by Mira T. Lee
When we returned to the beach, we made a picnic. Papi caught two bass, grilled them on a fire. Juan and I covered Ricky with sand. Mami pretended to be a monster, fingers creeping toward us as we sucked on sweet granadillas—she captured us, punished us with her tickles. When the sun got too hot on our sticky bodies, we ran into the surf. Ricky cried when he got stung by a jellyfish. “It’s Alamar!” he said.
Five years later, Mami gave birth to Fredy at home in a round, wooden tub. Said he slipped out and swam instantly like a fish. When he bounced up for air, his cry was so loud it startled her; she fell back and hit her head. Tía Camila grabbed the baby with a towel, handed him to Mami when she woke a few seconds later. “It’s a boy,” she said. Mami was so happy her baby was alive and breathing, she didn’t notice anything wrong. Then Tía Camila showed her the gaping tongue, the flat profile, the up-slanted too-far-apart eyes. “He’s not right,” said Tía Camila. “Hush,” said Mami. They brought him to a medicine man who lived up in the mountains. “Best, a dunce,” said the man. “Worst, a deadweight. That child is a curse.” Mami grew angry. What did he know, this old man who wouldn’t even look her in the eye? But I noticed it, too, how the women at the market lowered their gazes whenever we all walked by. It was then, I think, the idea came to her, that I should go to America. “Hijo, a man’s duty is to his family,” she said. “You will help your brother. There is no such thing as a curse.” I felt proud, full of purpose. I felt afraid, confused. But I nodded. I was fourteen years old.
As far as I was concerned, pregnancy was a woman’s business. I didn’t need to know the details. Babies have been born since the beginning of time, in caves and fields and taxicabs, I figured they know what to do. “Stop joking, Manny,” said Lucia. She punched my arm. Chinita was determined to prepare. She took special vitamins. Went to bed early. Weighed herself every day. She practiced breathing. Drank herbal teas. Joined chat rooms on the Internet. Every week she’d report something new she just learned. “The baby is the size of a grape today.” “The baby has fingernails now.” “Soon the baby will make pee.” “Later, her body will be covered with fur.”
Mrs. Gutierrez brought her rambutans. “Sour fruits are good for baby’s skin,” she said. “Backyard organic!” She bent down to pat Lucia’s belly, which lately had seemed to become a public space.
“Fantástico,” said Lucia. She inhaled. “Thank you.” Mrs. G did manage to grow an amazing assortment of tropical fruits and vegetables in the tiny patch of dirt behind her house. Sometimes Lucia helped her pull weeds or spread fertilizer. She said it was good for the baby to know the earth.
“The bugs, the mold, don’t you worry,” said Mrs. Gutierrez. “I call Harry, I tell him he has to clean up this place. I put roach bait all over but with that trash in the alley, nothing I do’s gonna help.” She smoothed Lucia’s hair. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier warning to me. Babies changed people’s minds. “With this precious one, you be careful,” she said, waving her broom in my direction, as if already I’d done something wrong.
Lucia asked if I would come with her to see the doctor. I said I didn’t like hospitals. “It’s a doctor’s office, Manny,” she said. “No police, no guards.” But I was afraid the doctor would ask me questions. Personal questions. “Trust me,” she said, “it will be okay.” I held her hand in the waiting room. She was right. It was not what I’d expected. The room was painted a bright, cheerful yellow with vertical white stripes, and two monkeys, a zebra and three giraffes. I liked the animals, the way the room felt like a cage. “It’s not a cage,” said Lucia. “What do you mean?” I said. She pointed out that the stripes rose only partway up the wall. “It’s a crib, you silly,” she said.
A nurse brought us to another room. Pale green walls, with photos of pregnant women holding their naked bellies, smiling peaceful smiles. “Who looks like that?” I said. “Not me,” said Lucia. She climbed onto the exam table, lifted her shirt. “Yoo hoo in there,” she said.
A tall woman wearing a long white coat walked in. “Hello, Doctor,” I said. I stuck out my hand.
Politely, she shook it. “I’m the technician. My name is Darlene. I’ll be conducting your ultrasound today.”
