Separation

I.

On a dusty road somewhere in the South Texas scrub, Maria eyes the Border Patrol agent’s raised gun, pressing her 4-year-old daughter against her hip. Rosalita clutches her toy bunny to the bright flowers embroidered on her shirt. Along the road stand their traveling companions of the past month, clusters of mothers, fathers, and children large and small, each group in an agent’s gunsight. A small boy glares at the agents, hands thrust into his jeans; his white sweatshirt flaunts the stars and stripes and proclaims, “AMERICA. LOVEIT OR LEAVE IT.” The silence of the windswept plain is pierced every few seconds by staccato commands: “Don’t move!” “Drop that backpack!” “Hands up!” An old yellow school bus comes over a rise, kicking up dust, and stops.

            Maria looks up from her daughter and regards the agent. Her long brown hair is disheveled and matted from the month-long trek, her jeans splotched with dried mud. Her dark eyes are soft and moist. Through her faded red t-shirt, she caresses the amulet that hangs on a string around her neck. “Por favor, señor,” Maria pleads, “no take mi Rosalita from me. No me quite mi niña.” 

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            Maria and Rosalita fled San Salvador the night after Carlos got roaring drunk at his sister’s wedding and pointed his pistol at her.

            Guns were no strangers to Maria—Carlos and his Barrio 18 gang all carried them. Violence was their creed, machismo their deity, and guns their best amigos. Three years before, a rival gang had killed Manuel, Rosalita’s father, a peace-loving musician and the only man Maria had ever loved. After that, Maria knew she had to seek refuge in Zacamil, the San Salvador neighborhood where Barrio 18 held sway, and take up with a gang member.

            Since she’d been with Carlos, Maria had come to expect a slap or two, even a punch, when Carlos drank too much. She’d suffered bloody noses, black eyes, even a broken jaw. Until now, after one of his rum-fueled binges, Maria had managed to put his gun safely away while he slept it off. But this time, waving the weapon in her face, Carlos called her una puta—a whore. “Yo te mataré,” he snarled, “a ti y a tu Rosalita también.” I will kill you—you and your Rosalita, too.

            Carlos slowly lowered the gun, but the burning dread surged through Maria’s body. Recently, her friends Juana and Francesca, also gang members’ women, had suddenly gone missing along with their children. Maria told herself they’d managed to escape, but she feared, or maybe she knew, that’s not what happened. She wasn’t going to wait to see if she and Rosalita would be next. Her 30^th birthday was coming up in June, and she wanted to be alive to celebrate it with her daughter.            

            Maria had a secret bank account, money left to her by her grandmother, Abuela Rosa, for whom Rosalita was named. So the next day, she withdrew it all and delivered most of it to one of the coyotes who advertised they could get people safely through Guatemala and Mexico and across the U.S. border. Before she paid the man, she told him why they were running. She wanted to believe his assurances that they would be granted asylum in the United States; what else could she do?  

            Maria wrote down where to show up that night to join a caravan heading north, and later, as Carlos snored heavily, she slipped out of bed, took the household cash from the jam jar in the back of the kitchen cupboard and stuffed her backpack with her and Rosalita’s underwear, socks, and shirts. In the back of her drawer, Maria found the brightly-painted La Palma amulet Abuela Rosa had given her: El Cadejo, the white dog with glowing red eyes from the folk tale Maria had learned as a child and told to Rosalita countless times, who offers protection to its followers. Maria hadn’t worn the cadejo charm since Rosa died, but that night, she pulled it from the drawer and slipped it around her neck. Then she woke Rosalita, and they were gone.

            Thank God Rosalita had been asleep when Carlos snarled his death-threat. Maria couldn’t bear for her to be in fear for her life. So she told her daughter they were going to visit an uncle who lived in San Antonio, Texas, although she had no uncle in San Antonio, nor any other relatives in the U.S.  She’d heard awful rumors about parents and children being separated by the American border police. Maria was certain she would never allow that, but, deep down, she had no idea what would happen if they made it across the border. She only knew she had to try.

