Today, Mario is riding beside her, all cleaned up in an ironed shirt and jeans. He has been talking nonstop, excited, full of plans, seemingly unaware of the other passenger in the back seat, whom periodically—when Antonia can get a word in edgewise—she tries to loop in.

?Cómo están? Antonia glances in the rearview at Estela and her baby, playing a clapping game, Estela bringing the tiny hands together while chanting: A la una yo nací, a las dos me bautizaron, a las tres supe de amores y a las cuatro me casaron. At one I was born; at two, baptized; at three I fell in love; at four I married; at five I had a child; at six my child died . . . and so on, all the way to midnight when the speaker succumbs to cancer, and her life is done. It’s a terrible song, circumscribing the little girl’s life even before she has gotten started.

?Por favor! Antonia protests. Let’s sing Mari some other song. Even in Spanish with someone else’s kid, Antonia wants the words to be right. We live in what we imagine.

They settle on “Cielito Lindo,” Estela rocking her baby to the rhythm, laughing each time Marianela makes a gurgling sound. She already knows how to sing! the mother exclaims, showering her little genius with kisses. It’s comforting to witness this backseat tableau of teenage Madonna and child. Estela’s maternal feelings have more than kicked in.

Antonia is driving the family first to the Mexican consulate to pick up Estela’s expedited passport, then to Logan for the flight to Mexico City, where they will transfer to Mexicana and a flight to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, then take a three-hour bus ride, the baby bawling, the weary youngsters hungry and irritable themselves. With la do?ita’s help, Mario will be opening an equipment repair shop in Las Margaritas, and Estela will go back to school to be a “norsa”—a quick language learner, her Spanish is now speckled with Spanglish. Once settled, they will be marrying, the gift already given to pay for la fiesta—plans Antonia is not sure will be kept, but she has handed over the controls of others’ lives into their own hands. She has promised to attend the wedding, bringing along some ashes to scatter as a “blessing.” Given her interest in the girl’s situation, Izzy would approve.

They have just left town, heading south on Route 7 when—her sheriff-fund donor sticker notwithstanding—Antonia sees the flashing lights of a state trooper’s cruiser in her rearview mirror. She pulls over, her heart thundering in her chest. Tranquila, tranquila, she reminds herself. If dogs can smell out fear, as Mona has often told her, so can law enforcement. Objects in the mirror are supposed to be closer than they appear, but this trooper is taking forever to walk the short distance from his cruiser to the window Antonia has lowered.

She smiles agreeably at the young officer, as if he’s just paying them a visit on this sunny September morning. Hi, there! she greets him.

The officer nods in response. Did she know she was going forty-one in a thirty-mile zone?

Forty-one! He’s exaggerating. Surely not more than forty. But along with not contradicting the mad and furious, it’s also a good idea not to argue with law enforcement. Lessons from childhood in a dictatorship. I didn’t mean to, officer. I’m so sorry.

The officer asks for Antonia’s license and registration, then heads back to his cruiser to check them out. In days gone by, Antonia would have pulled out her cell phone at this point and called Sam. You know the speed limit there is thirty, he would have chided her.

Just as well then not to have the option of calling him, though the scolding would have come with a rescue, a package deal. Someone has to be the grown-up in the room, Sam always used to say whenever Antonia would panic about a fix they were in. It’s up to Antonia now to reassure her two passengers, Mario next to her, and Estela in back with the baby. They have gone very still and silent, as if they could somehow make themselves vanish. No se preocupen, she keeps repeating. Todo va salir bien. They were headed for Mexico anyway. The glass half full. The silver lining. Attitudes and approaches pulled out of the old chestnut trunk like dress-up clothes to distract the scared children in her care.

In the rearview mirror she watches as Estela squeezes her eyes shut—that grimace right before a face crumbles in tears. Ay, do?ita, por favor, Estela wails, clutching her baby. While Antonia was listening to NPR all summer, Estela was taking in all those reports on Noticieros Televisa about la crueldad en la frontera. Children being separated from their mothers and fathers.

