<p style="text-align: left;">(Read <a href="http://provoketive.com/2011/12/20/christmas-undocumented-annunciation-part-i/">Part I here</a>)</p>
Terror and fear run the next few days together. She remembers stripping naked with the rest of the group and crossing the muddy river in the shivering dark into America with her clothes and knapsack wrapped in plastic and held high over her head. There were Gabby’s warnings about sensors buried on the riverbanks to detect their passing, and there was the hole clipped in the fence. There were the flashes of light from the sky when routine patrols searched for border crossers. The pursuit of border guards, the hiding, the running from snarling dogs, the walking and stumbling through dense brambles of agave and prickly pear that tore at her clothes, her flesh and her will to keep going. There were blisters, cracked, bleeding and painful on her feet and lips. Freezing at night, yet walking on. Sweating during the day, exhaustion overcoming even the heat and fear to bring on sleep.

At last, the bedraggled group arrives at their destination, the town of Uvalde.

“This is as far as I go with you,” Gabby says on the outskirts of town. “The town is to the north and east. Just follow the power lines and you’ll find it. If you don’t wander off, you won’t find any hostile citizens, no border patrols and no more checkpoints to dodge. It’s a straight shot.”

The group sloughs off their packs and sits in the dusty grass, exhausted, hurting and tired. Gabby sits down, too, next to Ave.

“What are you writing?” she asks, pointing to Ave’s palm-sized pink notebook, its spiral binding unrolling at the ends.

Ave shuts the book and places a nervous hand over the top to keep it closed. “It’s nothing. Just a bit of writing.”

“May I see? What kind of writing? Like a journal?”

Ave shakes her head. “I like poetry, but I don’t let anyone read it.”

“A poet?” Gabby muses. “I’m sure you are wonderful writer.”

An uneasy silence hangs between the two women. Unable to find a tactful way to ask the question in her mind, Gabby decides simply to be frank.

“Have you miscarried?” Gabby asks, turning her body to face Ave’s. “I have worried about this since we began. It is such a long, difficult journey.”

Ave shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says, placing a hand on her womb. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like I know he’s in there and he’s happy.

“A son,” Gabby says, more affirmation of fact than question.

Ave nods. “A son. And he survived. We survived. We made it, just like you said we would.”

Gabby smiles, rising from her seat. “A miracle then. God was indeed with you.”

Ave pondered Gabby’s final words as she remembered the hardships of her journey. Then she remembered the St. Christopher medallion hanging from a chain around her neck. She rises, slowly and painfully, intending to return the necklace to its owner. But when she looks around for Gabby, however, the coyote has vanished into the desert as mysteriously as she had originally appeared.

She turns the medallion over in her hand. There is a scuffed inscription on the back, and it looks older than the earth. It reads, “Call him Jesus.” Puzzled, Ave wonders what it means. She puts the necklace back on, says goodbye to the rest of the group and heads toward Uvalde, occasionally looking around to see if she can spot Gabby ahead of her in the desert.

When she arrives in town, Ave finds a pay phone, digs her phone card from her bag and dials her cousin’s number. Her call is answered after two rings, but no one says hello on the other end.

“Hello? Hello? Isabella? Is that you?” Ave shouts into the receiver. “Can you hear me? Hello?”

Suddenly, fear consumes her again. She had not consider that Isabella might not want to help her, might not want to speak with her. What if she didn’t have a place to go here in this foreign country full of suspicious eyes toward immigrants. Ave removes the phone from her ear and is about to replace it in its cradle when she hear’s a woman’s voice shouting on the other end.

“Hello! Wait, wait! Don’t hang up! Hello? Who’s there?” Relief exhales through her body as she recognizes her cousin’s voice. “Zach, if you’re going to pick up the phone, at least grunt or something to let them know you’re there. Or, better yet, say hello!”

Ave smiles. Isabella has not changed. “Tia, it’s Ave. I need your help. I’m pregnant, I’m in Uvalde and I’m illegal.”

Ave jerks the phone back from her hear as Isabella erupts in shouts. There is the loud clatter of a receiver falling to the floor and the hasty scuffling sound of Isabella retrieving it. “I’m so sorry dear girl, I could not help but leap the moment I heard your voice and your news! God be with you dear child. I’m coming now. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“So you don’t mind?”

“Mind? Dear child, no!” Isabella says. “I’m lonely here. I could use the company. And I have news for you, as well. I’m pregnant, too! At my age! Can you believe it?”

Ave smiles again. She is in America, undetected by the border patrol. Her baby has survived, despite the arduous journey. Soon, she would be in the safety of her cousin’s home and filled with good food, tamales and salsa. So, yes, at this point, she would believe just about anything.

Tomorrow