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rubbed her eyes.
    “We’ll have to cut up toward Flagstaff,” Delia said. “Drive the long way through the Navajo reservation. Monument Valley is up there, the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. We’ll be able to see some of the hills from 40. All those cliffs against the sky. If there’s any moon, it will take your breath away.”
    Cissy kept her face turned to the window.
    “Randall and I went up to Monument Valley once.” Delia’s voice was careful. “It’s amazing. Like an open cathedral. Something to see.”
    Cissy watched the sign for Buckeye coming up on the left. A cathedral, she thought. She looked out at the far red rocks, the purple and gray mountains in the distance. It was all a cathedral, open and pure and wide as death.
    Delia took 17 up through Phoenix to pick up Highway 40. She spread the map to show Cissy the route. “This will take us most of the way. Forty is like Ten, goes on forever. From here to Nashville anyway.”
    Cissy remained silent, and Delia put on the radio again. Twice she found stations playing Mud Dog, but twisted the dial past them as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to hear any of that. She found a stubborn rock station in Tempe playing Captain Beefheart and Steely Dan as if no one had ever died, and settled on that one as long as it would come in.
    Late that afternoon they crossed Arizona into New Mexico and Cissy saw more and more Indian names. After Gallup there were Laguna Pueblo signs, with little hand-tinted posters advertising good turquoise jewelry and traditional blankets. Was Albuquerque another Indian name? Maybe it was Spanish. It didn’t matter. Delia told Cissy to close her eyes and take a nap. She wasn’t going to stop just to sleep.

    Cissy dreamed of culverts and big concrete pipes, of stars and moons shining in black water, and of dark-haired women bending to scoop up beads of tears. She woke up with her eyes crusted and swollen when Delia stopped near Tucumcari. They had been making good time in the good weather, but both of them were tired and sticky with dried sweat. When the Datsun fishtailed in the slipstream of a passing semi, Delia noticed that her arms and legs were starting to feel rubbery and numb. She realized suddenly that they had not had anything but chips and Cokes since leaving Los Angeles that morning. New Mexico was dotted with diners and low mud-brown stucco buildings that proclaimed themselves “family restaurants.” Delia chose a big truck stop and pulled in close to where the semis were parked.
    Salad of iceberg lettuce and tomato quarters with cubes of bright yellow cheese, chicken chili, and Texas toast. Cissy gave the food all her attention and drank three glasses of iced tea. Delia picked at her scrambled eggs and stared longingly at the men drinking beer at the bar.
    “We’ll get to Amarillo by midnight,” she told Cissy.
    “Why are you in such a hurry?” Cissy’s necklace glowed red-black against her throat in the fluorescent lights.
    Delia used her napkin to wipe condensation off her tea glass. “Your Granddaddy Byrd is expecting us.” She looked into the glass.
    Cissy put her fork down. “You called him?”
    “He’s expecting us,” Delia said again. “Cissy, please. All I have ever wanted you to know is that you are not alone in the world.”
    The table was dark wood shellacked so thickly that Delia could see her reflection in the surface. Her face looked like it was underwater, slightly out of focus, the murky image of a woman who had never known how to say what she was thinking. She remembered how Granddaddy Byrd had looked at her when he took her to live with him, the sullen rage beneath the grief. She remembered when she had started to sing to herself to fill the world with more than loneliness. She wiped her hand across the image on the table.
    “Having family,” Delia blurted. “Even sisters you’ve never met. It’s a blessing, Cissy. You’re part of something bigger than just yourself