She squirted a gel on Lucia’s belly. Pointed to a screen. “I can’t see anything,” I whispered. “Wait,” said Lucia. The screen flickered like the static on TV, then some grayish blobs rolled back and forth. And then, there it was: a baby. With a head, nose, toes. It floated and squirmed, bounced and kicked. Then it lay still, curled up, like it was lazing in a hammock. I laughed out loud. Mierda! Holy shit. It was real.
Darlene showed us its fingers, its spine, its fast-beating heart. “Do you want to know the sex?” she asked.
I looked at Lucia.
“Yes,” we said.
“It’s a girl.”
“You see?” said Lucia, grinning.
A girl. My chest swelled. I wanted to tell Mami. I wanted her to feel proud. I wanted her to tell everyone about her first grandchild.
On our way home, Lucia said we should celebrate. We spotted El Pollo Loco by the Ecuadorian buffet. “Hola, Pollo,” Lucia called out. A cardboard sign hung from a string around his neck: 2-4-1 EMPANADAS@PIZZA PAL. We slapped him double high fives. Then we went inside, stuffed ourselves with goat stew and plantains. When we’d eaten enough, Lucia announced it was time for peach ice cream and pickles. “You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m pregnant!” she said. We went inside the Korean grocery next door. She settled for vanilla and kimchi.
“To the three of us,” she said, raising her spoon.
Suddenly it seemed very real, very serious. With or without papers, I was bound to this chica by this baby inside her. I tried to stand up straight.
And then my words slipped out. “Will we need papers?”
“Are you being romantic?” she teased.
“For the baby,” I said.
“For the baby we need a piece of paper?” But I knew she understood what I meant. She knew I was always grinding my teeth at night, chewed on the inside of my cheek when I got nervous.
A few days later, Mami called. I told her the news.
“Dios, how many nights I prayed that you would meet a nice girl,” she said. “Una China Americana. And now this!” I could hear her clapping her hands. “You will ask her, won’t you? When will you ask her, hijo?”
In Mami’s eyes it was our family’s ticket. Fredy’s ticket. Marriage to an Americana.
• • •
One day I went to work and my boss told me to go home. “Sorry. I hate to lose you, Manny,” he said. But there had been crackdowns; I needed papers. “I can’t take any more chances,” he said. He had a friend who was hiring dishwashers for night shift. Paid a lot less than my old job, but it was a job. “I’m sorry,” he said again. I knew there was nothing I could say, so I said, “Sure.”
Mrs. G said she’d hook me up with her son-in-law, Maurice, who worked construction. “I tell him you’re a good worker. Strong. Good body.” I rolled up my sleeve, flexed my bicep. She tapped it with the end of her broom. “You like Maurice. He’s a good guy. You hear about that maniático, burning down that candy store in Tarrytown? People are crazy.” She coughed. I’d seen it on the news. Boss and I worked on that place last summer, painted it orange and white, a big gumball machine on the back wall. Mindy Griffin said the arsonist poured gasoline on old tires, set them on fire, smashed them through the shop’s front window.
Maurice picked me up in a pickup truck. Typical Americano, with his buzz cut and twangy American voice, blasting thrash metal from an old cassette deck. I didn’t like him. But I didn’t complain. My Vargas cousins said in California, workers stood on street corners hoping for trucks to come by so they could work for ten dollars a day.
We drove north, through neighborhoods where the houses were mansions, the lawns smooth like golf courses on TV. Streets were empty except
for trucks loaded with landscaping equipment: mowers, blowers, trimmers, rakes, workers who were brown. We parked in the driveway of a big house. By the front door was a fountain where two stone fish spit water from their mouths. Maurice said this was a bath for birds. Dipped his hands and wiped them on his jeans so I did the same. We entered the garage. It clattered open when he swiped a plastic card, and the door inside was opened by a maid. Dressed in uniform, black dress with white lace collar and white apron, like she was out of some movie, and black shoes nice enough for church. She looked like Mami’s age. The room was full of closets, with a shiny wood floor, bigger than any of the five bedrooms in my house. Maurice said this was a mudroom. I laughed. I thought of my hometown, Martez, where entire houses became mud-rooms whenever it rained too hard. Maurice took off his coat and gave it to the maid. She handed us crumpled blue hairnets. I thought only cooks at restaurants wore these, but I put it on my head. Maurice snorted. He slipped his over his shoes. “This one is fresh off the boat,” said the maid. I hated the way she laughed, high and thin, like I was lower than donkey shit.
