The sweltering Miami sun, humidity you could taste, and a little Cuban café you could smell from the street. Inside the café a cacophony, conversation of dishes and cutlery, milk and steam, and a Spanish woman singing a song of family and home. A woman, frenetic, with Spanish loud in her mouth but kindness in her eyes placed a dish in front of me. From it came a happy heat and the smell of childhood, slow-cooked meat on the prismatic tiles of the café counter, a stark white Styrofoam container leaking at the bottom. The old woman tells me its old clothes --ropa vieja—a meal given by the gods, mixed with Spanish heat, and tomatoes pulled from the back of a penniless father. The air was humid in Spain, workers slaving, children starving, King Phillip laughing.