"You're already doing it," Sandy said calmly, her hand on Elvia's shoulder. "You didn't get high. You tried your best."

"I could still-" Elvia cast about for words, her breath ragged. "Girls talk about getting it taken care of-"

Sandy whirled and went to the porch. When she came back, her face was pink, the cords standing out in her neck. "You have two choices if you don't want a baby. You think I'm gonna tell you about conception and life, all that. No. It's your life I'm worried about. If you think you're five months pregnant, you can't even have an abortion. And if you'd tried to have one, you might never have gotten over it." Sandy rubbed the hair from her forehead. "Damn, Elvia, it's the one thing in life you can't change. Ever. Your other choice is to give the baby away. But you were pregnant once, you had a baby in there, and you'll never change that."

"My mother changed it," Elvia cried. "She left!" She remembered the numbers on the curb, the dusty yard where her footprints had been erased a thousand times.

"So you want to give the baby away?"

"I don't know." Elvia couldn't lift her face from the gold sparkles.

"Elvia, you don't even want to talk about it. How are you going to love it?"

"That's what Michael said," Elvia murmured finally. "How am I gonna know how to be a mother if I don't even have one."

"You do. You have two. She's out there. Your mother has never forgotten you. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Never. Mothers can't forget."

Elvia washed her face in the sink. She stared at the blue-striped stick. No abortion. No erasing the geode, pulling it out like a hollow sparkly shell. A baby. A person. Getting bigger and bigger, moving more and more, with a brain that knew something, even inside. No choice now. She had to have the baby. Whatever happened, she would never forget.

Sandy said, "I'm right here. You feel okay?" She bent down to lift Elvia's face.

Elvia felt only the smallest stirrings now, down by her bladder. You don't have fingernails yet? Not yet? She stood up, unable to meet Sandy's eyes, wondering if the vanilla and sugar and flour were still in the cupboard near the stove. With sprinkles for all the birthday cakes.

"We can call a social worker on Monday. My friend Les. See what he says about looking at your file, trying to find your mom." She paused. "I know you were found at St. Catherine's."

Elvia opened the cupboard and touched the spindly birthday candles. "So you want me to find her? You don't want me to stay here?"

"Oh, Elvia, you know I'd be happy if you stayed here." Sandy lifted her chin to the window. "But we can't just pretend . . ."

"Pretend somebody left me in your driveway?" Elvia said bitterly. "Not now. I'm too old."

"Your father still has-"

"I can be sixteen. I'll be an emancipated minor."

"Impressive term. I've heard it. But we don't even know-" Sandy sighed. "I gave you that August birthday. Remember? You don't even have a birth certificate. Even your father doesn't know when you were born." Sandy folded her arms. "But you're his kid. Still."

Elvia was silent. She took out the green bowl where she'd watched lumps dissolve into batter when she'd first sat on this counter and touched the gold sparkles, where she'd heard her mother's words disappear in her head like poured honey, falling in ribbons and melting into itself without a trace.

She slept on Saturday morning, the heavy light in the bedroom wrapped like a blanket around her legs. She woke once with the word nun echoing in her head. She hadn't taken her candle from her backpack. She wished she could pray to a corn goddess. Maybe her mother's tribe had a corn goddess. Maybe her mother was Maya, like Hector joked. He said, "Now there's more Maya in LA than in Mexico." She'd never find someone in LA.

When she went outside, Sandy was sitting on her two steps, staring across the field.

Elvia said, "I never know when I'll fall asleep, or wake up."

"I remember. Once when I was pregnant with Rosalie, I was watching Ray work on a car." She pointed to the driveway. "He was putting on glass packs. They make the exhaust real loud. And he revved up the engine over and over. I sat here dead asleep for about two hours. I woke up and had little dots of oil on my legs."

Elvia said cautiously, "I always wanted to ask you. How come you only had Rosalie?"

Sandy stood up and brushed off her robe. "Because that's how life went." She went inside, and Elvia stared at her father's truck, a pale hulk beside the house.

Suddenly she felt so tired that she leaned against the same wall where Sandy said she'd slept. Sandy always knew what she was doing. She knew how to be a good mother. Elvia felt her way along the wall back to the bed that already smelled like her, and she lay there thinking of Callie and Tina Marie. Where were the babies? They were better off without their mothers.

