Hecho en El Salvador

I’m an adult, but my grandmother makes my shirts. The ones with good wicking properties that I wear on my morning runs. Five days per week she sits behind an industrial sewing machine in a room full of them, all cream-colored with metallic details. The machines, that is. The people, mostly women, have shades of brown, resilient skin that has outlived civil war. They rarely giggle. At times, they laugh, eat, go to the bathroom, flirt with ideas, fan themselves with their hands. But for most of the day, they are taciturn, patiently outlasting the drudgery, anticipating evening mass or a phone call from my mother. They aren’t all awaiting my mother’s call. They each have their own daughters. Their sons, however, are dead — a few daughters, too. Not all of them, but enough to dress in black for years. Some of the calls travel long