Raynie: February 2000.

Erma Geddon woke up today, a month too early. She’s a California Desert Tortoise, and my best friend. We have four major things in common.

1. We are both girls.
2. Today is our birthdays. It’s Valentine’s Day. We don’t know the real day or year of Erma’s birth so I share my big day with her. She was rescued out on a highway near Palm Springs and the turtle rescue people decided that she’s around fifty years old. I was born in Anaheim Memorial Hospital just after midnight on February 14, 1989.
3. Erma is on the endangered species list. And so is my sorry eleven-year-old ass.
4. We both have scientific names. Her name is Gopherus agassizii, mine is Homo stupid.

I memorized Erma’s official moniker when I was five and a half. My dad, Ray (I prefer to call him Ray, now that he’s gone), used to quiz me in front of company to show off how smart I was. He would lift me onto a table and I would stand Indian tall, like my Granny Tooley, and recite, “Class: Reptilia, Order: Chelonia, Suborder: Cryptodira. Super Family: Testudinoidea, Family: Testudinidae, Genus: Gopherus, Species: agassizii.”

From Granny Tooley I learned the importance of naming things, like the animals and plants that live on the earth, birds that fly in the sky, learning the names of one’s ancestors, or hard ones like naming a wrong that needs righted. I use Erma’s genus and species now that I’m older, and have nothing to prove. I love the way it sounds, Gopherus agassizii.

The words set my mind adrift on a silver sea, in a pea-green boat with billowing sails, in the company of the Owl and the Pussycat. We land in a place of long ago and far away where people live simple lives, laugh, and dance around bonfires, and never have to worry about nuclear war and clean air. A place where it's safe for kids to play and roam without fear that some pervert will snatch them from their front yards. A place where all the plants and animals, including humans, speak the same language and nobody kills off other species because they don't understand them. A place where the people you love never go away and leave you.

"Don't dawdle, Raynie. Get dressed."

I'm glad Mom interrupts my thoughts. I've boarded this downhill train too many times, as Ray would say, and it always ends with me wheezing and then sucking on my inhaler.

As you know, today is my birthday and I'm out in the garage getting my clothes out of the dryer. I plan to wear them to the La Brea Tar Pits, the place I chose to go for my celebration, if you want to call it that, and that's when I see Erma Geddon poke her head out between the wooden slats of her box, her eyes at half-mast. I miss her when she's asleep, and hope, for selfish reasons, that she will wake up.

My birthday falls on Monday this year and Mom got special permission from my school to take me and True on a field trip to the tar pits. True's brother, Jason, is going with us, minus official permission. He's playing hooky.

Ray used to take me to the tar pits all the time. He knows I love learning about how the world used to be thousands of years ago. But he didn't even call to wish me happy birthday today, not that I blame him. I probably wouldn't either if I were him.

I hate to cry worse than I hate falling down and skinning a knee, but the tears come like a cloudburst of unexpected rain. I blow my nose on a dirty towel in the laundry pile of things to be washed as I steady myself. I can feel Ray lifting my chin with a fist and saying, ‘Zip it up, little soldier.'

Mom took the day off from the bakery she half owns. I don't want to disappoint her more than I have already.

Birthdays are special days to honor our journey on Earth. That's what Granny Tooley says. She sent me a card, a watercolor of a bunny rabbit sitting under a Douglas fir tree. She made it herself.

I'm one week older than True. Last Saturday her mom, Ashanti, threw a big shindig for our birthdays at the South Coast Country Club complete with clowns, jugglers, and mimes. There were eight of us kids and we rode around in a white limousine all afternoon, waving balloons out of the window in the roof. The party ended early because of Jason. He ate too much ice cream and cake and barfed chocolate toxic waste all over the white leather back seats of the limo.

The Shandaras moved to a fancy house in Irvine three months ago. When Ashanti told True their family was moving from Anaheim to Irvine and she would be changing schools, True staged one of her famous tantrums in front of the moving men. She has a flair for the dramatic. She can throw her voice to China in a high-pitched scream that sounds like a female cougar in distress. Ray says she sounds like a dying diva in an opera. He calls her La Trueviata. And she never stops until her mother caves in to her demands. I timed "the changing school" scene. It took forty-seven minutes before Ashanti threw in the towel. I am eternally grateful that God gave True a powerful voice and the courage to use it.

True uses her grandmother's Anaheim address as her place of residence, and Ashanti drives her back and forth every day from Irvine. A bonus is that Jason decided to go to a school in Irvine, and we don't have to put up with his out-of-control bodily fluids behavior anymore. He used to spit and try to wipe buggers from his nose on us when we passed him in the hall.

