CHAPTER 1

Maria

The night Maria saw the angel began just like any other nightwhen she went to the laboratory to feed the dogs. After dinner shefinished her chores—turning the compost, scattering corn for thechickens. When she was done she stuck her head in the kitchendoor. Her father was at the table fixing a boot and didn't look up.

I'm going now. The señor is expecting me.

Then go.

She pulled the bicycle out of the shed and walked it to theabandoned highway. Hiked her skirt up and started pedaling. Itwas a warm night and she rode slowly to savor the feel of the airon her skin. Around her the desert ran without interruption to thehorizon and even though it was nighttime you could tell where thehorizon was because that was where the stars stopped.

Mostly the road was flat. But toward the end there was adescending hill, not too steep, that led to the building where theseñor kept his laboratory. For this final stretch the girl coastedwith her hands off the handlebars as she always did, holding herskirt open so she could feel the air against her thighs. This was herfavorite part of the job, coasting down the last hill at night withher skirt lifted, hearing the sound of the bicycle tires against theasphalt and the faint whirring of the wheels and the fluttery soundof her dress and the sound of her own breathing and nothing else.

When she came to the laboratory she got off the bicycle andlaid it on its side in the dirt next to the long low building. Fromfar away, the sound of a train, going through the pass over nearMagdalena. The señor's Cadillac was parked in front and there wasa light on in the back where he usually worked. Which meant hehad come back from Texas early. Or wherever it was that he went.She thought it was Texas.

Maria walked inside and turned on the light. The laboratorywas a converted warehouse with a concrete floor. Metal shelvingran down three walls and on the fourth the señor had put thetwenty-one dog cages.

Maria opened a sack of dry dog food and began scooping itinto metal bowls. One and a half cups for each dog. She movedfrom one cage to the next, sliding the food and a bowl filled withwater through a hatch at the base of each cage.

When she came to the end of the line of cages she stood,indecisively, looking at a door at the far end, hoping this wouldn'tbe one of those times the señor would need her help for theblood-taking. During this procedure a dog would be put on ametal table and she would hold its head and talk to it soothinglywhile the señor did something with a long needled syringe downnear its hindquarters.

Should she tell him she was here?

Maria went back outside and stood for a moment in the stilldark air. A small gust of wind blew out of the east, lifting her dressabove her thighs, flapping about her waist with such insistence thatshe had to use both arms to settle it back in place. The feeling ofthe cool air against her bare skin produced a curious constrictedsensation in her throat. A dark and nameless excitement sweptthrough her.

From somewhere in the distance came the low rumble ofthunder. Above her a reef of charcoal-colored clouds had sprungup and the stars that were visible only moments before had beenobliterated.

A storm was coming.

The girl went back inside. For some reason the dogs hadretreated into the shadows at the back of their cages and stoppedtheir peculiar crooning sound. She found the silence unsettling.

Hola, she said. Qué es?

The hound in the first cage came slowly forward and pressedits muzzle against the wire mesh. She allowed it to smell her fingersand lick them. Once again she felt something stirring inside of her.

Then she heard a voice.

Maria.

At first she thought it was the dog who had spoken her namebecause the sound came from nearby. But the dog wasn't evenlooking at her. Its gaze had shifted to the door leading outside. Atits base a streak of pale blue light. Maria felt the hairs on her armsstart to tingle and she could hear the blood pounding in her ears.

When the door blew open she half expected to see someonestanding there. A maniac maybe, or a ghost. But there was nothingin the doorway. Just the wind picking up outside. Then she hearda pinging sound, and another, above her, on the tin roof, almostlike popcorn popping.

Maria.

This time she was sure the whisper came from beyond thedoor. From outside.

A cool wind was drifting in from the door. She could feel itaround her legs, grasping at her dress, as the pounding overheadgot louder and more insistent. Slowly she approached the door andby the time she stood at the entrance the noise had ceased.

Oh, she said. Dios.

The ground was covered with hailstones as far as she couldsee, glowing almost blue in the uncertain starlight. They coveredthe señor's car and they covered her bicycle, it's wheel turning, thespokes glittering with tiny white stones. Maria thought it was themost beautiful thing she had ever seen.

After a while she stepped outside. Her shoes making acrunching sound. She knelt and picked up a handful of smoothwhite pebbles and put one in her mouth savoring the cold againstthe heat of her tongue.

When she looked up she saw it.

The figure was standing about fifty feet away. Motionless.

Staring at her.

