Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  It didn’t matter that she was sticking herself with needles; it didn’t matter that the medicine seeping out of those needles cost hundreds of dollars per half-milliliter. What mattered was that she was taking steps. She was doing something that could result in a baby.

  And finally, the queen step, for which all other steps had been preparing, was IUI. In the doctor’s office, with Neil Diamond playing over the speakers, a wave of Rishi’s semen was spewed into her through a needle-less syringe. Rishi’s sperm would search out Kavya’s egg in the dark disco of her womb. This was by no means their last chance, but to call it a good one was a stretch. They had a ten to fifteen percent probability of conception, the doctor said. Kavya had tried not to see the funnel clouds of cost analysis erupting from her husband, but they were hard to ignore. In all her Indian-offspring-model-minority life, she’d never felt such pressure to succeed.

  Kavya was supposed to wait for a blood draw at the clinic to test for pregnancy. Twelve days after her appointment, she couldn’t stand it any longer and bought a three-pack of home tests. But all home pregnancy tests come out positive: Rishi’s voice, which she ignored. She just wanted the tests on hand.

  But the thing was, she felt pregnant. She could see the plus signs even without the tests. And what was the harm in affirming what she already sensed? She could try one stick, she decided, just to see. She’d save the others for the right time. She unwrapped one test and took it to the bathroom.

  A minute later, all three sticks sat unwrapped and peed upon, lined up on the bathroom counter. Now she could only wait.

  Slowly, one by one, two plus signs bloomed on each stick. “I knew it,” she whispered.

  She stood in her bathroom for many minutes, watching these plus signs, waiting for them to change back to minuses. She listened to the nasal hiss of her breath, and for those many minutes, this was all she heard. Twelve days. It was possible, she dared surmise, that she, Kavya, was twelve days pregnant. In the soft light of their Spanish-tiled bathroom, she blinked at her success, until slowly, very slowly, she accepted that life, at last, would begin.

  Two more days until the doctor’s office. She would wait. Her certainty was stronger than medicine. She would treasure this secret knowledge. For two days, it would be hers alone. Three sticks, three promises, six little plus signs, her ducks in a row.

  That night, she lay in bed and let Rishi stroke the flat plain of her abdomen until she fell asleep. Kavya didn’t need Rishi or a doctor or even three dripping sticks to tell her she was pregnant. She felt the same as she’d always felt, physically, but a certain light-headedness, born of elation, had emptied her mind of all thoughts but the idea that she, Kavya, would be a mother.

  She packed the thought away. She wouldn’t let herself believe just yet.

  • • •

  “AWESOME!” THE DOCTOR SAID. “You did it!”

  Kavya jumped to her feet. Joy rose from her gut. Thirteen months of trying and failing had tamped it down, but now it bubbled over in laughter she couldn’t control. She wheezed each breath, unable to catch it, her laughter and inhalations tripping over one another. Rishi picked her up, like he would a child, and she wrapped her legs around him. He held her for so long that the doctor left the room. When she looked up, they were alone.

  “What happens now?”

  “I don’t know. Where’d he go?”

  “I want to scream, Rishi.”

  “Do it.”

  She laughed again. “I can’t!”

  The doctor returned soon enough, grinning widely. Kavya took Rishi’s hand in hers.

  “When can we see it?” she asked.

  “Nine weeks. We’ll do an ultrasound and you’ll get a neat little picture for your Facebook page.”

  For Rishi, the indentured servitude seemed, at last, to have paid off. Rishi became a man again—a husband, holding Kavya’s hand in the OB’s office. And if all went well, a father. The world around him felt rarified, thin but life-giving, like mountain air. Maybe this was happiness. From the soles of his feet came an electric charge, and in his chest there gathered a deep, warm well. No, this was purpose.

  In the car, driving home, Rishi turned to Kavya. “We can do it here.”

  She turned to him, then squeezed her eyes shut and let loose a horror-movie scream. She squeezed her hands into fists and screeched, then fell into laughter. Rishi opened his mouth and let out a howl. Their lives had been barreling toward this day. Joy, at last, had found them.

