We all became thieves eventually. My sister and I just watched at first, as our three older brothers stole things, regularly and with a shameless vigor. It started with candy. Abba Zabbas, Jolly Ranchers, long powdery gum sticks, jaw breakers, mountain bars, cherry and regular, and any penny candies they could quickly stuff into the pockets of their stiff, Tuffy Jeans from JC Penney’s.

One summer when I was six and my little sister Ros was five, we convinced our brother Paul to let us come with him when he walked into town. The five of us were on our own in the summer, supervised only by our oldest brother Luke. We headed to Lupoi’s market, Paul’s favorite store for stealing candy. Lupoi’s had two entrances, one at the front of the store where the cash register was and one at the back of the store by the butcher counter. This setup made for an easy escape after filling your pockets with pilfered goods.

My sister and I wandered through the store, looking longingly at the boxes of Fruit Loops and Sugar Pops. Our father only bought cornflakes or cheerios in bulk. Even if you covered the cereal with sugar, most of it ended up in the bottom of the bowl, while you spooned up mouthfuls of cardboard cereal. My sister and I knew to wait for Paul by the butcher case. We leaned against the cool angled glass. The pieces of bright red meat were surrounded by green plastic grass. A giant beef tongue with pale white taste buds rested on its own platform. Ros and I stuck our tongues out at each other and studied them, laughing and drooling.

Suddenly we heard my brother talking to someone. We quietly snuck over to look down the next aisle and saw one of the clerks holding my brother by the arm. Paul looked at us and shook his head ever so slightly. We knew that meant we should keep quiet. Evidentially the clerk recognized my brother and called the police. The three of us waited awkwardly to one side of the front counter while the cashier rang up customers. Two police officers arrived and escorted us to their squad car. They laughed at us as they opened the car door, calling us little baby punks. Paul’s hair was damp with sweat and sticking to the top of his forehead like an old man’s combover. He stared straight ahead as we drove through the familiar streets of our suburban town.

We pulled up to the back of the police station, located right across the street from our favorite park, the one with the good swings and a shallow wading pool they filled up in the summer. One of the two officers took Paul into a room and closed the door. The other officer motioned to us to sit on the wooden bench in the hall and wait for our father. Ros and I walked over to the bench and slid our bodies up with our hands, standing on our toes to reach the bench. We huddled next to each other, holding hands, our feet not touching the ground as we swung our legs back and forth.

‘What’s going to happen to the candy?’ Ros asked.

‘The cops are going to keep it, duh. I bet they don’t even return it, I bet they just eat it all themselves,’ I said.

‘I’m hungry,’ Ros said.

My two oldest brothers, Luke, and Brian, moved on from shoplifting to breaking into houses and stores. My youngest brother Paul, stuck to stealing candy for years, even after Lupoi’s, until he didn’t. He stole candy prodigiously everywhere he went and sold it at our elementary school during recess. Luke and Brian sometimes brought home fancy stereos systems, careful to hide their loot from our father. I learned much later that they sold most of the things they stole. They pilfered stacks of records and eight track tapes. They stole wads of cash left out on bedroom dressers, and they pinched many, many bottles of alcohol.

One Saturday morning I was listening in on one of Luke’s phone calls. Before he caught me mouth-breathing into the receiver, I heard him talking to his friend Jeff, saying something about an alarm system.

‘Wait, what did your mom say?’ Luke said.

‘Not my mom, her friend, they were talking this morning about a store being broken into on Culver Street. I thought I heard her say something about an alarm system,’ said Jeff.

‘How did her friend find out? Who else knows? Oh man, you gotta keep your mouth shut dude, don’t crack.’

‘What do ya mean, me? You gotta keep your brother Brian quiet, and no flaunting any stuff either, tell him to lay low.’

It was at this unfortunate moment that my brother Luke noticed my breathing and told me to get the F-off the phone. I carefully hung up the phone and ran outside to find my sister. I wasn’t shocked that my brothers had robbed a store, they did a lot of scary illegal things. I was more worried that my father might find out. Our mother had been dead for several years by this time. My father never spoke of her to us. He was moody and annoyed by one of us most of the time. My older brothers still had the memory of her face. I did not. The only memory I had was of not having her. She became my secret deity of unconditional love.

