Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  Later that morning, Soli awoke on her top bunk. “Today is Thursday,” she said, and from below, she heard nothing. Not even the rustle of sleep. She looked down. Salma was gone.

  That afternoon, the guard found Soli. “You have a visitor,” she said. Salma, she thought. Salma was out and coming back for her, coming back to tell her about her life outside, the miracle that had freed her. Or else it was Nacho. The possibility left her breathless.

  The room contained rows of small tables, each divided by a pane of glass, inmate on one side, visitor on the other, speaking by telephone across the glass. Some chatted as if nothing at all were wrong, others held the receivers and stared in silence. Waiting at a table was a man Soli had never seen before. He wore a gray suit and red tie.

  He picked up the phone and introduced himself. “Adrian Alvarez,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Against the pane of glass he pressed a small card:

  ADRIAN ALVAREZ

  WILEY, WITTGENSTEIN, ALVAREZ, AND JAFFREY

  It meant nothing.

  “I’m a lawyer. I’m your lawyer.”

  It took her a few moments to decide what this meant.

  “Where’s my son?” she asked.

  He smiled a tight, horizontal smile.

  “You’re Solimar Castro Valdez,” he said. “Is that correct?”

  She said nothing.

  “We only have about ten minutes, Miss Valdez—”

  “We’re supposed to have thirty. Thirty for visits.”

  “I know. I think they took their time getting you here. I’ve been waiting awhile.”

  She shrugged.

  “Okay. So we’ll need to get started, all right? I’ll need as much of your story as you can give me, okay? Should I speak in Spanish?”

  “Yes,” she said. And in Spanish she leaned forward, in Spanish she stared him down, in Spanish she asked, “Where. Is. My. Son?”

  “Your son is with foster parents. That’s all I know right now. All right? He’s fine. Can we agree on that? He’s being well taken care of, I’m sure.”

  “How would you know that if you don’t know who he’s with? And without his mother? How could he be fine?”

  “I promise.” He sighed. “I promise to try and find out for you. And I’ll tell you next time.”

  She looked him over. Alvarez. He looked barely old enough for his suit. “Who are you?”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Miss Valdez. I’ll need you to be totally honest, okay? I’ll need to know all your mistakes, everything that happened to you, everything you understood to be true.”

  She looked at the timer on the side of their table. “Are you with the police?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  And so she began, haltingly at first, because she had no reason to trust the man. But soon it began to feel so good to tell her story to someone who was willing to listen, laying it out and remembering that, yes, she had existed, that she couldn’t stop herself. Her story poured from her lips like sand. In the five minutes that remained, she told him everything she could about Manuel, Checo and La Bestia, the truck with the men, the men with the hats, the onions. The timer buzzed and she hadn’t even got to America yet. From behind, she heard the heavy footsteps.

  Adrian gazed up. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Miss Valdez.”

  “Find Ignacio,” she said. “Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez. Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez!”

  From behind, she was yanked from her seat to her feet, pulled across the room almost faster than she could walk. She looked back, and Adrian was saying something through the glass partition that she couldn’t hear.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY, NO ADRIAN. The day after, he still hadn’t come. There were no visits on Sunday and by Monday she’d decided he had given up on her, or had found out something terrible about Nacho and didn’t want to tell her. Sunday night, she hardly slept. Two new women were in her cell, and they seemed to know each other, but neither spoke Spanish. One was fat, the other thin. They were Chinese, or something like it, with paler skin than any she’d ever seen. They spoke to each other without stopping, with hardly a breath between words. They talked so tiresomely that she began to miss Jeanette. The thin one snored like an industrial machine.

  On the third day, at last, a guard called her to the visiting room.

  “Adrian Alvarez.”

  “Hello, Miss Valdez.” He didn’t smile. She would learn that Adrian Alvarez rarely smiled.

  “Where is my son?”

  “Ignacio’s with a couple in Berkeley. They don’t have any other children. They have a comfortable home. That’s all I could find out. All right, Miss Valdez?”

  “Call me Soli.”

  “Now listen, you’ve got to finish your story for me, and faster this time. If you cooperate, we’ll get you out of here, and you’ll be able to find your son on your own.”

  “On my own? What about you?”

  “I’m an immigration lawyer, Soli. I don’t do family court.”

  “And you can’t help me find my son? Then why the hell are you here?”

  From his folder, he pulled a sheet covered in writing. He signaled to the guard, who looked it over and nodded. The guard walked the paper around to her.

  “I’ve translated it for you,” Adrian said. “It’s your reunification plan.”

  She read it aloud, a list of tasks set out by the court.

  Family counseling upon release, it read. That was number one, and the thought of her release was enough to make Soli smile. Number two: Parent education training. Sure, she thought. She could have used some of that. Three: Substance abuse evaluation and adherence to all court approved recommendations. Four: Psychological evaluation and adherence to all court approved recommendations. The list went on and grew murkier by the line, until she came to the final requirement: Visitation with your child.