  That evening, they walked down Shattuck and sat in a sidewalk tapas bar. It was autumn, and the leaves had gathered the season’s fire. Orange, red, yellow: An old oak tossed them down as if it had had enough. Together, they searched for menu offerings Kavya couldn’t eat anymore: tuna tartare, soft cheeses. “Are you craving anything?” Rishi asked. Kavya ordered fried potatoes and flan. They sipped on lemonade with mint and watched the sidewalk course past. People seemed to move more slowly than usual, bathed in the waning sun. It grew late, but they weren’t tired. It grew cool, but neither felt the chill.

  • • •

  LATE THAT NIGHT, Rishi’s eyelids grew heavy and he began to drift off, when he was woken by a rustling inside. In the depths of his chest, he felt a murmur. His heart had been a tornado shelter, stocked and sealed off to the world, waiting patiently for imminent disaster. But now, rapping at its wood was a tender hand, a slow-growing promise. As he lay still and felt the small taut push of Kavya’s belly against him, a drop of longing coursed through his bloodstream, minute but terrifyingly potent.

  He slipped his hand beneath her shirt to her waist, where the skin was incandescent, hotter than he’d ever felt it. He ran his fingers along her belly, still modest and supple, and moved up to her breasts, fuller now—definitely fuller. He cupped one in his hand and she gasped.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Do they hurt?”

  “No.” She breathed deeply. “No.” She guided his hand over her breasts and down her abdomen. She reached back to slip his pants from his waist, and though a small part of him worried that they shouldn’t be doing this, invading their blessing with the rampant impulses of their own bodies, he followed Kavya’s lead.

  • • •

  FOR THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED, Kavya did what pregnant ladies did. She did the yoga, she bought the vitamins. She read pregnancy timelines to keep track of her baby as it grew from a squiggle into a complexified tadpole with round black eyes. She tried to feel it inside, to press her senses against the quiet formation of head, mouth, and hand-buds. But mostly, she felt the same, exhausted at times, more bloated than usual, and then nauseated. Around week six, she started to carry plastic bags in her purse, should the urge to vomit overtake her in an elevator or checkout line. She couldn’t tolerate the smell of coffee or basil or garlic, and the thought of chocolate brought on an angry surge of nausea. The streets of town became an obstacle course of miasmic offense.

  Rishi watched her through these weeks, fascinated by this newly contented and incredibly sleepy version of his wife. She took a nap after work each day, rose for an hour or two, and went straight back to bed. Her weekends were spent in a nest of pillows, watching television, reading books, dozing. He felt powerless against the hormonal workings that had taken her over. He’d done his part, in a cramped room at the fertility clinic; the rest was on her shoulders.

  Now Rishi picked things up for Kavya and rubbed her feet at night and danced for her in the living room to Janet Jackson songs when she was feeling especially sorry with sickness. She longed for her mother’s cooking, its rice and rasam with hot peppercorns that stung her tongue numb. But they hadn’t told her mother yet. They hadn’t told anyone, had decided not to until they were ultra-sure. So she lived her life feeling green, happy, but particularly alone.

  She went about her business at Gamma Gamma Pi, avoiding garlic like a vampire would, ignoring demands for low-fat yogurts and
cheeses—which, she was surprised to discover, smelled distinctly like Play-Doh—and sticking her head out the window every few minutes to escape the odorous steam clouds that hung about the kitchen.

  • • •

  KAVYA WOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER her pregnancy as the first time she was owned by someone else. She became an apartment of liquid and light, of distant blood rush and nutritional delivery. She was glad to give. But then:

  “Gosh,” the doctor said. And Kavya knew. “Gosh darn.” The doctor muttered this, moving the fetal heart monitor from one spot on her belly to another. Kavya wrapped her arms around herself. The doctor looked from her to Rishi. “This happens sometimes.”

