Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  When she left the Cassidy home each day, crossing Shattuck Avenue to the bus stop, she noticed how soft the sidewalks were. Here in Berkeley, the ground forgave, and through these hills the people walked softly, like angels. They shopped and laughed and sat on the grassy median between lanes of traffic to eat their gourmet pizza. She boarded the bus that would take her home and pushed her way into a window seat. Always, she pressed her forehead to the window and searched the faces that streamed past, slowly first, then faster as the bus picked up speed, and slower, slower, slower, as it came to another stop.

  Sometimes she thought she saw Checo. She saw him in the young men who clustered around coffee shops with wild hair and stony shoulders. Some wore headbands and bracelets made of string. She imagined that Checo would end up somewhere remarkable, not as a fruit picker or factory worker or gardener, but a groundbreaker. A world-changer. Or else the companion of a rich young woman with short hair who hated her father. He would be taken care of, or he would be extraordinary. If she saw him again, would she claim him? What if she saw him right then and there, on a crowded strip of sidewalk? Would she drag him into her life of babies and buses and houses to clean? Or would she leave him to be young and blanketed in sun, lounging in the legs of a fairy-haired girl?

  The day she’d told the señora of her pregnancy, she left the Cassidys’ with a stronger sense that her child was coming.

  “What happened to you?” Silvia sprang from the doorway and unbuttoned her coat, then landed on the sofa next to her, breathing heavily. “You feeling all right? Bueno.” She placed a hand on Soli’s belly and called into it, “Bueno, que tal?”

  “I told them I’m pregnant,” she said.

  Silvia sat up. “No, you didn’t. What did they say? I told you not to tell yet. What happened?”

  And so she said to Silvia what the señora had said to her. Soli would work for them for as long as she could, and then she would stop. Silvia grunted at this like they’d conned her. She rubbed her cheek and sighed.

  “And then,” Soli said, “I’ll be their nanny.”

  Silvia had always been beautiful to Soli. She was her strong-armed and lusty-haired cousin, her eyes fierce with life. She moved like a woman who’d woken up and figured out how to live this dream. But now Silvia let out a small laugh and grew very quiet.

  “Housecleaner to nanny. That’s a big step up, Soli.” Silvia stood still, considering her. “You know a lot about children, do you?” There was something in her voice that didn’t make sense. “Okay, then. You’ll keep working. And you’ll pay me back. For the coyote, if he comes. For all the rest.”

  “Silvia.”

  “What.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  She looked into Soli’s face like she was trying to read her. “You are lucky, Soli. Do you know how lucky?”

  At the time, she didn’t know. So she said the thing that she did know: “She said something about yoga.”

  Silvia frowned.

  “The señora, she wants me to do something called yoga for pregnant women. She wants to take me.”

  The corner of Silvia’s mouth quivered, a smile that she tried to fold away. But the laughter boiled up inside her and sputtered out, first low and then high-pitched, a guffaw, a hooting like a drunken owl. Silvia laughed for a good long time.

  • • •

  AS SOLI’S MIDDLE BEGAN to expand, sleeping on the sofa became impossible. “We’ll move you to the boys’ room,” Silvia said. “They can sleep out here for a while.” Daniel and Aldo lit up at the prospect of trading their double bed for sleeping bags and the room with the television. The switch was made. Waking up two, three times a night now, Soli would catch sight of the flickering television in the living room, its volume turned low, the boys sleeping before it or lying awake with eyes glazed over at three in the morning, four.

  One night, Soli lay in bed, staring into the darkened room, when the door opened. In the faint light stood a boy. Daniel. He entered, dragging his sleeping bag behind him. Aldo followed. The thrill of all-night television had worn off, and the boys wanted their room back. Daniel laid out his sleeping bag, then helped Aldo straighten his. The boys stretched themselves out side by side, parallel to Soli’s bed. Soon they were asleep, the three of them to a room. And that’s how things stayed.

