I Believe in Gratitude

I have begun to teach Isabel the important things. Just as I thought my hija. Feel gratitude. That's what I told my little five-year-old cousin yesterday when she found a coin in the grass. Wrapped her fat fingers around a peso, eyes bright. Say thank you, I tell her, like this: I kneeled beside her, pretending the peso was inside my thight fist and I closed my eyes and filled my heart and kissed my fist long and firm like a mother who finds her lost child, like a father saying good-bye. She did it too. Thank who? That is not important.

Some people think I am religious.

I am not.

I believe in gratitude.

(Kissing the Virgin's Mouth, by Donna M Gershten; Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction)