Cover

ALSO BY MARINA BUDHOS

The Long Ride

Watched

Dedication

To those seeking safety—may their stories be heard.

Epigraph

On May 7, 2018, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had implemented a “zero tolerance” policy, dictating that all migrants who cross the border without permission, including those seeking asylum, be referred to the DOJ for prosecution. Undocumented asylum seekers were imprisoned, and any accompanying children under the age of eighteen were handed over to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which shipped them miles away from their parents and scattered them among one hundred Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters and other care arrangements across the country. Hundreds of these children, including infants and toddlers, were under the age of five.

—Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

Their faces assumed the awful craftiness of children listening for sounds from the grown-up world.

—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Part 1: Brooklyn, New York, 2019

Chapter One

They’re coming.

It takes a second for the words to drip into the thick soup of my sleep.

They’re here.

The words make ripples in my half dreams. A lamp switches on and a bright band of light stings my lids. “Rania! They’re here.”

I wrench up from the quilt, my heart quivering. “Who?”

“Just come.” Ammi nods to the other bed, where my little brother, Kamal, is sleeping. “Don’t wake him.”

“Of course,” I grumble. I punch my pillow and force myself to get up. Kamal is protected. He’s sensitive. Don’t let him hear. With me, her voice is flat, practical.

I follow her out of the bedroom; she’s still in her jacket from work—a black windbreaker that makes a rubbing noise as she walks. The keys are still in the open door. She hasn’t even pulled out her sofa bed.

Several people are crowded outside our apartment. The fizzing, garbled sound of a walkie-talkie from the hall cuts through our living room. My heart speeds up. They’re in black quilted vests with POLICE on the back.

No. Not us.

A woman turns to me, the one with the walkie-talkie. “Hold,” she says, and clicks off. “And this is?”

“My daughter.”

“Any other children in the apartment?”

“My son.”

“And your daughter is how old?”

A hesitation. “Eighteen.”

“Ammi—” I start, but she flashes me a cool, forbidding look.

That’s a lie! I want to yell. I’m not eighteen for seven months—December. I’m tall, very tall, taking after my dad, so most people think I’m older than I am. I get away with a lot: the teachers who don’t say a word when I come to pick up my little brother; the kids who hit on me to buy them beer at the liquor store. Me and Ammi both stretch the truth when we have to.

The woman looks up at me. “We’ll have to see some ID, then.”

Ammi gives her one of her charming smiles. “Can you wait just a moment?” She takes my arm and draws me into the foyer.

“Ammi!” I whisper. “My ID says I’m seventeen! Why did you—”

“Hush.” She sets her hands on my shoulders. Ammi is so short, she has to lift her chin to meet my gaze, but she can still terrify me with one firm look. “No time for panic or baby stuff.”

“I’m not a baby!”

Her eyes dart in a dozen directions. “There’s a plan—”

“What plan?” I yank up my sweatpants, worrying the string.

“I tried to call Maria Auntie but she’s not home. She’s on a shift.”

“Why did you say I was eighteen?”

“Rania!” She shakes me lightly. “You’re minors. You can’t be left on your own.”

On our own? My eyes swing around the foyer. Wait. Panic starts up in my chest. Ammi can’t go.

She’s fumbling inside a table drawer, taking out an envelope. Ammi once showed me the paper inside, explaining, “If anything happens, this is what you need. It’s a standby guardianship form. Maria Auntie will take care of you.”

Maria Auntie lives down the hall and is our surrogate aunt since we don’t have any family in this country. She brings us foil dishes of arepas and tamales and we keep our extra keys with her. Maria Auntie is a lot like Ammi—she’s got hustles and side hustles to keep her family going.

“Everything okay over there?” the officer calls over to us.

Ammi pulls me back to the doorway. “My mistake. My daughter is eighteen in a few months.”

The woman gives us a skeptical look. “So you’ve appointed a standby guardian?”

“Yes, yes.” She thrusts the folded paper at the officer, who reads it.

“And where is Maria Alvarez?”

My mother’s voice fades. “Working.”

The woman squints at the form. “And who is this—Lucia Alvarez?”

“Lucia!” my mother says brightly. “Yes, yes! She is home. Maria’s daughter.”

Oh great, I think. Lucia. The biggest mess-up around. She dropped out of LaGuardia College and got in trouble with some creepy boyfriend.

