Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  29.

  Soli began her retreat, burrowing a tunnel to the inside of the inside of herself. It was safer there, where no one could see her truly, where she could keep things small and dark. There were hundreds in the camp, maybe thousands—hard to tell from the outside, when they marched her along the barbed wire, hands shackled to a chain around her waist. From the outside, all she saw were fantastical domes, ivory-white beneath the blue sky, surrounded by never-ending flatland. The domes were like nothing she’d seen before. From the outside, they were pleasure castles. On the inside, she found rows, dozens, of bunk beds, like in an orphanage in a children’s book. Prisoners slept head to toe, and at night, they shivered. She had a single purple blanket. She would never forget this blanket.

  Nothing feels lonelier than not knowing where your loved ones are. Ignacio. Aldo, Daniel. Even Silvia. She’d filled with ache on the inside, and had no room left for food. She was saturated with sorrow.

  At night, the winds gathered speed across the land, unbridled by buildings or trees. The cold of the open land was spiteful. She’d assumed she was in a building, but soon it became clear that this was no more than a tent, a very large one. The night wind hissed through the cracks and folds, circled the dome until it found her. She spent the nights gripping her blanket, stretching it as best she could around her bare feet. The prisoners shivered and their teeth clacked. Imagine two hundred sets of clacking teeth. Soli kept herself together by thinking about Ignacio, replaying him again and again. Sometimes she’d think of Berkeley, the people eating pizza in the middle of the street, the lazy music that trailed from restaurants. And other times—she couldn’t help it—she’d remember the night she first saw the ivory domes glowing from within, the sky smeared with stars, and she couldn’t help thinking that this was a beautiful place, a dream arrayed on a naked plain.

  She rarely slept at night. If she did doze off, a shriek usually yanked her back. She heard men in pain, and women. But she got used to this, as people get used to struggles of any measure—the guards who behaved like insolent children, the mildew smell of the food, the roaches that scurried beneath the beds at night. She got used to the hands that slid down her pants, past the loose elastic waistbands. She got used to the feeling of never being warm or clean. In that first place, she wore a baggy gray sweatshirt, jogging pants, and sandals. Even with the residual paunch of pregnancy, Soli’s pants slid down when she walked, unless she bunched the waist in her hand. Silvia would have slapped her chest and laughed.

  Solimar was Alien 127676. The beds on either side of hers were occupied by Aliens 127677 and 127678, also known as Serena and Salma. That first day, Serena and Salma were already deep in conversation when Soli arrived at her bed, but they spooled her into their discussion as if she’d always been there, because what else was there to do? They remarked upon the fact that all their names began with S, which was a comfort. Days later, when the three of them were moved from the dome, marched to the main prison building, and shut together in a cell, they were grateful. To be grateful, in such a place, was a small surprise.

  They called their room la juala, the cage. Its only openings were a door, kept locked most of the time, and a small high window in the wall, no bigger than a piece of notebook paper. It was too high to look through, but they could see if it was gray outside, or blue. It kept in them the old habit of looking for the weather, of expecting to go outside and feel it.

  Criminals lived in the adjacent cells—real steal-and-rape types, arsonists and con men and drug dealers, more varieties of evil than Soli cared to ponder. They trailed through the yard and down the corridor. She passed them when she went to the cafeteria. She heard them howl and wrangle at night.

  Because such men occupied the public spaces, they kept the women locked in their rooms. Women were treated like criminals, while thieves roamed the yard like bison, and men were as free as children to play and fight. Soli was no angel. She was fairly sure she wasn’t a criminal, either. Still, kept with criminals, though she’d stolen no more than a number, some water bottles, and a jug of wine in all her life, Soli started to believe that maybe she was one of them, that some evil resided within her and the people in uniform had been the first to find her out.

  At night, she cradled the microscopic slips of her son that had passed from his body to hers. She foraged for memories of him. In the mornings, they rose with the blast of a horn and said to each other, Today is Monday, Today is Tuesday. They kept track of the days like this, because it seemed to them—to Soli, at least—that if the days could be counted, then they’d have to come to an end. At times, the three women found themselves laughing, and this place on the inside didn’t feel so terribly bleak, just ludicrous. Soli shut off a part of her mind so she could live. In the mornings, the guards walked down the corridor, opening doors, yelling for them to stand up and be counted. They were counted, lined up, and herded to the cafeteria. After breakfast they were given twenty minutes to mill around the yard. This was where Soli felt the most watched, out in the open air. The eyes behind darkened windows were palpable. Once they were taken back inside and locked in their rooms, they sat on their beds and gazed up at the rectangle of light. She could stand up and move to the other side of the room, if she wanted. She felt her behind spreading and fattening, weighing her down with every passing day.

  One night, Soli had a dream that the door opened and a man came in to take Serena away. “Where am I going?” Serena asked. “Am I getting out? Am I out? Where are you taking me now? Where are we going?” She went on squawking like a frightened crow until she was slapped into silence. Soli tried to get up and stop them, to say Serena, wait. Or Serena, goodbye. But sleep pinned her to her bed.

