Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

‘Would you like to stay here and draw?’ she asks Luca with her hum-voice. ‘Or sit in the big room with the other children?’

Luca’s hand shoots out and grabs Mami’s.

‘It’s okay,’ Hermana Cecilia says. ‘You can stay with your mami .’

Lydia stands to pluck the backpack from his shoulders. She encourages Luca to sit at the other desk, beside the door.

‘This way you can color,’ she says. ‘You won’t have to hold the paper on your lap.’

Luca sits, and Lydia returns to sit across from the nun, who has some paperwork and a file folder in front of her.

‘Before we begin, I want you to know that you don’t have to answer anything that makes you uncomfortable. I ask that you try, because the answers you give will help us assist more people in the future, to prepare for new patterns of arrivals. But all the information we gather here is anonymous. You needn’t give your real name unless you want to.’

Lydia nods her consent, the nun lifts the cap off her pen, and they begin.

‘Names and ages?’

Lydia gives a little twist of her neck before she responds. ‘I’m thirty-two and my son is eight.’

Hermana Cecilia writes down: María, 32, y José, 8.

‘Where are you traveling from?’

She hesitates, then asks a question of her own. ‘No one has access to these files?’

Hermana Cecilia folds her hands and leans slightly forward. ‘I assure you, hermana, whatever, whoever you’re worried about will never see these files. The only copy is kept locked in that filing cabinet, in this office, also locked, whenever I’m not here.’ Her eyes are blue, and they twinkle when she smiles. ‘I’m always here.’

Lydia nods. ‘We come from Acapulco.’

The nun returns to her writing. ‘What is your intended destination?’

‘We’re going to Estados Unidos.’

‘What city?’

‘Denver.’

‘A friendly city,’ the nun says. ‘Pretty there. Are you traveling for reasons of being reunited with a member of your immediate family?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have family members currently living in the United States?’

‘Yes, an uncle and two cousins.’ She hasn’t seen that uncle, Abuela’s younger brother, since she was a young girl. She’s never met his children.

‘They’re in Denver?’ Hermana Cecilia asks.

‘Yes.’

‘They are expecting you?’

‘No.’

‘Was your decision to migrate planned or spontaneous?’

‘Spontaneous.’ Lydia squeezes her clasped hands together between her thighs.

‘Was the primary reason for your journey financial?’

‘No.’

‘Was the primary reason for your journey medical?’

‘No.’

‘Was the primary reason for your journey domestic violence?’

‘No.’

‘Was the primary reason for your journey related to gang violence or recruitment?’

‘No.’ Lydia shakes her head.

‘Was the primary reason for your journey related to violence by a cartel or drug traffickers in your place of origin?’

Lydia clears her throat. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. She can hear Luca’s crayon moving rapidly across the paper in silky strokes.

‘Are you currently in fear for your life from a specific individual or individuals?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you received direct threats to your safety?’

Lydia nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Were the threats violent in nature?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you describe the threats?’

Lydia scoots her chair closer and places her elbows on the edge of the desk. She folds her fingers together and lowers her head and her voice.

‘The cartel killed sixteen members of our family,’ she says, staring at the pen. The nun does not look up from her paper. ‘They came to a family party and they shot everyone. My husband, my mother, my sister, and her children. Everyone. We escaped.’

Hermana Cecilia’s pen is at a momentary loss. It hangs suspended over the page for a few seconds before the nun can make it move again. She scribbles everything down and then makes her voice go again, too.

‘Has your spontaneous migration resolved the immediate threat to your safety and well-being?’

Lydia hesitates, because everything she’s ever thought about protecting Luca has changed now. She doesn’t want him to be afraid. But she needs him to be very afraid. And in any case, how can anything she does or does not say make any impact on him after what’s already happened? She shakes her head. ‘No,’ she admits. ‘We are still in danger.’

‘You feel the threat has followed you?’

Lydia nods very slightly. ‘Yes. I mean, he doesn’t know where we are right now. But it was a very powerful man who did this. His influence extends all the way to el norte . And he won’t stop looking until he finds us.’

‘Do you know which plazas belong to him, or who his allies are in other organizations?’ the nun asks. ‘Do you know which routes are safe for you to travel without his halcones ?’

Lydia feels that this room has the sanctity of a confessional. ‘No,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘You are a long way from home,’ the nun says. ‘He cannot find you here. You are safe here.’

Luca’s crayon makes no sound behind her. The nun puts her pen in the cup beside her phone and tucks the paperwork into the folder. Then she stretches her hands across the desk toward Lydia, who takes them in hers, and bows her head. When Lydia closes her eyes, she realizes her hands are trembling. Hermana Cecilia’s fingers are cool to the touch.

‘ Padre nuestro, bless these children with your love and grace. Protect them from any further harm, God, and provide them with comfort in their time of unspeakable grief. May Jesus walk the road with them and repair their broken hearts. May Mother Mary sweep all dangers from their road ahead and lead them safely where they’re going. Padre nuestro, these two faithful servants have shouldered more than their share of life’s burdens already. Please, God, may you see fit to relieve them of any further torment, yet not as we will it, but as thy will be done. In Jesus’s name, Amen.’

‘Amen,’ Lydia says.

Behind her at the little desk, with closed eyes and clutched crayon, Luca is moving his lips.

Hermana Cecilia leans forward one last time. ‘Be careful who you talk to,’ she says.

That night Lydia wakes to the sound of raised voices in the corridor. She sits up in the half-light of the bunk room and notices several other women popping up from their beds as well. They move silently to check on their children, who sleep through the ruckus. Luca is above her in the top bunk, so Lydia has to disentangle her leg from the backpack strap she wrapped around it before she fell asleep. She stands, her bare feet cool against the tile floor, and reaches for his rumpled covers. Luca is not there. Panic rises in her throat.

‘Luca!’

She checks her own bed again without meaning to, and then the surrounding beds as well. As if her child is an item she’s unthinkingly misplaced. A cell phone, a book. A pair of glasses. There’s a window on the door that leads to the corridor, and a rectangle of light shining through it. Lydia, without shoes or a bra, bolts toward that patch of light.

This is Luca’s third trip to the bathroom since they got into bed a few hours ago. The murky lemonade returns. Being on the top bunk has made his frequent sprints to the toilet extra challenging, but Mami’s so exhausted that she never wakes, not even when he nearly steps on her shoulder as he clambers down, not even when he lands with an indelicate thump just inches from her head, not even as he runs – the prickly, imbalanced gait of the diarrhetically infirm – from bunk to bathroom and back again.