But not, however, before Fe got the long-dreamed-of automatic dishwasher, microwave, Cuisinart, and the VCR, not for wedding presents (since nobody seemed to have gotten none of her hints … either that, or they just couldn’t afford them), but which she had bought herself with her own hard-earned money from all the bonuses she earned at her new job.

And it was that job that killed her.

A year from the time of her wedding, everything ended, dreams and nightmares alike, for that daughter of Sofi who had all her life sought to escape her mother’s depressing home—with its smell of animal urine and hot animal breath and its couch and cobijas that itched with ticks and fleas; where the coming and goings of the vecinos had become routine because of her mom’s mayoral calling (which, by the way, sent La Loca into permanent exile, in the roperos and under the bed for hours, or off riding Gato Negro, or down by the acequia with her peacock-friend and sometimes to places nobody knew about); and where her prodigal dad, though generally a sweetheart, was always hard up for cash, talking Fe into writing him a check or giving up her watch, high school graduation ring, whatever she had on her to get him out of some urgent debt. Despite all this and more, Fe found herself wanting to go nowhere else but back to her mom and La Loca and even to the animals to die just before her twenty-seventh birthday. Sofia’s chaotic home became a sanctuary from the even more incomprehensible world that Fe encountered that last year of her pathetic life.

And meanwhile, most of the people that surrounded Fe didn’t understand what was slowly killing them, too, or didn’t want to think about it, or if they did, didn’t know what to do about it anyway and went on like that, despite dead cows in the pasture, or sick sheep, and that one week late in winter when people woke up each morning to find it raining starlings. Little birds dropped dead in mid-flight, hitting like Superball hail on roofs, collecting in yards and streets, and falling on your head if you didn’t look out. Unlike their abuelos and vis-abuelos who thought that although life was hard in the “Land of Enchantment” it had its rewards, the reality was that everyone was now caught in what had become: The Land of Entrapment.

But that month the year before, when everybody was chile roasting and when esa Fe was still having bridal dreams of everlasting happiness, she did not plan a wedding like the one she wanted when she was engaged to you-know-who, the convenience store manager, who was still managing the store off 1-25, when the local paper ran an engagement photo of pretty Fe in the arms of her new fiancé and cousin, Casey the Accountant, announcing their imminent marriage.