Julissa, at the center of the town,

lives with her mother and sister in a sun-seared triple-wide. Aluminum foil covers the windows and a dwarf palm slouches in front. The backyard is hard dirt and the smell of oranges. Between home and the refinery stretches The Fields: really nothing more than an acre or two of high weeds and wild anise. A stagnant hole into which Julissa once threw Steve Cruz’s new Sting Ray. Steve, a wet-eyelashed dummy whose mother was the meanest yard duty in the history of Taper Elementary. This remains Julissa’s cruelest act. But cruelty still resides in her. She knows this because she feels it on some days, taking care of her mother in her mother’s final decline. Her brother makes the old woman’s eyes shine, but his visits are rare. And her sister, in her senior year, works after school at the new hotel. So, Julissa, 19, is in charge.

After The Fields sits the new 7/Eleven in metal and glass. Once, her grandfather sent Julissa, the oldest, for wine. She pretended she’d never recall the name, so he drew a thunderbird on a napkin and said, “Show ‘em this.” The glass 7/Eleven doors pealed their bright note. Emitted their blast of chilled plastic and sugar.

Gaffey Street traverses the town. There is Big C Lumber, then the long uphill grade, then the library where Julissa’s brother—he thinks no one knows he’s gay—stands with the metal clicker he uses to shush kids. Where he regards Julissa balefully, waiting for her to deposit her stack of hardbacks in crinkly jackets. Where he asks how their mother is doing and says he’s been extremely busy but will send a check.

After that is Richard Henry Dana Junior High, where the town’s tougher kids are schooled. The stream of them and the milder Dodson kids mingling and flashing like minnows San Pedro High school. The football field, the color of old woman money, sits above the Los Angeles Harbor.

Unlike Julissa’s, Joey’s family has lived in San Pedro for decades. Joey, Julissa’s boyfriend. His grandparents came over from Dalmatia. Last week, Joey’s mother sent over cevapcici, barbecued lamb, roast piglet, and mostaccioli, each accompanied by a fragrant strudel. Julissa’s mom is down to liquid meals, and Julissa is putting on weight.

It’s Friday, December 17, 1976. Tonight at 7:33pm, the SS Sansinena, a Liberian oil tanker, will explode at berth 46. Curled in Joey’s lap in the bleachers, Julissa will behold a skyful of fire. Nine will die: eight crew and one dock security guard. Forty-six will be injured. The explosion will split the ship in half and obliterate multiple port buildings. The fire will burn for four days.

But Julissa doesn’t know any of this yet. She’s spent the morning scouring the range hood with a cleanser her mother hates. Giving her mother her liquid meal. Sponging her down and getting her into fresh clothes. Listening to remarks about Julissa’s weight and her roughness with the washcloth as Julissa cleans her backside. Julissa deadpanned to her sister Evvie before Evvie left for school, “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen your own mother’s butthole.”

Every day, Tomás

wakes up in this dismal port town and excoriates himself for breaking his high school promise to himself: I will escape this place. Instead, he works as a glorified babysitter in the town’s library. Wiping down pee-damp chairs in the children’s area. His only escape: 15 minutes smoking in his shared office with the doors shut, blinds drawn.

Every day, one of his mother’s friends comes by to ask about the latest Jacqueline Suzanne and whether he’s met a girl. Then they ask after his mother; adding that they’ve been meaning to pay a visit. Tomás inhales the polished wax floors and yellowing paper. His stamp pad’s ink and the Emeraude cologne and permanent wave solution. And smiles smiles smiles.

This morning in bed, Tomás’s paramour, Monte, turned to Tomás and said, “What if I were to move in here with you? Or at least meet your mother, before…”

And Tomás had answered, not even bothering to open his eyes, “Because it’s unthinkable.” And he said some other dreary things and so did Monte. And then it was eight and Monte left and then Tomás showered and sighed into a button-down shirt and blazer. Slacks and loafers.