            The next thirty days and nights on the road were sweaty and unwashed, often thirsty and hungry, and always scary. At night, in empty warehouses or backrooms, Maria told Rosalita new versions of her favorite stories: the one about El Tabudo, the fisherman with big knees who got turned into a fish, the one about El Cipitío, the pot-bellied boy cursed to wander the earth forever with his feet pointing backward, and of course, many different tales Maria made up about the white dog El Cadejo saving children from his arch foe, the black dog with eyes like burning coals. Or they sang together the songs Rosalita loved: “Las Estrellitas (The Little Stars),” or “Tortuguita Concha (Little Turtle Concha),” or Rosalita’s very favorite, “Tengo una Muñequita (I Have a Little Doll).” “No, Mama,” Rosalita always insisted with a teasing smile, “Tengo una Conejito(I Have a Little Bunny).”

            Once Rosalita was finally asleep, Maria sat up, protecting her, guarding the small bit of money she had left for junk food and bottled water, and fending off men who offered their protection but expected favors in return. What sleep Maria got was during the days on rickety buses or packed into the backs of battered old trucks—when she wasn’t trudging on foot, sometimes carrying Rosalita as well as her backpack.

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            Now, exhausted but finally in Texas, Maria faces the agent’s gun with her hands raised and Rosalita clinging to her side. The agent looms over her as his scorpion-tattooed arms grip his weapon and keep it trained on Maria. In the distance, she can see the live oaks waving in the breeze, but she hears nothing. She feels heavy as a boulder, unable to move, yet she can tell that she is trembling.

            “Por favor, señor,” she says again, extending her hands, “mi Rosalita tiene sólo cuatro años, ella solamente me tiene a mi.” My Rosalita is only four, she has only me. “Volveremos ahora, OK?” We will go back home now. 

            Rosalita looks up in fright at her mother. “No, mamá, no,”she cries, bursting into tears. “¡Carlos nos va a matar si volvemos!” Carlos will kill us if we go back. In that instant, Maria realizes Rosalita wasn’t asleep that night. Maria should have known her daughter was too smart to believe they had relatives in Texas. Rosalita has known all along they are running for their lives. Now Maria also knows that returning home is unthinkable.

            “I said hands up!” the agent growls, gesturing with his weapon. “I won’t say it again.” Suddenly, Rosalita breaks away. Before Maria can grab her, Rosalita hurls her bunny at the startled agent and rushes headlong toward him. Her flowered shirt paints a sudden flash of color against the gray scrub. Maria shrieks. She hadn’t left Carlos, hadn’t trekked 1400 miles, only to have Rosalita shot dead after all.  

            Maria snatches her backpack from the ground and heaves it at the raised gun barrel, but misses. “¡No!”she screams, “¡No dispares!”Don’t shoot! She launches herself after Rosalita. But her cry is lost in the dry wind rustling through the brush. As she lies at the agent’s feet, her head buried in her arms, she notices how the Texas dust smells the same as the dust back home. She closes her eyes and waits for the blast. But the man lowers his gun, bends down…and hugs Rosalita.

            “OK, get up and come with me,” the agent says and hands the bunny back to Rosalita.  Holding it tight, she gives him a shy smile. He helps Maria to her feet and motions for them to follow him to his car. As they climb in, Maria looks back and sees their companions being herded onto the yellow school bus.

            Settling back and closing her eyes, Maria nestles close to Rosalita, running her free hand across the smooth surface of the cushioned seat as she inhales the smell of new leather and the cool air blowing deliciously over her. Yes, she thinks, this is America. We have made it. We will tell them all about Carlos and his beatings, his gang and his death threat. Then, as the coyotes promised, we’ll be granted asylum and become Americans. El Cadejo has protected us.

