And how old are these lovely children, may God bless them?
Nine and five, my husband says.
Ten! the boy corrects him from the backseat.
Sorry sorry sorry, yes, they’re ten and five.
I know the girl wants to say something, too, to intervene somehow; I sense it even though I’m not looking at her. She probably wants to explain that soon she will be six instead of five. But she doesn’t even open her mouth. Like my husband, and unlike me, she has a deep, instinctive fear of authority figures, a fear that expresses itself in both of them as earnest respectfulness, even submissiveness. In me, this instinct comes out as a sort of defiant defensive unwillingness to admit to an error. My husband knows this, and he makes sure I never talk in situations where we have to negotiate ourselves out of something.
Sir—the policewoman says now—in Virginia, we care for our children. Any child under the age of seven has to ride in a proper booster seat. For the child’s safety, may God bless her.
Seven, ma’am? Not five?
Seven, sir.
Sorry, officer, so sorry. I—we—had no idea. Where can we buy a booster seat around here?
Contrary to my expectations, instead of claiming her right to rhetorical usufruct of his admitted wrongs, instead of using his defeat as a trampoline from which to spring her own power into a concrete infliction of punishment, she suddenly parts her lips, layered in bright pink lipstick, and offers a smile. A beautiful smile, in fact—shy but also generous. She gives us directions to a shop, very precise directions, and then, modulating her tone, offers us advice on which exact booster seat to buy: the best ones are the ones without the back part, and we must look for the ones with metal buckles, not plastic. In the end, though, I convince my husband to not stop to buy the booster seat. In exchange, I agree to use the Google Maps GPS, just this once, so we can get out of the maze of this town and back onto a road.
MAP
We drive onward, southwest-bound, and listen to the news on the radio, news about all the children traveling north. They travel, alone, on trains and on foot. They travel without their fathers, without their mothers, without suitcases, without passports. Always without maps. They have to cross national borders, rivers, deserts, horrors. And those who finally arrive are placed in limbo, are told to wait.
Have you heard from Manuela and her two girls, by the way? my husband asks me.
I tell him no, I haven’t. Last time I heard from her, right before we left New York, her girls were still at the detention center in New Mexico, waiting either for legal permission to be sent to their mother or for a final deportation order. I’ve tried to call her a couple of times, but she doesn’t pick up. I imagine she’s still waiting to hear what will happen to her daughters, hoping they will be granted refugee status.
What does “refugee” mean, Mama? the girl asks from the backseat.
I look for possible answers to give her. I suppose that someone who is fleeing is still not a refugee. A refugee is someone who has already arrived somewhere, in a foreign land, but must wait for an indefinite time before actually, fully having arrived. Refugees wait in detention centers, shelters, or camps; in federal custody and under the gaze of armed officials. They wait in long lines for lunch, for a bed to sleep in, wait with their hands raised to ask if they can use the bathroom. They wait to be let out, wait for a telephone call, for someone to claim or pick them up. And then there are refugees who are lucky enough to be finally reunited with their families, living in a new home. But even those still wait. They wait for the court’s notice to appear, for a court ruling, for either deportation or asylum, wait to know where they will end up living and under what conditions. They wait for a school to admit them, for a job opening, for a doctor to see them. They wait for visas, documents, permission. They wait for a cue, for instructions, and then wait some more. They wait for their dignity to be restored.
What does it mean to be a refugee? I suppose I could tell the girl:
A child refugee is someone who waits.
But instead, I tell her that a refugee is someone who has to find a new home. Then, to soften the conversation, distract her from all this, I look for a playlist and press Shuffle. Immediately, like a current sweeping over us, everything is shuffled back into a more lighthearted reality, or at least a more manageable unreality:
Who is singing this fa fa fa fa fa song? the girl asks.
Talking Heads.
Did these heads have any hair?
Yes, of course.
Long or short?
Short.
We’re almost out of gas. We need to find a detour, find a town, my husband says, anywhere that we might find a gas station. I take the map out of the glove box and study it.
CREDIBLE FEAR
When undocumented children arrive at the border, they are subjected to an interrogation conducted by a Border Patrol officer. It’s called the credible fear interview, and its purpose is to determine whether the child has good enough reasons to seek asylum in the country. It always includes more or less the same questions:
Why did you come to the United States?
On what date did you leave your country?
Why did you leave your country?
Did anyone threaten to kill you?
Are you afraid to return to your country? Why?
I think about all those children, undocumented, who cross Mexico in the hands of a coyote, riding atop train cars, trying to not fall off, to not fall into the hands of immigration authorities, or into the hands of drug lords who would enslave them in poppy fields, if they don’t kill them. If they make it all the way to the US border, they try to turn themselves in, but if they don’t find a Border Patrol officer, the children walk into the desert. If they do find an officer or are found by one, they are put in detention and held to an interrogation, asked:
Why did you come to the United States?
Be careful! I shout, looking up from the map toward the road. My husband jerks the steering wheel. The car swerves a little, but he regains control.
Just focus on the map and I’ll focus on the road, my husband says, and swipes the back of his hand across his forehead.
Okay, I answer, but you were about to hit that rock, or raccoon, or whatever that was.
Jesus, he says.
Jesus what?
Jesus Fucking Christ, he says.
What?
Just get us to a gas station.
Unplugging her thumb from her mouth, the girl grunts, puffs, and tells us to quit it, punctuating our amorphous, flaky, ungrammatical yapping with the resolve of her suddenly civilized annoyance. Without losing her poise, she sighs a deep, weary period right into our stream of words, clearing her throat. We stop talking. Then, when she knows she has our full, silent, contrite attention, she footnotes a piece of final advice to round up her intervention.