This was ten years before he would be known around Upper Room as the man with the truck, a black Chevy pickup that had become Upper Room’s truck because of how often Robert was seen driving from church, an arm hanging out the window, the truck bed filled with food baskets or donated clothes or metal chairs. He wasn’t the only member with a truck, of course, but he was the only one willing to lend his at any moment. He kept a calendar by the phone and whenever anyone from Upper Room called, he carefully scheduled them in with a tiny golf pencil. Sometimes he joked that he should add the truck to his answering machine greeting because the truck would earn more messages than he did anyway. A joke, although he wondered if it was true, if the truck was the only reason he was invited to picnics and potlucks, if the true guest was the truck, needed to haul speakers and tables and folding chairs, but no one minded if he tagged along too. Why else would he receive such warm greetings when he stepped into Upper Room each Sunday? The ushers clapping his back and the ladies at the welcome table smiling at him and the pastor mentioning, once, in passing, that he wouldn’t be shocked if Robert’s good stewardship landed him on the elders board one day.
The truck, Robert believed, had turned things around for him. But there was also his daughter. People are always tenderhearted toward single fathers, especially single fathers raising girls, and folks would have cared for Robert Turner still, even if that terrible thing hadn’t happened with his wife, even if she had just packed a suitcase and left, which to some, it seemed like she did anyway.
—
THAT EVENING, when her father pulled his truck into the garage, Nadia was curled in bed, clutching her twisting stomach. “The cramps might be bad,” the dreadlocked nurse had told her. “Expect them a few hours or so. Call the emergency number if they’re severe.” The nurse didn’t explain the difference between bad cramps and severe ones, but she’d handed Nadia a white bag curled at the top like a sack lunch. “For the pain. Two every four hours.” A clinic volunteer offered to drive Nadia home, and when she climbed into the white girl’s dusty Sentra, she glanced out the window at the nurse, who watched them drive off. The volunteer—blonde, twentyish, earnest—chatted nervously the whole drive, fiddling with the radio dials. She was a junior at Cal State San Marcos, she said, volunteering at the clinic as part of her feminist studies major. She looked like the type of girl who could go to college, major in something like feminist studies, and still expect to be taken seriously. She asked if Nadia planned to go to college and seemed surprised by her response. “Oh, Michigan’s a good school,” she said, as if Nadia didn’t already know this.
That was two hours ago. Nadia clenched her eyes, passing through the cold center of the pain into its warmer edges. She wanted to take another pill even though she knew she should wait, but when she heard the garage door rumble, she shoved the orange vial into the white bag, everything inside her nightstand drawer. Anything unusual might tip her father off, even that nondescript bag. Since she discovered that she was pregnant, she’d been sure that her father would notice something was wrong with her. Her mother had been able to tell when she’d had a bad day at school moments after she climbed into the car. What happened? her mother used to ask, even before Nadia had said hello. Her father had never been that perceptive, but a pregnancy wasn’t a bad day at school—he would notice that she was panicking, he would have to. She was grateful so far that he hadn’t, but it scared her, how you could return home in a different body, how something big could be happening inside you and no one even knew it.
Her father knocked three times and nudged her bedroom door open. He wore his service khakis today, which seemed like a second skin, how naturally he fit within sharp pleats, a row of badges across his chest. Her friends used to be surprised that her father was a Marine. He didn’t seem like the boys they’d grown up seeing around town, cocky and buff and horsing around in front of the Regal, flirting with passing girls. Maybe her father had been like that when he was younger but she couldn’t imagine it. He was quiet and intense, a tall, wiry man who never seemed to relax, like a guard dog on his haunches, his ears always perked up. He leaned in her doorway, bending to unlace his shiny black boots.
“You don’t look so good,” he said. “You sick?”
“Just cramps,” she said.
“Oh. Your . . .” He gestured to his stomach. “Need anything?”
“No,” she said. “Wait. Can I use your truck later?”
“For what?”
“To drive.”
“Where are you going, I mean.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask where I’m going. I’m almost eighteen.”
“I can’t ask where you’re taking my truck?”
“Where do you think I’m taking it?” she said. “The border?”
Her father never cared about where she went, except when she asked to borrow his precious truck. He spent evenings circling the truck in the driveway, dipping a red velvet square into a tub of wax until the paint shone like glass. Then as soon as someone from Upper Room called for a favor, he jogged out the door, always running to his truck, as if it were the only child, needy and demanding of his love. Her father sighed, running a hand over the graying hair she cut every two weeks, the way her mother used to, her father sitting in the backyard with a towel draped around his neck, her hands guiding the clippers. Cutting his hair was the only time she felt close to him.
“Downtown, okay?” she said. “Can I borrow your truck, please?”
Another wave of cramps gripped her, and she flinched, pulling her blanket tighter around herself. Her father lingered in the doorway a moment before dropping his keys on her dresser.
“I can make you some tea,” he said. “It’s supposed to—your aunts, they’d drink it, you know, when—”
“You can just leave the keys,” she said.
—
THE DAY AFTER she was accepted into Michigan, Luke brought Nadia to the Wave Waterpark, where they rode inner tubes down the Slide Tower and the Flow Rider until they were soaked and tired. At first, she’d worried that he’d suggested a water park because he thought she was childish. But he had as much fun as she did, yelping as they splashed into pools, or dragging her to the next ride, water beads clinging to his chest, his wet sideburns glinting in the sun. After, they ate corn dogs and churros at the tables outside Rippity’s Rainforest, where kids too small for the slides padded in floaties. She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break.
She hadn’t expected a gift from Luke, not when her father had barely congratulated her. Look at that, he’d said when she showed him the e-mail, offering her a side hug. Then he’d passed her in the kitchen later that night, eyes glazing over her as if she were a once-interesting piece of furniture he’d since tired of. She tried not to take it personally—he wasn’t happy about anything these days—but she still teared up in the bathroom while brushing her teeth. The next morning, she awoke to a congratulations card on her nightstand with twenty dollars folded inside. I’m sorry, her father had written, I’m trying. Trying what? Trying to love her?
She stretched her legs across Luke’s lap and he kneaded the smooth skin near her ankles while he finished his corn dog. He’d never seen her like this before—hair wet and kinky, her face clean of makeup—but she felt pretty as he smiled at her across the table, touching her ankle, and she wondered if his gentle touch meant more, if he might even be in love with her a little bit. Before they left, she tried to take a picture of the two of them but Luke cupped his hand around her phone. He wanted to keep their relationship a secret.
“Not a secret,” he said. “Just private.”
“‘That’s the same thing,” she said.
“It’s not. I just think we should be low-key about this. That’s all.”
“Why?”
“I mean, the age thing.”
“I’m almost eighteen.”
“‘Almost’ ain’t eighteen.”
“I wouldn’t get you in trouble. Don’t you know that?”