There also existed the possibility of Elena and Mauro seeking citizenship by each marrying other people, since they weren’t already married to each other. The woman upstairs whose children Elena babysat had married a white Texan for this purpose. They only saw each other for appointments at the immigration office. She’d had to pay a few thousand already, and the rest was due in installments, but she never had to have sex with him and already had a green card in hand. The way she described it, marrying someone else as just a matter of paperwork didn’t seem unreasonable to Elena, but Mauro refused to consider it.

They were careful. Scared even to play the radio too loud, not wanting to give anyone a reason to complain. They’d been told immigration officers only arrested people when tipped off. SWAT teams raiding apartment buildings, restaurant kitchens, or factories. Bulletproofed and body-armored officers with no-knock warrants, storming homes, breaking down doors if needed, as if the people inside were planning a bombing or a coup. They might take you away or if you were lucky, let you go with just a warning, but you’d be entered in their database, called for annual check-ins, and classified as deportable.

Mauro and Elena could always go home. Their old lives would wait for them. Yet staying under such conditions would prevent them from ever being able to visit Perla without losing the life they were beginning to make in the north. If they remained without adjusted status, they’d need to dissolve into the population, praying the laws changed, for amnesty or asylum.

Mauro passed time spinning bottles, flipping coins, pulling cards from a deck, searching for signs, a way to make the decision for his family to stay or to go. But there was no card for keeping Elena and her mother apart. No card for a life sentence of uncertainty. No card for forfeiting one country to bet on another. No card for regret.

Nando was much smaller than their daughter had been when she was born. Elena was sure it was the American diet, which somehow fattened a person while depriving them of nutrition. Mauro was in the room for the birth but was afraid to come back to see them in the hospital because he’d heard from neighbors of someone being arrested when visiting a dying relative, detained and swiftly deported. They heard such stories often. Mauro and Elena knew they would have to behave more perfectly than any natural-born citizen even if their complexions would always arouse suspicion. They were both people who followed the letter of the law, but once they overstayed they shuddered at the sight of police, who could ask point-blank for their government ID, and they’d have to admit they had none. For every deportation horror tale, there was another about someone receiving sudden amnesty, asylum, or a pardon so they could apply for residency, and they were filled with hope. And now they had a son who was different from them, with double the possibilities for his future.