            Suddenly, the car stops. When Maria sits up, she is baffled by what she sees—chain-link fencing surrounding more Texas dust, and two separate gates leading to two barren enclosures. In one of them are hundreds of adults, some talking in small groups, some walking around aimlessly, some rattling the chain-links. The other pen contains only children like Rosalita, some with tears running down their dirty faces, others peering forlornly through the fence into the adult enclosure, still others just sitting on the ground, their dark eyes staring into space.

            “Right,” says the agent, “here we are.” He jumps out of the car and opens the rear door.

            Another agent appears from nowhere, grabs Rosalita, and pulls her toward the gate to the children’s pen. “¡No!”Maria screams and tries to run after her. But her arms are pinned behind her, and she is pushed against the car. She turns her head in time to see Rosalita, howling and holding tight to her bunny, disappear behind the fence. Rage storms inside her. The pain she feels is intense, physical. Just then, the yellow school bus pulls up to the gates. Through the bus window, Maria glimpses the boy’s sweatshirt: “AMERICA. LOVEIT OR LEAVE IT.”

II.

            Six weeks later, Maria sits alone on a bench in the baking afternoon sun, outside the rundown bus station in downtown McAllen, Texas. She is wearing a gray t-shirt, the same pair of jeans, and flip-flops, but no hat. Around her neck is the cadejo amulet. Next to her on the bench is a white cloth bag emblazoned with the red, white, and blue insignia of the Border Patrol, containing the few things she has been allowed to keep from her confiscated backpack, as well as the charger for the black GPS monitor strapped to her right ankle.

            She wipes the sweat from her forehead and, for the hundredth time, squints through the glare across the platform, beyond a row of orange traffic cones, at the line that has been inching along all day toward the ticket office inside the bus station. Standing in the line are men and women, some alone but some—the lucky ones, Maria knows—with children again by their sides. All of them carry the same white bags, all have the same black devices strapped to their legs. Those at the rear have just come off the last government bus from La Hielera—the Icebox—the converted warehouse on Ursula Avenue that is the Border Patrol’s processing center. Maria came from La Hielera at 10:30 that morning and has been sitting there ever since.

            In the line, Maria sees several women she knows from La Hielera, where they were confined together in metal enclosures, ate meager meals together, showered together, and slept next to one another on mattresses on the concrete floors, under thin Mylar blankets barely warm enough in the center’s frigid air. She knows their stories—where they came from, why they left, how they made it across, whether they, too, had children taken from them at the border; none of their stories are much different from Maria’s. She also knows she will never see them again because the line they are waiting on is for bus tickets out of McAllen, to California, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, to join sisters, uncles, cousins or boyfriends who will take them in as they await their asylum hearings.

            Maria has not been given a date for an asylum hearing, and she is not waiting to get on a bus since she has nowhere to go. So she sits on the bench in the sun. Sweat has soaked through her shirt. She has eaten nothing since oatmeal and weak coffee at the center; she is thirsty, but the bottle of water they gave her is empty. Still, with every hour she has been sitting on the bench, her excitement has grown. For she is waiting not for a departing bus, but for one arriving today from Michigan. On that bus, she has been told, will be Rosalita.

            Maria has not seen her daughter since they were pulled from the agent’s car six weeks ago. But she has spoken with her—twice. A social worker at La Hielera was able to locate Rosalita. She was in a migrant children’s center in someplace called Kalamazoo, Michigan. The social worker could not explain why Rosalita was in Kalamazoo, nor could she bring Rosalita to Maria. But she did arrange for them to speak on the phone. Each time, they were allowed just two minutes. Each time, Maria could hear Rosalita crying—as if she hadn’t stopped since the day they were separated. Between sobs, Maria could make out “Mama, dónde estás?” Mama, where are you? “¿Por qué te fuiste?”Why did you go away?  “¿Cuándo vienes paratras?”  When are you coming back? She told Rosalita she loved her and would see her soon, but it didn’t stop the sobbing. Maria felt feeble—even more helpless than when she stood staring at the agent’s gun.