?No va a pasar! Antonia states categorically with such Beth-like assurance that Estela instantly stops crying.

The officer is back, Antonia’s documents in hand. Good news: everything has checked out; he’s going to give her a break—a cat and mouse move—because at the same time he’s releasing her, he is bending down to peer inside. His face is so close, Antonia can smell milk on his breath, his former farm-boy breakfast habits still intact. His skin is so pale, she can see the tiny capillaries just below the surface. A phrase, too pedestrian to be anyone’s famous words, runs through her head: his mother’s son. Unaccountably, Antonia’s heart floods with tenderness at this untimely moment, just as in her long-ago hormonal youth, she’d feel herself inconveniently getting turned on at an inappropriate time, during a final exam, a job interview, on the checkout line at a store.

So, can we go now? Antonia asks far too tentatively.

The young officer hesitates, his eyes scanning the inside of the car, a brown male passenger in front, a brown girl cowering in the backseat, hugging a tiny doll—or is it a baby?—dressed in a frilly outfit. His face tightens with authority. One hand on his holster, perhaps anticipating trouble. What about your passengers? he asks Antonia.

What about them? Antonia smiles prettily. The girl who could get out of a scrape using her wiles has long disappeared from her old woman’s face. Oh, them? I’m taking them to the consulate in Boston and then the airport. They’re going back to Mexico. She cannot offer to show the officer their airline tickets as proof because she purchased them online. But they’ll soon be over the mountain and through the woods and into the air, headed for home, beyond his jurisdiction.

Do you have any identification? the officer asks Mario, who looks to Antonia to translate.

He has his passport, Antonia explains. Will that do, officer? Of course, she knows it will only do if there is a USA visa stamped inside, which she is sure there isn’t. But perhaps the officer won’t notice; perhaps he missed the training session when ICE came and informed local law enforcement on the finer points of the customs and immigration laws.

Let me see what he has. The officer pauses. They’re related? Husband and wife?

Soon to be, Antonia offers. The more she can make them sound like a family, the better she believes it will go for them all.

And the baby, theirs? the officer adds, pointing to Mario.

Soon to be, Antonia replies, before realizing how that must sound. I mean, soon as they get married, it will be official. She hands over Mario’s passport, hoping the officer won’t ask what he asks for next.

Hers, too.

Estela has no passport yet. She has a consular ID and the receipt from when the Mexican consulate came up from Boston with its mobile unit last month, and Estela applied for her passport. Rather than take a chance of it not arriving on time for her travel, they opted for going to pick it up at the consulate before the flight later today. Antonia explains all this to the officer, availing herself of only one teensy lie. Estela lost her passport and the replacement is waiting for them in Boston.

She can tell the officer is not happy about this—the capillaries on his cheeks flood with blood, two pink patches, a blushing look that in a different context Antonia would find endearing. He collects the proffered documents and heads back to his cruiser. Estela is again sobbing, this time so hard she is gasping for breath, and sensing her mother’s fear, Marianela has begun to wail as well.

You have to stay calm for your baby’s sake, Antonia admonishes.

Ay, pero, do?ita, ?Y si se la llevan?

No one is taking Mari, Antonia asserts. She decides not to add “over my dead body.” It’s not a Spanish idiom anyhow.

Would ICE really separate Estela from her baby? How can they? Estela is herself a minor. More likely, Mario will be deported, and perhaps precede mother and child to Mexico. What ICE will do to her, Antonia is not sure. Transporting aliens—there was an article in the local newspaper about a farmer and his wife being stopped with Lourdes Morales in the car. Lulu! Antonia doesn’t know what happened to the couple, but Lulu ended up briefly in the local jail, under the purview of Sheriff Boyer, before ICE came to collect her and transport her to a detention center in Boston. In the interim, Sheriff Boyer asked Antonia if she would come in and translate for him.

Tell her not to worry; no one’s gonna hurt her.