At first, her calls were frequent. Daily. Sometimes twice, in the morning and before she went to sleep. She reported everything about her new life, gossiping affectionately about her mother and her siblings. She suspected her mother was a little frightened of her. Not because she might be dangerous, but as if she were some breakable object, like a centuries-old museum artifact on loan between nations.
Her brother and sister, she said, took her on outings to Manhattan, where she felt choked by crowds and buildings taller than their highest mountains, where the subway vibrations reminded her of the tremors she felt underfoot back home, Chibchacum adjusting his load; and to the beach, wide as a field and full of people, sand coarse and mottled with cigarette butts, the Atlantic water inky and cold.
Her English improved beyond television and movie dialogue. Her sister became her teacher, instructing her to read pages of novels aloud for an hour each night. On weekends, her family took her to the other town where their good friends lived and the adults, too, treated her as if she were a special thing, precious and symbolic as an emerald ensconced in gold. She worried they hadn’t yet figured out that she was ordinary, she told her father, exceptional only in her ability to do harm and to run away, and was terrified that someone would learn of her crime and time at the prison school and tell her mother.
The funny thing, she said, was that back home she felt she had so much to say, but in her new country everyone kept commenting how quiet she was. She even heard her mother describe her as shy. She worried she’d left her real self with her father and the girl who flew to the United States in her place, though she wore the same face, was someone else.
* * *
A few weeks after her departure, Mauro received a call from the police. They learned Talia had left the country. They knew the day and the hour, and he prayed they hadn’t searched security camera footage showing them together at the airport as he prepared to send her off. He was able to fake shock, which the police seemed to believe, since Elena had been the one to purchase the plane ticket. They asked if he’d heard from her. He said he hadn’t. They asked if he knew how to reach Elena, and he lied that they hadn’t spoken in years. And so the call turned to one of sympathy.
“I am sorry to have to give you this bad news,” the officer said. “Now that your daughter has fled the country to be with her mother, you may never see either of them again.”
* * *
Elena called to thank Mauro for the Virgin statue he’d sent, for the photographs and for the letter he’d tucked into the envelope with them. He waited for her to say more, but she was quiet. Then she thanked him for the years he’d cared for Talia. Said every day was a revelation of who she was as a young woman. Despite the distance and years apart, she’d somehow convinced herself she knew their daughter well. Now she understood that child was fiction. The daughter Elena was getting to know was smarter, wiser, as lovely and self-governing as a wildflower.
Without Talia between them now, Mauro worried the threads that bound him and Elena would fray to nothing. He felt a dam of urgency break in him.
“I’ll find a way back.” He didn’t know if she understood or if she would even believe him. He only hoped that when he made it to the other side, she would be waiting.
* * *
The apartment was packed and ready for its next occupancy. The boxes with the few things that mattered to them held in a storage unit where he’d paid the year in advance. After Talia left, Mauro did months of research. Enough time had passed since his deportation that he could apply for legal reentry. He submitted the paperwork and was approved for an appointment at the US embassy, which gave him hope that his past offenses might be pardoned. He took the day off and wore his best clothes, brought a file of photos of his family and copies of Nando’s and Talia’s birth certificates. He told the consular officer he had two US-born children and his deportation had caused substantial hardship on their mother. He’d read about another deported father in Nicaragua with a similar family situation who was granted a special waiver with the help of some advocacy group. But Mauro still had no sponsor waiting for him on the other side and now had nothing in Colombia proving any incentive to return. His request was refused. He could reapply, the officer said, or wait until his American children were old enough to petition for a parent visa, but the arrests on Mauro’s record made it unlikely he’d ever be granted entry again.
He considered other potential routes. First to the United States by way of Canada, but ruled it out when he learned the two countries share immigration information. A flight to Jamaica or the Bahamas since neither required visas of Colombians. Or by boat to Panama through the Darién Gap and San Blas Islands, by bus and train the rest of the way north. The more he stared at those borders on maps, the more absurd it seemed that outsiders succeeded in declaring possession of these lands with national lines, as if Creation could ever be divided and owned.