Soli can only shake her head. A tug at her hand, and she looks down to find Nacho.
“Checo,” Soli says. “What happened to Checo?”
Nutsack stares down at Nacho, then looks at Soli with a new understanding. And then his face falls, and Soli knows. Nutsack crosses his arms, shuffles his feet, and says, “He didn’t make it.”
“He’s back in Mexico?”
He shakes his head. “No. He didn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sees fear in Nutsack’s eyes. “The men? With the guns?”
“They shot Checo. But he got away.”
“And?”
“We all got away,” he says. “They robbed us all, but then they let us go. We tried to get Checo to turn back and go home—he was wounded in the leg and arm. But he wouldn’t. He said, I’ve come this far already.”
“I see.”
“So we crossed the desert, a pack of us together. Only Mario and I made it to the end.”
“Checo didn’t make it.”
Nutsack stares at the ground.
“Was he buried?”
When Nutsack doesn’t answer, Soli lets him go.
That night, after she’s put Nacho to bed and finds herself alone, she sits at her window and watches the alley below. She opens the window to a sweet evening gale, redolent of gasoline and autumn leaves. He was buried, she assures herself, out there in the desert, properly and decently, with a short and parch-throated Mass. The coyotes sang in his honor, the cacti bent their spiny heads, and for a moment, the desert fell into shade. His last thoughts were of her, of Soli charging down the street with a jug of wine for a belly, lying on the trackside in the early morning chill, hidden and scared in the back of a truck. Soli, of all the young travelers, had the best chance of making it. She’d carried a piece of Checo inside, driving her forward, relentless as La Bestia, even before she knew it existed.
Soli would make an altar for Checo. He would come to see them, a breeze in the room, imperceptible to all but her. He would dance with the skeletons on a crisp October night. She’d put out a jug of wine, some rice and beans, a stolen bottle of water. She wouldn’t have a picture of him, only a living, breathing memento, rebel-haired and three feet tall.
Together, Soli and Nacho swim through the hazy basin of the city. She works. He plays. He goes to school. Some nights, when Soli returns, always past midnight, he wakes up and comes to her. Not at a run, but with the tumbling step of a sleepwalker. She picks him up and covers him in kisses. Rosa with the lazy foot looks on.
If this is a story, it’s one with no right ending. If this is a dream, it is a dream made solid, a dream grown to a little boy with a waist and shoulders, calves that wrap around his mother’s hips.
They live in a one-room apartment with water-stained walls and carpet that’s been burnt in places. This is their dollar house, for now. The boy has filled it with light and sound. He’s run too fast and scuffed its walls, as little boys must do. She’s brought him to a life on the border of safety and fear, rectitude and abandon. She’s brought him to a life that’s a constant question, of where he belongs and to whom. Of who the criminal is, and whether Soli did wrong. But she tries to shelter him from these darker spools of thought. He is a boy. His life will be simple.
And what of America? Thirty-two months. A dream. She still parses through the fibers of those days. Eventually, Soli will tell Ignacio about the place called Berkeley. He’ll be grown then—a man, maybe, grown beyond belief. That’s when he’ll stop simply feeling her and start to see her again. And what will he see but his own skin, wrapped around a woman he once hardly knew, whose eyes and cheeks dig beneath his own. And when he sees her, will the grasses bend and the winds recede? Will the sun hide its brazen face and leave them be? And will the sky, the mothering sky, kneel down around them?
She will tell him his story. This is the story, Ignacio, of a girl with a secret. This is the story of a lion-car, a devil-beard, a voice like a mountain flute. This is the story of a house covered in vines, of little boys with warrior legs and princely hair. This is the story of oceanic air, of evenings wrapped in sun. This is the story of the wind, rushing through the trees, alongside a train, across the valley floor, billowing the drapes of a bungalow home. This is the story of the sun and the wind and the child they bore. This is the story of the sun and the wind, dragged aground by the meddlesome earth.
acknowledgments
I must first acknowledge the brave people whose real struggles inspired this story: immigrants, both documented and undocumented, immigrant rights advocates, foster parents, adoptive parents, and those who have undergone fertility treatments. In particular, I’d like to thank the following individuals who answered countless questions and helped me to locate resources:
Angélica Salceda, Anne Less, Annika Hacin Sridharan, Christina Mansfield and Christina Fialho of End Isolation/CIVIC; Jazmin Segura of SIREN; and Seth Freed Wessler.
U.S. immigration policy is in a continual state of flux. This novel refers mostly to policies that existed in 2012–2013. As of this reading, immigration law has largely remained unchanged, and more than five million children in the United States have at least one undocumented parent. I am grateful for the time and generosity of Aarti Kohli, of the Asian Law Caucus, who helped me understand how undocumented immigrants experience the criminal justice system; César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, who spoke to me about his research into immigrant detention centers; and Omar Riojas, who shared his knowledge of undocumented migrants battling for custody of their children. The story of his client, Encarnación Bail Romero, was the first I came across in my research.
I am grateful to Eric Ballon, who let me shadow him in a sorority kitchen for a day; Nirupa Sekaran, who answered many questions about fertility treatments; and Manohar and Anand Sekaran, who answered various slightly worrying questions about legal procedures and medical ailments, respectively. Social workers at the Department of Social Services in Oakland, California, let me sit in on a foster care information session. Carolyn Gregory, Sandy Swing, Esme Howard, and other Bay Area parents spoke to me by phone, welcomed me into their homes, and shared their very personal stories of adoption and foster care. When cafés got too loud and libraries got bedbugs, I was grateful for the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, where I could always find focus, good conversation, and an empty desk.
The following publications were instrumental to my research: Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, edited by Peter Orner; Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best; Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System by Seth Freed Wessler; and Due Process and Immigrant Detainee Prison Transfers: Moving LPRS to Isolated Prisons Violates Their Right to Counsel by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández.
Writing this book would have been a very different experience without the grace and hospitality of Michael Sledge and Raul Cabra, who hosted me at Oax-i-fornia in San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, Mexico; and Pablo, who drove me through the beautiful small towns of Oaxaca and shared his own immigration story. My time in Oaxaca was made possible by a faculty research grant from California College of the Arts.
When a novel enters the world, only one name goes on the cover, but so many others make it possible. A few good friends and excellent editors slogged through my early drafts: Anita Amirrezvani, Jessica Arevalo, Caitlin Myer, and Meghan Ward. Thanks also go to Stacey Lewis, Alvaro Garduno, and Wylie O’Sullivan, for their advice and insights later in the writing process. When this project began to feel like an impossibility, members of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto reached out with advice, empathy, and encouragement, proving once again that San Francisco is the best literary city anywhere.
My agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, championed this book from its first sentences. My tireless editor, Tara Singh Carlson, read throu
gh this book more times than I ever could. Her patience, energy, and literary laser-vision astound me. Thanks also go to Helen Richard, who helped this novel over the finish line; to Karen Fink, Alexis Welby, and the publicity team at Putnam; to Kristi Leunig and Matt Rappaport, who gave me a quiet place to write; and to Robert Humphreys, Robert Waller, Daniel Grisales, and Blake Whittington for their photographic work.
To my parents, I owe gratitude for their patience, encouragement, many hours of babysitting, and for making their own courageous journey into a new American life. I couldn’t have begun this book without Spencer Dutton, my fiercest supporter and first reader, or without my sons, who make me feel lucky every day.
about the author
Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. She is the author of The Prayer Room and her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and children. Lucky Boy is her second novel.
shanthisekaran.com
facebook.com/ShanthiSekaranauthor
twitter.com/shanthisekaran
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Lucky Boy Page 43