The officer goes down the hall and presses, hard, on Maria Auntie’s buzzer. A few other doors in the hall crack open, some still with the chain attached, worried faces peering out. I feel a humiliating burn around my ears. We have seen this before. Men and women in these same jackets swarming up the stairs. Calling through the door. Crying and pleading and then our neighbors were gone.

“Who is it?”

Before the officer can speak, Ammi calls out, “It’s us! Sadia and Rania!”

The door swings open. Lucia’s makeup is smeary, one side of her curly hair flattened. “Yeah?”

When the officer explains the situation, she rolls her eyes, as if to say, You guys are always a pain. I’ve heard her complain to Maria Auntie that they shouldn’t get involved with other people’s problems.

There’s a footfall behind me. Turning, I see Kamal in his rumpled pajamas, rubbing his eyes. “Ammi?” he mumbles.

My mother looks crushed. Everything she does is to never let Kamal know this could happen. Me, I’m always supposed to go along with her, even if it makes no sense.

“Take him back in,” the walkie-talkie woman says to Ammi, firm.

“May I say goodbye?”

The woman sighs. “This isn’t a good idea.”

My whole body clenches. Every part of me wants to scream: Then don’t take my mother.

Ammi kneels down. She’s in slacks and a crisp shirt, as if for an office, even though she’s been driving all night for Uber. Kamal stretches his thin arms around her neck and nestles in her hair. She’s murmuring to him calmly. I’m furious—and scared. Then Ammi wipes her eyes.

“Ma’am?”

“Just a minute.”

“Ma’am, don’t make this harder.”

She stands. She puts something in my palm—cool and bumpy—it’s her keys, to the car, to everything else. She draws me close. I smell sandalwood and a trace of coconut oil in her hair, the stuff that I use for my unruly waves. My mother is so young, it’s as if we’re sisters, not mother and daughter. “You can drive,” she whispers. “Remember that.”

True. Ammi made sure I took driver’s ed, even though I use buses and the subway everywhere. She never lets me drive the car. But she’s always ready to flee. We keep a suitcase packed with a set of overnight clothes and toothbrushes in the bottom of our closet; we never buy too much for the apartment—one wok, one tawa pan, silverware for four, so we always have to wash our forks and knives after eating. The story of our life, for so long.

But this time, it’s not the three of us, packed up, sprung and ready to go. Just her. I call out, “Wait! It’s a mistake!”

Ammi pulls back. Her face has gone hard. “Not now, Rania.”

I whimper.

“In the morning, call Lidia. She knows what to do.” That’s our lawyer.

My mother and I stare at each other. A staticky voice comes through the walkie-talkie. “We need you down here. Another group. A van.”

“Roger that,” the woman says. “I’ve got some collateral here too.”

Collateral.

Ammi.

The woman gestures to Lucia, who grudgingly comes and stands by our door. “You’re over eighteen?”

Lucia looks defiant. “Just turned the big twenty.”

“Can I see ID?”

Here Lucia’s bravado falters. She’s undocumented. The whole family is. She fishes out an ID, the woman scribbles down the information, then gives it back. “Okay, you’ll need to stay with them. We’ll send someone to make sure your mother is serving as standby.”

The officer gently takes my mother’s elbow and guides her past half-opened doors and frightened faces. Kamal flings his arms around me, presses his head into my stomach.

Lucia nervously picks at her fingers. Behind her toughness, she’s scared. Just like us. She puts her hand on Kamal’s back. “Thanks,” I whisper.

And then we are watching, stunned, as Ammi disappears down the stairwell, swallowed up in a mound of heads and shoulders. It’s only after she leaves that it sinks in.

This was a raid. An ICE raid.

I wrench Kamal into our apartment, slam the door, and push down a sob. No. I can’t break down in front of Kamal. Back in our bedroom, I nudge him into bed. Even though he’s trembling and confused, he slides his bare feet under the blanket and turns his back to me. I rush to the window. Down below, several ICE agents mill in the hot glare of lights. One puts a palm on Ammi’s head, steering her toward the back of the van. She glances up at me, to our window. I see her mouth move.

Run, I’m sure she’s saying. Run.

Chapter Two

Two months ago I was running around for fun.

It was early April, one of those hot days where sweat pricks the back of your neck the minute you step outside. I had just dropped off Kamal at school and was heading over to the subway to meet my best friend, Fatima. This was our routine every day since we met at the beginning of ninth grade in gym class. On that day, I was groaning and cursing my thick hair falling in my face when a girl handed me a gold-braided tie, saying, “Take it. I’ve made fifty more.” She had the same wild waves as me, but she looked way more chic with her gray-green eyes, her drab uniform shorts rolled into neat cuffs. I snapped the band into place and felt sleek and cool.

