Lost Children Archive. Valeria Luiselli

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      The boy and his father are still asleep, and the two of us—mother, daughter—find a seat on the couch in the cottage’s small but luminous living room. She sips her milk and opens her sketchbook. After a few failed attempts at drawing something, she asks me to make four squares for her—two at the top, two at the bottom—and instructs me to label them in this order: “Character,” “Setting,” “Problem,” “Solution.” When I finish labeling the four squares and ask what they’re for, she explains that at school, they taught her to tell stories this way. Bad literary education begins too early and continues for way too long. I remember how one day, when the boy was in second grade and I was helping him with homework, I suddenly realized he probably didn’t know the difference between a noun and a verb. So I asked him. He looked up at the ceiling theatrically, and after a few seconds said yes, of course he knew: nouns were the letters on the yellow cards above the blackboard, and verbs were the ones on the blue cards below the blackboard.

      The girl concentrates on her drawing now, filling in the squares I made for her. I drink my coffee, and open Sontag’s journals again, rereading loose lines and words. Marriage, parting, moral bookkeeping, hollowed out, separation: Did our underlining these words foreshadow it? When did the end of us begin? I cannot say when or why. I’m not sure how. When I told a couple of friends, shortly before the four of us went on this trip, that my marriage was possibly ending, or at least was in a moment of crisis, they asked:

      What happened?

      They wanted a precise date:

      When did you realize, exactly? Before this or after that?

      They wanted a reason:

      Politics? Boredom? Emotional violence?

      They wanted an event:

      Did he cheat? Did you?

      I’d repeat to all of them that no, nothing had happened. Or rather, yes, everything they listed had probably happened, but that wasn’t the problem. Still, they insisted. They wanted reasons, motivations, and especially, they wanted a beginning:

      When, when exactly?

      I remember going to the supermarket one day shortly before we left on this trip. The boy and girl were arguing over the better flavor of some squeezable pureed snack. My husband was complaining about my particular choice of something, maybe milk, maybe detergent, maybe pasta. I remember imagining, for the first time since we had moved in together, how it would be to shop for just the girl and me, in a future where our family was no longer a family of four. I remember my feeling of remorse, almost instant, at having the thought. Then a much deeper feeling—maybe a blow of nostalgia for the future, or maybe the inner vacuum of melancholia, sucking up presentness and spreading absence—as I placed the shampoo the boy had chosen on the conveyer belt, vanilla scented for frequent use.

      But surely it was not that day, in that supermarket, that I understood what was happening to us. Beginnings, middles, and ends are only a matter of hindsight. If we are forced to produce a story in retrospect, our narrative wraps itself selectively around the elements that seem relevant, bypassing all the others.

      The girl is finished with her drawing and shows it to me, full of satisfaction. In the first square, she has drawn a shark. In the second, a shark surrounded by other sea animals and algae, the surface of the water above them, the sun at the very top in a distant corner. In the third square, a shark, still in the water, looking distraught and facing a kind of underwater pine tree. In the fourth and last square, a shark biting and possibly eating another big fish, maybe also a shark.

      So what’s the story? I ask.

      You tell it, Mama, you guess.

      Well, first there is a shark; second, he’s in the sea, where he lives; third, the problem is there’s only trees to eat, and he’s not a vegetarian because he’s a shark; and fourth, finally, he finds food and eats it up.

      No, Mama. All wrong. Sharks don’t eat sharks.

      Okay. So what’s the story? I ask her.

      The story is, character: a shark. Setting: the ocean. Problem: the shark is feeling sad and confused because another shark bit him, so he goes to his thinking-tree. Solution: he finally figures it out.

      Figures what out? I ask her.

      That he just has to bite the other shark back for biting him!

      CHAOS

      The boy and his father finally wake up, and over breakfast, we discuss plans. My husband and I decide we need to get going again. The children complain, say they want to stay longer. This isn’t a normal vacation, we remind them; even if we can stop and enjoy things once in a while, the two of us have to work. I have to start recording material about the crisis at the southern border. From what I can gather by listening to the radio and fishing for news online whenever I can, the situation is becoming graver by the day. The administration, backed by the courts, has just announced the creation of a priority docket for undocumented minors, which means that the children who are arriving at the border will get priority in being deported. Federal immigration courts will process their cases before any others, and if they don’t find a lawyer to defend them within the impossibly narrow span of twenty-one days, they will have no chance, and will receive a final removal order from a judge.

      I don’t say all that to our children, of course. But I do tell the boy that what I’m working on is time sensitive, and I need to get to the southern border as quickly as possible. My husband says he wants to get to Oklahoma—where we will visit an Apache cemetery—as soon as possible. Sounding like a 1950s suburban housewife, the boy tells us that we’re always “putting work before family.” When he’s older, I tell him, he’ll understand that the two things are inseparable. He rolls his eyes, tells me I’m predictable and self-involved—two adjectives I’ve never heard him use before. I reprimand him, tell him he and his sister have to do the breakfast dishes.

      Do you remember when we had other parents? he asks her as they start with the dishes and we start packing up.

      What do you mean? she answers, confused, passing him the liquid soap.

      We had parents, once upon a time, better than these ones that we have now.

      I listen, wonder, and worry. I want to tell him that I love him, unconditionally, that he does not have to demonstrate anything to me, that I’m his mother and want him near me, always, that I also need him. I should tell him all that, but instead, when he gets like this, I grow distant, circumspect, and maybe even unbiologically cold. It exasperates me not to understand how to ease his anger. I usually externalize my messy emotions, scolding him for little things: put on your shoes, brush your hair, pick up that bag. Most of the time, his father also turns his own exasperation inward, but he doesn’t scold him, doesn’t say or do anything. He just becomes passive—a sad spectator of our family life, like he’s watching a silent movie in an empty theater.

      Outside the cottage, as we make final preparations to leave, we ask the boy to help reorganize the things in the trunk, and he throws a bigger tantrum. He screams horrible things, wishing he belonged to a different world, a better family. I think he thinks we are here, in this world, to thrust him toward unhappiness: eat this fried egg you hate the texture of; let’s go, hurry up; learn to ride this bicycle that you fear; wear these pants that we bought just for you even though you don’t like them—they were expensive, so be grateful; play with that boy in the park who offers you his ephemeral friendship and his ball; be normal, be happy, be a child.

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