We walked on thick plastic floor mats up the stairs, then down a long hallway to a bathroom. It was about the size of the mudroom, with blue flowered wallpaper, white floor tiles. A gold mirror hung on the wall above the sinks.
Maurice handed me a sledgehammer. Pointed to the tub.
“Does it leak?” I said.
He laughed. “Come on, hermano.” Dropped his plastic glasses over his face. Then he climbed inside, took the sledgehammer from my hands, raised it high over his head. “Stand back,” he said. “This baby’s cast iron.” He slammed the hammer into the middle of the tub.
The whole house shook. My ears rang.
“Now that,” he grinned, “is satisfying.”
I tried to copy what Maurice had done, but it took me six tries to make one serious dent. For the rest of the day I pounded away at the tub and the tiles and the walls. I learned this work was called “updating.” To smash a tub to put in another tub. But it didn’t feel good. I didn’t understand the destruction of perfectly good things. The day was eight hours long. At exactly five o’clock we stopped, so the neighbors wouldn’t complain. By then all that was left was loose wires poking out of studs. Whole room was in pieces, dumped in trash cans. We hauled them to the truck.
“So. What’d you think?” said Maurice.
I poked at a splinter in my palm. He grabbed it, dug with his fingernail, sucked and spit the thing out.
“Next time wear thicker gloves,” he said. Pushed some bills into my hand.
It was less than I was expecting, but I nodded. Got home and I got straight into the shower. My hair was stiff with dust. The spray of water released pain from my body. I felt the hurt in my hands, my shoulders, my back, my lungs. When I spit or sneezed or coughed it came up black.
• • •
By her eighth month of pregnancy, Lucia walked like a duck, feet pointed out, one hand on her back like an old lady. Her T-shirts outlined the shape of her breasts but no longer stretched to cover her belly. She took special care to sleep on her left side, one pillow between her legs, three tucked around her like a nest. I was squeezed to the edge of the mattress, tried not to roll to the floor. She walked to the butcher to buy special meats, rode the train all the way into Chinatown to buy special herbs, boiled everything in a special clay pot with a curved wooden handle and spout.
My Vargas cousins complained about the smell.
“Ay, chica, let me guess . . . today’s specialty is dead dog,” said Susi, holding her nose.
“Wet, dead dog,” said Hector.
“Chinese people eat cats,” said Carlos. “I saw it on TV.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Hector.
“Is it true?” said Susi.
“Oh, yes,” said Lucia. “Dog penis is a great delicacy.”
“You mean, you’ve tried it?” Susi shrieked, stuck out her tongue.
“No,” said Lucia. “But I would. I don’t see how it’s any different from eating cow or pig or anything else.”
“Mmm, pig,” said Carlos.
“This . . .” said Lucia, “is pig’s feet.” She pulled a bloody hoof from its brown paper wrapping, waved it in the air. “It takes six weeks to prepare this soup.” She put the pig’s feet in her clay pot, along with a tub of black vinegar and a huge pile of ginger. She would boil this sludge once every morning and let it sit on the stove all day.
“In China, all mothers make this for their daughters,” she said. “To drink after the baby’s birth.”
“But you are American,” I said.
“Cabrón,” said Susi. “Smart-ass. Don’t listen to him.”
Susi was eighteen, the youngest in the house, just a kid. Carlos said she escaped from a pimp in some beach town near Esmeraldas, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him. Most nights she washed dishes at the Peruvian restaurant by the train station. Some days she cleaned houses with a service. She took an English class at the community center, too; Lucia had started helping with her assignments. The two of them sat at the kitchen table after dinner, Lucia kneeling on her chair, head bent over Susi’s notebook, as Susi wrote her essays by hand. Sometimes I heard them laughing, snorting like donkeys, acting like they were sisters.
