Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  “Silvia,” she said. “I think it’s starting.”

  Silvia lay her down on the carpet, with a sofa cushion beneath her head. She sat with her cell phone, timing the contractions, stroking Soli’s forehead. The pains felt like terrible gas cramps, and Soli wanted nothing more than to sit on a toilet and get them out. But that wasn’t what this was. This delivery was going to rip her body in two. She would die, surely. When Soli couldn’t stop herself from crying, Silvia let her cry. She seemed to know that this labor was not just physical.

  “Listen,” she said, taking Soli’s hand, wiping the hair from her wet face. “You know what happens, Soli? You know how parts of you go to the baby? Through the placenta? Your blood and your cells and your vitamins?” Soli knew none of this, but nodded. “Parts of that baby go through to you, too. His cells and his blood. He leaves pieces of himself inside you, and they’ll be there forever. It’s a two-way street, Soli. You live in each other. Forever.”

  Three hours later, Silvia drove Soli to the clinic. She waited at the check-in desk, barely able to stand on her feet, while Silvia confirmed repeatedly the price of the service, demanding it in writing, refusing to fill in paperwork until she had documented proof that she wouldn’t be paying more than she’d budgeted for this birth.

  “Just pay!” Soli finally shrieked. “Just pay!” Someone—she couldn’t see who—lowered her by the elbows into a wheelchair and wheeled her to a delivery room. A woman in blue clothes came in and introduced herself as Nurse Camila. She explained to Soli what she was about to do. Soli heard none of it, and allowed her feet to be guided into stirrups, her knees pushed apart.

  “You’ll feel some pressure now,” the nurse said. Her hand shoved into Soli and she gasped. The hand prodded her insides, explored her like a hard little animal, and she began to weep. She was back on the rocky roadside with the men in cowboy hats. They shoved themselves inside her. They ground her down to a dusty pile of sand. She closed her eyes to the fluorescent lights above, her ears to the nurse’s murmur. The nurse pushed deeper and she screamed.

  “Whoa! Okay, Solimar. I’m done for now. I just checked how open you were—your cervix. Okay? So we know how far along you are. How close to delivering.”

  Soli let out a long, low hum.

  “Nice work, Solimar. You’re three centimeters. You’re on your way.”

  Silvia came in, at last. “I’m late for a job,” she said. “I have to go.”

  “Go.” Soli lay on her side, parsing out her breath like the nurse had shown her. She shut her eyes against a fresh contraction.

  “Try to relax,” Silvia said. “You can do this on your own, Soli, you understand? I could lose this client if I don’t—”

  “Go!” Soli growled. She kicked out feebly, her foot smacking Silvia’s side. She turned onto her other side and did not watch her leave. The door clicked shut, and a cascade of liquid gushed from between her legs. “No,” she gasped. “Help!” she called. “I need help!” She continued to gush, no matter how she tried to stop it, and she was back on the flour truck, piss running down her thighs, the boys around her silent and staring.

  The door opened again, and Nurse Camila walked in.

  “Who closed this door?” The nurse spoke to her in Spanish, and Soli began to cry.

  “I need help,” she answered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  The nurse stopped when her foot slid. “Ai,” she said. “Okay.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident!”

  The nurse gathered towels from a cupboard and spread them on the floor, then took a seat next to Soli.

  “That’s your fluid,” she said. “Your water broke. That’s all, Soli. Nothing to worry about.”

  Alone in the delivery room, Soli labored for eight hours longer. At times, she wanted nothing more than sleep. Other times, she was certain the pain would kill her, that she was doomed to a life alone with her burdens, that being alone would be her death. Camila came and went, monitoring her blood pressure, offering her plastic cups filled with ice cubes. Soli was hungry and weak. Her face and neck were soaked. She sucked on the ice until a late, thunderous contraction made her chuck the cup at the wall. A team of medical personnel trailed in, as if summoned by this last contraction. More nurses, a doctor, a man setting instruments on a tray.

