Rosario had short hair and wore baggy knit sweaters and jeans. She was short and blonde. People in town said she was a tough woman. I loved her for it.
She used to talk to me like I was someone worth talking to.
One day, I was in my mom’s beauty salon—well, her dream, really. It started as a few chairs in the living room and became the most beautiful salon in our town. That day, I was about thirteen, wearing my school uniform and learning how to blow-dry hair. I must have looked serious about it, because Rosario called me over.
"Let’s see, Bachué," she said, "blow-dry my hair."
That was a big deal. So I picked up the dryer, my fingers wrapped around it like a mission, and I began.
Three minutes later, she screamed. I had burned her scalp.
That story followed me for years.
Rosario was one of my mother’s best friends. It’s strange, how I never called any of my mom’s friends “Aunt,” like the children of my friends do with me now. But painting this series of portraits—of the women in my life—alone in this cabin in the woods, I’ve realized something: there are no words for what they were to me.
They weren’t my aunts. They weren’t just my mother’s friends. They were the examples. The ones I watched closely. The ones who showed me, without trying, what it meant to be a woman who speaks her mind, who shows up when called, who’d pick you up at midnight just because they love you like their own.
It’s a strange relationship, a girl and her mother’s friends. You’re close, but there’s a space. There’s reverence, and mystery, and sometimes a kind of unspoken inheritance.
Rosario and the others, shaped me. Even now, I think about her when I’m painting or when I feel that itch to do something boldly—without apology. She wasn’t soft. She didn’t ask to be liked. And maybe that’s what I admired the most.
Now that I’m older, I understand that what we call “hardness” in women is often just a refusal to be made small. Neuroscience says our brains are wired to scan for safety in faces—especially women’s faces. When we see a woman who doesn’t smile easily, who takes up space or speaks directly, our brain misfires. It registers her as unsafe. Threatening. But that’s not on her. That’s on us. That’s centuries of conditioning playing out in real time.
Rosario didn’t care about any of that. She saw me trying to become something and offered herself as a little test. I failed that test—with a scorched scalp and a mortified face—but she laughed it off eventually.
Wherever you are, Rosario, I hope you’re laughing now.
You didn’t need to be called “Aunt” to be unforgettable.
You were one of those women—without a name for the role you played, but vital all the same.