He was thirty-eight. He came to Colombia to teach French. His students were mostly rich Medellín housewives, since people looking for practicality usually chose to learn English. “So many people want to leave this country,” he said. “I can’t understand it. Why would anyone want to leave the most beautiful place on earth?”

Talia’s father said people don’t leave Colombia looking for money so much as looking for peace of mind. She told the Frenchman people left this country for the same reason he left his. It wasn’t giving him what he needed. To that, he agreed, adding he always had the impression he’d been born in the wrong place. She wondered about that, if by birth one could already be out of step with destiny, but only replied that she was very tired and ready to sleep.

He told her to take the bed and he’d stay on the sofa. She approached the mattress, removing only her sneakers before slipping under the blanket, closing her eyes though the lights were still on. In the prison school, Talia lay on her bunk at night running films across her inner lids: images of her mother’s face, scenes from her life in the north, a life that would soon be hers too. She knew Elena from photos, though she probably wouldn’t have been able to pick her mother out of a crowd until recent years, when phone calls came with video—that is until the signal weakened and the picture froze or went black. On those video chats, Talia saw her mother’s bedroom behind her. Watched as she walked around with the phone to show Talia their house, her brother’s and sister’s rooms. Elena said Talia would share a room with Karina when she arrived. They’d already gotten a bed for her. She took Talia on a tour of the surrounding land. Silken grass, trees with leaves that brightened and shed with the mystery of seasons, unlike in Bogotá where the only weather shifts were from wet to wetter. In her mother’s winter, Talia saw tendrils of snow on their windows. In their summer, she saw her siblings sun-blushed, hair slick from swimming in the pool. Some days the Bogotá sun was naked enough for Talia to taste life beyond the elevated confines of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, smashing the climatic monotony, but then the sun would cover in clouds again and she’d remember those minutes of summer were a lie. The best her measure of the Andes could offer was a cycle of seasons in a single day.

Some nights the story of Talia’s family in North America crackled and faded as if she’d worn out the reel. On came memories of Perla; the years when the soapy scent of the lavandería filled her lungs, washing her mind and memories away with the rinse.

Talia first noticed her grandmother started calling her Elena. I’m Talia, Abuela, she would remind her gently, because Perla was a prideful woman. Perla also began to call Mauro the name of her absent husband, Joaquín, who was rumored to have been murdered in Cúcuta on his way back to Bogotá a few years after he left for Venezuela, but Perla never forgave him enough for it to feel true. She was only in her fifties when her joints swelled—aging, it appeared to Talia, at warp speed. Elena had wanted to bring Talia to live with her many times over the years. When she was the age to start kindergarten, and each summer thereafter, to begin the new school year. But Talia begged to be left with her grandmother, whose own visa applications were repeatedly denied. Young as she was, Talia understood Perla would not survive without her. Being alone in her country with her family abroad would kill her quicker than the lavandería miasma or the thin mountain air.