She parked the cart at the bottom of the steps and smiled at us. She scratched an ankle with a bare toe.

“Hello, Mrs. Rosen.”

“Rommel,” she replied with a grin.

Sam slapped his knee. “That’s another thing my parents had a fit about.”

Carlotta climbed up to us and snatched the bottle of grape soda. She drained the last three inches in the bottle. She rolled her tongue around her lips and wiped her mouth on her arm. She sat down and stretched her legs out to either side of her belly.

“I asked them to give me the money instead of the green stamps. They wouldn’t so I took the cart.”

Sam grinned. I handed her the cookie bag.

“It might make a good baby bed while he’s little,” I volunteered. “It would be handy to be able to roll him around.”

“Aram’s going to build a cradle.”

“That’s right. I have to practice being my own carpenter and plumber. I’m going to build a house for the goat, too.”

Carlotta said, “There’s something wrong with Kate. And the toilet has stopped working. There was some kind of big party at the house while we were gone. Some of my dresses are gone, and a few of them are ripped. There’s garbage all over.” She shook her head.

Sam peered down the street. “There’s Rennel now. Do you think we can get the cart into his trunk?”

“Just a minute, Carlotta, I’ve got my mother’s oatmeal bread recipe.”

I went into the house as Rennel’s dented Rambler screeched up to the curb. She was still sitting on the steps, smiling, when I came back out. The bags of food leaned against each other on the sidewalk as Sam and Rennel tried to tie the grocery cart into the trunk of the car. I handed Carlotta my mother’s neat filing card with the doodle daisies printed along the top edge. I sat beside her.

“How did you like New York?”

Her smile disappeared. “It was horrible. Aram’s mother is a fanatic. She has a double kitchen—two identical halves with two of everything: stoves, sinks, tables, everything. Half is white and the other half is red. Even the floor. There are even two doors. On the days she serves meat she locks the white door so you can only go on the red side. It’s all about not boiling a calf in its mother’s milk. I didn’t go in there the whole time. Not through either door. I was afraid of profaning something. And I had these terrible dreams about seeing my baby boiling in my milk. His skin turned red and started to swell up and separate from his flesh and his eyes looked up at me through the bubbling milk and his hands were reaching for me. Ugh.”