Half a block away, she looked back, but the one-way street was empty. She had outsmarted Wade and Yoram’s men! She turned into another street, and from there, she became lost in a series of alleys. For once, she welcomed the anonymity of this city of twelve million. An unfamiliar sense of freedom made her feet lighter even as she darted past the back doors of foul-smelling fish stores, her shoes sloshing through puddles of rotting fish heads and entrails. It felt good not to have someone hovering about her, even Leslie with his good intentions. She only served as the conduit for his many talents.

A Chinese couple accosted her to examine her curly red hair. With the naiveté of children, they reached to explore its texture. Submitting to their curiosity gave Nola a sense of human contact in this foreign land. But after the encounter, she twisted her hair up and stuffed it under a baseball cap she found in her bag, then put on sunglasses. She hurried on.

The alley joined a street of dilapidated residential buildings. The two- and three-story houses of bare concrete or peeling plaster looked drunk, leaning on their neighbors for support. Yet, in a startling contrast to the poverty, the children who chased each other in a schoolyard were beautifully dressed, the girls in frilly dresses and the boys in sailor suits. In the briefing the team had attended upon arrival, the guide called these kids “Little Emperors.” The second generation of the single-child policy, each was the only child in his or her family, pampered by six adults—mother, father and two sets of grandparents. None had aunts, uncles, nor cousins.

She pushed on, thoughts crisscrossing her mind. She was alone in a vast country whose language and customs were incomprehensible to her. Since she had moved out of Miss Helga’s, she hadn’t had the responsibility of caring for anyone.

Lulu’s head nestled between Nola's breasts, their two hearts beating together. Nola lowered her head closer to the black crown. “I love you like I’ve never loved before,” she whispered. “Just wake up. Let me see that you’re still yourself, that they haven’t damaged you.”

A public urinal’s stench made Nola pinch her nose and cross to the other side of the street. There, a fearless flock of geese came chasing after her, nipping at her calves. She broke into a trot. The geese pursued her. She had never imagined these creatures could be so nasty. “Get away,” she shouted, and kicked at their insolent chests. At the traffic light, they retreated.

Lulu was warm and quiet at her bosom. Nola kept speaking to her as she reached a main thoroughfare and pressed her way through the thicket of people, through block after block bustling with activity. Perhaps the creaking of pushcarts, the trilling of bicycle bells and the blasts of broken tailpipes would wake up her baby.