You could hide a body in the basement. Underneath the coarse rug with frayed edges, the one that still clings to crumbs from your after-school snacks and smells like damp tennis shoes. Inside the broom closet, where Mami kept the fading Christmas decorations that were far older than you. The sack that held the almost-bare plastic tree always looked a little like an evergreen body bag. On the top shelf of Pa’s tool collection. The Ryobi boxes could be pillows and the tarp, stiff like dried seaweed, could be a sheet or comforter or quilt. 

In the rusting metal chest where your parents kept their original identities. Rigoberto Amir Hun and Ixchel Grecia Oh are Roberto and Grace Hunt. You know their original names like you know your own. 

The refrigerator that once stood like an artifact downstairs. You remember considering climbing in it and sleeping in the cooled coffin. Behind the water heater, on the far-left corner, where the pipes and wires tangle themselves into hairballs. Under the one loose floorboard by the foot of the stairs. 

Beneath the crumpling boxes of your baby clothes that look like they could’ve never fit a human, or the boxes in which Mami keeps all the clothes she outgrew during motherhood. Wrapped in the blanket that Pa’s mother back in Cayo sent him with. You remember he said it kept him warm while he walked across three borders. A cloak of invisibility. A scrap of home. 

You think: you couldn’t hide a body in the water-stained bathtub or under your bed or in your parents’ closet or behind the front door. A body couldn’t fit in Ma’s bureau or the kit bags with all the important documents sealed in sandwich bags. A body couldn’t fit under the dinner table or behind the frilly curtains or inside the closet with your winter coats. A body could never fit in the attic.

Yes. You could hide a body in the basement.