  The doctor stepped to her side and began talking, but Soli heard nothing but the last part: “You’re going to start pushing now. Are you ready? Push down like you’re going to the bathroom.”

  Soli did just this; it was all she could do, and through the waves of pain and a fear of shitting came the relief of knowing she was doing what was right and real. She closed her eyes and the earth charged forward, the trees rushing by. She felt the wind against her eyelids, Checo’s arm around her waist. Checo’s eyes, their walls of intent. She focused on his eyes. When the trees vanished and the earth grew dark and close, the thought of Checo wrapped around her and he pulled her through. For twelve more contraction cycles, she breathed and pushed, tunneling endlessly.

  And then: “Do you want to feel your baby’s head?” Camila guided Soli’s hand to a spot between her legs, where she felt the small globe of flesh, warm and wet and foreign. At last, with a tearing scream, she bore down and pushed and felt the solid slide of a body pass from hers.

  The people around her leapt into action. “You did it!” someone cried. “He’s here!” The nurse held the baby up for Soli to see. He was crimson and shone with slime, his eyes trapped shut. He was barely human. An alien cord extended from his navel and disappeared somewhere between her legs. She stared, appalled. Above the cord she caught a glimpse of a miniscule, very human penis. A boy. Her boy. He thrust his fists into the air and wailed. Moments later, still slick with fluid, he lay on her naked chest, his small lips churning, searching for her breast.

  • • •

  HE WAS SMALLEST AT NIGHT, when shadows lapped at his edges. In the dark, he was magically small, a miracle, a sprite. It was easy, in the hours before dawn, to think Ignacio might die, only because it seemed impossible that such a creature could live a whole week and then two, then three and four. It was impossible to think that four weeks could grow into a lifetime.

  Love wasn’t a word that meant anything to Soli, not when she looked at her boy. Love was a television word. Soli held her sleeping son, his fists balled and eyes shut tight, clinging to a dream. What she felt for him was epiphany. She had awakened, sprouted a new layer of skin, pink and raw and wholly vulnerable. For the first time since arriving in America, she was well and truly scared. And so she named him Ignacio, for the patron of retreats.

  At times, the fear consumed her. Fear that Ignacio would stop. Simply stop. That each breath, the revelation that it was, could surely not lead to another.

  Fear that should anything happen to her child, she would be obliterated. She was at the world’s mercy now, in a way she’d never known.

  Fear that should something happen to her, her son would never know who his mother was, this woman whose every inhalation raked with desire. Awakened, fearful, Soli had room for little else. Room, barely, to think of Checo. Room, barely, to think of her baby’s other possible fathers—the roadside vaqueros who’d left her balled up like a trodden insect. Lucky Ignacio. Lucky boy. Not all fathers were trovadors.

  But in the end, there was only one possibility that she could live with. In a clinic recovery room, at her core a punctured and spewing volcano, Soli locked eyes with the parcel in her arms. She had spent many nights worrying about how this moment would play out, whether the creature she birthed would resemble a rapist, whether she’d live out her days with an angel-skinned reminder of three devils by a roadside. But there in the clinic, an hour after she’d given birth, she awoke to the sight of her son, swaddled and placed in the wheeled transparent bassinet. She’d picked him up, placed him against the bump of her belly, and took her first
long look. She felt herself falling again, this time faster. From her son’s head rose a brief tremor of hair, and planted in the center of his face was a fine razor of a nose, Checo’s nose, rendered by some miracle in sweet, picayune perfection.

  19.

  A tune, a hum from Soli’s lips, each note a pinprick to sensitive ears. She hardly knew she was singing.

  “Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez,” she whispered to the bundle in her arms. “I will call you Nacho, and so will your cousins and friends. If only we knew your father’s family name, you would have that, too.” She couldn’t name him Checo; to Soli, only Checo was Checo. And so, to combat the primal, heart-crunching fear, he would be Ignacio. “And El Viento for your father, for the wind,” she said. Digestively, at least, he was living up to this.

