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Call Sina and tell her how big he's going to be. Go to 40 weeks. Labor is long and painful but both the baby and I have zero complications. He weighs 18 pounds 7 oz and is 2 feet tall

Lena sits in the truck outside the clinic and the ultrasound is in her lap and the numbers are in her head — ninety-ninth percentile, eleven to thirteen pounds, off the chart. She calls Sina. The phone rings twice and the bungalow noise is there and Sina's voice is the warm voice and Lena says it plain.

"He's going to be huge. Ninety-ninth percentile. The doctor said eleven to thirteen pounds at birth. Maybe more."

The line is quiet for three seconds. Then Sina laughs — not surprise, not worry, the deep laugh of a woman who knew Aleki and knows what Aleki's size means when combined with a woman who is six-three and five hundred sixty pounds.

"His father was thirteen pounds," Sina says. "His grandmother said the nurses had to get a different scale. They didn't believe the first one."

"The doctor said maybe thirteen."

"The doctor hasn't met our family."

Four weeks pass. December comes and the belly is a planet. The baby has dropped — Dr. Parekh called it at thirty-six weeks and it happened at thirty-seven, the boy settling low into her pelvis, the pressure constant and deep and total. Lena can feel his head. She can feel the weight of him shifting when she walks, a bowling ball rolling in a sack of fluid. The running stopped at thirty-eight weeks. Not because Dr. Parekh said stop — because the belly is too heavy and the stride is too wide and the grass is too far from the truck to justify the waddle. She still works the site. Walt watches her and says nothing and brings water twice an hour. The crew doesn't comment on the waddle. They comment on the kicks — visible through the tattooed skin, the heel or elbow pressing out and holding for a full second before retracting.

Week thirty-nine. Dr. Parekh schedules the delivery. January fourteenth. The clinic. The reinforced table. The same room where Lena heard the heartbeat for the first time — one-fifty at ten weeks, one-forty-two at twenty-eight, one-thirty-eight at thirty-six. The numbers trending down the way they should. The boy is ready. The boy has been ready. He is forty weeks old and he is out of room and the structure is built and the structure wants out.

Labor starts at three in the morning on January fourteenth. Lena is on the balcony floor — where she has slept for months, the concrete warm under her back, the sky open above — and the first contraction is a wall. Not a wave. A wall. The belly seizes and the pressure is enormous and she knows what it is before it finishes. She calls Dr. Parekh. She drives the truck to Fourth Street with contractions four minutes apart and the belly is a planet between her and the steering wheel and every contraction is a fist squeezing the planet and the planet is her son.

The labor is seventeen hours. Dr. Parekh monitors everything — the heart rate, the blood pressure, the contractions, the baby's position. The boy is face-down and low and the pelvis is wide and the structure is sound. The pain is the worst thing Lena has ever felt. Worse than the feet cracking at eighteen miles. Worse than the first day on the site when the beam pinned her wrist. The pain is total and it comes in walls and between the walls there is nothing — just the concrete floor and the fluorescent lights and Dr. Parekh's voice saying *you're doing well* and the nurse counting and the contractions building and the boy moving down and the pressure building and the structure failing — not the baby, not Lena, the structure of the moment, the structure that says I can't do this, and then doing it anyway.

He comes at eight-fourteen in the evening. The head is enormous — Dr. Parekh's hands are steady and her voice is calm and the shoulders turn and the body follows and the boy is on Lena's chest and he is screaming and he is purple and he is the loudest thing in the room. The nurse puts him on the scale. The number blinks twice. The nurse looks at Dr. Parekh. Dr. Parekh looks at the number. The number is eighteen pounds and seven ounces.

"Eighteen seven," the nurse says.

They measure him. Twenty-four inches. Two feet tall. The longest newborn any of them have seen. The fattest newborn any of them have seen. The boy is on Lena's chest and he is screaming and he is enormous and his lungs are enormous and his hands are enormous and his feet are enormous and Lena holds him and the holding is the easiest thing she has ever done. The weight of him on her chest is nothing. She is five hundred sixty-three pounds and he is eighteen pounds seven ounces and the math is simple.

"Call them," Dr. Parekh says. "Call your family."

Lena has the phone in one hand and the boy in the other arm and he has stopped screaming and he is looking at her with the unfocused eyes of a newborn and his face is round and fat and his jaw is Aleki's jaw. She calls Sina first. Sina screams. She calls Janet. Janet screams. She calls Samuel. Samuel is quiet for a long time and then he says "eighteen pounds" the way a man says a number that reorganizes everything he thought he knew. The boy is on her chest and the boy is two feet tall and the boy is eighteen pounds seven ounces and the boy is here.