Mom couldn't believe Ashanti would drive so far every day, at least forty minutes each way—sometimes more than an hour, depending on freeway traffic. Ashanti told my mom they moved to get away from all the Mexican immigrants in the schools in Anaheim, which seems odd to me as Ashanti and her husband, Rudi, are immigrants from India and should understand what it's like not living in the country where you were born.

I don't deserve any special treatment from my mom even if it is my birthday. I'm lucky she doesn't kick me out. I could be, at this very moment, sleeping under a bush with the homeless people down by the dry riverbed under the freeway where Ray used to jog every morning. Maybe he's joined the list of the endangered along with Erma and yours truly. He could be down there now, hungry and hiding under a bush.

I think of Marilyn who lives on the corner out in front of Starbucks Coffee in Orange. Ray and I used to go and talk to her sometimes. She always dresses in the same retro, low-cut black cocktail dress that shows her boobs, and wears a big floppy black hat and white gloves, even on the hottest of days. She sits all slathered in suntan oil on the edge of the red brick island that's filled with pink impatiens. Looking like a faded beauty queen, Marilyn soaks her feet in a plastic tub of water that matches the pink of the impatiens. When you ask her questions, she points to a big sign she made that says she was strangled by the Anaheim killer when she was a child and he destroyed her vocal chords. Ray said that's just one of her many stories; Marilyn changes them every year or so. He said she lost her voice because she smoked too many cigarettes. He always gives her a five-dollar bill, and for that she'll haul out old, yellowed, dog-eared photos of a young blond lady, who could be anybody. She points to the photos and then to herself. She won't let you touch them though.

One picture is of a smiling beauty with white teeth, her head poking through a giant Life Saver. Even at my age I'm not foolish enough to believe that if you suck on Life Savers you'll be beautiful and have white teeth. Marilyn has a couple of suitcases with all her earthly belongings tied together and perched on top of a wagon with a handle so she can pull it around. No one knows for sure where she sleeps at night.

I look for Ray every time Mom and I drive by Marilyn's corner. I'm always a little disappointed when I don't see him out there in the hot sun soaking his feet in that pink tub with Marilyn. I worry about Ray. He doesn't have a great work history.

Ray's the one who put Erma Geddon out in the garage on the shelf this past November (one of the last things he did before the big blow-up) next to all the rock polishing equipment he spent a fortune on a few years ago and hardly ever used, and the boxes of brand new toys that have never been opened, stacked from floor to ceiling. Ray says the toys are collectors' items and will be worth a fortune someday down the road.

I see sand slowly sifting out of Erma's bed onto the concrete floor. Mom yelled at Ray for filling the box so full because she would be the one to clean it up, not him. According to Mom, Ray never does anything right, or keeps his word. He left right after that.

Correction: Mom kicked him out. That was shortly after she looked me in the eyes and demanded I tell her the truth. Of course, I cracked immediately under the pressure and confessed how I came to have the large sum of money she found in my sock drawer, a story that I do not care to talk about at this time.

I watched through a blur of tears as Ray wheeled out a suitcase that was a dead ringer for one of Marilyn's, and got into a yellow cab. I chased him down the street and around the block, the sharp glittery pieces of stars in the sidewalk digging into the soles of my bare feet. I chased him until the taxi turned and entered the busy traffic on Magnolia Avenue. That was the last I saw of him. It's been almost four months. He hasn't even called me one time. Not even a ho, ho, ho at Christmastime. I hope he doesn't hate me, but I think he does.

The first month after he left, I used to drag my blanket and pillow into his office every night after Mom went to bed. The leathery smell of the old catcher's mitt he used to play ball with helped me pretend he was just away for an out-of-town game. But then one day he came while I was at school and got all his stuff, except for the things in the garage. When I saw the imprint of the rings on the carpet where his desk used to sit, it really hit home that he was gone and wasn't coming back. I sort of went hysterical and broke a lot of Mom's old 78 and 45 rpm recordings of Miles Davis and then locked myself in Ray's office and wouldn't come out for half a day and a whole night.

Erma Geddon had been moving real slow and sleeping a lot by mid-November, just before Ray left. One day she slept all day under the azalea bush in the backyard and didn't come out to see me when I came home from school, so Ray decided it was time for her big sleep, as he called it. He's the one who named her.

Ashanti told True and me that the name was taken from the bible, from the Book of Revelation. She says that the United States today is the place where the final battle between good and evil, Armageddon, will be fought, and only good Christian people will be saved. She's always talking about The Rapture. Ray says that's a lot of baloney and I shouldn't pay any attention to it. He says that the Shandaras are the most fanatical of all Christians—the born again kind. Hinduism was their religion when they lived in New Delhi but they converted to Christianity when they became citizens of the Unites States. Ray says it's ironic because the Hindus are tolerant of all other religions and teach that all spiritual practices can lead to self-realization. The Christians, on the other hand, according to Ray, say you have to believe that Jesus died for your sins in order to be saved.