  • • •

  SHE DREAMT ONE NIGHT of trains, trains slowing to a halt, trains stopping, at last. She stumbled in her sleep and jarred herself awake, just as she’d first tripped over the solid earth, stepping from a train onto stationary ground.

  “I found you a truck going west,” Checo had told her. “It’ll be here in the morning.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m going east, amorcita. We’re leaving tonight.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  “I will.”

  “You won’t make it through the desert, Soli. I can’t be responsible for you.”

  “Who says you’re responsible for me? I can take care of myself.”

  He grinned, then looked very sad and said, “Okay. Come along if you want.”

  They piled onto the bed of a truck. Around them, sacks of flour rose in solid stacks, higher than their heads. Pepe was gone, and now they were five: Soli, Checo, Flaco, Mario, and Nutsack. The boys had stopped treating her differently—they talked about women and passed gas. When they needed to, they angled themselves through the truck slats and pissed with the wind. All of them but Checo, who was apparently above such biological requirements.

  The sacks were packed in tightly enough not to avalanche when the truck made a sudden brake, but the air was thick with flour. Opening her backpack, she drank down one bottle of water, then two. With each bump in the road, clouds of flour puffed and settled in her throat. She drank three bottles of water that morning, which was the wrong thing to do.

  Soli had to go. What’s a girl trapped on a truck bed to do? Does she piss on herself? Does she squat in the corner and endure the stares? Does she angle herself through a slat and hope for the best? These were all possibilities, but they weren’t her possibilities: She wouldn’t be pissing in front of Checo and the others. She banged on the wall of the driver’s car. She yelled. Her bladder burned like a lit stove.

  Checo, then Flaco and Mario, stood up and joined in the banging and shouting, but they soon gave up.

  “I’ll find something for you,” Checo said. He rummaged in her backpack and came up with an empty water bottle. Soli shook her head. “Flaco,” he ordered, “give me your hat.” Flaco grunted and pulled his cap over his eyes.

  “Checo, please,” Soli said. Checo shook the backpack, emptied it of everything, and handed it over. Soli began to weep and laugh, and then bent over with pain.

  At a certain point, a girl loses hold of her possibilities. So Soli stood where she stood, her head pressed to a flour sack, and because she could not stop it, she let it go. The urine gushed between her legs. It announced itself more loudly than the engine or the growl of the road. It spilled with joy, its own private gusto. The boys listened too, their heads down. Their eyes hovered on the pool that formed at her feet. Only Checo walked over, put his hands on her shoulders, and pressed his cheek to hers. She cried tears as hot as the piss that streamed down the truck bed and caked the flour and fell through the cracks to the road. Her thighs burned against the soaked fabric of her pants, but in slow, halting steps she walked back to her seat, and for minutes, there was silence. To escape their eyes, Soli closed hers.

  • • •

  THE MORNING OF THE SECOND DAY, they stopped outside a massive yellow building. “It’s a tortilla factory,” Checo explained. Soli had never thought of tortillas made in factories. If pushed, she would have accepted that they existed, somewhere in the world. Just not in her world. The thought of warm, fresh tortillas brought desire dancing through her.
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  “What food do we have?” she asked Checo.

  “Almost nothing left. A little bread. I’m saving it.”

  “That’s all? What are we supposed to eat?”

  He glanced at the others, then back at her. “I told you this wouldn’t be easy.”

  When the door of the truck bed rolled open, three men jumped in. They each grabbed a flour sack and hurled it off the bed, where another man caught it and stalked off to the factory. They grabbed and hurled, grabbed and hurled, until the bed was empty. And for a good two hours, Soli and the boys had the truck bed to themselves. They stretched out. Soli slept in Checo’s arms. They awoke to Mario and Nutsack playing a balancing game, each trying to stand on their hands as the truck sped along the bumpy road. Flaco was turning cartwheels, falling drunkenly at each landing. And then the truck stopped again.

  Onions were loaded on, crates and crates of red onions. The boys groaned at the smell.

