"Let me talk with her."

"Hey," I said, when Adriana answered. "How are you doing?"

We chatted for a while about nothing in particular. She asked me how Trina was. Better, I said, which wasn't a lie. Although she said she was fine, Adriana's tone said otherwise. But there was nothing I could do about that.

At one-thirty, everyone assembled for another meal. The kitchen table was laden with platters of chicken, corn on the cob, a mixture of broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, and a huge salad. Eddie sat at the head of the table and put a cloth napkin around his neck like a bib. Jean served our plates. We were like some bizarre, misfit farm family who'd run out of conversation, except for Jean, who chattered nonstop. She was definitely southern. Every word had a drawl. She talked about the weather and oranges, while the patriarch, Eddie, chowed down and finished her sentences. I kept waiting for them to call each other Ma and Pa. After lunch and cleanup, the girls went on separate walks.

I was sitting on the porch when Brad sat down next to me.

"Wilbur couldn't get the lab work done. He'll be back tomorrow."

"I thought this was going to be a pit stop. You know, go to the bathroom, get some food, and keep moving," I said.

Brad actually laughed. "It doesn't work like that."

"You forget that I don't know how it works, Brad."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "There is a destination, and we will get there. But there's a journey that comes first. You're on the journey now. Relax."

I didn't want the journey. I clamored for the terminal, the place where somebody would fix my child and return her to me exactly as she had been before, so that my life-our lives-could go forward.

"Where are you from?" I asked, trying to forge a conversation to make myself feel less uncomfortable.

He gave a short laugh. "Small farming town. Kind of place that makes you want to aim a gun at the sky and pull the trigger, just so you know you're alive."

"That bad?"

"Even the baseball games were quiet. As a kid I always wanted to stand up in the middle of an inning and scream, 'Get me outta here!' "

"Iowa? Nebraska? South Dakota? North Dakota?"

"Can't get into that." He paused. "Are you and Bethany having some issues?"

His question surprised me. I hadn't realized that the silent treatment Bethany and I were doling out to each other had been noticeable. "We had a little discussion this morning," I said. Brad stared at me without responding. "I was upset because she didn't tell me about all of her daughter's problems."

"I see," Brad said.

"I didn't know about this whole splitting thing."

"And if you'd been told?"

"Maybe I wouldn't have come. I don't want Trina around somebody who's that sick. Don't get me wrong: Trina has an illness, but she's not that bad."

"Okay."

"Trina will be going back to school in September, to Brown. She's a National Merit Scholar."

"Keri, we're going to do everything we can to ensure that both Trina and Angelica can have good futures. Trust us to do our work. And we'll trust you to do yours. But you know, there can be no healing without acceptance."

I TOOK A WALK, A MINDLESS TREK TO THE ROAD AND BACK. Five times in all, fast enough to work up a light sweat and hear my own breathing. Leaning against one of the oaks, I pulled out my cell phone. There were messages. Orlando had called again. And PJ.

I dialed PJ's cell phone. Fourteen years old and his own cell-but thank God, because the alternative would have included the possibility that I'd have to say hello to his mother. And ever since the drink-in-my-face incident, Lucy had been on my list of people to avoid at all costs. PJ's phone rang, rang, and rang some more; then I had to listen to about eight minutes of gangsta rap before I could leave a message.

After dinner we watched movies. Jean and Trina played more Scrabble, and Angelica worked on a puzzle. It was clear to me that some kind of bonding was taking place between Jean and my child. I wondered if this "station" was the first stop for everyone, so that all the runaways could benefit from Jean's inner Earth Mother.

Yawning and stretching, Trina seemed calm enough as she got ready for bed. It didn't appear that she would need Haldol tonight. Bethany, the girls, and I had changed into our pajamas in the bathrooms while Eddie, Brad, and Jean posted themselves like sentinels in the bedroom.

"Why does he have to sleep in here with us?" Trina asked.

"It's best," Brad said.

"It's not best," Trina said. "You snore and you talk in your sleep."

"Sorry about that."

He rooted around in his bag for a moment and then opened a small plastic container and offered it first to Trina and then to me. Small, round pearly globs of wax.

"Earplugs," he said. "Roll them in your hand until they get soft, then stick them in your ears."

I took two and began rolling. Trina stared at Brad defiantly.

"I'm not going to run away," she said.

"I'm sleeping in here tonight, Trina," Brad said. There was an air of finality and authority in his tone that I admired. If Trina had been hectoring me, the argument would have gone on and on. He extended the container toward her again; Trina rolled her eyes and refused the plugs. Then she began pacing, as if she'd shrugged off all traces of sleepiness.

"These people are crazy," she whispered, leaning over my bed. From the corner of my eye, I saw Angelica sit up in her bed and lean forward.

Brad looked at Trina, his head tilted a bit, as though he was measuring something from a distance.

"Really," I said.

She began shrieking. "They're trying to kill me!"

Brad got up from the bed, moving very carefully.

Her eyes were large, bold, daring me to contradict her.

"Trina . . ."

"Last night they came into the room. They tried to make me drink something."

"Really."

"Yes!" she screamed, over and over.

Brad took a few steps toward Trina.

"Get the fuck away from me, you devil!" Her body tilted toward the door. She began to shriek. Outside the room, Eddie and Jean came running. The key turned, and then they were inside.

"Trina," Jean said, taking my daughter's hand. "Trina," she said, in soothing, dulcet tones.

I sat and watched. Brad and Eddie held her. Jean talked. A few minutes later, Brad gave her another shot of Haldol. How much was that? Too much? Not enough? I hadn't risen from my bed.

I SAT IN THE FAMILY ROOM AFTER TRINA CONKED OUT. JEAN came in offering peppermint tea, two steaming cups on a tray with painted roses on it. She sat next to me, her thigh pressed against mine, even though there was plenty of room.

