The Grand Canyon beckoned. Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York, and the White House, every destination Boss Yeung had promised they would visit together. The names sounded like an incantation—Niagara Falls, Yellowstone—and were the closest to marriage vows that would ever pass between them. New York had the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, yellow cabs, and a Chinatown, where people could tell her how to find housing, a doctor, and other services for those underground, but the drive to New York would take at least five days, likely more. Her back ached, as if clamped in a vise, and she needed to pee again. The baby rode on her bladder, and in her travels, she'd have to stop as frequently as a city bus in rush hour. And what if the van's engine died, stranding her along the side of the road? A car honked and she sped up. She couldn't risk getting pulled over by police. She squinted at a sign on the intersection. None of the words were familiar and she couldn't tell what direction she was headed. Las Vegas was east of Los Angeles, wasn't it? She'd changed planes there, waiting in the terminal long enough to try a slot machine that ate her dollar. Housing would be cheap and plentiful—she'd seen the grid of subdivisions across the desert from the air—but she didn't want to give birth in a city built on illusion and loss. Her daughter might as well stake a claim to a mighty city, a storied city known the world over, even if Scarlett moved on soon after. After. She couldn't predict the outcome of the next hour, let alone the next month, the next year, the decades in which she would be watching over her daughter. She rolled up her window. She couldn't stay in Los Angeles. Mama Fang must have contacts among the Chinese here, the shop owners and restaurateurs who would keep an eye out for a hugely pregnant woman in exchange for a reward. She choked back a sob. Despite everything, she wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in the passenger seat while Boss Yeung drove, the heat turned on high, music low, her head against the cool glass. He'd been rugged, resilient as a mountain. It would be a very long time, if ever, before she might be a passenger again, before she would ever feel so protected. If only she hadn't agreed to come to Perfume Bay. Far from him, she had become a line item, a unit of sale. If only he hadn't listened to his friend Uncle Lo—an investor in Perfume Bay and founder of a media empire that spanned Asia and beyond—who'd recommended sending her here. The golden arches loomed on the corner, familiar like nothing else had been all night, and Scarlett turned into the lot. Due in less than a month, she couldn't get far, not tonight, not when exhaustion drew her under. Not for a while, and the loss of the road trip she'd considered just now was a disappointment as great as any she'd already suffered. Boss Yeung would never accept her refusal of his bribe. Men like him were used to taking what they wanted, and she knew he'd come after her. She'd put as much distance as she could between herself and Perfume Bay, and decide tomorrow where she might find safe, secret harbor. McDonald's was crowded, though it was past nine. Perfume Bay served dinner early, to ensure early bedtimes, and the full tables reminded her that the world she'd left had carried on. In the bathroom, she splashed water onto her face, trying to wake up. The bruise from her catfight with Lady Yu was fading away, but her eyes were puffy, and she was moonfaced, haggard. She'd aged a decade in a day. Maybe she should have a Coke. A Coke! Above the counter, the menu dazzled, with pictures of hamburger buns puffy as blimps, and drinks glistening with condensation like morning dew. Her mouth watered. Pointing to what she wanted, she ordered a soda and a small bag of fries, and paid with a hundred-dollar bill from the wad tucked into her jacket. She should tape the money into the waistband of her underpants. No thief—no one but a doctor or nurse—would root near her crotch and risk a baby tumbling out. Stepping away from the counter, she greedily dug into the fries, scorching her fingers. The scent was golden as a day at the beach, a scent that coated her tongue with the savory promise of grease and held both the wonder of the first bite and the satisfaction of the last. The salt was gritty against her tongue, the fry crisply giving way under her teeth, the fluffy interior a starchy cloud of potato, the taste of earth and sea. She gulped the Coke, sweet and bubbly, a kick to the brain. A switch flipped and color returned to her black-and-white world. How muted, how miserable she'd been at Perfume Bay! She hadn't consumed caffeine in months because coffee, tea, and soda were forbidden. Fried foods, too. According