What “not much” meant, in the end, was that my mother struck my daughter whenever, in her words, Maya “wasted money,” a phrase that was absurd on its face, because my daughter had almost no money to waste.

Once, Maya told me, she had bought a notebook.

A six-dollar notebook, for school.

My mother said there had been a two-dollar one, and punished her for the difference, and I will leave the manner of the punishment where it belongs, unwritten, except to say that it involved a wooden hanger and my daughter’s legs, and that when Maya told me, I had to get up and walk into the hotel bathroom and close the door and grip the edges of the sink until my knuckles turned white, so that she would not see my face.

My first instinct, standing in that bathroom, was to drive straight to my mother’s house, and tear the door off its hinges, and demand answers with my hands.