Now it is afternoon and time for his cigarette break. Tomás has clicked his small metal clicker—the one he sounded to silence noisemakers—so much today his fingers are stiff. And that’s when it happens. Monte, his ridiculous paramour. Outside the front window on the sidewalk. Embracing—or is it assaulting?—Tomás’s younger sister Evvie, in her high-waisted pants and platform shoes. And then dashing away. Evvie’s reaction is to look wildly around, as if to ensure there are no witnesses. That she is not in trouble. The heavy door slides open to admit her. And she stands there before him with her mouth in a childlike frown and Tomás registers that his clicker has been clacking without pause. Patrons are staring at the two of them, aliens to this small town.

Evvie, killing time after school last spring

with her mother so sick at home. In her high-waisted pants and platform shoes. Fawn-eyed and shiny-haired. If the homeroom boy, taller and more tanned than she remembered, hadn’t caught up in the shiny-floored hall and stared her down, pronounced her pretty, said he’d hook Evvie up with that job at the new chain hotel on Gaffey.

If that boy hadn’t lied to the hiring office, claiming Evvie had experience. If he hadn’t offered to train her before his night auditor shift. Let her sleep in that cement-smelling room behind the hotel’s front desk before driving her home.

If the blonde who normally worked Fridays hadn’t asked to switch that night. December 17th, 1976. And if Evvie’s night auditor boyfriend had not taken the blonde to the Old Towne Mall to see The Outlaw Josie Wales, a movie they did not watch.

And if the thieves hadn’t cased the joint earlier in the week and chosen the blonde, the one Evvie was covering for and who at that moment was blowing Evvie’s boyfriend in the back row of the theatre.

If Evvie hadn’t clocked dappling shadows around the pillars in the hotel lobby. The rustle behind her and the hooded boy with his gun, vaulting over the front desk to join his pimpled friend. The focus in their eyes. If they hadn’t gestured to the tray of bills; the fifties underneath, saying, “Give us the money and we’re gone,” before leaping the cheap lobby fountain and away.

If Evvie hadn’t cried, “Take me with you!” she would have been left behind for the second time that night.

Julissa, again, breathing in night blooming jasmine and the refinery,

doesn’t yet know that her mother is dead. Julissa, the caregiver. In charge of the diaper changing, the liquid diet administering. Endless loads of laundry. Her spit. Her urine and feces. It will be weeks before the odors of her mother’s sickness leave Julissa’s nostrils. Years before she understands that her mother felt that she, Julissa, had emotional problems, Meaning, she had emotions.

Now her boyfriend Joey squeezes her hand. Slips his own steady palm beneath Julissa’s denim skirt. The gray-green football field splays before them in the half-dark. A couple of boys from her sister’s grade kick a ball. Beyond that, the lights of the harbor shine. Joey is saying how his uncle can get him in the Longshoremen’s union. Julissa is in his lap, thinking. A job at the harbor. A new start in their town of grit and pollution-clogged skies.

An enormous blast rattles her skeleton. Julissa and Joey are nearly thrown from the wooden bleachers. They clutch one another. Below them, the football field and the fiery harbor beyond. Sirens cut the night.

When Joey says let’s knock doors to check on folks, Julissa knows she will marry him. Live in a regular house. Let new smells fill her up. Shop at South Shores Meat Shop and the Sunshine Market. Sunday supper at the Slav Club. Joey’s mother will teach Julissa to clean squid. Puree bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and garlic. Fix cevapcici. Barbecue lamb. Roast piglet. Peppers and jam. A new strudel for each day of the week.

There on the wooden bleacher, she lets Joey get to third base. Two miles below them, the air is still alight. It brightens the boy’s face as he works away. After the clothing is put back into place, the fingers discreetly wiped, the two of them knock on neighborhood doors. Glass from shattered windows litters the lawns. No one answers and exhaustion is overtaking her. She needs to get home to be sure her mother is all right. They’d had such a big argument when Julissa was settling her in front of the television in her recliner, her mom muttering she’d take her own goddamn pills.

Julissa doesn’t yet know that her mother is gone. But a new peace has rooted within her. The sky is aflame. The ancestral seed has begun to warm. This is her home town, finally. Yes, this is home.