to the tenets of Chinese medicine, such dishes stoked internal fires, causing nosebleeds, blemishes, and worse. Superstition. Or maybe not? Scarlett had been uncertain enough to obey. With each bite, she cursed Boss Yeung. With each bite, she cursed Mama Fang, and by the time she reached the exit, she'd finished the bag of fries. She returned to the counter and ordered another—supersized. Glorious: the glossy red box, striped yellow-and-white inside. When she'd first arrived in the factory city, fast-food trash had awed her: the shiny wrappers and waxy cups were finer, brighter than anything in her village. Even into her twenties, sometimes she'd pretended she was eating at a McDonald's in Manhattan or Paris, as if the golden arches were a magic portal that she might slip through to the other side of the planet. She now knew escape never came as easily as closing your eyes and wishing yourself elsewhere. Another customer waited for her order. Her son, standing beside her, might have been eight. They both had the same stocky build, the same narrow nose. His head bowed, his eyes locked on his comic book. "Boy or a girl?" the woman asked. That much, Scarlett understood. Girl, she said. Sharing the news for the first time, she felt a fluttering excitement. So much of her pregnancy had been in secret until now. "A girl!" The woman offered what must have been congratulations. After pumping ketchup on top of her fries, Scarlett left McDonald's with lightness in her step. A stranger wishing her well turned her hopeful she might find her way in the world again. She licked her fingers, savoring the sweet tang. The van's alarm went off, bleating and insistent, and she fumbled for the keys, the noise escalating. To her shock, the rear doors opened and out slid Daisy. Scarlett called her name, but Daisy took off running. She went after Daisy in a ridiculous low-speed chase, two women late in their third trimester, ungainly, treading water on land. Joints jangling, hips off-kilter, Scarlett felt like a hula hoop swinging out of control. Panting, they stopped after a few meters, eying each other. Daisy bristled with flight and fight. Scarlett broke the standoff by tipping her take-out bag toward Daisy, who glanced around with suspicion until she couldn't resist. She stuffed fistfuls of fries into her mouth, her eyes closed in ecstasy. During the commotion at Perfume Bay, she must have sneaked into the van. "Where were you headed?" Scarlett asked. Daisy didn't answer. She was American by birth. Her parents had been living in Illinois when she was born, while her father studied for his engineering doctorate. The family returned to Taiwan when Daisy was two months old and hadn't been back to the United States since. Lady Yu and Countess Tien had considered her a snob, in that enmity between mainlanders and those whose families fled across the straits to Taiwan after the civil war. She was the youngest guest at Perfume Bay, and used to attend a fancy international school in Taipei, where the latest American slang circulated in the hallways, where admissions required every student to hold a foreign passport, keeping out locals without the resources to give birth to their children abroad, without second homes in Los Angeles and New York. The kind of school found in cosmopolitan cities where Boss Yeung had wanted to send their son. In this, Daisy seemed as privileged as the other guests at Perfume Bay. But like Scarlett, she'd kept to herself, never spoke of her baby's father, and never spoke of future plans. They were alike in their defiance and determination, and maybe in other ways, too. Daisy drained the Coke. "Meeting someone?" Scarlett asked, over the squawk of the drive-through speakers. The headlights of a passing car strobed over her face. "Is someone coming for you?" Daisy eyed her, probably deciding whether she could trust her. The teenager attracted trouble and sought it out in equal measure. Scarlett would have to drop her off at the Taiwan consulate, where officials could tame a wayward minor. Daisy opened her mouth, as if to plead—and then vomited: the fries, the Coke, her fear, everything that must be churning inside her. If Scarlett had been maternal, if she'd been sisterly, she might have gathered up Daisy's hair and rubbed her back, but she did not. She turned away from the mess, gasping, trying not to vomit herself. Daisy shuddered and stepped away from the pool on the asphalt. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, sipped the Coke, and grimaced. The McDonald's security guard ran up. He asked her something in English and stared at her cup. He must suspect that she was drunk. Daisy straightened and made what sounded like an apology. He rubbed his scraggly blond goatee, and asked another question. Did he say "doctor"? Probably he'd asked if she needed a doctor. Daisy shook her head. When he noticed Scarlett and her pregnant belly, he did a double take. Two pregnant women, in matching velour sweat suits with the Perfume Bay logo. Daisy carried high as the prow of a ship, Scarlett low as a turtle. The guard studied them. He might have been trying to figure out if they were mother and daughter. Friends? Sister-wives or lovers? He would remember later if police came looking for them, if their disappearance hit the news. "Mexico," Scarlett blurted. "Mexico?" the guard asked. Daisy gave her a quizzical look. In Chinese, Scarlett told her to ask for directions. They couldn't get across the border without their passports, but she wanted to throw off authorities. The guard was shaped like a gourd, his pale cheeks dotted with zits, his complexion wan under the parking lot lights. After pointing down the road toward the freeway, he returned to his post by the door. Burping, Scarlett tasted fries, simultaneously savory and disgusting. She—and the baby—were hungry again. Later, she promised her daughter. More and more, she talked to her. She couldn't understand what the baby was saying or thinking, or feel what she was feeling, and the baby wouldn't remember her time in utero. But Scarlett wanted to imagine the mind of her daughter in ways she was sure her own mother had never tried to imagine hers. Back at the van, they discovered it listing heavily to the right, the front tire sunken and torn away from the rim. Did someone sideswipe it or try to steal the tire? "You hit the curb," Daisy reminded Scarlett. Scarlett frowned, her body clammy. A pinball of a headache bumped around behind her eyes, the fries too rich after months of dining like a nun. She jerked open the back doors. No spare was visible, not on the door, not on the floor, and she cursed Mama Fang's stinginess. Daisy trailed her fingers on the floor mat and tugged on the corner. Losing her grip, she stumbled backward. Scarlett caught her. "You'll end up like Lady Yu." Convulsing, rushed to the hospital and sliced open, her baby yanked out. The mat, now askew, revealed a wheel tucked into a well. Together, they could pry it out. They'd have to squat and lift at a time when merely walking tested their balance. Daisy started to sob, leaving Scarlett at a loss, irritated that she had to contend with this girl's misery, too. The guard came to their rescue, carrying a tall cup of lemon-lime soda. To settle Daisy's stomach, he said, while he worked on the tire. "Sorry we don't have ginger ale." "Could I get a bottle of water?" Daisy asked. Her tears stopped. It seemed she'd been trying to get his help by crying melodramatically. "I'm really thirsty for water. The sweet might make me sick." He jogged toward the door, and Scarlett scolded her. "Can't you take what's offered?" "Everyone thinks asking for help puts you in debt. It's the opposite," Daisy said. "If someone helps you once, he'll keep helping you. He would have done the same for you, if you'd asked." "Only if I were your age. Probably not then, either." The guard disappeared inside the McDonald's, the door slamming behind him. "He's not keeping track of every little thing," Daisy said. "He's telling himself that I'm worth it, and wants to keep helping me. Otherwise, he's an idiot for helping me at all." "You think Mama Fang isn't keeping track?" Scarlett asked. Her temples pounded. "I don't owe her a thing." From her backpack, Daisy dug out a stack of passports and thumbed through them, the sound of the sliding covers like cards shuffling, the sound of possibility. In her haste to get to the hospital, Mama Fang must have left her office unlocked. Daisy handed Scarlett her passport and then smiled, more resourceful than she seemed. — An hour later, when Daisy plucked the cheapest cellphone from the rack at the discount superstore, the clerk tried to convince her to upgrade. With his cloying cologne, slicked back hair, poufy white shirt, and thin mustache, he resembled a pirate. "You'll be taking a lot of photos of the little one. You don't want to miss a thing." They ignored him. Scarlett was sick of the clerk, of Mama Fang, of everyone who preyed on pregnant women to turn a profit. The loudspeaker blared an announcement. Daisy translated: the store would close in fifteen minutes, and shoppers should complete their purchases. They had to get back on the road, but Daisy wanted to get a message to the father of her child. Just like her, he was ABC—American-born Chinese—though he'd grown up in a suburb outside of San Francisco, she told Scarlett. They met while he was attending a summer language program in Taipei. "I have to find him." She gripped the cellphone still encased in clear plastic. As they passed the cosmetics aisle and its