  Kavya didn’t need to ask how or why. She knew enough. Somehow, what she’d offered in two months as a mother hadn’t been enough. What started out as six tidy plus signs had somehow lost its positivity. The fevered patter of the heart was gone, had petered into nothing more than a spot, very faint and very still. Kavya didn’t remember much else of what was said, only the buzz of the overhead light, the question she asked five times, six or seven: What do we do with it? The answers were crowded out by a new truth, repeating: I lost my baby. I lost my baby. I lost.

  Rishi explained to her—three times, even after the doctor explained them—the methods of removal. Each time, she gazed at him like she’d forgotten the question. “D and C,” she said the next morning, “that’s what I want to do.” She spoke so quietly that Rishi didn’t hear her at first. She blew on her tea, eyes downcast, and said the words again.

  The drive to the clinic was long and quiet. They listened to a story on NPR about the 9/11 memorial, as if the radio were trying to soothe their bad thing with a reminder of worse things. There were worse things that could have happened, yes, than losing a pregnancy. Kavya greeted the doctor with tremulous control. As she sank into anesthetic rest, Rishi’s own mind quaked with a question that wouldn’t and couldn’t be answered: What if this child was the one?

  The one what? The devoted son or astonishingly successful daughter? The answer to their worries about growing old? What if this child was a sort of secular savior, the one to answer the amoebic burgeon of the world’s problems? The words from the old book came back to him, transformed: One child to rule them all, one child to find them, one child to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. This child might have been the one.

  And these were the sorts of thoughts—injurious, wildly unshareable, and who needed his opinion, anyway?—that coursed through Rishi’s head as his wife was undressed, prepped, and anesthetized.

  On the drive home, Kavya was still groggy. She sat silently, with her eyes closed. When Rishi turned on the radio, she reached out and she switched it off.

  12.

  The señora paused the video. “Here’s the thing, Soli. You’re in for a serious shock. With the birth, with the delivery.” And here she stopped herself, tilted her head to the side. “Or are you? Have you been at a birth? Back home? In your—your village?”

  “No, señora, I have not.”

  “This isn’t going to be pretty. But it’s what you need to know.” She wrapped her hand around Soli’s and pressed play. On-screen, the señora on a hospital bed. A clear tube ran from her hand to a bag of liquid on a stand. The on-screen señora kicked off her sheet to reveal her bare bottom and legs, her feet covered in a chunky pair of socks. She turned and revealed an ivory globe of belly. From Soli’s own belly came an anxious flutter of kicks. A doctor walked in and shook her hand. As if this were a real movie, the camera focused in on her face, her closed eyes. She writhed in a mild, dramatized sort of pain. It wasn’t pretty, but it was prettier than Soli’s delivery would be. Of this she was fairly certain.

  On-screen, the doctor gave a thumbs-up. He was as handsome as a doctor on a telenovela. In Popocalco, a comadrona with hefty arms and hanging jowls brought babies into the world. From the television came a glottal moan; Mrs. Cassidy arched her back, spread her knees. Soli was beginning to feel queasy again. This was her sixth month, and nausea should not have been an issue.

  On-screen, from between the señora’s legs grew a conflagration of tissues, distended and purple and open to the world. When the camera zoomed in close, Soli ran for the bathroom. In the toilet, the toilet she had just cleaned, her stomach emptied in an angry and orange cascade.

  If Señora Cassidy had noticed her run out, she was too transfixed now to notice her return. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, focused on the screen.

  “This part gets samey,” she said, fast-forwarding through high-speed writhing, high-speed tight-lipped breathing. Soli stood in the doorway. “Here we go. Here’s the money shot.”

  She pointed on-screen to a pair of thighs, knees raised high, feet held aloft by husband and nurse, and a cavity bulging, opening, glistening with a slick sort of liquid, and finally, the wet-matted hair of a newborn’s head. On-screen, she let loose a scream that ripped through the television and caught Soli by the throat. She screamed again, like a dying animal.

  “Señora!”

  This was Soli. The señora turned. Soli couldn’t stop her words. She was shouting.