Late in the night, she heard a powerful engine, and she thought it was her father, there to pick her up. Pressing her face to the screen so hard she smelled the rust and dew, in the same spot where she'd rubbed her forehead years ago, she saw Ray, his wide shoulders and brown hair slicked back, shiny. He stood in the glow of a streetlight shining onto the driveway. "Whose truck?" he called softly, and Elvia heard Sandy's voice from the porch steps.

"Somebody's visiting me."

He nodded. "Yeah? That's a hell of a truck. A '62 Ford. Seems like I've seen it before." He stood with his hands in his pockets, his head still bobbing slightly.

"Maybe," Sandy said finally.

"Just came to pack up some more tools. I'll be out of your way in a minute. You and your guest." He walked down the driveway, and Elvia heard the garage door sliding open. Sandy wanted to make him jealous? He couldn't have been gone that long, if he still had things here. She listened for Sandy's shoes on the gravel, too, but she heard the front door close.

Before dawn on Sunday, she couldn't sleep any longer. St. Catherine's-people would be around on Sunday. She left Sandy a note and backed the truck out, hearing the screen door slam. Sandy was on the porch. Elvia didn't look back. This was it. The last chance.

Rumbling down the street, she passed a yard where a woman stood like a ghost in a white robe, holding a coffee cup, her light brown face contorted with tears. Elvia took in a ragged breath. Was the woman Mexican? She saw a black bun when the woman turned away.

The orange groves were deserted, the long green hallways where she and her sisters used to run, pretending the irrigation furrows were racing lanes. She saw more groves across the city, on the eastern hills, and the river bottom laid out in a dark swath far below her. Fog clung to the eucalyptus and palms, where Michael might still be sleeping in the mist-filled branch room. Or he might be anywhere-just like her father, her mother, everyone else.

When she saw the white tower of the Spanish-style church, in a panic she thought: Who taught me that finger thing? Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors, look at all the people. A foster mother. The big lady with the broom hem.

She jostled over the speed bumps and parked the truck near a hedge of oleander with dusty leaves. She ran her hands along the bristle-trimmed top of the hedge. Here?

The big front door was open, and the sanctuary was cool. The stained-glass windows were bright as kaleidoscopes on one side, dark and indistinct on the other. Someone was humming.

An older woman was replacing the water in the bouquets near the altar, her gray hair floating and bobbing like a cloud. Elvia said, "Excuse me. Can I talk to the-priest?"

The woman turned, startled, her lipstick bright red, her brows penciled black. "Oh, honey, he's not here right now. It's too early. I'm just getting everything ready for mass."

"Do you know-is he the same priest that was here like, twelve years ago?"

The woman shook her head. "No, Father Mulcahy left, well, I think nine years ago? He went to Louisiana. Father Parks has been here since. We had an interim priest for a short time and . . ."

Elvia wouldn't cry. She nodded and went back outside. Near the street was a statue, a woman with her hands outstretched and limp, like the begging women back at the border. The same curve of finger. Elvia touched the cool white tip of a thumb.

She stared at the hedge, imagining her tears floating around the baby like pearls. Pearls weren't real rocks. They were collections of calcified oyster spit around an irritation, she told herself calmly. An irritation in the belly.

I'll tell Sandy I give up, she thought, driving up the street. Now what? Now you really want me to stay? She hesitated on the porch, hearing voices through the screen even though she saw no social worker car. A woman said, "All week I think about the stuff I'll get done when he's gone, and then I take him to his dad's and I miss him so bad I have to sleep with his pajamas."

"For the smell," Sandy said.

"Yeah. It's one night, and I wander around like a zombie. I can't even breathe right when he's not there. Bugging the hell out of me."

When they'd finished laughing, Elvia opened the door. The ghost-robe woman Elvia had seen down the street sat at the table, sipping from a coffee cup, her hair still in a bun, her face carefully made up now. Sandy said, "This is my friend Enchantee. This is . . . this is Elvia."

Not your daughter. Not your friend. Somebody who just showed up one day. Elvia went into the bedroom, listening to their voices float down the short hall.

"A new shelter?" Enchantee said.

"No. She was one of my kids for years." Elvia heard Sandy sigh. "Broke my heart when she left with her dad. I haven't had anyone stay that long for a while. Because everything's so unsettled with the separation." She paused. "Ray got a condo with Bonnie the blonde. And I guess she doesn't like oil stains, because he rented a warehouse to work on his cars."

