conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about European, York, Italy with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Where We Come From'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Where We Come From
  It bothered Nina that Rumalda looked her same age, like they might have been classmates in grade school and now had come to be reunited every Friday morning when Rumalda walked across the bridge to clean the house. Sixteen years younger was not nothing, yet Rumalda hobbled like an old mule with a bad leg that never healed. Bunions. A bone spur. A bad hip. Only God knew. The woman refused to see a real doctor, terca that the salve the curandera had prepared for her needed time to do its healing. Maybe leaving it on more than just overnight. Nina wondered who actually looked her true age, she or her maid. If she had been spared only by being born on this side of the river. If she shouldn't go back to coloring her hair, like she did when she had more time, before she moved back home to take care of her mother.
  When the gray showed up she convinced herself she looked more her age, but then the gray began turning white and she didn't know what age she was anymore and if it mattered, as little as she left the house these days. But how much older would the Matamoros Nina look? Would her feet be as calloused and scaly, as misshapen with bunions from walking six days a week for however long to the bridge to wait in line with the rest of the men and women coming to this side to work? How many shades darker? How much more haggard and spent from walking home on the other side of the river, where you never know when Los Mañosos, as Rumalda calls the narcos, might decide today is a good day to start killing one another in the streets?
  Two months earlier, before Nina's nephew Eduardo asked her to take care of her godson Orly, Rumalda had asked for her own favor. She had arrived like every other Friday and set down her purse, removed her flats, and put the first load of laundry to wash. She came back to the kitchen when she was called over a few minutes later. Maybe this was the only house she cleaned where she was invited to sit and have coffee. Maybe she had coffee everywhere she went and never mentioned it out of modesty. It was a small gesture to pass the time, to treat her like a person and not some criada, as Nina's mother sometimes called her. They paid her the standard forty dollars to do the laundry and clean the house. Even on a fixed income, Nina always set aside enough money for this expense. It was her only break from working around the house during the week. If Rumalda had extra time, she prepared the lunch and made tortillas so she could fill the rest of her workday.
  When she did finally sit, it was close to the edge of the seat cushion and avoiding much eye contact, instead staring into the black, unsweetened coffee before her. Other than Nina's brother Beto occasionally coming to visit and the doctors and nurses they saw when she took her mother to her appointments, Rumalda was one of the few contacts Nina had with the outside world. Adelita Morales from down the street had died two years earlier and left her husband behind, who by that point was already going blind from the diabetes and now stayed indoors, afraid to venture even to his front gate. Most of her friends from work had moved on with their lives. Nina had tried to meet them for coffee or lunch, but this only happened on Fridays, the one day a week she could stray from the house knowing that Rumalda was there to keep an eye on her mother.
  Rumalda wasn't much of a talker. But Nina was just happy to see someone else's face, to see her smile or grimace when she shared some small detail about the last seven days of being here with her mother. And perhaps this is how it would've continued if Nina hadn't been asking Rumalda so many questions, inquiring about her husband and the younger daughter and then the older one and her husband and their baby, instead of letting the woman sit and enjoy her coffee.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Orly almost couldn't believe it when Alex told him about the slap. Before then they never would've thought Maribel had it in her to hit one of her kids. During the ten years she had worked for the family, the boys had done enough to frustrate her, but she never seemed bothered by their antics—the mad-science experiments in the kitchen, the underwear stuck to the ceiling fan, or one of them hiding her cell phone in the clothes hamper or inside a cereal box so it took most of the day for her to locate it. And then there were the fights she had to break up between them, the accusations about who started it and who did what to whom and who was making it up to get the other one in trouble when their parents got home. She'd sigh, shake her head, say something like "Son tremendos," and continue working. Sometimes she'd take her Virgen de Guadalupe pendant and rub it between her thumb and forefinger. No matter what they did, though, she never got as annoyed as their parents did. They figured Maribel for one of those parents who didn't believe in spanking and not just the kids of the family she worked for. But a slap across the face was definitely hitting, way more than just a spanking, and a lot more than raising her voice.