Now, by spring of senior year, it’s like there’s a wind under our sneakers. Fatima and I glide and slide through the Brooklyn streets—my neighborhood, Sunset Park; hers in Bay Ridge. Our shoulders loosened back, not bowed with textbooks. All that counted is behind us. Sure, we’ve got our Regents exams but I’m not too worried. We’re in the fourth quarter, our grades stacking up fine. I’ve got my admission to Hunter College in Manhattan; after lots of family drama, Fatima’s going to Brooklyn College.

On that day we were wearing matching FREEDOM T-shirts that Fatima designed, showing a silhouette of two girls before a sunset. Our little reward to ourselves for four years of manic work and pushing for grades, while taking care of our siblings and remembering to pull the meat out of the freezer for dinner—so what if we declared ourselves free a little early? We deserve it.

Self-care, Fatima calls it. She’s always posting pics on Instagram on how to give yourself a spa day or light scented candles to soothe your spirit. Blissful pictures of windows looking out on the Mediterranean Sea or of us lounging in Sunset Park, showing off our pedis. Fatima’s something fierce about fashion and self-love. I’m sure it’s because of her mother, who got married at sixteen. Mrs. Elawady is always in the same long housedress, day in, day out, too busy with taking care of Fatima and her three brothers. Fatima gets furious at her mother for letting her roots grow out; now and then she drags her into the bathroom, packs her hair with her grandmother’s recipe of henna and yogurt. I think Mrs. Elawady likes it, actually. “My daughter, the bossy general. I always obey.”

That’s the biggest thing we have in common: our moms. Young-old, we say. We’ll never be like them. We’ll fly fast before life tugs us by the ankles. Isn’t that the whole reason they came to America? Fatima’s mother thought she was going to go to university in Cairo to be a nurse, until her parents told her about a great match: a young man who already owned a business in the US. After many cups of mint tea, talking about the two young people, the matter was settled between the families. “No way that’s how my life’s decided!” Fatima often declares.

Now, on this warm spring morning, I found Fatima waiting by the subway entrance. She had on a denim jacket to hide how tight her T-shirt pulled across her chest. I’m sure her mom wasn’t too thrilled about that. “I got the afternoon off,” she told me.

“Me too. Kamal is going to a friend’s place.”

“Wanna go downtown after school?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Freedom!” We laughed, bumped fists. She hooked her arm through mine, and we raced onto the platform, ignoring the people who frowned at us. We grabbed a couple of seats while the train rumbled underground for a few stops and then suddenly we were up, aboveground, sunlight shooting through the glass. We stared out at the blinding morning light, slashing across the Brooklyn rooftops. Everyone else was lost in their phones or staring down at their shoes. They didn’t even notice the view! That’s what me and Fatima wanted: to live full on, taking in everything.

Our FREEDOM T-shirts came from when we were studying the Beats with Mr. D junior year and reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I complained that the main characters are just a bunch of sexist white dudes who get to do whatever they want, and all the women are called girls and get dumped. “Go ahead, rewrite it,” he told us.

So I did. We performed our feminist version for Mr. D’s Beat Café Night. Brooklyn Ra-Ra and Fa-Fa, we called ourselves. We sat on folding chairs, in black felt berets, on our own wild road trip to find America. At the end I got up and gave my last riff:

The road is a licorice whip sliding down my throat

red-bean buns in Sunset Park, watching the sky blush pink.

West, go West, the Beats told us.

What if the road isn’t yours because the guys got there first?

Maybe the road is your head bristling with possibilities,

The America of me

not the Mexican girl left behind in California,

the jazz players of Denver.

We want America too but our mothers say:

Be careful. Watch out. Curb your mouth. Bring in the laundry.

How do you find America when you’ve got dinner to make?

When you can’t kiss that boy under a Red Hook moon?

I am not my mother I am me

How do I find the America that is me?

We got a lot of cheers, some howling, kids punching the air. Mr. D. submitted that and some of my other writing to a contest. I won a scholarship for “literary promise,” which will help pay for Hunter College. Meanwhile, Fatima fought with her parents to go to FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, but her father put his foot down and said she was going to Brooklyn College, since it’s closer to home, and she’ll major in something more practical. Still we made promises to meet up in Prospect Park or rove around the city as much as we could.

Our version of free.

