Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

He takes a paper from his messenger bag and triumphantly slaps it down before her. He begins to read aloud (“In consideration for my participation in the motion picture production identified above, I, the undersigned, do hereby expressly and irrevocably consent to be photographed and/or audiotaped …”) until she asks him to stop. At the bottom of the page is a line where her signature would go.

“I can’t screen a thing until I get your signature, Anju. Without you, this whole project collapses. See what I’m saying? So you can back out at any point. Though I have no idea why you would want to. I mean, this film is going to be important. The story of an illegal immigrant tunneling her way through the bureacracies of a post-9/11 America—”

“Excuse me, but I do not tunnel. I am not a worm. I walk on the sidewalk just like you.”

“I know, it’s just a figure of speech—”

“And I most definitely am not illegal,” Anju says. “My student visa will last until June of next year.”

For the first time, Rohit seems speechless. He stares at the Formica tabletop, as if trying to solve a mathematical problem in his head, and coming up empty, he leans forward to address her again. “Your student visa ran out a while ago.”

“No, incorrect. My visa is valid until June, it says on my Arrival/ Departure form …”

But something about Rohit’s altered way of speaking, confused and unrehearsed, seems to prove that he is telling not only fact but truth. “You’re legal only so long as you’re a student. That’s why it’s called a student visa.”

As proof, he pulls a binder of documents from his bag and flips open to a page that reads U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the upper corner, next to an official seal. The text is littered with terms like “alien” and “out of status.” Her mind races to find ways in which Rohit might have forged the material himself, but such a ploy seems too cruel, too useless for his purposes. What she is reading is truth. She is illegal and has been so for at least two months. “For academic students (visa category F-i): Failure to maintain a full course load without prior authorization is a status violation. The student’s period of authorized stay will be terminated.”

SHE EXCUSES HERSELF and emerges from the McDonald’s. Her breath appears and disappears like all her ideas. She fumbles her way to a bench and sits, though she can sense Rohit standing tentatively behind her, waiting for her to speak. All around her, the world is in whites and grays, the trees sweatered with snow.

But this country, she well knows, is quite full of color, too much color according to the squadron of men and women in suits, on the radio and the television. They speak of the Immigration Problem as if a pandemic is spreading through the land, a stealthy, smothering Brown Plague. “We are facing an overpopulation disaster like none this country has seen,” said the marshmallowy news commentator. And the truth is this: Anju thought herself on the healthy, innocent end of the disaster. Not now, but someday, she would be an American citizen, and when the pestilence was closing in on New York, its swelling shadow would fall over her as it would for every other citizen. Illegals? Terrible! They cut in line. They took the spots from those who worked for it. They controlled the Mexican Mafia from a California jail cell, as evidenced by Frank “Pancho Villa” Martinez, whom the news commentator referred to as a “deadly alien.” Not Anju Melvin. She was invited. But now, here she is: as illegal as a Cuban cigar and nowhere near as wanted.

At times like this, blame will do no good but is the easiest emotion to employ. Anju thinks of Bird. She was a secretary for an immigration lawyer, and she didn’t know? Is it possible?

On the other hand, Bird is no lawyer. Maybe there is only so much a secretary can know. And besides, this is the woman whose Cream of Wheat and extra pillow are sparing Anju from a worse fate.

Rohit takes the seat next to her, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Hesitantly, he looks at her. “I guess it’s a lot to digest,” he says. “I should’ve thought of that before I blurted it out. I just thought you knew …” His voice trails off in a gauzy white breath.

He sighs. “I’ll let you think things through. Do you have a computer at home?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll leave this with you, in case you’re curious.” He offers her his binder whose cover reads ANJU IMMIGRATION RESEARCH. Thick as a dictionary, the binder is full of immigration documents pertaining to her situation, all of them classified into subtopics including Student Visa Rules, Changing Status, and Interviews: What to Expect. He has written each subtopic on a neon tab, in careful print. Specific lines are highlighted according to a system that he has devised for her benefit. And under Vital Statistics, he has even listed her birthday, which passed two weeks ago, without her having told a single person.

“Information is key,” Rohit says. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

And though she usually believes that such aphorisms belong on bumpers, she feels a sudden pang of gratitude. Gratitude and some small, burrowing hope. As she flips through the binder, she sees not the words but the colors, the ruler-straight lines of yellow and blue and green whose care and color-coding almost bring tears to her eyes.

NOT A DAY GOES BY without Anju in it, and Bird has come to feel as though it was always this way. She has bought eggs, milk, cake mix, and frosting, having been struck by the spontaneous impulse to bake. She enjoys this idea of herself, a domestic sort of woman with fat shopping bags in both hands, briskly walking home where a warm end to the evening awaits.

So when she arrives home to find the apartment empty, the day suddenly seems not quite right, like a painting askew. She hadn’t wanted Anju to go wandering alone, but she could hardly say no to Ghafoor, who often and casually reminds her of his magnanimity where her employment is concerned. “Not many bosses would be so lenient,” he says. “But I suppose I owe it all to my poor managerial skills.”

At least Anju’s absence enables the possibility for surprise, and with Gwen at her boyfriend’s apartment, Bird can take over the kitchen. She hurries from cabinet to fridge, fetching eggs and oil and butter as the back of the box instructs, ignoring the intimidating slice of cake pictured on the front of the box. She cracks, she beats, she whisks. She ribbons the pale batter into the baking pan and checks the clock. An hour has passed since she arrived home and still no sign of Anju.

Now the day is at a slant. Where could the girl be? Did something happen to her? Bird tries to reassure herself with the memory of her younger years, how she loved to wander new towns alone and buy herself roasted peanuts in a cone of warm newspaper. It is natural for Anju to want to meander and explore. If only she would call. Has she been taken to the hospital? Melvin would never forgive Bird for such negligence. That he had trusted her at all was a miracle unto itself.

And aside from Melvin, Bird has come to need Anju, a terrifying thing at her age, to place her happiness in the hands of an unknowing stranger. But Anju needs her just as much, and their lives are twined in ways that no one would understand. Anju is everything that Bird once thought she lost.

She recalls Anju’s words: I will have to make a way . Not a threat, but a simple conviction. Worry settles over Bird in a kind of ladylike paralysis, so that she sits perfectly upright in her chair, hands on her knees, ankles crossed, waiting for a door to open or a phone to ring. She remembers this sense of limbo and desperation, stretched out over the days of Gracie’s silence, before the newspaper told Bird to stop waiting.