Both my older brothers had already been to Juvenile Hall multiple times. We had a court appointed social worker who came to check on us once a month. When any of my brothers got into trouble my father was angry at all of us. We were a singular entity to him, an island of kids with endless needs. Privileges were revoked for all of us. No one could go anywhere, no riding our bikes, no playing with the neighbors, just lots of cleaning and then exiled to our rooms for hours on end.

The five of us were a scrappy unit, a dirty posse of motherless kids who just wanted to be like everyone else. We wanted Christmas trees with presents underneath that weren’t from some smarmy church ladies. We wanted someone to make us food we liked, not TV dinners or meatloaf, which when my father made it consisted of ground beef with capers and nothing else, not even salt and pepper. We wanted new clothes and cool sneakers. We wanted to go to normal places like Disneyland or Lake Tahoe. We did not want to go to the Bay Model in Sausalito or poke around in freezing tide pools early on Saturday mornings when normal kids were sleeping in.

Shoplifting was a skill, an art almost, like knowing how to do magic tricks. It took patience and a suspicious mind, and a calm nervous system. It required a poker face and the ability to blend in, to be forgettable. The goal was to be benign, invisible as you moved among the desired items you planned to smuggle out of the store. Being a little kid met a lot of the criteria. When I entered a store I tried for an innocent, wide eyed face. I walked slowly, maybe trailing my hand along a shelf, or pausing to look at a toy or book intently. Then I put it down and walked away, roaming to another aisle or even to another part of the store, always looking around for store personnel.

When I was about eleven years old, I decided I wanted a bra. I did not need a bra. My chest was as flat and bony as a boy’s. My friend Bitsy’s older sister got one and showed it to us one by one at their house after school.

Woolworth’s was a long walk from our house but doable. The bra I wanted was there. When I entered the store, the cashier was talking to a woman about her husband’s border collies. I walked slowly back and stood in front of the bras. I took a deep breath and stuck the box down my pants. I looked up and the cashier and the woman were laughing about something.  I made it out the door, adjusted the bra box in the waistband of my jeans and headed for home. I felt exhausted, like when they made you run extra laps in P.E. for laughing.

The last time I stole anything was from a grocery store. I was spending the weekend with my friend Bitsy at her newly divorced dad’s apartment in El Cerrito. I can’t remember what we stole. I do remember almost getting out the door and a man suddenly appearing, running towards us.

‘Uh, you wanna pay for that?’ he said. He was out of breath.

I looked at Bitsy, wide-eyed. She looked at me, her face blanched and pale. We didn’t have a plan for this scenario. It never crossed my mind to just run.

‘Pay for what?’ I said. I was buying time, hoping that this situation might miraculously go another way.

‘The stuff you have in your pockets, the things that belong to the store.’

‘We don’t have anything.’ I said. I made my voice small and childlike. I tried to look baffled and innocent.

‘Ok, let’s go back inside and have a little talk. Follow me, come on, hurry it up.’

We followed him to the back of the store, looking at the floor as we walked behind him. Bitsy started to cry. He led us through a set of double doors that opened into a cold hallway. Stacked up along the wall were cases of tomato paste and a plastic tower of water. A mop still in its plastic packaging leaned against the wall. He unlocked a door and motioned us to come inside. As he walked over to his desk, still standing, he reached for the phone on his desk and called the police, just like that, no lecture, stealing is wrong, don’t come back, nothing.

When the police officer finally showed up, I recognized him as the older brother of a family of seven wild brothers from our neighborhood. My cheeks flushed with shame, I prayed he wouldn’t recognize me.

As he looked at me, he laughed and said, ‘Oh, don’t I know you, you’re Luke’s little sister?’ He smiled and told the undercover officer that he knew me and that he would talk to my family, so would it be possible to let us off with a warning?

After that day and our close call, I was done. I never wanted to feel like I did in the back office of that grocery store, short of breath thinking about what my father would do when he found out, getting yet another call from the police about one of us. The incident felt like a miraculous save and an obvious god sent ending to my shoplifting career.

A few weeks later as I was heading out the door to ride my bike before it got too dark, my father called me over to his overstuffed green vinyl chair in our living room, a small table next to it piled high with Scientific American and Time magazines.

