And with the backpack pressed up against my chest, with the front pocket right there under my chin, I heard it too.
"Wait," I whispered. "I hear something."
It wasn't my grandfather. That was the first thing I knew, before I knew anything else. I had been listening to my grandfather breathe through that little speaker for a month, every day, I knew his snore the way I knew my own name, and this was not him. It was high and small and thin. It was a voice. A child's voice. Very close to the speaker, so close it buzzed.
"Mama," it said. "Mama. Get up."
I unzipped the pocket. My hands were shaking so badly I caught the antenna in the zipper and had to work it free. I took the receiver out and held it up, and the red light on top was lit solid, flickering at the edges, and I turned the volume wheel with my thumb all the way up, as far as it would go, and the hiss came up loud into the kitchen, and the voice with it.
"Mama, get up. Get up, Mama. Chispa, no. Mama."
There was a dog in it. Yapping. That high thin yap I'd been hearing for a week and a half, yap yap yap, except it wasn't a toy and it wasn't a commercial, it was right there in the speaker, frantic and hoarse, and then it stopped and turned into a whine, and under the whine was a television, a man's voice selling something, a car or a carpet, and a child crying. Not loud. Tired crying. The kind of crying a little kid does when she's been crying for a while and she's run out.