LUZ SPENT TOO MUCH ON THE TREE BECAUSE IT’S THEIR FIRST Christmas together and she wants to make it special. She’s not going to stress about it. She’s been careful with money, and there’s still plenty stashed in various hiding places around the apartment. Plus, Mr. Cardoza has promised her another shift at the market beginning next week. The way she sees it, it’s things like this, the holidays, that Isabel is going to remember, and if she gives the girl enough good times, maybe the bad stuff that came before will fade away.
She’s decorating alone because Isabel lost interest after a few minutes and begged to go play on the patio. The neighbor’s cat hangs out there and lets Isabel fuss over him like a baby doll. She’ll spend hours rocking the fat tabby, singing him songs and tickling him under the chin to make him purr. Luz cocks an ear to her happy chatter as she hangs another ornament. All of the decorations are either silver or pink, Isabel’s choice.
The little girl has adjusted nicely to her new life. In the beginning she’d cry for Carmen and her cousins once in a while, but she hardly ever mentions them now. The story Luz tells her is that she left her to work in Mexico and came back as soon as she had enough money to get the two of them a place to live. Isabel accepts this as the truth, and even urges Luz to repeat the fable and elaborate on certain aspects, like how lonely she was for Isabel and how she sobbed into her pillow every night, thinking about her. The kid gets a kick out of being a character in her own bedtime tale.
The tickets Luz bought that night after the cab dropped them off at the Greyhound station were for Stockton, a city Alejandro used to talk about, somewhere his parents had lived before they moved to Compton. Luz and Isabel ended up getting off the bus early here in Fresno, though, to escape a woman who was asking too many questions about where they were headed and why. Luz decided this was as good a place as any to disappear, and, after a few weeks in a motel, found a one-bedroom unit in a nice complex on the edge of downtown. The whole apartment is smaller than the master suite of El Príncipe’s house, but there’s a pool and a security fence, and she and Isabel can walk to a shopping center and a shady park.
They kept to themselves for a couple of months after they moved in, settling down and getting to know each other. The real world wasn’t going to go away, however, and Luz understood that they had to learn to live in it. She started at the supermarket as a bagger, but is now a checker trainee. Isabel goes to a preschool down the street and is crazy about her day care lady, Mrs. Sanchez. On Luz’s days off, they sit by the pool or go to the park or see movies at the mall. Isabel loves McDonald’s French fries, cherry Popsicles, and playing on the swings. It’s the life Luz pictured them having with Alejandro, only they’re living it alone. When men ask her out, she tells them she’s married to a soldier serving in Afghanistan. When she has nightmares about shooting Maria and El Toro, she listens to Isabel’s breathing in the quiet room they share and reminds herself that it was them or her.
The tree has shed needles all over the carpet. Luz wheels the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, plugs it in, and pushes it around the living room while going over produce codes in preparation for her checker’s test tomorrow: Iceberg lettuce, 119. Tomatoes, 238. Navel oranges, 210.
“Mommy!” Isabel calls.
“What?” Luz shouts back.
Getting no response and thinking the girl didn’t hear her, she shuts off the vacuum.
“What?” she says again, cocking an ear toward the patio.
No answer. Fear stirs in Luz’s chest like a long-hibernating beast slowly rousing.
“Isabel?”
She steps into the kitchen. The slider that leads to the patio is wide open, and Luz can see that both of the deck chairs where Isabel usually sits with the cat are empty. That’s crazy. There’s nowhere else she could have gone. The patio is tucked under the balcony of the second-floor unit above theirs. Floor-to-ceiling walls on both sides provide privacy from the neighbors’ patios, and a sturdy six-foot wooden fence serves as a back wall.
Besides the chairs, there are a few potted plants on the slab and some of Isabel’s toys—a plastic rocking horse; a kid-size kitchen setup with a stove, refrigerator, and sink; a half-flat beach ball. Heart pounding, Luz drags one of the chairs to the fence and climbs onto it to check the alley on the other side. She worried about the alley before taking the place, but everyone assured her it was used mainly by garbage trucks. “There isn’t even any graffiti,” they said. This afternoon it’s deserted, and the garage doors that open onto it are all closed.
The worst kinds of thoughts fill Luz’s head. Could Rolando have found her here? She gets down off the chair and runs through the kitchen and living room and out the front door. It’s a cold, gray day, the sun hidden behind a curtain of thick clouds. Luz’s breath smokes as she jogs down the walkway to the street, calling Isabel’s name. Her hands are freezing. Two white men, one old, one young, are painting a dresser on the sidewalk. She’s seen them around the neighborhood before.
“Did you notice a little girl?” she shouts at them. “Four years old? Black hair? Wearing a red coat?”
“A little girl?” the old man says.
Luz doesn’t have time to repeat herself. She steps into the street and yells in both directions. “Isabel! Isabel!” Her cries go nowhere, muffled by the gloom or snagged in the bare black branches of winter trees. The only movement is a mail truck a block away, the carrier opening the rear door to refill his pouch. Luz wraps her arms around herself and runs stiff-legged back to the apartment.
“We ain’t seen nobody,” the old man says as she passes by.
Her phone. Where is it? She bends over the coffee table and tosses aside coloring books and boxes of Christmas ornaments. Whatever trouble it brings, she has to call the police. “My daughter is missing.” The thought of saying those words makes her throat swell. Coming up empty-handed, she heads into the kitchen. Her purse is on the counter. She grabs it and paws frantically through the mess inside. There’s the phone. There. She flips it open.
“Boo!”
The room tilts and rights itself at the sound of Isabel’s voice. Luz turns to find the girl pointing up at her from under the table.
“Ha-ha, I scared you,” Isabel says.
Luz’s legs give way, and she sinks to the floor.
“What are you doing?” she says to Isabel.
The girl’s grin disappears when she hears the anger in Luz’s tone.
“I was hiding,” she says. “For like a joke.”
“No, mija, no,” Luz says sternly, her blood finally flowing again. “No hiding. It’s not funny.”
Isabel isn’t sure how to react, it’s so rare that Luz scolds her. Seeing tears well up in the girl’s eyes, Luz reaches out and pulls her onto her lap.
“Mommy worries if she can’t find you,” she says. She rocks her back and forth. “You’re my sun and moon. You’re my stars and sky and my birds and trees.”
“You’re my kitty and my cat,” Isabel says, brightening as she recognizes one of their games.
“You’re my puppy and my monkey,” Luz says.
“You’re my flower and my water,” Isabel says. “You’re my mommy and daddy and sister and brother.”
Luz hugs her tightly, still shaken by the chasm that opened at her feet when she thought she was gone. This is love, she tells herself, this is life. She kisses the girl’s cheek and presses her nose into her hair. You can have everything else in the world, all of it. She’s found her treasure, a lamp to light her way, and it’s enough.