  After a while Maribel went outside to talk to Daniela, who by then had locked the car doors. Alex cracked open the bedroom window so they could hear Maribel begging Daniela to open up, telling her she was sorry, she overreacted, it wouldn't happen again, she promised, even saying it in English. Across the street, Dr. Murphy, who was retired and generally asleep at this hour, New Year's or no New Year's, flicked on his porch light and stood by his picture window when he saw it was the Latin girl who worked across the street. He had his cordless tucked into the pocket of his robe, ready for the first sign that things might be getting out of hand. Alex said it was like watching a reality show.
  The list went on for another twenty minutes, until Maribel came back inside and the boys headed off to their bedrooms. Their parents came home close to one in the morning.
  The next night Orly hears them in the kitchen. The sounds haven't gone away and only become more obvious because now he knows it's not just Nina. He tries to sleep, runs his fingers up and across the grooves on the wall, imagines what hotel his father might be in tonight, what Alex is doing at camp, if he's done anything else to make the counselors call their dad, if this is the week Carson's dad is taking him to Paris, who his teachers will be in seventh grade, but none of it works.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Orly almost couldn't believe it when Alex told him about the slap. Before then they never would've thought Maribel had it in her to hit one of her kids. During the ten years she had worked for the family, the boys had done enough to frustrate her, but she never seemed bothered by their antics—the mad-science experiments in the kitchen, the underwear stuck to the ceiling fan, or one of them hiding her cell phone in the clothes hamper or inside a cereal box so it took most of the day for her to locate it. And then there were the fights she had to break up between them, the accusations about who started it and who did what to whom and who was making it up to get the other one in trouble when their parents got home. She'd sigh, shake her head, say something like "Son tremendos," and continue working. Sometimes she'd take her Virgen de Guadalupe pendant and rub it between her thumb and forefinger. No matter what they did, though, she never got as annoyed as their parents did. They figured Maribel for one of those parents who didn't believe in spanking and not just the kids of the family she worked for. But a slap across the face was definitely hitting, way more than just a spanking, and a lot more than raising her voice.
  After a while Maribel went outside to talk to Daniela, who by then had locked the car doors. Alex cracked open the bedroom window so they could hear Maribel begging Daniela to open up, telling her she was sorry, she overreacted, it wouldn't happen again, she promised, even saying it in English. Across the street, Dr. Murphy, who was retired and generally asleep at this hour, New Year's or no New Year's, flicked on his porch light and stood by his picture window when he saw it was the Latin girl who worked across the street. He had his cordless tucked into the pocket of his robe, ready for the first sign that things might be getting out of hand. Alex said it was like watching a reality show.
  The list went on for another twenty minutes, until Maribel came back inside and the boys headed off to their bedrooms. Their parents came home close to one in the morning.
  The next night Orly hears them in the kitchen. The sounds haven't gone away and only become more obvious because now he knows it's not just Nina.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She feels her way to the kitchen without turning on any lights in the house or outside. She knows it won't help her see whoever it is moving in the shadows who doesn't want to be seen.
  Who are you? She realizes she's saying it no louder than a whisper because she's only saying the words to herself. She realizes this is the first time she's ever asked herself this question. "¿Quién eres?"
  Someday, not too long from now, as much as she hates to think about it, she's bound to lose her mother. It could happen from one day to the next, faster than Nina or Beto wants to believe. She doesn't know if she'll hold on to the house, if she would even want it, knowing Beto is likely to fight her on it. But either way it doesn't mean she can't have her own life now. It doesn't mean she won't be here or somewhere else for when her Orly wants to visit her. It doesn't mean that later things won't be different and she'll have reasons for changing her mind about some of her choices.
  This time the thump against the screen door is followed by a woeful meow and the fury of La Bronca, especially when it leads to Nina setting out a bowl of milk for the stray cat.
  After the cat has had its fill, Nina goes back inside and searches her purse for the scrap of paper the driver gave her before leaving with Daniel. From the hallway closet, she pulls down the second photo album and flips through the first half of it until she finds a blank page. With the plastic peeled back, she unfolds the paper with the phone number, lays it flat, and seals it up, where she can find it later. She still has plenty of pages to fill.