Snow drifted through the streets and now that it was dusk, Christmas trees glimmered in the windows. Maria moved her nose off the glass and came back to the counter. She was acting grown-up now, helping her mother make tamales. Their hands were sticky with masa. “That’s very good”, her mother said. Maria happily kneaded the masa. She felt grown-up, wearing her mother’s apron. Her mom had even let her wear lipstick and perfume. If only I could wear mom’s ring, she thought to herself.

Maria helping her mother make tamales.

When her mother left the kitchen to answer the telephone, Maria couldn’t help herself. She wiped her hands on the apron and looked back at the door. “I’ll wear the ring for just a minute,”

The ring sparkled on her thumb.

Maria returned to kneading the masa, her hands pumping up and down. On her thumb the ring disappeared, then reappeared in the sticky glob of dough. Her mother returned and took the bowl from her. “Go get your father for this part,” she said.

Maria trying on her mother's ring.

They made twenty-four tamales as the windows grew white with delicious-smelling curls of steam.

A few hours later the family came over with armfuls of bright presents, her grandparents, her uncle and aunt, and her cousins Dolores, Teresa and Danny. Maria kissed everyone hello. Then she grabbed Dolores by the arm and took her upstairs to play, with the other cousins tagging along after them. They cut out pictures of toys from the newspaper. As Maria was snipping out a picture of a pearl necklace, a shock spread through her body. 

Maria taking her cousins upstairs to play.

“The ring!” she screamed.

 Without answering anyone, Maria ran to the kitchen. The steaming tamales lay piled on a platter. "The ring is inside one of the tamales," she thought to herself. "It must have come off when I was kneading the masa."

 “Help me!” Maria requested her cousins.

“What do you want us to do?” asked Danny.

“Eat them,” she said. “If you bite something hard, tell me.” The four of them started eating. The first one was good, the second one pretty good, but by the third tamale, they were tired of the taste.

They watch the steaming plate of tamales.

“Keep eating,” Maria scolded.

Corn husks littered the floor. Their stomachs were stretched till they hurt, but the cousins kept eating until only one tamale remained on the plate.

“This must be it,” she said. “The ring must be in that one! We’ll each take a bite.

Despite taking a mouthful of the tamale, they found nothing.

“Didn’t any of you bite something hard?” Maria asked. Danny frowned, “I think I swallowed something hard,” he said.

“Swallowed it!” Maria cried, her eyes big with worry.

Maria forces her cousins to help her eat the tamales.