scent of possibility and hope, Daisy ducked in, murmuring she wanted to clean up before she sent her boyfriend a photo. Scarlett caught sight of herself in a warped plastic mirror, her skin greasy and hair stringy as a mop. Boss Yeung wouldn't recognize her; she hardly recognized herself. As a teenager, she used to change her style—panda-bear mascara, doll-pout lips, glam-rock aqua eye shadow, pants studded with rhinestones—to release the different selves clamoring within her. Pregnancy was a different costume altogether, one she couldn't shed at will. The taut belly she'd expected, but not the black line that bisected her. Even her feet became alien, swollen and creased. Standing side by side, they stared in the mirror, their image blurred as if under water. When Scarlett tentatively smoothed Daisy's rumpled hair, the teenager swallowed, her eyes wet. They looked at each other, and in silent understanding, Daisy reached for a makeup tester. First the toner that she swept over Scarlett's face. Poured onto the white cotton pads, the toner had the grassy fragrance of purity and new beginnings. Scarlett sighed. Although Mama Fang didn't prohibit makeup, the women of Perfume Bay didn't bother. They also didn't have to worry about keeping up with the latest fashions or maintaining their hair coloring, manicures, and pedicures, all those time-consuming grooming rituals forbidden because of the chemicals. Not like Mama Fang, who wore permanent makeup, her eyebrows plucked and shaved off and tattooed in surprise, and her dark-rimmed eyes with the furtive look of a raccoon. Given the chance, Scarlett would have slashed her face with red lipstick in revenge. Daisy smoothed cream on the puffy skin below Scarlett's eyes and brushed powder over her face. A ticklish ritual, a blessing, to mark their return to the human race. She stroked Scarlett's wayward brows with the tip of her finger, slicked on cherry-scented pink gloss, and brushed on blush. Scarlett exhaled. "I could fall asleep standing up." The loudspeaker crackled again: five minutes until closing. Scarlett applied Daisy's makeup quickly, with a heavy hand, and they both looked again into the dimpled mirror. Scarlett touched her own cheeks, caught herself and smiled, embarrassed to be primping. Daisy didn't know Scarlett's story, and Scarlett didn't know hers, but tonight their paths had merged. Scarlett draped her hand on her belly, where her daughter was drumming out the song of her arrival. Soon. Soon. Soon. Stay inside, she told her daughter, where she could keep her safe, where she could keep her to herself. The snack bar by the entrance had a popcorn machine, the smell of a movie theater, fake butter and salt. At the checkout, Daisy tore open the package to reach her new phone, ran her fingers over the buttons, and snapped a photo of herself from the waist up, in profile, and emailed it to her boyfriend. The response was immediate, as if he'd been waiting for her. She read the message and her excitement winked out. She showed it to Scarlett: Error. Address not found. She tried again with a messaging app, and then another, but couldn't find him. He'd disappeared. — In the passenger seat, Daisy yawned and rubbed her eyes. Scarlett didn't know how she could take care of her daughter, let alone a teenager, too—a teenager who was also expecting. For more than half her life, Scarlett had been on her own. If Scarlett had gotten pregnant at Daisy's age, she never would have made it to the city. Her mother would have insisted she marry, sentencing Scarlett to a life in the village, or else she would have ended up at the clinic, getting scraped out. Either way, she would have lost the nerve to leave home. Scarlett pulled out of the parking lot. As ably as Daisy had handled herself tonight, Scarlett wouldn't let the teenager slow down her escape from Boss Yeung. Daisy would have to find her boyfriend on her own. Scarlett suspected that soon enough, Daisy would move on. Reunite with her parents back home and leave her son with them, cared for by a team of ayis, while she resumed her life at school. Daisy didn't belong on the road, on the run. With a deep sigh, the teenager slumped over asleep, her mouth slack, her hands limp. In the light of morning, she would understand that fulfilling her prison term at Perfume Bay served the interests of all concerned. The van gently rocked, the engine rumbling in a lullaby. Scarlett turned down the radio and drove back the way she'd come. — The van slowed and Daisy jerked awake. Just after midnight, they were across the street from Perfume Bay. Scarlett hit a button to unlock the doors. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice hoarse with the ferocity of a mother. Daisy unbuckled her seatbelt and lunged across the bench seat—her belly clearing the dash by millimeters—and hit the horn, three long blasts. "I'm not going back." "You have to." Scarlett shoved Daisy's shoulder. Reaching her leg as far as it could go, Daisy stomped on the gas, jerked the steering wheel, and the van plowed into the neighbor's mailbox. A crash, and the mailbox toppled and scraped against the bumper. Scarlett hit the brake. More lights blinked on down the street. The front door of Perfume Bay swung open and Countess Tien peered out, cradling her wailing son. The other guests followed. With Mama Fang still at the hospital and no one telling them what to do, they seemed lost as children in a fable. Daisy hit the gas again, and the wheels spun in place on the lawn, throwing up loamy earth and grass that spattered against the windshield. Deeper and deeper the tires sank. Scarlett released the brake and the van jounced onto the street. Daisy's foot slipped off the accelerator, and her hands flew up to protect her belly. "Stop! Stop at once," Countess Tien shouted. Scarlett took control, hitting the gas, tires squealing, stinking with burning rubber, and Daisy braced herself against the dashboard. The engine strained and then stampeded, hurling them forward. She'd have to struggle to force Daisy out of the van, and police might already be on the way. They peeled around the corner and took the next freeway on-ramp. Scarlett pounded on the steering wheel, furious. "You do whatever you want, because you know your parents will save you. The police will come after us." "The police will come after Mama Fang." Daisy hastily explained that last week, when she'd run away to find her boyfriend, the neighbor across the street had taken her in. What was going on, he had asked. Why were there so many pregnant women at the house all the time? "A hotel," she told him. "Here?" he asked. "For pregnant women." He scowled and told her Perfume Bay's overflowing septic tank had spilled filth onto the adjoining lawns several times, stinking up the neighborhood. Mama Fang had to be breaking the law, cramming too many guests into Perfume Bay. Daisy asked to borrow the neighbor's phone, but when she called her boyfriend's number, it wasn't in service. She had punched it in again, trying not to panic. Maybe his parents had canceled the account. She'd looked back at Perfume Bay. "You want her out? I can help you. I'll get pictures from inside the house, and then you can take me to the bus station. Please?" Sighing, he'd rummaged in a kitchen drawer and returned with a disposable camera. But when she tried to sneak back inside, Mama Fang had been waiting for her. As Scarlett accelerated on the freeway, Daisy hastily buckled her seatbelt. "Remember the trash cans that fell at dinner?" Daisy asked. "The raccoons." "I bet it was the neighbor." No one but Daisy had suspected he was going through the garbage to collect evidence. No one but Daisy had known he was spying on Perfume Bay and following the van on the way to the clinic. No one but Daisy had known, and she said nothing. "After tonight, the neighbors will call the police," Daisy said. "Mama Fang will be ruined." "You don't know that! You don't know a thing!" "Mama Fang jailed us. Now we'll shut down Perfume Bay." The other guests had conspired against them, fallen silent or turned their backs when they'd entered the room, Daisy said. They'd called Scarlett a xiao san, a little third. A mistress, a third party, small in every way: a young woman with a selfish heart and a lesser status. Surely, Scarlett must have heard them whispering. They'd called Daisy xiao dangfu, little slut. Mama Fang would be unaware of the havoc they'd wreaked. By tomorrow, police would swarm Perfume Bay and take her in for questioning. By tomorrow, these pampered women and their spoiled babies would be forced onto the street. As Daisy mimicked Countess Tien's high-pitched, haughty tone, they laughed, united against the world. Scarlett felt like a bottle of champagne shaken up, and yet she knew she could not let loose. Daisy was a danger to herself, to her son. She was rash, as rash as Scarlett when she'd left home for the factory city. Rash as when she'd started an affair with a married man. Rash as when she'd stolen the van and driven it into the night. — As they descended the steep mountain pass out of Los Angeles, the pains began. At first Scarlett blamed the change in altitude. She swallowed, her ears popping; they'd gained and lost more elevation than she realized. The winding road left the dun-colored hills and flattened out into a wide valley. How long the day, how vast this country. For now, despite her reservations, she'd accepted Daisy as a passenger. An unspoken agreement, by its nature nebulous and temporary, but all the agreement they needed to get through the first leg