  So far, like a good son, he had given Soli everything she wanted: for Ignacio to guard her thumb in the curl of his fist, for him to reach for her in that baby way, his hands trembling, as if air and light were his own phantasmic inventions. She wanted him to search the sky for her, to kick his legs and struggle for her breast, as if milk were air and suckling, breathing. All she wanted was that he stay this way for a good while longer. As long as he stayed the same, she could stay the same, wrapped in her room and sheltered from the do-this and do-that of the world beyond the door.

  His shit smelled like baking bread. His lips were hardly lips at all. The button of his chin, the porcelain poppy cups of his ears. The sturdy fat of his hands.

  “I will tell you about your father, Ignacio,” Soli said, but she fell asleep before she began. She sat propped up in bed with eyes closed and mouth open, cradling him in one arm. She would wake again and continue: “I will tell you about your father, the wind. I’ll tell it to you now, when you’re too young to have to understand.” She would speak quietly so as not to invite the snatching spirits.

  “How to explain La Bestia? It was a monster train. You don’t know what monsters are, but being a child, you soon will. Your father and I rode La Bestia together. He protected me. There were bandits on that train who would throw you off it, send you down to the slicing wheels, if you didn’t give them all you had. There were hit men and con men and some downright no-good majaderos. But we won’t talk about them. We’ll talk about your father the wind. He was one of the good ones. There were many good ones, people who would rather leave the place they loved than stay home to ruin it.

  “Your father said he was going to be a gardener. He could name every tree we passed. He would probably move on, he said, start off with a boss but build his own business.” Checo had said this only to Soli, on one of their few mornings together, when they lay wrapped in his sweater in the predawn chill. Around his braying, bragging boys, he kept his mouth shut, pretended along with the rest of them that nothing much mattered.

  Here Soli paused, because she thought of Pepe, the loudest of all, and the smallest. Checo had kept an eye on him. He did it in a way, of course, that Pepe would never have noticed; and, likewise, Pepe sought out Checo, hovered beneath his protective wing in a way he thought Checo would never suspect.

  Pepe was tonto enough to play the sorts of daredevil games the big guys did. Lying down on the train, dozing, running and jumping when they had room, playing kick-me-in-the-chest, just to pass the time. One afternoon, as the sun burned low and orange on the horizon, Pepe lay on his side, watching a small town rush past. His voice was lost under the roar of the train, but from the way he opened his mouth and held it, the way he jutted his chin just so, Soli knew he was singing.

  He sat up. “I see it!” he’d shouted. “I see it!”

  Soli had turned to find a few tall towers in the distance, as long and thin as cigarettes.

  “It’s Arizona!” Pepe cried. “I know it is!”

  He jumped to his feet.

  And BAM. Like a gun had gone off. Pepe hit a tunnel. Soli screamed. Everyone screamed. Only Checo had the sense to grab in the dark for Pepe’s arm. He caught it. When they emerged from the tunnel, the boy swung like a pendulum, batting against the train’s metal flank. He was silent. His head hung down so that no one could see his face to know if he was alive. “Pepe!” Checo had shouted. “Pepe!” It was a miracle that Checo had caught him, but sometimes miracles don’t amount to much. Pepe wasn’t answering, and Checo himself was falling from the train, dragged down by the boy’s dead weight. The others, Mario and Flaco and Nutsack, were calling, Drop him! Drop him! They pulled back on Checo’s legs. But Checo held on until the last thin finger of the boy’s hand had sidled from his grip. And Pepe fell beneath the train. They felt barely a bump below, and then he was gone, as if he had never existed. Not everyone would have tried to save Pepe. Some would have been too slow, others too tired. Soli wondered, in the silent and horrified hours that followed, if Pepe had had a moment to realize that the tall buildings were not Arizona, that America was still a long way away. She hoped he hadn’t. She hoped that when he’d died, all he’d seen was the great city against the sunset, a quivering filament of glory. What a thrill for a little boy, to discover America.

