Do you think she will remember this? the woman on my left says in Spanish. We are on the bench and her child is a toddler and she is wearing yellow shorts with white daisies and she has just four front teeth. She is sitting in the sand throwing handfuls in the air while a guard stands to the side. The guard looks through her. The guard is a woman and she looks like me.

What is her name? I say.

Gladys, she says. Do you think she will remember this?

No, I lie.

I lie because I know they can detain us for months. I know this because another detained woman told me so. She is working with activists who are trying to get her out. The activists told her kids are not supposed to be detained more than twenty-one days, but the Obama administration is arguing that kids with their parents are different from kids without their parents and so the twenty-one days doesn’t apply. It’s all incredibly confusing. The woman has another daughter who is a US citizen. She just wants to get to her. Mothers with US citizen children have a better chance but still …

Which one is yours? the woman beside me says.

She is not here, I say.

What do you mean? She fidgets with her shirt.

I left my daughter with someone, I say. She was not picked up.

Then why are you here? She frowns at me.

I don’t know, I answer truthfully. They transferred me from Florida. I don’t know why they brought me to the family facility. I have no family with me.

You are lucky, she says. You are lucky your child will not remember this.

Your daughter won’t remember this, I say. I want to hold her hand but I don’t. She won’t remember this, I say again.

We all know that last week, this woman and her daughter were placed in an isolation room for two days. The isolation rooms are in the medical unit. They are meant for people with TB and other such diseases, but the guards use them for punishment. The guards punished the woman after a bed raid. These raids are unannounced; they often wake us in the middle of the night, scaring the children. The guards found the woman had hidden snacks in the room. She worried because her daughter has lost so much weight since landing here. She said the isolation room smelled of antiseptic. She said the isolation room had a smiling zebra painted on the wall.

In my bunk I have started a letter to Ana. I have scratched it into the metal above me with a paper clip. It starts Dear Ana, I am sorry. That’s all I’ve written. Dear Ana, I am sorry.