one Ma bought to replace the one we broke, does look like a girl, with glass-blue eyes, long black lashes, a red-lipped smile, offering a rose. When everyone’s eyes are shut tight in prayer, I reach out, try to take it. It’s glued to his fist.
    W hat started as praying is now a dinner party. Ma makes sure the egg rolls stay warm, that there’s enough soy sauce in the chow mein. I hear her swap recent gossip with neighbors who moved away long before, watch her hold the babies of women who grew up on our street. In the Philippines, my parents threw three to four parties a year, and Ma boasted how her wedding was the grandest her province had ever seen. She promised equally grand weddings for us. But I was twenty-one when Delia and I eloped, and she gave up on Eric long ago. Funerals and novenas, I think, are all Ma has left.
    People keep coming. I try to stay close to familiar faces: I comfort Mrs. Gonzalez, Eric’s second-grade teacher, who’s brought the crayon portraits Eric drew for her on paper sacks. I talk with Isaac Chavez, Eric’s best friend from grade school and the first boy, Eric confessed to me later, he ever loved. He never told Isaac; maybe I should. But when Isaac introduces me to his new wife, I see no need to complicate his night.
    Later, when the Mendoza brothers walk in, I stay away. A long time ago, at a Fourth of July picnic, they found Eric under the slide by himself, making daisy chains, singing love songs at the top of his lungs. I watched as they called him a girl, a sissy, a faggot. “That’s what you get for playing with flowers,” I told Eric later.
    Ma catches me in the kitchen. “We’re out of ice,” she says. Beside her is a Filipino woman rattling melting ice cubes in her plastic cup. She looks like she came to dance instead of pray: her black hair falls in waves past her shoulders, and her tight black dress is cut above the knee. In her high-heeled boots, she’s taller than almost everyone here.
    â€œNo problem.” I take the