And the thing is, True has started quoting the Bible lately. Her eyes take on a glow like the phenomenon called foxfire, a greenish luminescence caused by fungi growing on rotting wood. I saw it one night in the forest at Granny Tooley's place. True stares straight ahead, like she's looking right through you. Her body gets stiff and shakes like a cat having a fit. Then, in this otherworldly voice, she says things like, ‘The Lord will descend from Heaven and we who are in Christ shall rise to meet him in the air.' I don't know if she's for real or just fooling around with me. She says I won't be able to rise up in the air unless I take Christ as my personal savior and she's worried that we'll get separated and won't see each other anymore. Just in case True is right, I ask God, just before I go to sleep at night, if he could put in a good word with his son, Jesus, to save Erma Geddon, my mom and Granny Tooley, and please save Ray and me. God knows the two of us need it.

Ray says the reason he named my tortoise Erma Geddon is because her natural habitat, the Mojave Desert, is being destroyed by off-road vehicles and lots of other things. I start wheezing when I think about all of those glorious tortoises being crushed in their burrows in the sand.

I have asthma pretty bad sometimes. It's worse when I get stressed. I've had it since I was a little kid. That's when Ray started calling me Wheezer. He's the only one who calls me that. He has a nickname for everybody. He calls Mom Olive Oyl instead of Molly because she's skinny as a stick and has a big head, according to him. I think she has the greatest smile in the world. She's beautiful when she smiles. She hasn't done much of that lately though. She calls Ray King Kong because he's big and loud. I find his size comforting and even when you're not in the same room with him, you usually always know where he is. Correction: where he was.

They say that during hibernation (it's called brumation when tortoises go to sleep) they don't hear anything, but I wonder if Erma heard all the yelling that went on between Mom and Ray. The sight of Erma has a calming effect on me. I come out to the garage when I'm upset and wheezing, and pull up a chair to sit next to her all snuggled in her sandbox asleep. I stare at her motionless shell (it's called a carapace). The pattern on her back reminds me of the Labyrinth out in the Anaheim Hills where Ray takes me on Halloween. Correction: took me. Erma Geddon looks like she's dead but Ray said her heart is still beating, only real slow.

When Erma's awake, I draw lots of pictures of her, particularly the pattern on her back, in different variations and colors. Her shell reminds me of something Granny Tooley told me. She said the whole history of the world since it was first created is written in Erma Geddon's shell. She said the I Ching, an ancient Chinese Oracle that can tell people's fortunes, was figured out eons ago by the wisest men in the world by studying the patterns on the backs of turtles. She said Erma is a bodhisattva, a being who has attained enlightenment and could leave this troubled world and be free, but hangs around on earth to help others deal with their suffering. Granny Tooley knows everything, but according to Mom, a lot of what Tooley knows she makes up in her own head. Ray calls her Dancing with Lies.

"Are you ready? We need to leave now or we're going to be late picking up True and Jason. And help me load this stuff into the car."

I can hear the rustle of plastic bags filled with bottles of water, a must have item for traveling in case you get stuck in traffic on the freeways, and peanut butter sandwiches that I helped make, with lots of homemade grapefruit marmalade. Our neighbor, Marsha, picks the grapefruits from her own tree to make it. I can smell oranges that Mom picked from our tree in the front yard. She made my favorite cake, chocolate marble, with dark chocolate frosting for my birthday party.

We have a brand new Ford SUV. Ray bought it without asking Mom, just before he left. She said it was a gas hog and polluted the air too much, and she went berserk when she found out how much it cost, because she was the one who would be responsible for the payments. Now you have to pry her out of it. She comes home from work at night and sits out there for a long time in the driveway, like Erma when she hides inside her shell. I think Mom does it to get away from me. I know she is real mad at me for breaking her Miles Davis records, and I remind her of my namesake, whom I know she is mad at. And the worst thing is the money I took and all, and how I lied to protect Ray. My mother hates liars. She said if I only knew what it was like growing up around Granny Tooley's fibs I would understand how important it is to tell the truth. Personally, I love Tooley's stories. And if she bends the truth sometimes, it's usually for a good reason. It's called artistic license.

"Mom, Erma's awake. Can we take her with us?" I lift Erma carefully out of her bed, legs paddling the air, and put her down on the cool concrete floor. She darts her head back into her shell for a second, and then pokes it out again and looks up at me with sleepy, loving eyes. You have to be careful about picking up tortoises. If they get scared, like out on a road or in the desert, they could pee and lose precious water that they keep stored up in their bladder for when they need it, and then they could die.