            At La Hielera, Maria has received all kinds of advice from more people than she can remember: people from the government, some in uniforms, some wearing suits; social workers who said they were there to help her but couldn’t bring Rosalita back; and so many different lawyers she can’t keep them straight. One lawyer, an old Chicano with a gray moustache and a rumpled suit, said he was defending her in her “criminal case” (what criminal case? she wasn’t a criminal!). He said he had arranged for her to be released on parole, so long as she wore the GPS monitor. He gave her his card, also rumpled, and said she should call him if anything went wrong. Another lawyer, a young woman from a New York law firm who had flown down for a week, said Maria could apply for asylum but was unlikely to get it. Why? Because even the most credible fear of injury or even death at the hands of a husband or boyfriend (“mere domestic violence,” the lawyer called it) was no longer being accepted as grounds for asylum. She felt betrayed—those coyotes had lied to her after all. If she couldn’t get asylum, why had she come here? Maria told all these people the same thing: all she wanted was to be with her daughter.

            The lawyers all told her not to sign anything. But when someone from the government gave her a form and said if she signed it, she would be allowed to see her daughter again, she hesitated. The form was mostly in English, but she saw a line in Spanish that read “Estoy solicitando reunirme con mi hijo…”—I am requesting to reunite with my child—and the box next to it had already been checked. That was exactly what she wanted, so Maria signed the form.

            She must have signed the right form because, last week, she got a telephone call at La Hielera from a woman named Sandra in Kalamazoo, who spoke to her in Spanish. Sandra said she was Rosalita’s lawyer. She explained that a judge in California had ordered the government to reunite children like Rosalita with their parents, so now that she’d located Maria, she would “start the process” and “complete the paperwork.” For the first time in weeks, Maria allowed herself to smile, but only a little. She’d learned to be distrustful.

            How long? Maria asked. Sandra didn’t know, but said she’d get to work on it. When she hung up, Maria could feel her heart beating as the excitement rose inside her. But she was also bewildered. Why did Rosalita need a lawyer? What could she have done wrong? She was only four.

            A week went by. Then, last evening, a social worker told her to go downtown the next day and wait for the bus from Michigan. Rosalita would be on it.

            At the bus station, the sun has turned from blazing yellow to deep red. Maria’s bench is now in shadow, and still, she sits and waits. Again and again, she caresses the cadejo on the string around her neck, willing the red-eyed dog to bring Rosalita to her soon. Maria has spent the past six weeks dreaming up new stories to tell her at bedtime, humming the songs they will sing, and thinking how Rosalita will gleefully change the Little Doll to Little Bunny. Maria’s 30^th birthday had passed with no celebration, but now she and Rosalita would have a birthday party.

            Maria’s lips are dry with the dust of the prairie. The exhaust from buses entering and leaving the station has made her dizzy, but no bus has brought Rosalita. Hunger gnaws at her, but she will not get up even to get a candy bar, afraid that in those few minutes, she will miss the bus from Michigan. Maria knows she must be back at La Hielera by 7 p.m., or she will have broken her parole. So, as the shadows lengthen, she stands each time a new bus pulls into the arrival platform, hurries across, and watches as the passengers get off. Still, no Rosalita.

            Then, just before 7, a new bus arrives. On the front she reads “DETROIT-DALLAS-S.ANTONIO-McALLEN.” Detroit! Maria knows this is the one, and her heart leaps. She runs to the bus door but is pushed back to make room for disembarking passengers with suitcases and packages. Finally, she sees a slim, well-dressed young woman with neatly pinned back blond hair descend the steps, a small traveling case on her shoulder. The woman turns to help a child off the bus. The child is wearing new red leggings and a blue and red Detroit Pistons t-shirt. Her hair is cut short—and she has no toy bunny. But yes! The child is Rosalita.

            “¡Gracias a Dios!”Maria screams. “Rosalita, mi ángel.” She opens her arms and springs forward to hug her daughter.

            But Rosalita does not run to her arms. She stares at Maria for an instant, expressionless, then clutches the blond woman’s arm and turns away. Nor does the woman look at Maria. Instead, she leads Rosalita into the bus station, leaving Maria standing on the empty platform.