  “Señora. This. I cannot do this. This is enough.”

  Soli bolted for the kitchen. The sound of the señora’s scream followed her. Even filtered through a video camera and a television screen, the pain was more real than anything Soli had known. It clung to her, a vibration of fear. She thought about picking up her coat and heading out the door and never returning. But the señora stood in the kitchen doorway, still clutching the remote.

  “But, Soli, you missed it. You missed the birth!” She crossed her arms. “Get back in here, Soli. There’s stuff you need to see.”

  “¿Señora?” She steadied her breath. Inside, the baby held his. “Señora? There is a line.”

  The señora shook her head.

  “Do you understand? There is a line. This is the other side.”

  Mrs. Cassidy opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it. She was about to fire her, Soli believed. Or report her to the police. The señora was searching for the right words with which to send her back to Mexico. Soli wondered, Did other housecleaners have moments like this, when the loudest sounds in a room were the tick of the kitchen clock and the wind-rush of knowledge that her words, her act of simply refusing to watch what she could not watch, had thrown her livelihood, her very ability to remain in a country, into danger?

  The señora began to speak, but stopped. She fixed Soli to the floor with a long and steady gaze. “I’ll turn it off,” she said.

  Soli nodded. But she couldn’t imagine herself getting back to work, donning rubber gloves to wash the dishes or mop the floors. So she said, “Forgive me,” and gathered her purse and coat. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  The señora grabbed her wrist and Soli stopped breathing. What now? The woman didn’t let go, but instead looked down at her own long, thin fingers wrapped around Soli’s arm, twisting the skin. She seemed not to know they were hers.

  And then she let go. From the living room drifted the crow of a newborn. “I’m sorry, Soli. And, gracias.” One side of her mouth rose to a smile, the other stayed put. And in the blue waters of her gaze, Soli saw a dark flick, a shark fin of disenchantment. She wanted to explain. She did want to. But what could she say? The señora had a husband with a video camera and a handsome doctor who gave a thumbs-up. Who would Soli have? The only person who was truly hers would be the one trying to get out; he’d be the one making her scream.

  “Goodbye” was all she said, and in slow steps, she moved through the kitchen, picked up her coat and handbag, and walked to the door. If she was doing the wrong thing, she had no choice. If she’d stayed, she might have slipped and sunk into those shark-infested waters, pulled under by the current of her ignorance.

  Outside, winter had settled gray and still over the town. As she walked home, the cool aftern
oon began to wash away some of the day. Soli was six months pregnant, and bulged with certainty. After months of being told where to sit, when to wake, and what to eat, she had had enough. Today she’d met a new part of her self—the part that knew what was right and what was wrong, and could go ahead and say it, the part that could walk out on her boss one day and walk back in the next, as if nothing at all had happened.

  She opened the apartment door to find Silvia on the sofa, flicking through the channels. She sat up straight and fumbled with the remote control. “What are you doing home?” The TV switched off. “Did they fire you?”

  Soli was too tired to lie. “I walked out.”

  “You quit?”

  “I left for the day”—she sighed—“that’s all.”

  Silvia squinted. “Something happened.”

  And so Soli sat on the sofa and told Silvia about the birth video. “That isn’t a normal thing to do,” Silvia said. “There’s something wrong with that woman.”

  “She was trying to help me, I think,” Soli said.

  “Hmph.” Silvia looked her up and down, then turned the TV back on, and lost herself in a talk show. Soli sat with her, just as she’d sat with the señora. Silvia was quiet for the rest of the evening, even with the boys. After dinner, she yawned and stretched and left the table, shutting her door behind her, leaving Soli to clear the dishes and send the boys to bed.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT, FROM THE SILENCE of her room rose a thin whine. A nearby telephone cable to anyone else, but as it buzzed through Soli’s waking mind, it gathered body, velocity, and grew to a wail. It was the señora’s wail, and it was Soli’s, from that day by the roadside that neither her new life, her new job, nor her many American showers could wash away. That night, she left her bed and returned to the dry desert road, alone.