  She would see Ignacio again.

  “I’m going to visit with my child? I can see Ignacio?” She sat up. “Where is he? I want to do this now.”

  Adrian cleared his throat and looked at her long and hard over the rim of his glasses. “Listen, Soli.”

  She waited for him to clear his throat once, and again, more vehemently than the first time.

  “Listen. This list was issued by a dependency court judge.”

  “And it’s a way to get my son back. I know.”

  “The thing is. The thing is, dependency court and detention centers don’t work together.”

  “And so?”

  “And so you won’t be able to get out of detention to go to counseling, or to go to class.”

  “And Ignacio?”

  Adrian Alvarez pursed his lips and shook his head.

  She stood to leave.

  “Sit down,” the guard called. “Sit down till you’re told to get up.”

  She sat down. “Why are you here?”

  “To get you a supervised release. My priority is to get you out, so you can work things out for yourself and Ignacio.”

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  “You’ll find something. You’ll figure it out. The point is, in here, you won’t be able to do a thing. When your custody hearing comes around, they won’t let you out of here. Got it? They don’t care about your son in here, Soli. You’ve got to get out.”

  Adrian Alvarez was getting red in the face, and this made her feel like maybe he wanted to help.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Brett Cassidy.”

  “Brett Cassidy who wouldn’t take my son in, you mean. That Brett Cassidy? Is that the one?”

  Adrian ignored this and flipped open his yellow writing pad. She kept talking anyway.

  “I took care of his daughter for almost two years, Adrian Alvarez. I was her second mother. And he let my
boy go to strangers. Brett Cassidy didn’t want anything to do with me. He said he couldn’t. I just can’t, he said. Like he couldn’t be blamed. Like he was just too good to get himself involved. And then he sends you, like a hero, right? He sends you so he won’t have to show his face. To take care of my problem so he won’t have to touch it himself.” She sat back, crossed her arms. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, Adrian Alvarez. Don’t talk to me about Brett Cassidy.”

  “You asked.”

  She almost got up then. She almost decided she didn’t need the likes of Brett Cassidy and his lawyer.

  But of course she did need him. And she needed whatever Brett Cassidy could toss her way. She was flailing in an ocean, losing strength and swallowing saltwater, and Adrian Alvarez was the only boat in sight.

  “So,” Adrian said. “Can we continue?”

  She told him about Silvia and the Cassidys, the abortion clinic, the social worker, giving birth to Ignacio, the money she sent back home, the preschool pickups, the day at the playground, the red light, the police. She told him about the day the señor asked for her social security number, the trip to see Marta, the money she paid him, the strange man’s cheek against her belly.

  Many times, Adrian stopped her and asked questions about what she’d paid, where the shop was, what Marta told her about her Social Security Number, what Mr. Cassidy said about her number, if he ever mentioned it after she threw it away.

  “Hm,” he said, and rubbed his chin, stared down at this notepad.

  “What?”

  “He must have known. He had to know the number wasn’t real.”

  “How could he know? It was just a number.”

  He looked up. “It would have come back to him, eventually. Even if he hadn’t checked up on you. At tax time, or when he filed the papers. He would have known that you didn’t have papers, Soli.”

  “But I didn’t even know I didn’t have papers.”

  He peered at her. “Really? You didn’t know? You thought the man in the grocery store was selling legal numbers?”

  She stopped to consider this. She’d painted her days with a veneer of falsehood—her very existence in the country a falsehood, a secret, an unknown—and had been doing so for so long that the reality of what she knew and didn’t know lay hidden. Here, sitting before Adrian, she let herself emerge, just a little, and exposed a slim sliver of truth. “I knew,” she said. “Of course I knew.”

  “You didn’t want to think about it.”

  She shook her head. “So the señor knew, also. That I didn’t have papers. But he didn’t kick me out.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “So what happens now? With Ignacio?”

  “Well, okay. There isn’t much policy around this, Soli. Around getting children and parents like you back together. There’s no you-must-do-this for the courts to follow. Do you understand that?”

  “No.”

  “So, it’ll depend on the people who handle the court case. On the judge. On how they see you. You’re only twenty, right? That could work in your favor, or it could work against you. The important thing is that we get you out of here.”

  “I have another question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where am I?”

  “What?”

  “Where am I? Am I in California?”

  Adrian blinked. “Yes. You’re in central California. Didn’t you know that?”

  “How would I know?” she asked, gazing at the gray wall behind him.

  The buzzer buzzed.

  “Time’s up.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll believe you when I see you.”