            Staggered, Maria tries to understand what has just happened. Then she turns and hurries inside after them. The terminal is crowded, and Maria doesn’t know which way to go. Finally, she sees a door marked “EXIT-TAXIS” and runs toward it. She emerges just in time to see the blond woman and Rosalita get into a car marked “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” and drive away.

III.

            Two days later, Maria is still in McAllen, not at La Hielera, but in a windowless cinderblock building that used to be a CVS drugstore but is now a detention facility for reunited families. Rosalita is there too; the blond woman brought her there to join Maria yesterday morning. The blond woman, Maria discovered, is Sandra, Rosalita’s lawyer from Kalamazoo. She apologized for what happened at the bus station: no one told her Maria would be there to meet the bus, and she had no way of knowing who she was. As for Rosalita, well…this wasn’t the first time Sandra had seen a separated child shun her own parent. She had become used to it.

            Sandra said she was leaving Rosalita at the family detention center so they could “get reacquainted,” but she would be back the next day to “discuss the situation.” What situation? Maria had asked, but Sandra just said they’d talk about it tomorrow.

            Now, Maria and Rosalita have been together for nearly two days. But the two days have been like a nightmare Maria cannot wake from. For the child who has shared her meals and slept, fitfully, in the next cot is not her Rosalita. She is una extraña—a stranger. She has followed Maria everywhere—to meals, to the bathroom, to the tiny fenced-in yard in the back, where she does not play with the other children but just stands by the fence looking out at the brush. Nor has Rosalita spoken a single word, and when she even looks at Maria, it is with the same empty stare Maria saw back at the bus platform. Most agonizing of all, whenever Maria has tried to hug her daughter, Rosalita has pulled away and refused to be touched. At bedtime, she doesn’t listen to the new stories and won’t sing the old songs. There has been no birthday party.

            Maria tries not to think about what could have happened to Rosalita in Kalamazoo. She tries to force from her mind the stories she’d heard at La Hielera from the women who’d been able to speak on the phone with their separated children. How shelter workers were forbidden to hug or even touch them. How they were lined up like prison inmates to receive vaccinations. How favorite clothes, dolls, and toys were taken away. Nor can Maria erase the image of the five-year-old boy she’d heard about, who had finally been released to an aunt in Philadelphia, but wouldn’t talk to anyone—not even his young cousins—slept constantly or sat crouching in closets or behind sofas, and refused to eat, except for drinking warm milk from a baby bottle. Still, Maria can’t believe that her own lively Rosalita, the brave girl who’d charged the border agent just a few weeks ago, could now have become una extraña. She waits fretfully for Sandra to return and answer these questions.

            Sandra finally appears that evening after Rosalita is asleep despite the bright fluorescent lights, remnants of the CVS, that will glare until 11 p.m. With Sandra is the government social worker from La Hielera—the one who found Rosalita in Kalamazoo. They motion Maria to a sitting area beyond the long rows of cots where several women and children are watching TV. There is no privacy, but they aren’t there to answer Maria’s questions anyway. They have brought some papers with them, and that is the “situation” they need to discuss. Maria has a decision to make.

            One of the papers is the form Maria signed weeks ago. She sees her signature and remembers why she signed it—to get Rosalita back. She reads what it says next to the box that was checked before she signed it: “Estoy solicitando reunirme con mi hijo para el propósito de la repatriación a mi país de ciudadanía.” I am requesting to be reunited with my child for the purpose of repatriation to the country of my citizenship. Maria shivers. She looks at the two women, perplexed.

            Yes, Sandra explains, you agreed to be reunited with Rosalita so both of you could be deported together back to El Salvador.

            “¡ Dios mío, no!” Maria says. “Vamos a morir allí.” We will die there. She remembers what Rosalita had said back at the border: “Carlos nos matar si volvemos!” Carlos will kill us if we go back. She breaks into tears.