‘I got a call from the El Cerrito police department just now. Anything you want to tell me?’

The old couple next to us fell asleep three minutes into Mahler’s Symphony #6. Is it cruel that I was awaiting with a sick glee the hammer blow that would shock them both, maybe kill them instantly? My wife held my hand, squeezed it gently. She saw me staring at them instead of the conductor. She knew what I was thinking. Her grip hardened. Her dress, my suit, Mahler, this old couple. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t immensely turned on. ‘Tragic’ is right.

That morning, we headed to the hospital to try again. It had been three years of trying.

Despite outward appearances, she lived with the disappointment weighing on her more heavily than anything she and I lifted each week at the gym. You can look perfect, treat your youthful bodies with care, eat well, drink moderately, work out regularly, but if your loins are imperfect, you’re barren. By extension so is your world.

The ones with families don’t get it. Everyone else just fucked and made kids and then that was it. Or at least that is how they present it when we have dinner with them.

My sister, three years younger than me, who had three kids raw dogging it with three different guys, once piped in after Easter dinner. We sat on the porch overlooking the lake that we’ve been visiting each holiday since we were kids. The Adirondack chairs’ peeling paint reminded me that dad and mom died years ago.

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“I think so. She tells me I am, but–”

“You’re an idiot.”

“–she craves butt stuff like a champ and biologically those tubes aren’t connected.”

“Oh my god. What is wrong with you?”

An egret sailed past and landed on the muddy shore. They will stand patiently for half an hour in one spot if it means they can spear a blue gill for lunch.

“I’m pretty sure that you stole your three from the mall, sis. They don’t look like you or Don or Phil or Robert.”

“Shut up. Always degrading. You know that’s not their names.”

“It’s not?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“You can help by not asking me if we’re aware of the mechanics of intercourse.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, are you timing it right?”

“She’s had a thermometer on our nightstand for months. And stockpiles of ovulation kits. She even has me analyze the viscosity of her vaginal–”

“Ok, that’s enough. I’m going inside.”

“Thin is good,” I yelled at her as she fled, her requisite glass of Chardonnay sloshing. “Thick is bad!”

I remember the first night we decided to make a baby. Consciously, actively make a baby. Just me inside her. No barriers, physical or medicinal or emotional. She held my ass tightly as I came, like she was holding me in place to keep it all in. We locked gaze. As my throbs subsided, she buried her tongue in my mouth. I think that was to help get that last little bit out. She’s that good.

“I hope that’s it,” I said, and regretted it immediately.

“Me too,” she said.

It wasn’t. Neither were the next ten, twenty, fifty.

And then here I was. She was in the lobby.

The first three tries we arrived at the clinic together, hand-in-hand. The last two times we drove separately and met in the lobby, each coming from other errands. I tried not to read into it too much. Twenty minutes later, I pathetically finished with my dick in one hand and in the other the sterile plastic cup with a couple millions me-s swimming in it, my name and clinic ID number in handwritten script wrapped around the side. And the current date. The “freshness date” I once joked to her once after I did my own walk of shame down the corridor to the lobby. This hospital system didn’t let her help me generate the sample, although if we did it off-site we could use a condom – no spermicide! — and bring that to the lab in a provided travel cup within twenty minutes. At the time, we lived thirty minutes away. Short of boning in the back seat of the Mazda in the clinic parking lot, we opted again to have me choke a soda in the hospital’s pseudo-boudoir third-floor brothel.

“Be sure to keep it warm afterward. And bring it to the lab tech at the end of the hall.”

“Gotcha, doc. I’m not triple-A anymore. This is the Bigs. Do you clean up spills? Or should I?”

“Good one.”

“I’ll do my best.”

My urologist, tall, strong, near retirement, had the right attitude about this business. He teaches at the local medical college now. Retirement has been good for him from what I’ve heard.

“Nine times out of ten, it’s the guy’s fault,” he told me months ago. “Women take on too much here. Sperm count and motility are the key. Low in either category means no luck. She’s ovulating regularly, almost clockwork. It’s not her fault for sure.”

“She blames herself.”

“She will. Don’t let her.”

“Easier said than done. I’ve told her it’s me.”

“I’ve been married thirty years.”

“Gotcha.”

“Do your best. But know this, if you two aren’t getting pregnant, it’s your fault.”