  When she did wake to the blast of a horn, she sat up and said, “Today is Tuesday, Serena, and I had the strangest dream.” But when she looked across the room, Serena was gone.

  Serena was gone, and then Serena became Jeanette.

  And there was nothing to say about Jeanette, except that she kept to herself and said nothing at all. They’d wake in the morning and Salma would say, “Today is Wednesday.” And Jeanette would look at them as if to say, Of course today is Wednesday.

  And even when Soli asked her if she spoke Spanish, she didn’t say a thing. But when Salma and Soli spoke, Jeanette seemed to follow their words, even when they led to nothing. Even when they spoke purely for sound.

  “Walls,” Salma would say.

  “Balls.”

  “Calls.”

  “Falls.”

  They could spend an hour or more this way, throwing rhymes back and forth, in English, to see who the poet was, the trovador.

  “Fly.”

  “High.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Jeanette stayed out of this nonsense dance of theirs. Sometimes Soli wondered if words inside a cage meant anything at all. Sometimes they spoke about their children. Salma had three at home in Chicago. They were born in America, and living with their aunt. And if Salma got deported, she’d lose them. They would stay behind, and she’d be back in Mexico, childless, her children motherless. “But I’d find a way,” Salma said. “I’d come back across to get them. Or I’d find the money to bring them with me, back home. We’d be poor as hell—I don’t know what we’d do. It’s not safe anymore in my old town. But we’d be together. And any place, even the worst part of home, is better than this cage . . . Don’t get offended,” she said. “You’re the only good thing.”

  And Soli told her about Ignacio, how she didn’t know where he was, just that he was somewhere in Berkeley. In care, she’d been told, which sounded like nothing, like the passage of air through barbed wire. He must have had another mother, another father, maybe a sister and brother and piles of toys, and perhaps he was even happy, and perhaps he was with a señor and señora who had their own Mexican housekeepers, who drank tea and did yoga just like the Cassidys. She told Salma about the Cassidys too, but
found that after a while, she didn’t have much to say about them. So mostly, it was Nacho, things Nacho had done, how he liked to open windows, how he liked being propped on her knees and pony-bounced, how they’d dance together in the empty living room of the house on Cedar Street.

  And Salma said, “At least I know where my children are, at least they’re safe at home. If I were you, Soli—if I were you I don’t know what I’d do. I’d be hanging from the bars of this cage, wailing like La Llorona until they let me out.”

  “And what’s the use of that?” Soli asked. “If I didn’t shut my own mouth, they’d do it for me.” Through all of this Jeanette said nothing about her children, if she had them, where they were, where her regret resided. Sometimes Soli would wake in the night feeling hot, and thoughts of Ignacio would scuttle into her head and scare away the sleep. She’d look over and see Jeanette staring at her, her eyes two beacons from a lighthouse.

  There was only so much loss a person could take, and once Soli reached her fill, her head, or maybe her heart, said Enough’s enough. And it spun a web, thin as a whisper at first, but thickening with time. As the shock dulled, her old life, dreamlike, began to slip from her grasp. Her new existence stepped forward, and Soli followed, held together by the paltry web inside. Life in jail grew nearly tolerable for a while, for a few weeks, until something new happened and kicked into her head the idea that No, this is not for me.

  One day she woke up and said, “Today is Wednesday,” and went about her day until it was time for dinner. She sat in the dining hall with Salma and silent Jeanette. They’d been served a thin slice of bread and a concoction in a bowl, something like pozole, a sludgy grain of some sort, some mashed-up beans mixed in and at the base of it, an unseasoned tomato sauce. This was a good meal compared to most—most of what they ate was overcooked and starchy; it filled them up but left them dull and bloated. Salma had been talking so long that Soli had lost track of what she was saying, and happened to look down into Salma’s soup.

  “Salma,” she hissed, and pointed.

  Salma stopped talking, looked down, and cursed. What she saw there was as long as her thumb, its sides littered with legs. Two pincers sprang from its head. Even Jeanette leaned over and stared into the bowl.

  “What should I do?” Salma asked.

  “Tell them,” Soli said. “That’s some haunted soup. They can’t make you eat that haunted soup.”

  “They won’t give me more.”

  Jeanette leaned in farther. And then she said, “That is one nasty. Shit. Bug.”

  They both looked up. Jeanette had spoken. For a moment, they forgot the bug. Jeanette’s eyes grew wide, still staring down.

  Soli looked back at the soup.

  The insect surged forward in the soup and Salma shrieked. Shrieked.

  The dining hall fell silent. Salma started whispering, cursing, praying.

  A guard approached. Soli counted every footstep.

  “What’s going on?” he called.

  More than anything, Soli was angry. This small offense, this misdirected insect, was the bug that tore the web inside.

  When the guard arrived, she spoke up. He looked at her like she was about to shit on his grandmother’s grave.

  “There’s an insect in this soup,” Soli said. “She can’t eat this soup. You can’t make us eat bugs.”

  And his hand—his hand went to the gun at his side. Imagine getting shot for a bug in Salma’s soup. But Soli would have taken a bullet for that buggy soup.

  The guard leaned over to look into the bowl, his pale shaven head just inches from hers. She could have bitten off his ear. Salma kept her head down, breathing heavily.

