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as it suckled its mother’s milk.
    â€œÂ¡Chispas!
The girl can’t be more than thirteen.”
    She shot several frames of the mother and child before she lowered the camera. Adriana focused her eyes on the young woman, thinking that she was beautiful. She gazed at her face: an oval covered by brown, smooth skin. The girl’s eyes were filled with light; although Adriana knew their color was black, she thought that they appeared to be cast in silver. The girl’s hair was raven-colored, caught up in braids, with some escaped strands, clinging to her forehead and neck.
    Adriana could not take her eyes off the girl’s face. She found the contrast hypnotic: the sight of the mother, still a child, offering the breast of a grown woman to her baby. Adriana sat down by a tree, placed her camera next to her, and leaned against the trunk. She pulled a note pad from her pocket and began jotting down her impressions. As always, Adriana made careful notes, including not only the details of her subjects, but her own feelings as well. Suddenly, a mix of emotions crept over her as she scribbled: love for the young mother, envy because she was not the child sheltered in those arms, sadness at having been robbed of love, fierce desire to discover the reason for her mother having murdered her father. Without warning, the experience transported her thoughts to the beginning of her own adolescence in Los Angeles.

    She was eleven years old. She was standing with Mrs. Hazlett on the corner of Whittier and Kern; they were waiting for a bus. The social worker had been Adriana’s case supervisor for a number of years, and the girl now felt at ease with her. In the beginning, when Adriana was recuperating from her scalded arm, she had been afraid of Mrs. Hazlett, mostly because she was different. She spoke only English, and she lived in a different part of the city. The woman was tall and lean. Her hair was a faded blond, her blue eyes were tiny, and she tended to squint them when she looked at people. Her looks intimidated the girl for a while, but soon Adriana learned that Mrs. Hazlett was kind, that she wanted to help her.
    As they waited for the bus, Adriana, with her small suitcase propped against her leg, felt sad because she was being placed in yet another home. She had been moved from foster home to foster home, and now she would have to begin all over again. She would have to be with a new family, with different people, but by now Adriana knew that anything could happen. Those people might like her, or maybe dislike her. There was a bigger chance, she thought, that they would not care for her, and no matter how much she tried to tell herself it did not matter, she was still afraid of rejection.
    The street was clogged with cars and people who bustled in and out of stores and small restaurants. Sidewalk vendors peddled fruit salad in paper cones, music on cassettes, handmade jewelry, even shoes and shirts. Adriana wiggled her nose, sniffing the odor of frying food as she stared at people eating off paper plates while they waited for the bus. She was familiar with the sounds and sights of that part of East Los Angeles because she had been living with a family around the corner on Arizona Street.
    â€œMy, my, that sure smells yummy!”
    Adriana knew that Mrs. Hazlett was trying to make things easier for her by speaking that way. She doubted that the social worker really liked the smells. She even wondered if Mrs. Hazlett ever ate anything fried, or if she ate with her fingers the way those people wereeating. She decided not to say anything; instead, she pretended to be looking out for the bus.
    Mrs. Hazlett went on trying to cheer up Adriana. She made funny faces and quick remarks, hoping to lessen Adriana’s latest displacement, to make it less depressing. The girl understood this, and she was grateful, yet she could not help feeling sad.
    â€œLook, honey, it’s better to have a change of scenery. Just