“Maybe I should call for a relief pitcher.”

He slapped me on the back.

“You’re going to need a closer, son.”

Twenty minutes later I finished. As I rearranged my suit pants, I reminded myself aloud, “Don’t rush or you’ll zip your dick.” I knew that from the first session way back when. We laughed about that when we got back to the car and rushed off to lunch. Rushing to get out of there reminded me of the first time I kissed a girl. Fifth grade. Both of our gut responses were to get away. Not because we didn’t like it. We were just feeling redness creep up from our necks and didn’t want the other to notice. The cup – top screwed tightly – sat on the now familiar rust-colored bedspread. I straightened my tie. Despite its corporate face, massive contemporary art collection, and white walls-ceilings-floors-doors everywhere, the hospital tried to make this space passably comfortable. It was dark, there was a bed, and copious lube and porn mags in the side table. Not good porn. The kind of porn doctors buy in med school, not to jerk off to but to study. All silicone-filled balloon boobs and pseudo-lesbian posturing. A fraction of those doctors disapproved and went on to become plastic surgeons. The rest didn’t. I’m not into porn, but it was something.

I cupped the cup as instructed and, like the layfolk holding the bowl of hosts and carafe of wine, processed down the hallway.

After the first couple times of practically throwing the cup at the tech and fleeing, I decided that making direct eye contact with her was an assertion of autonomy. Or just a way to say to her, “I’m not embarrassed here.” Or, “See? I’m trying.” Minus one time, I’ve had the same tech. She wore that white coat like a boss. I found her on social media once. She had three kids.

“Here you go. Make merry with them.”

“Tell your wife it’ll be–”

“–Ten minutes. Yep. We know.”

“Old pro already.”

“Not by choice.”

That’s a lie. I did this for us both. I just didn’t know at the time if the same applied to my wife. There comes a time after a year or so of failure where you can’t but think her maternal disappointment wedded with her hot-as-lava mating instinct, that I wasn’t turning out to be the caveman she felt could drag her away and close the deal. It was my imagination working on me, I know. She loved me. No, she love-loved me. But consider my sister. It’s not love that makes babies.  

That tech, in her white coat and severe bangs, washed and sorted my sperm, checking for amount and movement, making sure I haven’t just choked up a whole scrum of headless tails whipping each other in a frenzy.

Unlike my seminal act, done in near darkness, alone, and with porn crouching nearby like a letch in the bushes, the insemination was about as clinical as it came. People joke about “the turkey baster method.” That’s so crude. The tube was way thinner than a baster and with this precision piece of medical equipment there was no chance of the slappy-squishy sound of the jellied cranberry as it released from the aluminum can onto the plate. The process was quick but not painless. My poor wife’s legs were perched in stainless stirrups. With more stainless steel, the doctor clamped open the cervix like a hellish pap exam and then worked the straw-like end up each fallopian tube, assuming he is unsure which tube has the released egg waiting for my boys. Then he depressed the syringe and that was it. Consummation was now more likely than the caveman method.  

If my process was humiliating, hers was excruciating. It blew for me; it sucked for her. The doctor left the examination room after telling her to stay put for five minutes. But we knew despite our instinct to flee what we needed to do. I kissed her on the forehead.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

A bead of sweat ran down her forehead and into her eyebrow. “You had porn.”

“All the girls were ugly.”

“This one hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My cervix keeps taking a pounding.”

“I know it’s not from me. I can barely reach.”

“True.”

We went home afterward and rested. Despite the cramping, it was the most sleep she had in three days. The anticipation is always sleeplessness and saving me up so the quality is higher. Later that day we headed to the orchestra. We’ve been getting out more these days, trying to distract ourselves, I think. It’s just nice not to be taking temps and testing fluid viscosity.

The hammer blow struck. Beginning in the woodwinds, a wave of heads came to attention as the soundwave rushed through the orchestra, then the dress circle, on to the mezzanine, and finally the nosebleeds. The old couple didn’t budge. She snored lightly. Her head rested on his shoulder. A lock of her gray hair curled under his nose like a mustache.

