As they ate, she watched her father, this man who was both young and old. He’d lost weight in her absence. His skin darkened in its hollows. After she left, he would continue to transform even more with age and time. She wanted to memorize him as he was now.
Her father would not let them be downhearted on this, their final night before she was due to leave. He played music and lifted her from the sofa to dance with him the way he taught her when he first came to live at Perla’s house, carrying her small feet on his toes until her body discovered its instinct for rhythm.
She was so tired, but she didn’t want to sleep, wishing they could still go up to the roof of Perla’s house for a farewell to the city lights. In the new apartment of no sunrises or sunsets, all they had was their small windows with a view to the street.
When she woke, it was still dark. She went to her father’s room, saw him sleeping atop his blanket, hands folded over his heart like a man at his own funeral. She wanted to wake him so he could tell her one more time about Chía, the guardian of night. She wanted to ask if the goddess would still watch over her when she was so far away from their land, but instead she let her father sleep.
TWENTY-EIGHT
They were just another parent and child in an airport terminal full of goodbyes. They entered as conspirators, calm, trying not to show their fear that she could be arrested. Police patrolled. Working dogs sniffed baggage. She knew from TV programs there were hidden cameras all around. They approached the counter. When it was her turn, she slid over her blue passport. At fifteen she was old enough not to have to travel as an unaccompanied minor. The airline attendant looked over the top of her glasses at Mauro and asked their relation.
“I’m her father.” He handed over his ID so the woman could compare their last names.
“Who will meet you at the airport when you arrive?” she asked Talia.
“My mother.”
In her handbag, an envelope of cash her father withdrew from the bank. Her heart quivered as the airline employee studied her passport picture, then scanned the bar code. Talia had seen enough movies to write her own scene of a police stampede surrounding and removing her in handcuffs. But nothing like that happened. The woman returned Talia’s passport with a boarding pass tucked inside and wished her a good trip.
Relief, but only temporarily, because she still had to get through customs and security. Her first time flying since her arrival as a baby. She felt dispirited. The composure she’d practiced in the taxi all the way to the airport, clutching her father’s hand on the vinyl upholstery between them, was gone. Mauro must have sensed this because he led her to a column along the corridor, held her close, and whispered that she was safe, nobody would take her away. She would get on that plane, and in a few hours she would be in her mother’s arms.
“What if I want to come back?”
“You can. You have two places to call home.”
A goodbye is always too brief, or maybe she’d been saying goodbye since she came to Colombia, aware for as long as she’d collected memories that her place there was only provisional.
“What if I don’t love my mother the way I love you?”
“You will. You do. When you see her you will remember.”
“And my brother and sister?”
“They are a part of you too.”
“I don’t want to go.” This came from some unknowable place but now felt truer than anything. “Don’t make me leave you.”
Her father was quiet. He knew that if she stayed the authorities would come for her and send her back to the school on the mountain or another one like it. And even after she completed her sentence, restlessness would never leave her until she returned to her point of origin. She could not leave, but she could not stay.
His eyes were dry, but she knew it was because he’d learned to cry without tears. They said all the things a father and daughter say to each other when they are not sure when or how they will ever see each other again.
How many years would pass between this moment and that one?
How would they be changed by a life apart?
She already felt aged by the day. No longer fifteen but as if she’d lived a decade more and understood, though she didn’t yet know how, that this would be the morning she would dream of, guard in her palms like a loose pearl during her future loneliness.
How stupid she was to think leaving would be as easy as handing over her ticket and finding her seat on the plane. She did not yet know she would mourn this morning like a death.
Mauro watched her as far as the airport perimeters would allow. When she reached the front of the line and gave her passport to the customs agent, she turned and saw him peering from the corner along the last visible stretch of airport tunnel. She had to go on without him. He would stay at the airport until her plane was in the clouds, he’d said. Her phone was programmed to dial him with a single touch should she be detained. They’d prepared in every way for the worst possible outcome, but everything was happening faster than expected. The agent waved her on. At the security checkpoint, while others were asked to step aside to have their bags individually examined, she passed through with ease. Her father was out of sight, but she knew he was still close.