Hardy spoke before I could, his bleak gaze locked with my mother's. "I think you're right."

He left the trailer.

I wanted to scream at my mother, to hurl words at her like a shower of darts. She was selfish. She wanted me to pay for Carrington's childhood with my own. She was jealous that someone might care for me when there was no man in her life. And it wasn't fair of her to go out with her friends so often, when she should want to stay at home with her newborn. I wanted to say those things so badly, I nearly suffocated beneath the weight of unspoken words. But it has always been my nature to turn my anger inward, like a Texas skink eating its own tail.

"Liberty—" Mama began gently.

"I'm going to bed," I said. I didn't want to hear her opinion of what was best for me. "I've got a test tomorrow." I went to my room with swift strides and closed the door in a cowardly half-slam, when I should have had the guts to do it full-out. But at least I had the mean, fleeting satisfaction of hearing the baby cry.

CHAPTER 8

As the year went on I had begun to measure the passage of time not by the signposts of my own development, but by Carrington's. The first time she rolled over, the first time she sat on her own, ate applesauce mixed with powdered rice, the first haircut, the first tooth. I was the one she always raised her arms to first, giving me a wet gummy grin. It amused and disconcerted Mama at first, and then it became something everyone accepted matter-of-factly.

The bond between Carrington and me was closer than that of sisters; it was more like that of parent and child. Not as a result of intention or choice... it simply was. It seemed natural that I would go with Mama and the baby to her pediatrician's visits. I was more intimately acquainted with the baby's problems and patterns than anyone else. When it was time for vaccinations, Mama retreated to the corner of the room while I pinned the baby's arms and legs down on the doctor's table. "You do it, Liberty," Mama said. "She won't hold it against you like she would someone else."

I stared into Carrington's pooling eyes, flinching at her incredulous scream as the nurse injected the vaccines into her plump little thighs. I ducked my head beside hers. "I wish it could be me," I whispered to her scarlet ear. "I would take it for you. I would take a hundred of them." Afterward I comforted her, holding her tightly until her sobbing stopped. I made a ceremony of placing the I WAS A GOOD PATIENT sticker on the center of her T-shirt.

No one, including me, could say that Mama wasn't a good parent to Carrington. She was affectionate and attentive to the baby. She made certain Carrington was well dressed and had everything she needed. But the puzzling distance remained. It troubled me that she didn't seem to feel as intensely for the baby as I did.

I went to Miss Marva with my concerns, and her answer surprised me. 'There's nothing strange about that, Liberty."

"There isn't?"

She stirred a big pot of scented wax on the stove, getting it ready to pour into a row of glass apothecar\'jars. "It's a lie when they say you love all your children equally," she said placidly. "You don't. There's always a favorite. And you're your mother's favorite."

"I want Carrington to be her favorite."

"Your mama will take to her in time. It's not always love at first sight." She dipped a stainless steel ladle into the pot and brought it up brimming with light blue wax. "Sometimes you have to get to know each other."

"It shouldn't take this long," I protested.

Miss Marva's cheeks jiggled as she chuckled. "Liberty, it could take a lifetime."

For once her laugh was not a happy sound. I knew without asking that she was thinking about her own daughter, a woman named Marisol who lived in Dallas and never came to visit. Miss Marva had once described Marisol. the product of a brief and long-ago marriage, as a troubled soul, given to addictions and obsessions and relationships with men of low character.

"What made her that way?" I had asked Miss Marva when she told me about Marisol. expecting her to lay out logical reasons as neatly as balls of cookie dough on a baking sheet.

"God did," Miss Marva had replied, simply and without bitterness. From that and other conversations, I gathered that on questions of nature versus nurture, she was firmly on the side of the former. Me, I wasn't so sure.

Whenever I took Carrington out people assumed she was mine, despite the fact that I was black haired and amber skinned, and she was as fair as a white-petaled daisy. "How young they have them," I heard a woman say behind me. as I pushed Carrington1 s stroller through the mall. And a masculine voice replied in patent disgust. "Mexicans. She'll have a dozen by the time she's twenty. And they'll all be living off our tax money." "Shhh. not so loud." the woman admonished.