Maya has memorized the rules: No published recipes, no talking, no crying, no mugging for the cameras. She surveys her ingredients with cautious optimism: pastry dough, cake mix, Oreo cookie pieces, chocolate chips, marshmallows, Nutella. Her Death by Chocolate empanada should be creative, but not showy. Brash, but not overpowering. Fun, but not too jokey. In a word, delisiosa.

Before the Journey, when they could scrape together enough money, she used to love making empanadas for everyone in her family. Now the hand pies frighten her. One misstep – if the filling is too hot or the crust falls apart – and everything ends for Papi, Mami, Javier and Nelsy.  If she wins, her entire family is awarded American citizenship. Losers are shipped back to wherever they came from, in her case, Venezuela, when they’ll either get locked up in La Pinta for life or if the quotas are filled, executed on the spot the moment they step foot on the tarmac.   

There are 11 other contestants, separated by tall metal dividers built to resemble the Wall along the border  – a 2,000 mile long, 30-foot-high grey steel monster with pointy spikes on top. She’d like to be able to look over the competition. Are they girls? Boys? Older than 11? She glances at the judges table – white lady; white, older man in a tux; white, younger man with a British accent. He’s the sarcastic one. She knows to watch out for him. 

She wonders what Nelsy is doing right now. Probably staring out the window of the Detention Center at the empty yard where the Punishment Tree is. All the cells face that tree. If Maya were there, she’d tell Nelsy to step away from the window and they could whisper make-believe stories to each other while Mami paces and Papi prays. Javier hasn’t said a word since that night in the Darien Gap.  

Bright toned, upbeat music plays. The show’s theme song. Maya understands some of the English words: fun, knife, crust, death. The lights are too bright. Maya wipes her upper lip with the sleeve of her white chef’s smock. If even one drop of perspiration lands on her prep area, she’s heard that a trap door will open beneath her station and she’ll tumble down and never see her family again. She stretches her gums over her teeth, forcing a smile. 

Just as suddenly as it began, the music stops. The judges introduce each contestant, talking quickly. Focus, Maya tells herself. Don’t blow this. She wills her hands not to shake as she pours, measures, mixes, chops. Maya’s hands don’t belong to her anymore. They’re stiff as claws, gripping the metal spoon awkwardly. Chocolate bits slide in and out of focus until she bites down hard on her lower lip and pain makes the pieces snap into place, stirring, stirring, pinching the dough over the filling the way her abuela used to pinch her cheeks before abuela was killed. 

Moving carefully, she puts her empanada on the middle shelf of her oven, a pink miniature toy stove. Sets the timer. Thirty minutes. That’s how long it will take to know whether she’s pulled it off. In the meantime, there are three more commercial breaks and the judges tell jokes, entertaining the studio audience. Maya lets herself remember floating in the Caribbean and counting clouds, clean sheets, the terrier she left behind, arepas stuffed with shredded beef, her grandfather’s mustache, books, mist curling off the mountains, hiding behind the shed when the gangs came around, her desk at school scarred with the names of kids that were taken, Mami boiling milk for Javier, the crowded marketplace where vendors sold cazon empanadas and hot dogs, Papi trying to find work, playing baseball in the streets, the tire swing hanging from the jacaranda tree next to their house, the time she saw a scarlet macaw and it didn’t flinch when she edged nearer, Papi coming home one day with a black eye and a mangled hand, listening to Los Chicos sing cuando vendras a casa, how each day bread cost more until they couldn’t afford to eat, the fires at night, bodies of young men tossed out of cars lying in the gutter because people were afraid to touch them, stealing bananas from a cart, the five of them in their one room house all together, safe, not safe. She stares into the camera until all she sees are yellow and red spots, like the soap bubbles she and Nelsy used to blow.  

The British judge is walking towards her. Could it? Is it possible she’s won? Her heart thumps crazily in her chest. Maya knows better than to meet his eyes. She looks him in the nose instead. Saved. She’s not going back. None of them are. But instead of  coming over to her station, the man enters the one on her left, and the studio audience erupts with pleasure, a volcano of cheers. It’s over. The lady judge says the name of the winner, but Maya isn’t listening anymore. She’s remembering how in Puerto Cabello she and Nelsy used to wade into the sea and pick starfish off the shallow seagrass beds, how once there was a red one, spiny, nearly fake, with hundreds of bumps and paths between the bumps, a whole world she never knew about, right in her hand.