  • • •

  AFTER SOLI GREW USED TO the nightly commotion, she had learned to sleep deeply, sunk to exhaustion by the endless and empty days. Now, Adrian dropping occasionally into her days, and constantly into her thoughts, was enough to keep her awake at night, staring into the dark until morning. She comforted herself by remembering Ignacio, cataloging her memories of his body—the birthmark on his chunky thigh, the sprouting of two teeth, how he liked to chase the broom when she was sweeping. When she couldn’t stop herself, she thought of all the times she’d put him on the floor and ignored his cries, when she had dishes to wash or onions to chop, when his twenty-pound heft was just too much for her, when all she wanted was to move without impediment, to be free to lie down on a sofa with a glass of cool water and the slow meander of her thoughts. She thought of his small arms reaching out to her, his tendency to press his forehead to the ground and weep theatrically, inconsolably. Those nights, when she let herself, she dreamt of his body pressed to hers, pillowy but firm, the weight that made her shoulders ache.

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, she was led to a room at the front of the compound. It was no bigger than la juala, windowless, with fluorescent beams running overhead. She sat down at a table. A female guard sat across from her.

  “Is this my hearing?” she asked.

  “Is this your what, now?”

  She’d never seen this guard before. She’d answered a question, which made Soli think she had to be new.

  “Is this the hearing, for my son? I’m phoning the court today?”

  The guard smiled, frowned, cocked her head to one side.

  “We’d like you to sign this, is all. This is for you to sign, okay?”

  “Is this for my release?”

  Soli looked down at the English words and knew them immediately. Adrian had warned her of this, had made her repeat the words aloud until she knew them by heart. They’ll let you out, he’d said, but only to be deported, Soli. Do you get that? They’ll send you back to Mexico, and you won’t be able to find Ignacio. Stipulated Order of Removal. Silvia too had told her not to sign anything.

  “That’s your voluntary departure agreement,” the guard said. “You seen one of these before?”

  “I will not sign this.”

  The officer cleared her throat and scooted her chair in. “Miss Valdez,” she said. “I’m a mother, too.”

  Soli waited.

  “I know you’re trying to get your son back. I know what it’s like to worry for your kid.”

  Don’t let them fool you, Adrian had warned her. They’ll make it sound like a good thing. Just push it away. She waited for Soli to return her gaze, for some acknowledgment that they were kindred spirits. Soli gave nothing. Under the sharp light of the ceiling lamp, a pale coat of hair covered the woman’s face.

  “The thing is, you sign this? You’ll be able to fight for your child. The longer you stay in here, the more likely you’ll miss a hearing, miss a court date. If we get you out of here, you’ll be able to get to those things.”

  “But my lawyer”—a smile leapt across the guard’s lips and vanished—“my lawyer said he would get me released. With a monitor.”

  “M-hm. That’s one way to do it. It could not happen at all. And then you’d be stuck in here even longer. Months, maybe.”

  Months, maybe. The thought of it pushed Soli back in her chair. The days to come, the weeks. The woman was calm, not hot with aggravation like some of the other guards. She acted like a woman, not a malicious sibling. She acted like a mother. The woman sat very still, as if she were posing for a portrait.

  Soli dropped her pen to the floor.

  The woman’s eyelids began to flutter. “Your choice,” she said at last, her smile almost gleeful. Parentheses sprang from her lips and hung there even when the smile fell away. What lay within those parentheses, Soli wouldn’t know until it was too late.

  Her mood changed after that day in the interview room. It didn’t lift. She wasn’t happier. She just cared less about everything that wasn’t Nacho. She’d lost her focus for a few weeks, distracted by bugs and chitchat, but now she had it back. She found freedom agai
n, even between those four tight walls, even with no one but the two Chinese women to talk to. She tried speaking Spanish to them, at them, which of course they didn’t understand. But it was something to do. And it interrupted their chatter, forced them to pause for a moment and wonder what was happening, which was worth a little something, too.

  She’d decided not to make any more friends in that place. Making friends would make things tolerable, and if she could tolerate a place, she’d be in danger of staying.

  There were matters she didn’t want to broach with Adrian. Why was he there? Why, really, had the Cassidys sent him? And how would she end up paying?

  One question she did ask: “Can you find out about Silvia? Can you tell me what happened to her, her children?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. She’s not your problem, though. You realize that.”

  “Yes. I have another question.”

  “Yes?”

  “When I get my Nacho back, what then? Will they send us both away?”

  “If you win custody of your child, Soli, you’ll most likely be deported. You’ll have your removal hearing, but I don’t see anything particularly compelling or unique about your case. To them, you’re just another illegal.”

  “But I’ll have my Nacho.”

  “You’ll have your child.”

  32.

  We’ve made a mistake.

  It wasn’t Rishi’s first thought, but it was his strongest and clearest. The boy—the baby—the creature in between (it seemed wrong to call him a toddler, as he hadn’t toddled yet) lay on his back, writhing and shrieking.