She had the impression of whiteness though she couldn't havesaid whether the figure was dressed in white or simply blended inwith the mantle of hail that stretched to the horizon. Nor couldshe have said whether it was a man or a woman. The only thingshe was certain of was that the figure was the source of the voicethat now repeated her name for the third time and whispered thesewords in her ear: Para ti.

Maria's mouth formed the words silently. Para ti.

She heard the crackle of lightning in the distance, a farawaysoothing sound. Still watching the figure, she knelt down andplaced another hailstone on her tongue. After a while her eyesteared up from the effort of staring. Maria blinked a few timesand when she could see again the figure was gone. She waited fora while to see if it would reappear and when it did not she turnedand ran back through the building past the dog cages and downthe dark hallway to the small room where the señor was working.

She entered the room without knocking.

The señor was standing at the window, looking outside, but itwas the wrong side of the building to have seen the figure in white.She said the first thing that came into her mind.

There was an angel. Outside. He talk to me.

The señor looked at her for a long time and pointed to a chair.She sat down.

What did the angel say?

He say, Maria. He say it three time.

And that's all?

Then he say, para ti.

Para ti. The señor regarded her intently. Then what happened?

Then he go away.

She sat with her hands folded in her lap while the señor wentto the window and looked out. She thought he seemed sad becausetears came to his eyes.

God bless you, he said.

Then he asked her if she had ever tasted champagne.

Charlene

It was about midway through her pregnancy that CharlenePonto began to wonder if it had been such a good idea to have ababy after all.

Babies were cute, no doubt about it. But she was worried howMr. Ponto would react to the news that he was going to be a fathersince her husband had made it perfectly clear how he felt aboutchildren before they got married.

They're too loud, he told her, too expensive, and they take uptoo much of your time. On another occasion, when he was drunk,he confessed to her that children, especially very small ones,reminded him of vermin.

At the time he told her this Charlene was despairing of evergetting married and Mr. Ponto had asked her out several nightsin a row. No one would have described Mr. Ponto as a catch, butCharlene wanted to make sure she didn't upset the applecart just incase he was planning to make an honest woman out of her.

Why ruin your figure, she said. If I want to dress somethingup, I'll get a doll.

It turned out to take a while but eventually Mr. Ponto poppedthe question. Why don't you and me get married next Saturday,was the way he put it one morning while brushing his teeth.

Really, Charlene said. You mean it?

Mr. Ponto nodded and spat brownish globs into the sink. Onecondition, he said. No kids.

Fine, Charlene said. No kids.

So they'd gotten married on a Saturday, and the followingTuesday Mr. Ponto had gotten his tubes tied. As far as he wasconcerned, that was that.

But that wasn't quite that for Charlene.

In the first year after her marriage she started to see thingsdifferently, kid-wise. She began to notice mothers and theirchildren in the park or at the mall, and realized there wassomething cute about kids in spite of all the noise they made.Sometimes she'd see pictures of mothers and children in a magazineor on TV and she'd feel a warm and comfy feeling inside her. Fromher reading she knew this was a manifestation of The MaternalInstinct, something every woman was born with, even her.

So it was the Maternal Instinct that got Charlene Ponto tostart thinking about babies again. Because she wasn't getting anyyounger. She was thirty-six and beginning to feel a stab of panicmost days, usually at about five in the afternoon, that Mr. Pontowould leave her. That she'd wind up old and lonely. Childless. Tocalm herself she'd fix a nice frosty highball and take her pack ofMarlborough Ultra-Lites out to the stoop, where she would worryshe was drying up inside. She had a mental picture of the fewremaining eggs inside her female machinery turning brown andshriveling up. Eventually she got up the courage to ask Mr. Pontoif he might not consider having kids after all, since she'd read itwas possible to perform a reverse vasectomy that was eighty-fivepercent effective.

Mr. Ponto had given her a funny look and told her she mustbe out of her fucking mind.

It was clear to Charlene that her husband was one of thosemen who couldn't share their feelings and felt uncomfortabletalking about the things that were important to women. LikeThe Maternal Instinct. The more she thought about Mr. Ponto'scurt response the more pissed off she got. She began to think thatmaybe it would serve him right if she got pregnant on her own.And if he didn't like it that was just too bad. She was a womanafter all, and everyone knew that women changed their minds.

But there was a problem. Two problems really.

The first problem was, she didn't know any man who mightwant to have sex with her. The other problem was that even if shedid, Mr. Ponto would almost certainly kill them both if he everfound out.

Then Charlene happened to notice an ad in the newspaper fora fertility clinic. A picture of a young couple holding hands andlooking sad. And below that a picture of the same couple holdinga baby and smiling. From the words in between the picturesCharlene gathered that the specialists at the clinic might be ableto help you have a baby. Even if your husband was sterile likeMr. Ponto was. In vitro something or other. Which sounded likemaybe they'd give you a baby scientifically, without the sex part.

