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opposition to her booster seat. While I had many failings as a mother, God knows, I was not willing to add to them crippling my child in an automobile accident. I had already sworn she was going to sit in a booster seat until she was tall enough and heavy enough to be safe without one, or until she got a driver’s license, whichever came first.
    I realize that forcing Ruby and Isaac to change into their tae kwon do uniforms while we were in transit somewhat diminished the security of theride, but they kept their seat belts on, and we were running late.
    I dropped Isaac in Mighty Mites and took Ruby up the stairs to the yellow and green belt class. She had just moved up to green, after struggling for quite some time with a mere green stripe on her yellow belt, and she was full of herself, swaggering onto the mat and giving the American and Korean flags a crisp bow. I scanned the assembled crowd, seeking out a mother I knew well enough to ask for a favor, but one whom I hadn’t imposed upon yet. There was one: a dark-haired woman with a shelf of a bosom and a roll of stretch-marked belly peeking out from between her tight T-shirt and her army-green, paint-spattered capri pants. She wore dark eye shadow and mascara and a slash of purple lipstick. Her hands were smudged with what looked like charcoal. She looked like an artist, or a Hollywood rendition of one. I recognized her from Isaac’s preschool—her son was a year ahead of mine.
    “Hi, Karen,” I said.
    “Karyan,” she said.
    So much for the favor.
    She said, “Remind me of your name? I know we’ve met at preschool, but when I’m working on apiece I get so distracted. I have a hard time remembering things.”
    All was not lost. “Oh, that’s totally fine. Really. I’m terrible with names myself. Juliet. Juliet Applebaum. And my son is Isaac. He’s a year below . . .”
    “Jirair.”
    “Jirair, of course. So, do you guys live around here?”
    Three minutes later, I was pulling the booster seats out of my car, dumping them into Karyan’s, and setting off for Canoga Park, having set up a tae kwon do car pool, commencing that afternoon. The only trick would be ensuring that Peter was home to greet the kids when Karyan dropped them off, because I was going to be stuck on the freeway heading out to pay a call on a woman named Sister.
    *   *   *
    Finding Sister Pauline was easier than finding a parking space outside the projects where she lived. It wasn’t that there wasn’t any place to leave my car. The problem was that someone had managed to break a bottle against nearly every available curb, and I didn’t relish the thought of changing a tire as the sun set over Canoga Park. Finally, I pulled the car into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven and offeredthe clerk two dollars to let me leave it there for longer than the allotted thirty minutes. We settled on five bucks, but I made him promise to keep an eye on the car. It wasn’t like I
really
thought anyone was going to take a joy ride in my minivan, but I’d only had it since Sadie was born, and despite the dent I’d already put in the bumper, I didn’t want it stolen. More because I didn’t want to have to cab it home from Canoga Park than because I had any special fondness for my car. It already smelled too weird for that.
    The kids playing double Dutch on the cracked asphalt driveway alongside the housing project not only knew where the tenants’ commission president lived, they knew her daughter Sister Pauline, and they knew that she was home.
    “She always home,” one little girl said, bobbing her head. Her hair was woven into a mass of braids, swirled into a pattern over her skull. I love braids, but whenever I attempt them on Ruby’s red curls I end up making her look like a circus clown.
    The little girl pointed me in the direction of a ground-level apartment. “You Sister Pauline’s parole officer?” she asked. “I never seen a parole officer with a baby before.”
    I had clicked