By RIMA BRUSI
Translated from the Spanish by JESSICA POWELL

Excerpted from Phantoms  

In January 1970, two months before my conception, John Lennon and Yoko Ono shaved their heads, and a few weeks later they released the single “Instant Karma!” 

If this thing I’m writing were a script, my parents’ acid-filled days on New York’s Lower East Side would be accompanied by this song. This is what I’m thinking about today as I talk to my mother, Teté, on the phone. This is mainly how we communicate: in-person visits rarely go well for us. In fact, our life together has always been more or less a disaster. We maintain our relationship, what remains of it, with the help of the telephone and letters.