For a while Charlene stared at the pictures of the sad babylesscouple and the same couple happily holding the one provided bythe clinic. Then she closed the magazine and put it back in thepile next to the couch. That should have been the end of it. Wouldhave been.

If not for The Coincidence.

The coincidence was that the clinic was just across the streetfrom the place she liked to buy pizza at. So one day on a whim shedecided to drop in and see what kind of babies were available andwhat you had to do to get one.

She found the visit disappointing. Instead of just tellingyou what kind of babies they could provide in a way you couldunderstand, two young women from the clinic took her into aroom and made her fill out a form while they explained a variety ofvery complicated procedures and asked her a bunch of questions.Like what kind of man Mr. Ponto was and how much money didhe make and did he ever hit her.

She told them her husband was a quiet sort who never saidmuch about anything and had only hit her one time in the threeyears they'd been married. Which was forgivable, because he wastrying to give up smoking at the time. Unfortunately Mr. Pontodidn't take her into his confidence regarding finances. But he madewhatever an assistant sales manager for a chain of hardware storesmade. Enough to rent them a real house with a little yard shecould see from the kitchen window.

The clinic ladies had looked at each other and scribbledin their notebooks. Said they'd get back to her, all snooty like.Charlene left the clinic without saying goodbye and walked acrossthe street and ordered a small pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.She consumed it at a table in the corner, every last piece, withoutgiving the clinic another thought.

And that's how it would probably have ended if Dr. Bishophadn't called.

She was watching Wheel of Fortune when the phone rang. Theman on the other end identified himself and said he had gottenher name from the fertility clinic. Then he told her that while hewasn't an official part of the clinic's staff, he thought he might havesomething to say that would interest her.

For a moment Charlene had trouble recalling what clinic hewas referring to. Then he mentioned babies and it all came back.

Charlene listened with half an ear while he talked. She wastrying to solve the puzzle on the TV screen before Vanna Whiteturned over any more letters, so there were some things the doctortold her she didn't quite follow in the details. But the gist of it wasthat if she was agreeable he could come over to her house and planta baby inside her at her earliest possible convenience.

Charlene hesitated. Considering Mr. Ponto's objections, sheknew that what she should say was, No thank you. But at exactlythe moment when those words might have formed in her mouth,Vanna White turned over the final letters on the puzzle.

The phrase was "BUNDLE OF JOY."

Charlene didn't think it could be clearer what she wassupposed to do. She wanted a bundle of joy for herself, and if Mr.Ponto didn't like it he could lump it. So she told Dr. Bishop hecould come over the next time Mr. Ponto went to visit his motherin Abilene and they could discuss his proposition in greater detail.

Maria

Maria awoke in the late afternoon the day after she saw theangel. She was lying in a strange bed in a strange house andrealized the señor must have driven her there from the laboratory.But she didn't remember it.

In truth she could remember nothing of what happened afterthe señor opened the black bottle with the cork that flew acrossthe room like a gunshot. He had poured the champagne into twolaboratory vials and said, To the angel. They had clinked glasses,and she could remember the way the champagne bubbled in hernose and how the second glass seemed to taste more bitter than thefirst.

After that she could recollect nothing.

But the angel she recalled with extreme clarity. Standing thereat a distance, all white, looking at her and saying her name. Thatwould be etched in her memory forever.

She started to get out of bed, then suddenly realized her headhurt inside, a dim throbbing, not unlike the soreness she also felt inher breasts, as well as farther down, in the area of her womanhood.Maria lay back against the pillow waiting for the discomfort to passbut instead she fell asleep. When she opened her eyes again it wastwilight outside and the señor was sitting in a chair next to her.

You're alive, he said.

Her tongue felt swollen and there was an unpleasant metallictaste in her mouth.

Que paso, she managed finally. It was hard getting the wordsout.

You saw an angel, the señor said. We need to talk about that.

Maria looked at him but said nothing. Maybe it had been amistake to tell the señor what she had seen.

How do you feel?

My head hurt, she said.

Champagne has that effect sometimes. I had to carry you tothe car myself. Fortunately, you don't weigh very much.

He flexed his thin arms and she saw he was making a jokeabout himself. Look at me, I am old, I am weak.

Maria smiled, then pulled back the bedcovers and started toswing her legs to the floor when the señor stopped her.

You need to rest for a day or two. I've called your parents andtold them where you are, so you don't have to worry on that account.