I quickened my pace and turned into the next store I could reach, my face burning with shame and anger. That was the stereotype—Mexican girls were supposed to have sex early and often, breed like rabbits, have volcanic tempers, and love to cook. Every now and then a circular would appear on the racks near the supermarket entrance, containing pictures and descriptions of Mexican mail-order brides. "These lovely ladies enjoy being women" the circular said. "They 're not interested in competing with men. A Mexican wife, with her traditional values, will put you and your career first. Unlike their American counterparts, Mexican women are satisfied with a modest lifestyle, as long as they are not mistreated. "

Living so close to the border, Tex-Mex women were often subject to the same expectations. I hoped no man would ever make the mistake of thinking / would be happy to put him and his career first.

My junior year seemed to go quickly. Mama's disposition had improved considerably, thanks to the antidepressants the doctor had prescribed. She regained her figure and her sense of humor, and the phone rang often. Mama seldom brought her dates to the trailer, and she hardly ever spent a full night away from Carrington and me. But there were still those odd disappearances when she would be gone for a day and come back without a word of explanation. After these episodes she was always calm and strangely peaceful, as if she'd gone through a period of prayer and fasting. I didn't mind her leaving. It always seemed to do her good, and I had no problem taking care of Carrington by myself.

I tried to rely on Hardy as little as possible, because seeing each other seemed to bring

us more frustration and unhappiness than pleasure. Hardy was determined to treat me as if I were a younger sister, and I tried to comply, but the pretense was awkward and ill-fitting.

Hardy was busy with land clearing and other brutal labor that toughened him in body and spirit. The mischievous twinkle of his eyes had cooled into a flat, rebellious stare. His lack of prospects, the fact that other boys his age were going to college while he seemed to be going nowhere, was eating away at him. Boys in Hardy's position had few choices after high school other than to take a petrochem job with Sterling or Valero, or go into road construction.

When I graduated, my choices weren't going to be any better. I had no special talents that would afford me a scholarship anywhere, and so far I hadn't even taken any summer jobs that would have given me experience to put on a resume. "You're good with babies," my friend Lucy had pointed out. "You could work at a day care, or maybe as a teacher's assistant at the elementary school."

"I'm only good with Carrington," I said. "I don't think I'd like to take care of other people's children."

Lucy had pondered my possible future careers, and had decided I should get a cosmetology degree. "You love doing makeup and hair." she pointed out. That was true. But beauty school would be expensive, though. I wondered what Mama's reaction would be if I asked her for thousands of dollars of tuition money. And then I wondered what other plans or ideas she might have for my future, if any. It was pretty likely she didn't. Mama chose to live in the moment. So I stored the idea away, saving it for a time when I thought Mama would be open to it.

Winter came, and I began to go out with a boy named Luke Bishop, whose father owned a car dealership. Luke was on the football team—in fact, he had taken the fullback position after Hardy's knee had gone out the previous year—but Luke wasn't considering a sports career. His family's financial status would allow him to go to any college he could get into. He was a good-looking boy with dark hair and blue eyes, and he bore enough of a physical resemblance to Hardy that I was drawn to him.

I met Luke at a Blue Santa party just before Christmas. It was the local law enforcement's annual toy drive to collect presents for poor families with needy children. For most of December toys were donated, gathered and sorted, and on the twenty-first, the presents were wrapped at a party at the police station. Anyone could volunteer to help. The football coach had ordered all his players to participate in some capacity, whether it was to collect toys, attend the wrapping party, or deliver them the day before Christmas.

I went to the party with my friend Moody and her boyfriend Earl Jr., the butcher's son. There must have been at least a hundred people at the party, and a mountain of toys stacked around and beside the long tables. Christmas music was playing in the background. A makeshift coffee station in the corner featured big stainless steel carafes, and boxes of cookies plastered with white icing. Standing in a row of present-wrappers, wearing a Santa Claus hat someone had put on my head, I felt like a Christmas elf.

With so many people cutting paper and curling ribbons, there was a shortage of scissors. As soon as a pair was set down, they were immediately snatched up by someone who had been waiting for his or her turn. Standing at the table with a pile of unwrapped toys, and a roll of red and white striped paper, I watched impatiently for my chance. A pair of scissors clattered on the table, and I reached for them. But someone else was too fast for me. My fingers inadvertently clamped over a male hand that had already grasped the scissors. I looked up into a pair of smiling blue eyes.