One night Susi came back from work, panting, hardly able to breathe. She said a man had followed her all the way up the hill from the station to Main Street, tried to grab her by her hair. “I bit his hand,” she said, staring at her own like it was a diseased object. “Good,” said Lucia. I said maybe she shouldn’t wear those shoes with the ridiculous skinny heels. Lucia told me to go away. She made Susi sit, hang her head between her legs. “Breathe,” she said, patting Susi’s back. She made her rinse her mouth out with warm beer.
The next night Susi said to me, “Does Lucia have family?”
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“It’s a secret,” she said.
“Come on,” I said.
She frowned. “Does she have any friends? You know, girlfriends?”
“Is this some kind of game?”
Susi pouted. She was pretty, even though her eyes were slightly too small and too far apart, her nose too wide and too flat. But her body was tight, with those curvy hips, a perfect heart-shaped ass. She always wore her denim jacket over a miniskirt, and when she walked in those heels, it was like her body was trying to catch up to her head. A baby giraffe, said Lucia. Still, I could see why guys were hot for her.
“Can you keep a secret?” she said.
Susi had decided to throw a baby shower for Lucia. She made a cake with pink frosting, spread confetti on the table, strung up crepe paper streamers and hung balloons from the ceiling fan. Invited Celia and Ruth, our Vargas cousins who were hardly ever around, and Betty, her sister, and Mrs. Gutierrez, who put on a red-and-white-striped housedress for the occasion.
Lucia was surprised. She blinked her eyes. Rubbed her belly with both hands. She pulled ribbons off of presents. Onesies and bibs. Yellow pajamas with duck feet. The clothes, so small. A set of plastic bottles. From Mrs. Gutierrez, a bouncy chair that played tinny classical music. “It’s Mozart!” said Lucia. From Susi, a teddy bear and a pink hooded fleece jacket with ears. “Gracias, hermanita!” said Lucia. They hugged, cheek to cheek.
I called Mami after the party. “Have you asked her, hijo?” she said.
“It’s not so simple,” I said.
The truth was, I couldn’t tell if Lucia loved me. Wasn’t sure if I loved her. Mami never talked about love. Love is so American, she would’ve said. I hadn’t brought up the papers again. And I hadn’t yet told Lucia about Mami’s greatest wish: for Fredy to come to America to live with us and get his operations. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep it from her, but I also wasn’t ready to burden her with the hopes of so many.
Our baby was born with a round face
and dark curls and two eyes like lying-down teardrops. Wrinkled, red and angry, she arched her back and shook her fists, screeched like this world was bloody torture. I could see Lucia was alarmed. “Is she all right?” she asked the nurse. The nurse bundled the baby in a blanket, put her in Lucia’s arms, and immediately the body went limp. Her head rolled to one side, eyelids fluttered. She yawned, like a cat. Lucia and I laughed. I inspected her ears, her hands, her fingers, her toes, each tiny part perfectly formed. We named our daughter Esperanza Sylvia Bok. Esperanza. Hope. Sylvia, for my mother. Bok, Lucia’s name. I was afraid to have her name connected to mine. We called her Essy for short.
We spent two days together in the hospital room. It felt protected, like we were inside a cocoon. “We are a family now,” I said. “A beautiful family.” The nurses brought us everything—blankets and water and juices and ice, and meals we ordered from a menu, like at a restaurant. They changed Esperanza’s diapers, checked her weight and pulse, handed us a rubber pacifier when she cried. When Lucia slept, I held the baby, watched soccer on a television suspended from the ceiling, ESPN2. Never thought a hospital could be like this. I wanted to stay forever.
My Vargas cousins welcomed us at the house. Susi strung up yellow and white streamers, hung balloons. Carlos brought back a huge pot of spicy goat stew from the Ecuadorian buffet. We made rice and beans and sopa de pollo with cilantro. It felt like home.
When Essy was one week old, we took her to see a doctor at the Main Street Family Practice, between the barbershop and the Korean grocery. In the waiting room, Lucia filled out forms with the baby’s name, and our names, and her birthday, and our birthdays, and landlords and employers and important contact information. She could see all the papers made me nervous.
A woman came and shook my hand. Her name tag said “DR. VERA WANG.”