"Hello, my darling. I'm so glad you are awake." I kneel down and kiss the back of her head. She smells like the building blocks of cookie-making: chocolate chips and vanilla. "Let's go out back and get you some food." I open the garage door that leads to the fenced-in back patio and yard and step out, Erma paddling close behind me.

"She's supposed to be sleeping." Mom's voice sounds surprised but not in a good way. As if what a person is supposed to do has anything to do with what they really do.

The air smells of bougainvillea and oranges after yesterday's rain. I love the rain. I don't usually wheeze for at least a day afterwards, unless I'm upset about something, but today I can barely see the snow-dusted mountains peaking up above the high adobe-colored fence that divides our yard from the Gonzales'. Their German shepherd, Percy, sounds like he would tear you limb from limb if he ever got his teeth into you. I climb up on the ladder and look at him through the lacy concrete pattern at the top of the wall. I've only seen the Gonzaleses a few times. They've lived there about a year but they work all day. I haven't heard any children's voices in the yard.

I pick some dandelion petals, Erma's favorite dining delight, and lick the yellow pollen from my fingers. It tastes a little like spinach. The sun catches little sparkles of raindrops on the still-wet grass. I sit down on it with Erma by my side. She sniffs my offering, but doesn't seem to be very hungry.

"Why did you take her out of her box?" Mom stands on the patio watching us, cupping a hand over her forehead to keep the sun out of her eyes. It looks as if she's trying to smile but can't.

"She was moving around like she wanted to get out," I said, shrugging my shoulders in a gesture that I inherited from Ray. He used to shrug a lot when he was being accused of something; like whatever it was, was out of his hands…a natural disaster, or an act of God or something. "I can't go and leave her alone the first day she's awake." I rub my chest, feeling a wheeze forming deep in my lungs.

"She'll be fine out here in the yard. She's used to being alone. We've already made plans and shouldn't break them now. And besides, you've been pestering me to go to the tar pits. I've taken the day off." Her voice softens and her face manages a half-smile. "We'll have fun. We hardly spend time together anymore. And it's your birthday." She comes over and puts her arm around my shoulder and kisses the top of my head.

I know it's true about Erma being all right without me. According to a book I read, her species spends ninety-five percent of their time huddled down in burrows, alone. After all, she has succeeded in living nearly a half-century without me. I guess she can survive another day.

My mother's kiss has let loose a landslide of guilt inside of me. I start to say something about how sorry I am for the mess I made, but the words feel like a wadded up message stuck in the neck of a bottle that has bumped around in the ocean for a godzillion years. Nothing comes out but a faint, high-pitched wheeze and some more tears that run down and tickle my neck.

One of Ray's duties, since he rarely had a real job, was to pick me up at school in the afternoons and bring me home, and stay with me until Mom got home around six. He made a secret deal with me to take a taxi home every day and to have the cab stop about a block from the house, and I would walk home from there. Then he would come home about fifteen minutes before Mom did.

He would give me cab money every day and a twenty-dollar bill as a bonus to keep my mouth shut. I don't know where he got the money and I didn't ask. I had a fat roll of portraits of Andrew Jackson tucked down under my collection of reptile socks. (They're not socks for reptiles. They're decorated with frogs and crocodiles and turtles and stuff.) I became as rich as Mrs. Astor. I started carrying a lot of money around in my ugly pink pillbox purse with shiny black plastic straps that True and I found at the Goodwill. The purse appealed to my darker side. On one banjo-flat side in big, black, shiny letters was the message, "You can't afford me." Word got around that I carried a lot of cash in that purse, and I became quite popular at school. Of course I shared fistfuls with True. We spent it on things we aren't allowed to use, like lipsticks and eye shadow, and True bought a new CD of the Hanson brothers, The Middle of Nowhere. She thinks they're cute. We lived high on the hog for a while, until True's mom, Ashanti, discovered a pile of bills and a ton of makeup hidden in her daughter's underwear drawer. True was smart enough to know that all the twitching, eye rolling, and screeching in the world wouldn't save her this time. She caved under the pressure of burning in hell for all of eternity, and told how we got the money. Ashanti hot-pedaled it over to the bakery in her new red Porsche and told Mom the whole sordid story. I was caught red-handed getting out of the taxi a block away from home and was relieved of my fortune along with a mighty burden of guilt.

Erma Geddon looks up at me and winks and then lights out with her spread-out flat, muscular legs and strong claws, paddling over to one of the tunnels she has dug to her favorite burrow under the floor of the tool shed. She understands that I have to go, and this is her way of telling me that she'll be all right on her own, and that I'll be all right too.

I receive her message as a warm breeze of relief until reality rushes back in like the Santa Ana winds gusting through the great divide of my broken heart.

I feel a wheeze coming on.