of this journey. Something or somebody must trouble Daisy back home, and Scarlett did not want to deliver her into harm. They decided to drive to San Francisco, which had many Chinese, offering safety in numbers. Unlike Los Angeles, in San Francisco Mama Fang wouldn't have her fingers in every pot. They could hide from Boss Yeung while searching for Daisy's boyfriend. San Francisco, with its soaring Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars climbing over the hills, had the beauty and charm Scarlett wanted associated with her daughter. Cars and semi trucks roared past, but she couldn't risk breaking the speed limit. A cramp hit, her pelvis clenching in a way that was familiar, though with an intensity that was not. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead, and she took deep breaths as the tightness passed. She couldn't be going into labor. She wasn't ready to receive her daughter, not without a home safe from Boss Yeung, not without a name for her in Chinese or English. Her entire body ached, ever since they'd woken up at dawn in a warehouse parking lot in the outskirts of Los Angeles. She turned on the radio, skittering through static to find a singer with a nasal twang strumming a guitar. She'd heard from the other guests at Perfume Bay that she had hours during a first-time delivery before she might start to push. Hours in which she might speed to safety. A day could pass between the first contraction and when the doctors would admit you to the hospital. The tightness bore down, a screw turned once more, her pelvis a rag twisted into knots, her belly hard and immobile. She gasped and hunched over, trying to shrink herself, shrink the pain. The contraction hit before the song had ended, the intervals coming faster now. For much of her life, Scarlett had bluffed her way into jobs in which she lacked experience and credentials. Now her ignorance terrified her. If something was going wrong inside her, she wouldn't know. What if the umbilical cord knotted around the neck of her baby and the doctors had to cut her out? Scarlett had never witnessed a birth firsthand, but back in the village, she'd overheard the screams of her neighbors, seen the blankets afterward covered in blood and shit. Sometimes after much pushing, the baby didn't come and the limp, howling mother would be packed off in a cart to the hospital. Sometimes mother and child returned. Just once, neither. Twice, the women returned alone, with empty arms and hollow eyes. She never should have left Perfume Bay and the world-class services that Mama Fang provided. Daisy's hands hovered, ready to grab the wheel, while Scarlett steered the van to the next exit and parked on a dirt road fronting the fields. A hundred meters away, workers hunched over, weeding. Had she been in labor since last night? Her trouble sleeping and the soreness in her body—had those been signs? The time she thought remained until delivery, gone in an instant. She doubled over the steering wheel, gripping until her knuckles turned white. Daisy rolled down her window, waving and shouting, "Help! Help!" at the workers. When she tried to honk the horn, Scarlett grabbed her wrist. "Not here," she gasped. Not in the van, not in the fields, worse off than Ma, worse off than a peasant in the most modern country in the world. She slid out of the van and staggered to the passenger side, her thin bedroom slippers kicking up puffs of dust. "Drive." "I can't," Daisy said. "You have to." "I've driven a moped, but—" "You have to." Daisy could only reach the pedals with the tips of her pointed toes. She slid down in the seat and stretched out her arms like a race-car driver. Barely able to see over the dash, she gunned down the dirt road, the van jouncing. Scarlett rocked against the door and bit her tongue. Blood flooded her mouth, the sinister taste of copper. "Where are you going?" "Finding a place to turn around," Daisy said. The narrow road bordered fields that stretched toward the horizon, nowhere to swing the van around. She couldn't U-turn. She had to reverse, pull up, reverse and pull up. Each jolt shot up Scarlett's spine. Daisy overshot the road, and the rear left tire slipped onto the edge of the ditch. The windshield tilted up, the sunshine white and blinding, and she hit the gas. "Stop!" Scarlett's alarm turned into agony. "The freeway's ahead," Daisy said. They were fighting for control of the steering wheel when a body hit the windshield. Scarlett covered her face with her hands. She couldn't bear to see the blood, the brains. The van rolled to a halt, the engine sputtering, and Daisy laughed. The laugh of a madwoman, of a murderer, sliding into tears. Through the grimy windshield, Scarlett glimpsed a faded plaid shirt, blue jeans, and straw, a bale's worth of straw.