"She was such a smart little girl," I said to her. Trina's report cards, the pinnacle of my motherhood. "Trina made straight A's all the way through school."

Jean stared at me for a moment. Then she laughed and bumped against my thigh with hers. "Those days are gone, sweetheart," she said, still chuckling; she stopped when she realized I wasn't laughing. "What I mean is, move forward," she went on, her tone gentle. "Appreciate what she's got going for her right now, right in this moment. She's a tremendous survivor, dear. They all are. She has battled hard to be here. Respect that. Straight A's? That was then."

"I'm not talking about some inner-city public school wizard who didn't crack a thousand on her SATs. Trina scored fifteen thirty-five out of a possible sixteen hundred."

There, I thought. There.

Jean opened her mouth and then closed it. She reached for my hand and squeezed it. I pulled away. There was condescension in her touch. She knew I'd felt it.

"My son was an average student, average ballplayer, average kid. But he had a killer sense of humor. He could turn everything into a big laugh-in. At the dinner table, he'd keep Eddie and me in stitches. We just knew he'd grow up to be a comedian. He started playing the comedy clubs in college, and he was doing great. Then he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. We had some bad days, real bad. But now my son works, he has his own place, he has friends. He has a different life; I've accepted that. For your daughter, more is possible. Bipolar isn't the same as schizophrenia. But I had to accept my child's diagnosis, with its limitations."

That's you, I thought. My child will recover; her life will move forward.

"My son is independent. He lives in a duplex next door to his sister. He takes his meds on his own. He has a part-time job. And he has a girlfriend. So."

So I'd slit my wrists if that was Trina's future. Maybe she saw that in my eyes. She smiled at me. "Trina's life has value just as it is, Keri, the same value it had when she was making straight A's and got into Brown."

"Don't tell me what to want for my child," I said. "And don't tell me what to want for me."

Jean just nodded and smiled her "it's all good" smile. "I didn't mean to upset you, sweetheart."

For some reason, after she left, I thought of Crazy Man, lumbering down Crenshaw Boulevard, out of his mind and unperturbed, maybe even happy at times. Did his chaotic life have value?

I knocked on the barracks door to get back in. Bethany opened it, which surprised me. I'd expected Brad.

We stared at each other until I looked down and then away.

"She'll be okay," Bethany said. She waited, waited until I looked straight at her. It took a little while.

"Yeah," I said.

20.

DR. WILBUR ARRIVED THE NEXT MORNING. TRINA WAS doing yoga with Jean and Eddie in a multipurpose room at the back of the house. Angelica, Bethany, Brad, and I were shelling sunflower seeds in the Health Bar factory. The doctor asked to speak with Bethany first. Neither the music nor the aromatherapy had soothed Angelica; she seemed agitated. She had been mumbling to herself while Bethany sat next to her. After her mother left, she stared first at me and then at Brad.

"Where did my mother go?" she asked, looking at me.

"She went to see the doctor; she'll be right back," I said.

"She'd better be careful. That doctor is a rapist. He tried to rape me when I got the medicine. He wanted to feel me up."

"Angelica, you finished shelling your pile?" Brad asked.

The anger that flared in her eyes was sudden. "I want money for this." She waited and then stood up. I heard a zipping sound. In what seemed like less than ten seconds, Angelica was completely naked.

"Angelica, you need to put your clothes back on," Brad said.

"This is all they really want," she said, looking at the Latinas, who averted their eyes and whispered softly in Spanish. She dug her nails into her arms and began scraping them against her skin, making angry red streaks. She didn't draw blood, but that was only because her nails weren't long and sharp enough. Brad rushed over and grabbed her wrists and held them behind her back, which is what Bethany saw when she walked in.

"Angelica," she said, from the doorway.

Angelica's body was sunken, carved. Illness on display. Dios mio! one of the Latinas said, her words underscored by nervous laughter. Bethany made an attempt. "Angelica . . . Angelica. . . ."

"It's okay," I said to her, and turned to Angelica. "I'll help you get dressed, and then you can have a cigarette."

Angelica stood perfectly still for a few moments and then bent down, picked up her clothes from the floor, and handed them to me, one at a time. "Who works for free?" she asked me.

I was pondering her question when I saw Wilbur at the door, beckoning me. The psychiatrist led me back to the barracks, where he sat down on the plain wooden chair closest to the door. There was another hard-backed chair right next to his, and I sat in it.

"The blood tests reveal that your daughter has only trace amounts of medication in her system."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means it will take six to eight weeks for the meds to be at a really therapeutic level. You say she was in the hospital recently. For how long and what did they give her?"

"The same drugs you're giving her, lithium and olanzapine. She was only there for seventy-two hours, and I suspect she was doing some cheeking."

Wilbur nodded and jotted something on the small notepad he was carrying. "I'm going to switch her to an antipsychotic that dissolves instantly on the tongue."

"I didn't know there was such a thing," I said.

"It's been around for a while. Unfortunately, the mood stabilizer isn't available in that form. We're going to have to make sure she gets it in her. Jean's pretty good at that."

"How long before she stops being so paranoid and impulsive?"

"Remember, it's not every day that she gets taken someplace against her will. Most of us would be upset."

He had a point. Maybe I had become so used to dealing with Trina's abnormalities that I'd overlooked the fact that her brain could still react normally to life's ups and downs. If my mother had snatched me off the street and driven me to parts unknown, I'd be screaming, too.

"Some of Trina's problems can be worked out with medicine, and some will take therapy, Keri. She's fortunate. Bipolar disorder isn't curable, but it's highly treatable. Is there anyone else in your family with a mental illness?"

I shook my head.

"No? On her father's side?"