Her eyes seem glassy, focused on the wall behind me. I remember the fights I sometimes heard behind their door: about some brush with the cops Lucia had a few months ago. The money Lucia’s boyfriend borrowed. And Lucia flinging back that her mom was always busy with everyone else’s business.

Maria Auntie taps the foil and points to a bag of groceries that she’s brought. “Lucia will bring some soup tomorrow.” She peers at me. “Kamal okay?”

I blink back tears. She didn’t answer my question. “He’s scared, but he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“Better that way.”

Is it? I want to say. All these years I didn’t know the truth about my mother’s asylum application. Now Maria Auntie adds, “I’ll speak to your lawyer. Everything will work out.”

After she leaves, I check my phone and see Fatima texted.

Ra Ra u there? U OK?

Fine.

What did Lidia say?

Complicated.

Talk?

Not now.

What r u gonna do???

Dunno. I send her a chain of sad emojis and then just turn off the phone. What hurts more: that they want us to leave? Or that my mother lied to me?

All this time.

I fall asleep on the sofa, then wake to a loud noise, my heart banging in my ribs. Just a door slamming down the hall. The TV is on mute, the picture a streaky blur. We used to watch the news all the time after the election. We were terrified: First the Muslim ban, when suddenly anyone from a Muslim country couldn’t travel here. Ammi and I would stay up, munching on bowls of chaat, unable to pry ourselves away from the terrible images: the crowds at the airport, the bobbing signs. Me and Fatima snuck out to go to protests, our voices hoarse from shouting. The family down the hall, from Yemen, would troop into the elevator, gray-faced; they told us they weren’t able to go back for the funeral of the wife’s mother. Months later, the news shifted to the border: tired families lined up; babies hiked to hips; caps pulled low; worn sneakers. I could not stop looking at a little boy, curled inside a cage on a concrete floor, under a blanket that looked like it was made of aluminum foil. He was clutching a dirty stuffed rabbit and had cried himself to sleep.

“Thank goodness we’re protected,” Ammi would whisper. “We followed the rules. We’re just awaiting our appeal. Inshallah. It will happen.”