"Dibs," the boy said. With his other hand, he flipped the tail of my Santa hat away from my eyes and over my shoulder.

We spent the rest of the night side by side, talking, laughing, and pointing out presents we thought the other would like. He chose a Cabbage Patch doll with curly brown hair for me, and I picked out a model kit of a Star Wars X-wing fighter for him. By the end of the evening, Luke had asked me out on a date.

There were many things to like about Luke. He was average in all the right ways, intelligent but not a geek, athletic but not muscle-bound. He had a nice smile, although it wasn't Hardy's smile. His deep blue eyes didn't have the ice-and-fire brightness of Hardy's, and his dark hair was crisp and wiry, instead of thick and soft like mink fur. Luke also didn't have Hardy's outsized presence or restless spirit. But in other ways they were similar, both tall and physically self-possessed, both uncompromisingly masculine.

It was a time in my life when I was especially vulnerable to male attention. Everyone

else in the small world of Welcome seemed to be paired up. My own mother had been dating more than I had. And here was a boy who resembled Hardy, without the complexity, and he was available.

As Luke and I began to see more of each other, we were accepted as a couple and other boys stopped asking me out. I liked the security of being half of a pair. I liked having someone to walk through the halls with, someone to eat lunch with, someone to take me out for pizza after the Friday-night game.

The first time Luke kissed me, I was disappointed to discover it wasn't anything like Hardy's kisses. He had just brought me back home from a date. Before getting out of the car, he leaned over and pressed his mouth to mine. I returned the pressure, trying to summon a response, but there was no heat or excitement, just the alien moisture of another person's mouth, the slippery probing of a tongue. My brain remained uninvolved from what was happening to my body. Feeling guilty and embarrassed by my own coldness, I tried to make up for it by wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him harder.

As we continued to date, there were more kisses, embraces, tentative explorations. Gradually I learned to stop comparing Luke to Hardy. There was no mysterious magic, no invisible circuitry of sensation and thought between us. Luke was not the kind who thought deeply about things, and he had no interest in the secretive territory of my heart.

At first Mama hadn't approved of my dating a senior, but when she met Luke, she'd been charmed by him. "He seems like a nice boy." she told me afterward. "If you want to date him. I'll allow it as long as you keep to an eleven-thirty curfew."

"Thank you, Mama." I was grateful that she had given her permission, but some inner devil prompted me to say, "He's only one year younger than Hardy, you know."

She understood my unspoken question. "It's not the same."

I knew why she'd said that.

At nineteen, Hardy had already become more of a man than some men ever were. In the absence of a father he'd learned to shoulder the responsibility of a family, providing for his mother and sisters. He'd worked hard to ensure their survival, and his own. Luke, by contrast, was sheltered and coddled, secure in the belief that things would always come easily to him.

If I hadn't known Hardy, it was possible I would have come to care more about Luke. But it was too late for that. My emotions had bent around Hardy like wet-molded leather left to dry and harden in the sun, until any attempt to alter its shape would break it.

One night Luke brought me to a party held at someone's house while their parents were away for the weekend. The place was filled with seniors, and I looked in vain for a familiar face.

The hard blues rock of Stevie Ray Vaughan blasted from outside patio speakers, while plastic cups of orange liquid were handed out to the crowd. Luke brought some to me, advising me with a laugh not to drink it too fast. It tasted like flavored rubbing alcohol. I took the tiniest sips possible, the caustic liquor stinging my lips. While Luke stood talking with his friends, I excused myself by asking where the restroom was.

Gripping the plastic cup, I went into the house and pretended not to notice the couples making out in shadows and corners. I found the guest bathroom, which was miraculously unoccupied, and I poured the drink into the commode.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I decided to take a different route outside. It would be easier, not to mention less embarrassing, to go out the front door and around the side of the house rather than return through the gauntlet of amorous couples. But as I passed the big staircase in the entranceway, I caught sight of a pair of entwined bodies in a shadow.

I felt as if I'd been stabbed through the heart as I recognized Hardy, his arms around a long-limbed blond girl. She was riding one of his thighs, her upper back and shoulders revealed by a black velvet bustier top. One of his fists was closed in her hair, holding it back as he dragged his mouth slowly along the side of her throat.