"Damn. All those Chevies, the Impalas, all the low riders and classic cars Demetrius and his brothers sold. Always some guy waiting for them to finish. The perfect engines, right?"

Elvia remembered Ray and a guy named Demetrius, a brown-skinned man with a ponytail and broad back, working in the garage on a pale blue car with fins that looked sharp enough to cut. So Enchantee's husband was gone, too.

"Yeah. All their hoods up like those cheap clip-on sunglasses. I used to look at the engines. The hoses were all tangled up like those pictures of your small intestines, and then you had-I don't know, oil filters or bigger things that looked like stomachs and livers."

Enchantee laughed. "You're crazy, Sandy."

"Of course I am. I had oil and grease outside, poop and pee in here. All my kids and their stomachs sticking out, the way you could see tangled-up veins in their foreheads and wrists." It was quiet, and then Sandy called, "Come get some breakfast, Elvia."

Elvia got a glass of orange juice. "Good," Sandy said. "Calcium for the baby. You think all this we're talking about sounds frightening?"

Elvia didn't answer. She stood near the window, eating toast.

Enchantee smiled and shrugged. "Teenagers always think if they pretend something isn't there, it disappears. Like dirty dishes."

Elvia slammed the cupboard door. "I don't need a lecture. I've been taking care of a little boy practically by myself. I saved a little girl's life."

Like they're gonna scare me, she thought. Hell, no. She stayed in the bedroom all day, staring at the dresser drawers where her things used to be. She slept, hearing crows, dreaming about one circling over her. She woke breathless, her scalp prickled with sweat, more fear than she'd ever had deep inside her breastbone. But no one kicked her, or even shivered.

When she walked into the kitchen that night, she said, "Sorry I was rude to your friend. And you." Sandy nodded. Elvia said, "But I went to the church and the same priest isn't even there now. And you guys were joking about poop."

The smell of lemon oil floated around her. Sandy said, "Okay. Do you want to stay?" Elvia nodded. "Then we have to talk to social services. And you have to do something about that truck in the driveway."

Elvia was so surprised she hiccuped. "Why? Because Ray saw it?"

Now Sandy looked surprised. But all she said was, "Because you're driving a vehicle that could be considered stolen, your dad is a scary guy, and I can't get in trouble with the county."

"Oh, yeah," Elvia said, stung. "More fuck-up kids might show up. He gave me the truck."

Sandy blew a little air out when she laughed. "Right. I guess you forgot. The biggest rule in this house was no lying. Remember why? I don't think you do, because back then I wouldn't have put it to you this way. I'd have just said because it's wrong, because it'll hurt you later, because I said so. Now that you're going to have your own baby, I'll tell you straight up: because it insults me. And I'm a short woman who's never done anything except raise kids, cook, clean, and wash, so people insult me all the time. I don't need it at home."

"No one's here to insult you now," Elvia said. "Maybe Rosalie got tired of hearing about laundry."

"Yeah. There's just me-today anyway. And you. And your baby." Sandy paused. "Tomorrow, we can make a doctor appointment. Then go down to social services. My friend Les can see if your mother's in the system. Maybe she's had other kids, maybe she still lives here." Sandy paused. "Then we can return your father's truck. I know he's not the easiest person in the world to talk to, but we can tell him-"

Suddenly Elvia couldn't stand Sandy's patient tone, her almost-bandage voice, as though she felt sorry for Elvia's pitiful life. "My dad's probably in Florida." She stood up. "I heard Ray talking to you last night. You sounded like you wished he'd come back. And I don't want to mess up your life more than it already is. An illegal fuck-up foster kid." She headed for the bedroom that used to be hers.

"You're not a fuck-up. I said it, okay? Look, you don't even have a driver's license, do you?"

"I forgot. Gotta go by the rules." Elvia wanted to laugh. Her father wasn't big on rules. Neither was Michael. She closed the bedroom door. Laying out the last brown and green glass-gems and her moonstone on the bed, she tried to pray one more time, like in the motel, in the desert. Sandy didn't know what her life was like. She didn't want Sandy to return the truck and see the shabby motel. She didn't want to be feral. Years ago, Ray had called a shelter kid "a feral child. The kind I don't know if you can help." Elvia had asked Rosalie what feral meant, and Rosalie said, "Like wild dogs that live in the arroyo or groves. You can't make them live normal again."

