So gentle, soft-spoken, mild, say the eyes of the other soccer parents when they turn to wave to Habte, Paul’s father, sitting alone three rows behind them on the concrete bleachers at Redondo Beach Elementary School. Aloof, a little strange, their eyes say, but what immigrant isn’t a little lost? Habte nods to their eyes. He prefers to sit alone, to share his burrito with the blue pelican hopping on one leg beside him, the pelican he calls Lucy, for the woman from the TV show who kept him company during those long nights working as a security guard when he came to the U.S. for graduate school. Habte pats Lucy’s head. He watches his son Paul: a flashing green jersey circling the ball. He claps when Paul makes a good pass. He thinks about the wood floors in his condo five blocks away that he’s refinishing himself to save money. His research salary isn’t enough to hire a professional, but Habte doesn’t mind the work. He likes to run his palms over the wood’s clean shave. He likes the dim outline of his face reflected from the polish: a rough mirror like the sea. Habte has always liked the sea. First the Red Sea that was quieter than the proud Pacific, so quiet that when he let his feet dangle in the water, he felt compelled to whistle. He was a boy then in Eritrea, in the village of Tiyo where fishermen spoke in whispers not to wake the water.

But then the war came and Ethiopia became a bad word, a word that meant evil, and everything was evil: children strung upside down from trees, black flies tunneling eggs into their swollen lips. The trucks crowded with older boys waving candy wrapped in bright plastic: sweet rewards for conscription. Two years later Habte hid his gun in a shrub along with his boots; it was harder to track a barefoot deserter. He wandered to Asmara, the capital city. He slept on benches, dreaming of bread and cool water sweetened with honey. Nothing to do but beg, or huff a rag soaked in petrol to make his stomach quiet. He scolded himself for not killing himself. He threw dice into the air and watched them fall: a three and a six, three plus six equals nine, nine is an odd number, odd meant Habte wouldn’t kill himself that day. I’m so unlucky, he would say without bitterness to the other hungry boys, thinking of his mother’s fingers that smelled like rice, fingers he would have eaten had she been there stroking his hair. His mother and the beauty mark on her chin that Habte liked to press for luck. And luck finally came—it always does—when another boy stabbed Habte, seeing him as a demon with his hungry eyes, stabbed him with a rat bone he’d sharpened and left Habte bleeding on his back, watching the stars grow until everything was shining: the gravel stones, the muddy puddle, his fingernails, his knuckles. Habte felt very light. He closed his eyes and saw a small grass house and his grandfather, tall with one leg missing, leaning on an elephant tusk. His grandfather pressed Habte’s hand and said, My little lamb, I would love to give you something, but what would help? He pointed to a giant hole beside the house circled with crosses. It has no bottom, his grandfather said, taking a dried bird’s wing from the brim of his straw hat, throwing it into the hole. They wish they had wings, his grandfather said. You hear them? Habte nodded. He heard so many voices. Habte listened to these voices—some sang, others were screaming—until some of the boys were shaking him. He felt a cockroach scuttle over his toes. He opened his eyes and saw a goat chewing weeds and kicking its feet like a spoiled child. Habte laughed as the boys carried him to the clinic where the doctor assumed his laughter was a symptom: he’d lost a lot of blood. The boys told Habte he wouldn’t stop saying Not to worry, not to worry, while the doctor stitched his wounds shut. Habte healed. Still too thin but a little stronger with new scars raised above his eye and across his chest like ribbons, Habte slicked his hair back with rainwater the boys collected in a bucket. He combed his hair as neatly as he could with his fingers. He still had no money, but he wanted to go to school, to the University. He wanted suddenly to learn. Why? Who knows the origins of inspiration: one day the heart beats faster. Habte stumbled into a lecture hall, giddy with hunger. A molecule grew slowly into a fish on the dusty wall: no money for a projector screen or even a blackboard, only chalk in the professor’s hand. But a shadow lifted in Habte’s mind. A small sun rose inside him. The girl with thin arms sitting in the front asked him his name after the lecture ended. He told her. She smiled and told him her name was Haben and asked if he wanted to share lunch: stale bread and sour cheese. Habte swallowed his spit—he did this often to pretend he was eating—and nodded. He shut his eyes to hide his tears. Come, she said. Habte followed Haben to a shaky ladder they climbed to reach a tiny room: a thin mattress, clothes folded neatly in a corner, a picture of Madonna torn from a magazine and pasted to the wall, a red bow in her hair, aluminum foil smoothed beside the pop star to make a mirror. They ate, and Habte listened to the frogs talking in the puddles under the window. Haben found him a job at her cousin’s printing shop where Habte’s fingers became sticky with new paper and glaze. He took classes at night and saved all the money he didn’t need to keep himself alive. He woke early in the mornings, bathed in a river still lit by the moon. He studied and struggled until slowly, very slowly—Habte doesn’t know how—he is at this green soccer field, waving goodbye to Lucy the pelican now that his burrito is finished. He watches Paul run up the bleachers in his small bare feet, his cleats and shin guards in his hands. Paul is smiling. We won, Dad, we won.