We stopped at the corner bodega, dunked our hands in the cooler of chilled water, and grabbed a couple of bottles, ice thudding inside. I walked with a bottle pressed against my neck and crossed the street to the park to watch the cute boys on the basketball court. “Fa-tee-ma!” this guy Jamal called, with his loose, easy smile. “When you hangin’ with me?”

“Never!” she called back.

Ammi always says to me, “Wait for the true one, Rania. Protect your heart.” No worries there. I wouldn’t waste my time on these losers anyway. My eyes are locked on next year and beyond.

The bell rang and we were part of the bumpy rush to pour into the huge building, banging up to the third floor so we weren’t late. My breaths were hot and sharp in my lungs by the time I got to Ms. Ricardo’s English class. Not that I worried: she’d gone light on me ever since I got the scholarship. Just as I was sitting down, my phone buzzed: a text from my mother.

Kamal’s taken care of?

I shoved the phone to my pocket but it vibrated. Rania? U there?

In class. I told you. Yes.

Where again?

His friend. Derek.

Sorry. Home late tonight.

Totally annoying. We just went over the arrangements an hour ago! Ammi said she had to visit immigration in the afternoon. A routine check: she does it every year while our asylum application makes its way through the system. Each time she goes I feel a spike of fear. Especially these days, with what we see on the news. The Muslim ban. No more asylum seekers allowed. But this morning Ammi insisted it was nothing, just the usual rubber stamp. I watched her slide off her bangle. “Why are you doing that?” I asked. She gave me a blank smile. “It’s been rubbing me lately.” As if to prove it, she kneaded her wrist. That didn’t make sense. The bangle came from my father, a long time ago, when they married. I listened to it drop, clinking, into a bowl.

After school, I spotted Fatima squatting by a wall and taking a picture where someone had graffitied BROOKLYN IS LOVE in bright fuzzy letters. She tucked her phone in her pocket. “Another idea for a T-shirt. I can sell it on Etsy.”

Fatima’s always coming up with creative schemes like this: she stays up late sewing sequins onto shirt collars, or cuts up her mother’s old housedresses to make patchwork turbans. Last year she made all of ninety-seven dollars, but she’s still sure that this will be her life.

“You’ll major in accounting,” her dad told her. After I don’t know how many fights and tears and her texting me at all hours of the night, she agreed, telling me that at least with an accounting degree, no one will cheat her when she opens her own clothing line. Fatima’s not one to back down easily. “You’re so lucky,” she says. “Your mom is a warrior. She wants you to be a writer. Or whatever you want.”

It’s not that simple.

What I really feel: my mom wants to be me.

Ever since I could remember, I’ve felt my mother’s wistful breaths on my neck. Fingering my stuff. Telling me about how she was a good writer in school too, the ghazals she used to scribble, the plays she acted in. Sometimes I’d come home and find Ammi on my bed, one of my schoolbooks opened on the pillow. She’d get up, groggy, strands of moist curly hair pressed against her cheek. Sadness and fury boiled up inside me. My bed, the quilt dented with her body. My book, pages folded on the corners. She was always there, her lingering scent of coconut oil and detergent, smothering my thoughts.

And then I’d feel badly. Ammi brought me here, on her own, and never complains. She’s tiny, just over five feet, and moves down the street like a boxer, using her shoulders to press past a crowd. She likes to shop on Eighth Avenue, Chinatown, where she says the long beans are the best, and she bargains down the fishmongers, who stand poised in their rubber aprons, paper bags open, or elbows into the cluster of Chinese women buying packages of pajamas spread on the pavement. She’s blunt and unsentimental. When I ask her about our family, her eyes flash, and she says, “You want to know how the men treat their wives and daughters? No, I don’t think so.” And that was the end of that.

Fatima and I crossed the street, headed toward the subway. “My parents asked me how I’d feel about delaying college a year.”

I stopped. “No way! You can’t do that!”

“I think my dad’s trying to set up a match. He’d rather have me married so I can cut out the whole dating-in-college thing.”

“No! Don’t listen to him!” I pushed the hurt out of my voice. “What about our plans next year? Hanging out? Your fashion line?”

She sent her voice into a low, manly roll. “ ‘Fatima, marriage isn’t some kind of shopping spree. You can’t return what you bought the next day!’ ”

“He did not say that.”

“Totally.”

“What does your mom say? Didn’t she always tell you that she wouldn’t let the same happen to you?”

Fatima shrugged. “What my dad says goes in our house. You know that.”

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