  “But you want to know where your papi is, Nacho.” She paused. “Nacho. We don’t know.” The last time she’d seen Checo was outside a factory in northern Mexico, running for his life, Soli exploding inside, more certain with every second that letting him go would be the worst decision she’d ever made. But she’d had no choice. There was no long goodbye, no final kiss. At the edge of the Sonoran desert, shots rang out. Whether they were bandits or drug traffickers or drug-trafficking bandits, she would never know. What she did know was that the whole group ran—Mario, Flaco, Nutsack, and Checo. They scattered in all directions. What she did know was that she was safe, and so was her hidden baby. “I made it,” she told Nacho. “I made you.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing when I did it, but it turns out I survived for you. I might tell you all this again someday. I might tell you about your father when you’re old enough to know. I may tell you about my voyage some years from now, when you’ve grown and you’ve known a little of the bad stuff of life. Just when you think you know what’s what and you can’t be touched, I will tell you everything. And when I do, Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez, you’ll know what you are made of.”

  • • •

  THE FIRST MONTH PASSED in a flash. Soli did not grow bored. She did sit for hours before the television, but spent most of them watching Ignacio work at her breast. When you have just one possession, you guard it with your life. The you that once centered your universe becomes nothing but a keeper of the one precious thing. As the weeks passed and Ignacio proved increasingly that he would live, Soli’s fear shifted to the newly formed knowledge that she was now tied more fiercely to fate and luck than she’d ever been before. Having a child was like turning inside out and exposing to the world the soft pulp of her heart. If something happened to Ignacio—if illness took him or an accident, she herself would never recover. If the night stole his breath away, as sometimes happened to the very very young, her own breath would never return. At night, thoughts like this sat vigil around her bed. She woke every few hours to look at him, lying next to her in a nest of blankets. She felt for his breath, touched a hand to his forehead, and tried to sleep again.

  But those were the nights. The days were a different story. The days brought her light and comfort and the eager Berkeley spring. And amid the uncertainty of new motherhood, the sleepless fog that hung over her days, Soli felt, at last, that she had a home. Motherhood was her dwelling, the boy at her breast her hearth. After a month of heavy dawns, Soli returned to the Cassidy bungalow, this time with a basket full of boy.

  20.

  Rishi arrived fuming, after an hour of trying to park in downtown Oakland. The lobby of the social services building was as bleak as he’d expected. A guard who’d fallen asleep on his perch pointed him to a partition in the lobby’s far corner.

  Every head turned to watch him take
his seat—twenty, maybe thirty people who looked like they wanted to be parents, and two at the front, who looked like they worked for social services.

  Kavya nudged him. “Where were you?”

  He’d come straight from work. He was sweating and had expected snacks. The Department of Social Services apparently didn’t budget for snacks. The private agency they’d been to had set out sushi and bottles of wine and sparkling water infused with a variety of subtle fruit flavors. The private agency had shown them a video of testimonials from the parents and children they’d matched. What Rishi remembered most were blue skies and sprinklers. The room they’d sat in was wood-paneled, a sauna of central heating and perfume. The meeting had felt like a two-hour infomercial, capped off by the sticker shock of the estimated cost of private adoption. They had spent their money, nearly all of it, on trying to get Kavya pregnant. It was a gamble that had seemed entirely worthwhile, at the time.

  And so he found himself here, in the beige florescence of the social services building, with an empty stomach and a sullen wife.

  Kavya crossed her arms and gripped her elbows. He felt her deltoids recede and knew she was trying, quite literally, to give him the cold shoulder. What went on for the next hour was the distribution of checklists and training packets. Before him lay a pamphlet titled “Foster Care Facts.” Rishi liked facts. In a financial panic, he had called the DSS to find out about state-run adoptions. It turned out that the state ran foster-adoptions, meaning that fostering came first, and if the circumstances aligned, adoption followed.

  • • •

  THE ENTIRE UNDERTAKING still felt distant to Rishi, but the meeting facilitators spoke of their decision like it was a foregone conclusion. Here, the need, not the price tag, was overwhelming. The county at the time had 1,400 foster children and 251 participating families. Children were in need of a safe place to live.