I have to do this by myself, Elvia thought. Figure out what's normal, for me.

She heard screaming in the middle of the night. Stumbling to the door, she saw a man handing a kicking child to Sandy. The boy yelled and flailed his wrists, and Sandy's hands ran down his wind-milling elbows until she'd trapped them in her arms. The man said, "Baby sister's gone. Dish drainer marks on the back of her head, Sandy. Father gave her a bath. Drunk. This one's two. On the kitchen floor staring at the sink when I got there. You're gonna have a long night." When he turned to put down a bag, he saw Elvia. "Who's that?"

Sandy's voice was high. "Just a friend's kid spending the night, Les. I have plenty of room." The man looked hard at Elvia, and then he reached for the doorknob.

She thought Sandy would call her to help when the car left, but the boy's wail was regular as a car alarm now, and then Sandy took him into her bedroom and closed the door.

Elvia stayed awake until dawn, hearing the cries muffled and slowed, Sandy's voice soft and indistinct and constant, like clothes in a dryer. Her bandage voice. She doesn't need me. She does this all the time. For anybody who's messed up. All the same. We're all here for a week, a month. Then somebody's supposed to want us. But I'm not a kid now. I already have my box. We all get a box. Then we have to go.

She got her clean socks from the laundry room, the white washer and dryer where she used to fold clothes at night, looking at the highwire moon through the wispy curtains.

Quietly pushing open Sandy's door, she heard their heavy, sleeping breaths. He had dark blond hair, a butch cut like dust on his skull, his body curled tight away from Sandy's. She lay on her back, her arm beside him, the pillows stacked around them. So he wouldn't fall, Elvia knew.

She went outside to put her backpack in the truck. Sandy's roses were bright as pinwheels in the streetlight. The white dead-end rail was like a crooked picket fence against the vacant lot. She walked through the dry foxtails to the arroyo, in the space worn down by her sisters' sliding feet. She wondered where they were-Jade, Chrissy, Bridget. The light snaked down the arroyo, illuminating the dry sand. A shopping cart lay on its side like a sleeping animal.

When she passed Enchantee's house in the truck, she saw the blue Honda pull out and blink headlights at her. Enchantee waved and Elvia waved back. But then when she got on the highway heading toward the desert, she saw Enchantee still behind her.

She pulled onto the shoulder and walked back to the Honda. "What are you doing?" she shouted.

"Giving you a ride back to Sandy's. She called me and said you'd be leaving." Enchantee had on sunglasses, a white scarf, and red lipstick. She looked like a movie star.

"Who said I'm going back?"

Enchantee shrugged.

"She's trying to run my life. Rules and doctor and school. Pretend to read my mind."

Then Enchantee grinned. "That's what mothers do. If you want one, I'd go back if I were you."

"That's you." Elvia waited for a convoy of semis to pass, wind thundering against her. Enchantee's scarf waved like a flag.

"Sandy's worried." Enchantee pressed two twenties into her hand. "If you won't let me drive you, do what you gotta do, have a good lunch, take the bus back here."

Elvia looked at the money. "You don't even know me."

"I'm your aunt now, whether you like it or not." Enchantee grinned, her white teeth, maple skin, and red lipstick bright in the morning sun.

"Yeah, you and Sandy really look like sisters." Elvia rolled her eyes.

"Hey," Enchantee said, her voice suddenly harsh. "My mother left me with my aunt when I was born. I had three cousins who weren't anything like sisters I'd want. I'll take Sandy anytime. And I taught myself to be a good mother. I hope you figure it out." She pulled back onto the highway, leaving Elvia standing near brittle-bush and discarded tires.

Hector's aunt told me the same thing. She said who takes care of you is the mother.

Driving through the Sandlands, down the curving highway, she knew she'd leave the truck, whether her father was there or not. She wouldn't cry. She was trying not to remember that night when her father had brought her this way and she'd imagined the night-lit trucks were Christmas trees hurtling sideways through the valley.

santa ana.

With each step over rocks and dry stems, Serafina had imagined herself on a pilgrimage, like women moving on their knees up the cobblestoned streets until their legs ran with blood. Or a donkey, carrying baskets along the mountain trails, plodding, head down.