Lucky
Season 1, Story 2
Graciela headed to work. She stood at the corner of a street not far from the three-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother, her sister, and her sister’s two boys. She wore a black Polo with a pizza insignia on her left breast and a hat over her deep burgundy hair that stuck out the back in a ponytail. She wore black tennis shoes and black pants, and a black backpack hung on her shoulders. She used to walk to work with her earbuds in. She didn’t do that anymore. She hated the thought of never going home again because her music was too loud.
She was lucky with the KwikShop opening up right there across the way. It was one of those big ones that had a mini-Burger King, a mini-Sbarro, a few staples, drinks, sandwiches, and all the standard fare of snacks, stale pastries, and rotating meat. She was lucky her friend worked at the Burger King. Its kiosk was right next to the Sbarro. The two women took their breaks at the same time. They’d lean over the counters during lulls to offer the complaints of the day. They protected each other from the men who lingered and leered in the sitting area. Graciela liked knowing someone else was in it with her.
The work was fine. Graciela knew how it could be worse. She liked folding the pizza boxes when it was slow. She could let her mind go while keeping her hands busy, which used to be fun, standing still while going anywhere. Lately, her thoughts didn’t make it past home. Any further and she felt like she was tempting.
These days she felt like she was watching one of those scary movies at the part where she knows something is around the corner, something in the mirror once the medicine cabinet closes, it will come, she knows it, she’s seen it before. She can’t stand it. She thinks it is coming next, but they know she thinks that and so it doesn’t come, she lets her guard down, and that’s when it comes because it always comes. It has to come.
Graciela wasn’t a criminal. She was lucky she wasn’t. She’d never been picked up for anything when she was young. She smoked a little, drank a little, did a little damage sometimes, but she never got caught. She also grew up here. That’s how she saw it. Started here in the fourth grade. School wasn’t for her — a counselor told her that once and meant it as a relief for Graciela — but she didn’t cause any problems. She was even in the school paper once for taking an AP class in high school. The principal made a big deal about it for some reason. She didn’t take the test and barely passed the class, but she did graduate. That counted for something. What was her life now? She went to the KwikShop, to the store, to home. Repeat.
Graciela couldn’t let herself believe that she was immune to the world around her. She hadn’t heard of anyone in town being snatched off the street yet, but it didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that they didn’t seem to care about places like this yet. They might someday. It didn’t matter if the people here seemed decent and wouldn’t make a fuss. They might someday. Luck runs out. That’s the way it is.
Graciela’s shift ended. She walked home, listening to every screech of brakes, every rev of an engine, every cry of a child, every yelp of a dog, every birdsong, every gust of wind.
Then she heard the screams. They reached her just as the little white man appeared on the other side of the street. Graciela’s heart raced, but she couldn’t bring the rest of her body to move any faster. She moseyed across the walkway, trying to see through the buildings in her complex to the other side where the shrieks rang out. Graciela prayed for an ambulance. She hoped someone was dead. Even her mother.
Graciela stopped at the edge of the parking lot. Two masked men paced in front of her apartment building with their guns drawn. Two other men had Graciela’s downstairs neighbor pinned to the ground on his stomach, his face in the dirt. He struggled to lift his head. Three women, screaming and crying, circled the scene. They had their own weapons drawn in the form of cellphones, pointed at the masked men. Graciela scanned the area for her mother, her sisters, or her nephews. No one. No peering eyes in the windows of the other buildings. No one was taking a chance.
The men lifted Graciela’s neighbor off the ground and began to drag him to one of the white trucks carelessly parked in the middle of the lot. He was sobbing, begging. He sounded like he was going to be sick. Graciela still hadn’t moved from her spot, and she would not until they were gone. They wouldn’t take her. It wasn’t for her. Not this time. She was lucky. But she wouldn’t risk it. If she didn’t move, they couldn’t see her.
Then they dropped her neighbor back to the ground. All four masked men spread out and squared up, their guns raised to the sky above Graciela. She followed the direction of their rifles, and, looking up, she saw a silver sphere. Only for a second. A blinding light. Everything white. She felt the warmth of a blanket wrap around her. Her body tightened from the surprise of the feeling and the unknown of its origin, but then she relaxed into its comfort. She looked back down, and her eyes adjusted. She was enveloped in a swirling green dust that colored her skin and the world around her. She watched the ground beneath become larger and further away. The people became smaller. She didn’t feel a pull as she was drawn up. It was more like being carried by a river stream. Gentle and uncontrollable.
