Tamara's lips are purple, then blue, and then purple again. The highway in the Sierras curves endlessly before us like hallways in nightmares. The air in the backseat is thin--half mountain air, and half the exhaled breath of the six of us whose breathing was momentarily stopped in time. I sit gazing out the window, nervous that logging or gasoline trucks will swerve into the car rather than plunge into the canyon below, fulfilling our destinies. I cannot look at Tamara, or rather I cannot risk that she will cease her methodic shivering and look back at me, knowing immediately by my own pitiful expression that I failed and betrayed her.  

"I miss Mommy," she whispers. I press her cold shoulder to me. I notice a yellow sign bidding me to watch for falling rocks. Did I ever miss my mother? I don't know that I have.

"I know you do, baby," I try to sound like I mean it. She nestles in closer like a cat, burrowing under my arm. She doesn't notice that I am just as cold and numb.

I am not a mother. Mothers are prepared. Mothers stick first-aid kits under the driver's seat. They keep old Afghans in the trunk. An old sweatshirt next to the spare tire.  They have the sense to yell out warnings. They have a natural fear of accidents.      

My husband and I had wanted to take the girls--my sheltered, well-mannered cousins--to the Sierras for years. The girls, Tamara and Lydia, are from Rialto, a town developers raised up from the dust and wind of the San Bernardino County desert. A town, Tamara would say, that "don't have nothing."

The one big thrill the girls have is going to Pico Rivera on the weekends to visit our grandparents in a tiny suburban house, which the sun has been fading for decades into the pink sound walls of the nearby freeway. There is no air conditioning or cable TV. There is just my grandma talking of her ailments and the deaths of aging relatives we've never met. There is my grandpa playing the guitar and beckoning us to sing or challenging us to hot sauce-eating contests, which he always wins. Or calling me "gordita." Calling my cousins "skin and bones."  There is a rooster in a neighbor's yard that crows into the late afternoon. The sky is orange, pink and brown criss-crossed by powerlines that buzz like fly zappers.

When my husband and I brought them north, they were as wide-eyed as we'd expected. At every rest stop along highway 101 they would get out and stretch and proclaim, "This is the farthest north we've ever been." It didn't get old--not even after four hundred miles. We were bringing the world to them. A world beyond curfews, three way calling and mall cruising. More than once my husband and I glanced at each other in approval, and without a thought to our arrogance we knew we were fighting the good fight: preventing teen pregnancy and increasing the odds that these two brilliant brown girls would find their way out of the suburbs and into college--all by taking a highway north.  

The weekend we took the girls to the Sierras, the sky wore a perfectly deep, soft blue. The trees and rock formations of the canyon stood out against this blue postcard. The first day, they talked very little and were timid with their surroundings. At the cabin, they saw insects walking around freely without threat of bug spray and a river which roared louder than any freeway, though just as constant. Their well-kept white socks and Adidas were a magnet for dirt and dried pine needles. They walked around awkwardly, as if their skin had suddenly been outgrown. And well past their normal bedtime, they stood on the deck, stretching their necks to see stars cluttering up the night sky.

The next morning Tamara woke up with a queasy feeling in her belly. Either her gut was telling her, "Ay, you should stay home today 'cause something bad is out there," or it was complaining of all the marshmallows and Graham crackers made into s'mores she'd feasted on the night before.

"Get ready to go," I said, "We want to take you two to some of our favorite sites up here."  They obeyed. They have been taught respect and humility: the two things Mexican families always pass on to their daughters.

We drove to the Dardanelles, a vista overlooking the reservoir thousands of feet below. There is an asphalt path for visitors to follow, illustrated with plaques which inform the onlooker of the white men who died here at the hands of the Indians.  

It was here, among the sun bleached white rocks and pine trees that Tamara bolted from the asphalt and charted her own path down the mountainside.

"Where you going, Pocahontas, get back here!" I scolded, "Stay away from the edges, I don't want anybody falling." I also didn't want any aunts or uncles disowning me. I could just imagine having to tell them their daughter fell off a cliff, the daughter who they so meticulously have kept from harm's way.

"Stay where I can see you!" I yelled in the direction of where I'd last seen her jump from one rock to the next. I was uncomfortable with how old I sounded. She seemed to be ignoring me. I would have ignored me too. But she wandered back after a half an hour or so. Back in the car, we drove on to the next side of the road stop, one without a marker, which I always call: the Circle of Rocks.

Something seemed different about Tamara. She had a look in her eyes like cats get when you try to make them indoor creatures after they've been out in the wilds of the front yard shrubs. She was more alert than before, her eyes following the road, the canyon, the trees and the sky all at once. She was taking her new nickname to heart, trying it out like a new outfit. Pocahontas.     

At the Circle of Rocks, the threat of falling down a canyon is diminished. There are a few picnic tables and rocks to climb that do not have breathtaking valleys below. The middle fork of the Stanislaus River beckons a few yards away. Pocahontas and her sister promptly took off towards the river, leaving us old folks to slowly emerge from the car. They ran around as if they were little girls, and soon they were out of sight.

We were walking to the river, Michael and I. Our friends were some where upstream a bit.

"Should we take them swimming in the lake later?" I asked Michael, "Should we barbecue for dinner?"

A blood-curdling scream ripped the air, like a sound barrier broken by a fighter plane. It was Lydia. Then Michael was gone, vanished, down the side of rock, to the river. I could hear branches breaking, as they must have abraded up his arms on his way down.  

"Oh my god, Tamara! She fell in--" I think I heard Lydia scream, but I remember very little. I remember following slowly behind, sliding down rocks and scrapping up my thighs. I thought of death. Tamara and Michael drowned. Dull and still, I no longer moved. One of our friends was yelling something to me.  

"Stay up there, Michael's got her. Clear the path. They need to get back up this way," said my friend.

Later, Michael told me he found her treading water, holding on to a branch as the current rushed passed her. He grabbed hold of her and pulled her onto the rocky shore. She had been crouching; scout-like on slippery, algae covered rocks. She had leaned over the water, to touch river water for the first time, the run off of Christmas snow.

"I lost my shoe," she said to Michael as he was catching his breath on the riverbank, "They were going to be my gym shoes this year." He noticed his arms then. They were turning pink and the blood was bubbling at the surface of his skin where the branches had grabbed at him on the way down.

Dripping wet with icy river water, Tamara looked up at me with scared but pretty eyes. I held her close to me. We rubbed her arms, trying to keep her warm.

"Pocahontas is dead," Tamara said.       

She took a hot shower in the middle of the afternoon and got into her pale blue pajamas and Tigger slippers. She stayed in the loft, as far away from nature as she could possibly get in a one-room split-level cabin. We let her sleep. We went over what to tell my aunt and uncle and when.

In the morning we packed quickly to leave the Sierras though we had planned two more days. It was the 4th of July. Tamara, with deep circles under her eyes, emerged last from sleep. She'd been trying to sleep all night but the sound of the river thrashing against the rocks kept her awake, beckoning and taunting her to return.  

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