It wasn’t until we were out on the road, the gate vibrating closed behind us, that we began to run. Down the hill and through the groves of oaks, past the quiet avocado farm and the chaparral scrub still blackened by the wildfires. Our sneakers slapped in the dust; our breath came fast in our chests. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that we were children again, running down the trail from Rattlesnake Canyon, hand in hand, away from the rocky precipice that threatened certain doom and toward the safety of home.
Down we ran, my sister hysterically laughing, manic with her unexpected freedom, the white dress flying out like a sail behind her, and me, following in her steps for once, unsure exactly what I’d just done but praying that it was better than anything I’d done before.
34
LOOKING BACK AT OUR childhood, at those handful of years when Elli and I played at being each other, I see now that I always got the biggest thrill out of deceiving our mother. You could say I was a cruel little shit. Or that I was testing how little our mother saw and understood, for my own devious purposes. Or you could simply argue that all children grow by cutting their parents down to a manageable size. It’s only once you recognize that they aren’t superhuman, after all, that you start aspiring to evolve beyond them.
But that night, when our mother opened the door to her house and looked momentarily baffled by the sight of Elli and me standing on her front steps—her eyes flicking uncertainly from one of us to the other and back again—I felt no glee at all. Instead, I was relieved when it took her only half a beat to lock eyes with Elli and reach out a hand to draw her inside: “Good God, Elli, where on earth have you been? You said you’d be gone a weekend. It’s been two weeks!”
It was just past nine, and she was already wearing a bathrobe that she clutched closed at her chest. From the living room I could hear the sound of the television, my father’s snores intermingling with a comedy laugh track. Our mother made no comment on our matching outfits or our cultish haircuts or the blood smeared on my sister’s dress; she simply stood aside as Elli made a beeline for Charlotte’s room without answering her question. And for once I was thankful for my mother’s fear of hearing about things that she didn’t want to know. Because I didn’t want to have to explain it at all. Not yet.
But she did grip my arm as I lingered in the doorway, waiting for Elli to return with the child. “Thank you,” she said, bringing her mouth close to my ear. Her breath smelled of Riesling and popcorn. “Thank you for watching out for Elli. Thank you for bringing her back.” Then she pulled me into a tight hug as I stood there, blinking in surprise. She made a little buzzing sound in her throat, her body hitching with her breath, and I realized that she was trying not to cry. I hoped that she wouldn’t because if she did I was in danger of losing it entirely, too, and I didn’t have that luxury. Not tonight, when there was so much still to do.
But it was also in that moment that I finally understood: She did see what Elli and I were up to, and she always had, even if she had her own reasons for pretending not to notice. I might never know what those were, but it didn’t really matter, because they were hers and not mine, and so they weren’t my burden to carry anymore. I didn’t need to prove anything to her; the only person I had ever needed to convince of my value was me.
Elli reappeared in the hallway then, with Charlotte in her bunny pajamas dead asleep on her shoulder. Charlotte’s curls were damp with sweat and her mouth worked drowsily at her thumb. She looked so content there in Elli’s arms, and my heart was sick just watching them.
Elli spoke in a whisper. “Mom, you have to say goodbye to Charlotte now.”
Our mother leaned over and kissed Charlotte’s forehead, pruned lips yearning against soft flesh. “Maybe you could bring her over next weekend? I’m happy to watch her.”
“I can’t.” Elli’s voice was cracking. It was hard to hear. “I don’t get to keep her anymore, Mom. She’s not mine to keep. I’m so sorry.”
“She was a foster this whole time?” My mom blinked, reading confirmation in my sister’s silence. “Elli. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been prepared. I wouldn’t have…I would have…” My mom closed her eyes. Her voice was phlegmy and thick. “Oh God. I don’t know if I can do this.” She placed a palm on the top of Charlotte’s head, gazed intently at the child for a long minute, and then abruptly turned away. Her arthritic hip wobbled, threatening to send her tumbling down the steps to the living room, but then she righted herself, and was gone.
My sister turned to me, her broken face sticky with tears and hot with shame. “Let’s go,” she said.
* * *
—
I was the one who carried Charlotte back to the house on Joshua Tree Drive. At the last minute, Elli just couldn’t make herself do it.
She sat in the front seat of my car, her feet half buried in the fast-food wrappers that I’d accumulated over the last week. We’d parked a few blocks over, as far from the streetlights as possible, but it wasn’t well lit out here anyway. The desert spread out to our left, a dark ocean of invisible danger under a crescent moon and a sky shot with stars. It was 4:30 a.m., not a single light on in the houses that were scattered along the street.
“You’re stronger than me,” she said.
“She’s not that heavy,” I said. “It’s only two blocks.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I knew that wasn’t what she meant, but I liked hearing it from her anyway.
I climbed out of the car and then lifted Charlotte out of her car seat and rested her against my shoulder. She rustled once and then settled there, boneless and limp in my arms. Elli got out of the passenger seat and stood beside me, stroking Charlotte’s cheek with the back of a finger, careful not to wake her. I’d changed into jeans and a black hoodie but Elli was still in the thin linen shift, and she shivered in the cold night air.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” she murmured into the little girl’s ear, and then she kissed her, as soft as a whisper, and climbed back into the car. As I walked off into the desert, moving slowly so as not to disturb the child, I could hear my sister sobbing.
I moved silently through the dark landscape, hunting for an open path, tracing the edge of civilization. On my left, through the cacti and the desert scrub, I could see swimming pools and formal gardens, outdoor kitchens and patio furniture upholstered in all-weather fabric. To the right stretched miles of wilderness.
I could hear mice skittering away from my feet as I walked. Somewhere out in the dark, alarmingly close, a band of coyotes erupted in a chorus of yips and growls. On my shoulder, the little girl stirred, but she didn’t wake up. I kept moving steadily through the desert, one step at a time, for what felt like hours, until the pink adobe house loomed up before me, and we were there.
* * *
—
I left her on a blanket on the grass of the Gonzalez home. Elli had suggested the front doorstep: “Don’t you think it would be safer?” But I argued that it was more likely that we’d be caught by a neighbor’s surveillance system if I approached from the front.
“You got insanely lucky the first time around,” I pointed out. “What if they had cameras installed?”
And so I slipped out of the desert and across the backyard, praying that in my black jeans, with my hood pulled up, I was invisible. With each step, I expected a security system to trip—for floodlights to blink on and an alarm to blare the presence of an intruder—but nothing happened. There was just a pitch-black garden, and a house with curtains closed, and the chill that crept in off the desert with me.
She rustled once, when I placed her on the blanket, but she didn’t wake up. I stood staring down at her, memorizing the way her face looked as she slept: my almost-child, my not-my-child child, this human to which I was permanently bound by the powerful thread of DNA but to whom I still had no claim at all.
I wondered if Emma Gonzalez would ever wonder about me, her biological mom. I wondered if she would ask to see the BioCal file when she turned eighteen, in order to learn more about me. Sixteen or twenty or thirty years from now, would she show up at my doorstep, never knowing that we’d met before, never knowing that I’d once changed her poopy diapers and kissed her sweaty head?