It was seconds. Then it was black. The warmth was gone, and she heard the cold clang of metal. She was pressed against what felt like the soft tissue of other bodies, but she couldn’t see anything. There were grunts and weeping and the heaving breaths of despair but no one – if it was anyone – spoke. Graciela strained her eyes. She couldn’t even see her own hands, which were right at her face with her arms locked against her chest, squeezed against the other bodies. She struggled to breathe.
The mass of bodies around Graciela made it difficult to discern if and how they were moving. Graciela could not hear any sounds other than what came from the people around her. At some point someone spoke actual words, but no one responded. Later, someone spoke again. A different voice. Neither of the voices were languages Graciela understood. More started to speak, and some tried to speak English, but the pronunciation was indiscernible. Those that Graciela could understand didn’t say anything of value. No one knew anything. Some described their lives, hoping to make some connection of some kind, the type of hope that people put out there to be saved by being known. Some shouted their fears, their guesses of where they were and what might be on the other side of wherever this was. Some cried. No one language was spoken enough for any group of people to communicate something resembling a plan of action, and whatever their body language might have conveyed as a means of rallying them to battle was lost in the darkness. All they could do was wait.
Time was indiscernible. It could have been a few hours later or maybe a day when they were all pushed out into a light that overwhelmed Graciela almost as much as the darkness. As the light cooled on her eyes, Graciela looked at the distressed faces of her fellow travelers. It was a way of seeing her own. They grouped like penguins as they took in their surroundings, and they were bordered in between two metal fences. On both sides of them were other groups of people with faces bearing the same looks, the same fear. The fences and the people between them seemed to copy like in a funhouse mirror. In both directions, they extended beyond what Graciela could see. The silver sphere was behind them and opposite was a giant, thin, silver creature with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. It had no face.
A siren wailed over the horror of their cries. Graciela and the others crouched down and turned to the creature. It began to swing its arms back and forth, slow, to its body and away, back and forth. It stepped back as it repeated the motion. The group followed. When they reached the end of the fence line, the creature stopped. It turned slowly and pointed out to a large plot of open land behind it. Graciela saw rows upon rows of mounds of dirt, as far as the fences that had no end. The creature turned back to the group and extended its arm, lifted its hand, and projected out a stream of light from its palm. A scene played in the light. There were no words or subtitles. Soft music played in the background. An image of a human man appeared in a field similar to the one in front of them. The man smiled, and then he got down on his knees, dug a hole in the dirt with his hands, and placed a small kernel into it. He replaced the dirt in the hole and shuffled a foot or two down the field. He repeated the process. After doing that a few times, he stood and turned back to them. He gave a thumbs-up. The projection disappeared and the creature lowered its arm.
Years passed, as much as Graciela could discern. They worked the land. They planted. They watered. They planted. They watered. Sometimes they built structures for the field or in the nearby cities. They harvested once whatever they planted grew. Then they planted and watered again. It went on and on. It was months — whatever that meant in this place — before Graciela realized that she had not had a thought unrelated to the planting and the watering since her arrival. Time went in such a way that there was no track to her thoughts. This made it easy to keep at the work, but, in the brief moments of clarity, Graciela could sense the madness growing in her mind.
The creatures had the people build a neighborhood of apartments for themselves outside the city. The creatures provided food and what the people came to understand as spending money to be used for clothes and useless trinkets at the few pop-up vendors placed at the edge of the ghetto. Graciela lived with two other women in a tenth-floor apartment. None of them spoke the same language — there was no time to learn each other’s languages — but they developed a simple method of nonverbal signs for the necessities.
Soon the people became a part of society. They served their role. They were slaves, but no one used that term. The creatures never spoke to them. It was understood that they were lesser beings, never citizens, never respected, never known, and it was assumed that this type of life was bearable for the person who had nothing else, no other options, and no coherent thoughts beyond the work of the day.
Graciela was lucky because at one point they let her stop working in the field. They gave her a job cleaning houses in the city. It was easier on her body. She wasn’t sure how old she was, but she was thankful for this change once her body started to resemble the shape of her mother, from what she could remember.
One day, Graciela headed to work. She waited in line at the street corner for the pod that would transport her and the other city workers across the border. The pod arrived, and as Graciela lined up in front of the door, she saw a poster made from light emanating out of a light pole. The poster had a human face at its center. It looked just like her own. Maybe it was. The face had a red X over it, and above the face were symbols that kept flashing and changing. Finally, it flashed words in one of the two languages that Graciela recognized.
GO HOME.
The person behind Graciela nudged her forward.
Return for Another Parabolic Story on Sunday, December 28th
Other Stories in Season One:
Story 1: Clanging Cymbals