When Marlene was a living little girl she began to notice that she looked different from the other children. Her skin was more brown, like the leather belts papa wore, and her long black hair was thick and straight, while nearly everyone else had curly light hair. She thought her hair looked like spiny straw. When she began to notice she also began to worry that there was something wrong with her, because even mama and papa did not look like her. They were tall and lean, but Marlene was short and soft. Marlene decided that everyone looked beautiful except for her, and she became sad and angry with God for making her an ugly brown girl with stupid hair. She sat alone in the overgrown grass field across from her house one day, trying to decide in which direction she would run away. She could live by the river to the north, where small turtles, frogs, and little chirp birds made beautiful noises. She thought that she could make beautiful noises with them. There was also the highway to the east. Many noisy large trucks passed through there and when mama and papa drove to the gas station she saw that the drivers looked more like her, dark and thick-haired and ugly. Maybe she was supposed to be one of them. Then, there was the large empty desert to the west of town. A boy in her class called it Mo Javee. She had never been to Mo Javee but knew it was a big, empty place with lots of sand and no water fountains or trees for shade. But she liked that it was empty because then there would be no one around to look at her ugly face. Marlene decided to go to Mo Javee, and the next morning, when mama and papa were still asleep, she woke up and put on her church dress. She looked from her window on the top floor of the apartment building and saw the Mo Javee mountains, and thought a map would be a good idea. She drew one on thick construction paper using the markers, then walked out and down to the street and walked to where her map told her to go. It pointed to a series of brown mountains at the end of her street. Marlene walked for a long time, and she thought it was taking too long to get to Mo Javee. She walked by people and looked up at them sometimes, but everyone was busy, too busy for an ugly girl, and she did not want to bother them. She walked and walked, and continued following her map to the mountains in Mo Javee until her brain became too tired to think about skin or hair or beauty.