  “You don’t smell much better,” Checo said to them. “At least now we don’t have to smell you.” And so they set off, riding among onions. Soli’s pants had dried by now, and she began to think that it wasn’t so terrible, this northern voyage, that the stories of danger and death had come from those too cowardly to make the trip themselves. This was an adventure, truly. She was choosing her own path, alongside Checo’s, and she’d never been happier.

  When the truck slowed again and came to a halt, she called out, “What’s next, muchachos? Garlic and cheese?”

  The boys grew still, peering through the crates to the door.

  “Nutsack, you’re in luck,” she tried again. “With the garlic and cheese we won’t even smell you now!”

  Checo shushed her. He stood. The others stood as well, searching for something to see, when all there was to see were crates and crates of onions. The truck grew absolutely silent. And then she heard it: the shuffle of footsteps outside, gruff voices she didn’t recognize, followed by the truck driver’s voice. He was answering them, and though she couldn’t make out his words, she heard each statement end with an upward inflection. And then she heard shouts, a hasty stampede of feet from the front of the truck to the back. And then the truck bed rolled slowly open. Next to her, she heard Checo swallow.

  She whispered, “What is it?”

  “Shh!” He squeezed her hand so hard she nearly cried out, but the look on Nutsack’s face silenced her. Nutsack was breathing hard in the still air. His chest heaved and sank with every breath. They heard voices again.

  “How many?”

  “Just some men. No money.”

  “How many?”

  “Four. Five.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “Four.”

  They waited through a long silence. And at last, they heard a low rumble. Soli sighed. The rumble of an engine, she thought.

  “We’re going,” she said.

  Checo shook his head. He looked at Soli now, as he never had before. He looked like he was very, very sorry for what he’d done.

  The rumble continued, and then grew closer. They listened, as floods of onions tumbled from their crates, barrelled across the truck bed and onto the ground. The crates moved out from around them, and she was blinded by the glare of a flashlight. Checo shoved her into a corner of the truck bed. “Hide!” A row of onion crates formed a low wall, and she scrambled down behind them.

  Heavy hands seized her by the shoulders: Flaco, trying to pull her out.

  “No!” she hissed, and sank her teeth into his wrist. Flaco cried out and cursed. And then he froze, the beam of a flashlight trained on his back. Slowly, he turned, shuffled to the mouth of the truck.

  “This is all?” a man snarled. “Four fucking men?”

  “Look, señor, you’re stopping every truck on this road. I don’t know what you think you’re going to find—”

  “Shut up!”

  A burly man stomped onto the truck bed and yanked the boys by their shirts. She watched from behind the crates as they were lined up, Checo farthest from the truck, Nutsack closest. In the dark of night, in the glare of the headlights, she could see that the ground was covered in sand. They were nearing the desert. They were almost at the end of their journey. The man who stood before the boys was bald and muscular. He seemed to be wearing a tight black shirt. But no, Soli realized a few moments later—he was shirtless, and covered in a complex collage of ink. She’d never seen a human like this before. Two other tattooed men stood beside him, holding up flashlights, guns slung across their chests.

  Her friends were ordered to empty their pockets, and Nutsack fumbled with a watch on his wrist. He handed it to the man and received, in return, a kick in the gut. Mario pulled some pesos from his jeans and shrugged.

  “Pinche baboso. Don’t shrug at me.” The man snatched the pesos from Mario’s shaking hand. “How about your friend?”

  Beside him, Flaco pulled out the linings of his pockets, then held up his wrists.

  It was Checo’s turn. He stood with his hands on his hips. “I’ve got nothing for you,” he said.

  “Empty out your pockets.” Checo reached in his pockets.

  “I don’t believe you,” the man said. He called to his cronies, “Get his pants off.”

  Checo didn’t wait for the men. He undid his own zipper, let his jeans fall to the ground, and stepped out of them. He stood in his underwear as a man with a gun riffled through the pockets and came up with nothing.