  “You got a bug there?” he said loudly, too loudly. “You got a big old bug in that soup, huh?”

  Salma nodded. Soli could tell from the clench of her cheek that she was holding back tears.

  Soli spoke up again, “She doesn’t have to eat that soup.”

  The guard looked up. “You’re right. She doesn’t. Better yet, she could take the bug out.” He leaned over, picked up the bowl.

  “Here go,” he said. “I’ll do it for you.” With that, he raised the bowl high. The women watched as it tipped forward, ever so slightly at first, then farther, until the red stew peeked over the vessel’s lip, creeping forward. It cascaded down. Salma cringed and squeezed her eyes shut. The stew splashed down onto the crown of her head, dripped down her hair and past her brow. It dripped to the tip of her nose and onto her T-shirt, chunks of cornmeal stuck in her hair. Her hand shook as she wiped the sludge from her eyes, from her nostrils and lips.

  Soli had had enough. With her better judgment gesticulating wildly, growling at her to stop and take one second to think, she spoke. “You can’t do that to her.” She leapt to her feet. She came as high as the guard’s chest, her body just inches from his. The guard grabbed Soli’s shoulder and shoved her to the floor. And then he leaned over and told her to get up.

  “Get up!” he shouted. “Get the fuck up, you fucking moron!”

  He yanked her up by the elbow and they walked out of the dining room. Arm in arm, Soli and the guard. She would carry the bruises for weeks.

  Where he took her, she’d never been before. First, though, he searched her, inside her pants, his dirty claws inside her panties, up in her armpits and beneath her breasts. He called her a terrible name. He did the things he’d wanted to do in the dining hall, but couldn’t with all those eyes on him.

  “I thought you Mexicans liked that shit,” he said. “Crickets and shit.” And when his hands had finished hurting her, he pushed her into a room and shut the door. The room was no bigger than the señora’s closet. It was big enough to take three steps forward and three to the side. Its walls were padded in foam, and it was semidark, but she could see her hands. They kept her there for hours and hours, maybe a day, maybe more. When she slept, she dreamed of Berkeley, a version of the old playground cast in shadow. She thought back to a day with Nacho and Saoirse. She’d walked Ignacio around the concrete border, guided him down the slide, and kept her third eye on the little girl. Saoirse stood on the wooden footbridge that swung between the play structures and tossed Barbie dolls from the chained precipice. One by one she let them plummet, and spent a few moments considering each new victim, facedown on the ground, its strands of flaxen hair mingled with the rough sands. During these forced suicides, Soli saw in her eyes the señora’s shark-fin flicker of sorrow. The little girl carried with her a shadow of a woman’s pain. But what did she know of pain? Soli tried to look down into Nacho’s face. I’m here, she wanted to tell him, but he wouldn’t look at her. She clasped him by the shoulders until her forehead met his, but still, she could’t see his face. His eyes were a blur. Don’t be scared, she said to the blur. I’m coming to get you.

  Time passes differently in twilight. They didn’t feed her. She didn’t go to the bathroom. She held her urine because she feared what they’d do if she pissed in that room, if she made a mess.

  When they let her out, she was limp with hunger, with lack of sleep. Her side ached with backed-up fluid. Back in la juala, Jeanette was asleep on her bunk. Salma lay awake and sat up when Soli entered. She’d been cleaned, with just a faint orange stain on her shirt. She blinked at Soli, looked up at the sunlit window. “Today is Friday,” she said.

  30.

  July in a county courtroom, just big enough for two slim tables and a modest lectern. Around the table sat four women—one a judge—who’d gathered to discuss a child named Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez. Ignacio himself wasn’t there, and neither were Kavya, Rishi, or Soli. At the end of the session, the judge declared the boy a dependent of the state of California. A permanency plan would be compiled, along with a list of tasks that Soli would have to complete, to prove her ability to mother. In the meantime, Ignacio would stay in temporary foster care.

  Joyce’s voice broke th
rough the cellular static. Kavya had to squint to hear her. She asked her to repeat what she said once, and then twice, until Joyce was shouting from her end.

  “I HAVE GOOD NEWS.”

  Kavya sat down.

  “THE FOSTER MOTHER SAID YES.”

  Kavya placed her forehead on the table. This got Rishi’s attention. He pushed the speakerphone button.

  Kavya nodded into the table, breathing heavily.

  “However”—here the static vanished, Joyce’s voice snapping clear—“this placement comes with risks. Kavya? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “The child has a mother who’s very much alive and very much willing, but in immigrant detention, for identity fraud, and there’s a chance—a good chance—that she’ll be back for him soon. Long-term placement here is not a certainty.”

  “Okay,” Kavya said. “Okay.”

  “So you understand that.”

  “It’s not a certainty,” she repeated. “But there’s a chance.”

  “I can’t commit to anything, Kavya. These situations never come with certainty. And let me tell you something else.” Joyce was starting to sound peeved. “This requesting one child over another?”

  “Yes?”

  “Highly irregular. Normally, we don’t let it happen. Foster care is for kids who need families. Not for families who want kids. You’re not shopping for purses here. You get that?”