The Insufficiency of Maps: A Novel

Our beginning, as far back as I can remember, my hand in hers. We're on the bus and we are short forty cents. Mami drops our fifteen pennies and they scatter across the floor of the bus. They roll under the seat of an old man in a dark green uniform with a ragged name tag on the pocket. He picks them up and carefully puts them in Mami's hand. "How much do you need?"
"Forty cents," she says.
He holds out two quarters. Mami says, "Go ahead, angel." I balance my way back to the driver and drop them into the coin slot. Mami takes my hand and we sit next to the man who gave us the money.
"Guess what?" She leans in close to him. "I'm getting married tomorrow. Going to the chapel." Her eyes grow wide. "Ding-dong, the bells are gonna ring!"
He grins, wrinkles cutting into the corners of his mouth. Then he winks at me, "Lucky man." A large woman seated across the aisle from me takes a tissue out of her purse and gestures toward the little black bits of dried blood on my legs. I've been scratching little bumps for days. "Chicken pox," Mami says. But they look like mosquito bites. The woman looks Mami up and down, but Mami just smiles.
The old man eyes our plastic bags and muddy shoes. "Looks like you've come a long way."
"We're going home," Mami says. "My father moved us away to the city when I was as small as my little girl here."
We've been walking all day to catch this bus. We came from a place far away, mostly walking, and the world around us changed from pale gray and wet to red and dry. I can't remember where we were before we started walking, except that it was so bright and bugs made loud sounds and we slept outside and counted the stars. We drew pictures in the mud of how we would rearrange them if we could. It is this lost place I am dreaming about, leaning against Mami's shoulder when the driver wakes us.
"It's the end of the line," he says. "Where exactly are you trying to get?" Mami digs out a postcard, hands it over to him.
"Lenny's? On route nine? That's all the way at the other end of the line. On the number four bus."
Mami stands, gathers our shopping bags and says, "Transfer, please."
He shakes his head. "You can't transfer to anything out here."
She stares at him while the empty bus exhales black fumes. No one moves but me. I lean into Mami's hips and watch the smoke rings rise outside the window. "All right," he says finally. "Just stay on the bus."
When we do get off, it's late at night. The driver steps off the bus to point us in the right direction, and we start up the dirt road.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"To the reservation to see your father," Mami says.
"When are we going to get there?"
"Don't know, angel."
"Are we going to have happy dream come true?"
"Yes," Mami says. "Happy dream come true."
She hangs a blue plastic shopping bag on her ponytail and sings, "Wedding bells are ringin' in the chapel, ding-dong the bells are gonna ring!"
She smiles, takes my face in her hands. "And you can be the flower girl."
"Yeah," I say, "and you can be the other flower girl."
Mami rips some weeds from the ground. "Like this," she says, and points her toes, prancing along the road, stretching her neck high. She flings weeds to either side of her. I tiptoe behind and throw little sprigs of grass in the air.
"You know what this means," Mami says. She races in a circle around me and mocks a donk on my head. "The condor fight!"
I fall over dead.
She scratches and scratches the air above me.
"Now my dear." Mami leans over me, making her voice shaky. "Now you are dry bones."