  The first man cocked his chin at Checo. “Okay, then, take off your underwear. We’ll see what else you’ve got.”

  Checo straightened, his hands behind his back, his chest thrust forward. He didn’t move. The tatooed man drew closer and stared him down. Checo stared back, unblinking. For several moments, they waited, each considering the other. The tattooed man let his eyes drift from Checo’s face down to his crotch. Then he took a slow stroll and stopped, his face just inches from the back of Checo’s head. He stood there a good long while, breathing down Checo’s neck and saying nothing. As the seconds ticked down, Checo seemed to grow stronger and more firmly rooted to the earth. He was a boy no longer. He was a man.

  And then he ran. Soli almost screamed at the sudden bolt, the drum of his feet and the crack of the rifle. Checo vanished. The three men fired their guns into the dark, but Soli heard nothing—no screams, no indication that Checo had been hit. Either he lay bleeding on the desert floor or he was charging through the night on his own. Either way, he was gone.

  She watched the other boys fall, kicked to the ground, kicked in the head, and spat on. When the men finally left, the driver of the truck reappeared. Grunting and muttering weakly to himself, he tossed the crates back onto the truck bed, gathering armfuls of onions from the ground, dropping a few and watching helplessly as they rolled away. Soli stayed hidden behind the crate, until the driver salvaged what he could and rolled the door shut. The engine coughed to life and they took off, leaving the boys behind.

  When they stopped again, hours and hours later, Soli was nearly unconscious with hunger. The meager collection of food was gone. The boys had left their backpacks behind, and she’d ransacked them, found and devoured the bread. The other bags had nothing to eat, just bandages and gum, a notepad. The truck door rumbled open, and this time she didn’t have the strength to hide. She sat at the center of it, and the driver cursed when he saw her.

  “How long have you been here?”

  She had no real answer. “Where are we going?”

  “North.”

  “Where north?”

  “Denver.”

  She’d never heard of it. “Is that in the States?”

  “Where do you need to go?”

  “California. Berkeley. Can you take me?”

  He was chewing on something. Whatever it was, he spat to the ground. “I can get you there,” he said, and began to shut the door.<
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  “Wait! Do you have any food?”

  He disappeared to the front of the truck and returned with more people and more crates of onions. Soli sank inside.

  11.

  Kavya and Rishi were keen budgeters—they had to be, living in Berkeley. The cost of this baby was not in their budget, nor could they have squeezed it into their budget. But still, the checks were written, the credit cards swiped. Their first step was an updated fertility workup: a series of blood tests and an ultrasound. The next step, a hysterosalpingogram, a word that rattled and dinged like a slot machine. A technician threaded a catheter into her cervix and up through the rails of her reproductive system. A contrast dye was injected. With Rishi by her side, one hand on her shoulder, she watched the dye on-screen course through her insides, pass through her fallopian tubes, and signal that they were open for business.

  Back at home, Rishi fell to the bed, exhausted. He pulled Kavya down beside him.

  “It’s beginning,” she said.

  “It is.” They listened to their breath fall in and out of sync.

  A week later, Kavya was scheduled for an endometrial biopsy. She barely noticed the spear-ended salad tongs they stuck inside her to pinch away at the inner lining of her uterus. These were simply instruments of the step-taking. And this particular step proved what she’d hoped: Her uterus was the consummate hostess. And the money that bled from their bank account and soaked through their solvency simply gave her permission to push ahead; the more they spent, the sillier it felt to stop. The fact that their insurance covered none of it didn’t matter.

  And neither did the daily shots. The first time, Kavya quaked at the thought of jabbing herself. Rishi, bravely, offered to give it a try, but the act produced in him such heaving anxiety that Kavya took back the needle. Soon, the quick jab before her shower grew so routine that it seemed she’d begun every day of her life by gathering a roll of belly fat and stabbing it with a hypodermic. The one egg a month her body had always known was amped up to twelve, twenty, twenty-five eggs. She became a very busy chicken.