            “Espera, María,” Sandra says, touching her arm. Wait. There’s some good news: the judge in California has ruled that the form Maria signed, with the line pre-checked, wasn’t valid. There is a new form, and they have it with them.

            “Gracias, gracias,”Maria says. She dries her tears and reaches out for the new form.

            But the “good news” isn’t all that good—in fact, for Maria, it’s awful. Sandra has determined that Maria has not yet applied for asylum, perhaps because she was caught trying to sneak across the border. “I only did what those coyotes told me,” Maria wants to say, but Sandra is not finished. Maria can still seek asylum, but she is likely to be found guilty of illegal entry and deported before her asylum hearing. In the best case, her asylum claim will be rejected at her deportation hearing. As the lawyer from New York had said, “mere fear of domestic violence” is no longer grounds for asylum. “Mere fear?” Maria remembers Carlos’s beatings, his gun and his death threat. Her fear is intense, the opposite of mere.

            Sandra drones on about needing to show “a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” But Maria gets it: she will be deported back to El Salvador and, if Rosalita is still with her, she will be deported too. “Muy bien,” Maria thinks, as a deep sigh escapes. We will find a way to survive there.

            But Maria has another “option,” Sandra tells her. Rosalita—and Rosalita alone—has a chance. That’s why Sandra has come to Texas with her young client. She has done two things back in Kalamazoo. First, she has filed a separate asylum case for Rosalita. Because Rosalita didn’t intentionally enter the country illegally, but was brought in “involuntarily” by Maria,  Sandra thinks there’s a good chance Rosalita will be granted asylum. “Carlos will kill me if I go back” will be powerful testimony before the right Immigration Judge—one in Michigan, not Texas. Second, Sandra has found a wonderful family in Michigan who will give Rosalita a foster home and, if she gets asylum, may be willing to adopt her if Maria will relinquish her parental rights.                  

            What? Maria is being asked to let Rosalita go back to Kalamazoo with Sandra? To live with a strange American family Maria has never met while she waits to see if Rosalita will get asylum? And then, worst of all, to give up her rights to her daughter so she can be adopted?

            Yes, Sandra says, Maria has understood it exactly. The social worker, who has said nothing yet, now chimes in. “Si, María, es el mejor para Rosalita.” It is the best thing for Rosalita.                      

            Again, Maria’s tears flow. Her determination melts toward despair. She remembers the old Chicano lawyer in the rumpled suit who said she could call him. Can’t she wait until tomorrow to try to talk to her own lawyer, she asks?  Not really, they tell her. Sandra must return to Michigan in the morning, and she has a return ticket for Rosalita. But if she leaves her with Maria, well…as she said, when Maria is deported, Rosalita will go with her.

           Sandra gives Maria the new form and shows her two lines, with the boxes still unchecked. The first one is exactly the same as the line that was checked on the old form. The second one says this:

“Estoy afirmativamente, con conocimiento y voluntariamente pidiéndome que regrese a mi país de ciudadanía sin mis hijo menor (s) que yo entienda permanezca en los Estados Unidos para perseguir reclamaciones de socorro disponibles.”(I am affirmatively, knowingly and voluntarily requesting to return to my country of citizenship without my minor child(ren) who I understand will remain in the United States to pursue available claims of relief.)

            Sandra indicates the second box. “Marque eso,” she says. That’s the one Maria must check if she wants Rosalita to have a chance. Otherwise…

            Maria pushes the form away.  She will not do this. Not after all they have gone through, after all they risked on the trek north, after she was sure they were going to be shot by the Border Patrol agent. No, she and Rosalita will go back home and find a way to stay alive.                    

            But then, Maria looks across the room, where Rosalita lies asleep under the fluorescent glare. She thinks about la extraña who has been with her the past two days. Not her Rosalita at all, but a strange child who wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t talk to her, and wouldn’t hug her. It is that child, not her Rosalita, who is being offered a chance for a new life. It is in her power to give her that chance. How could she not? Isn’t that what a mother should do? What Abuela Rosa would have done?

            Maria takes the form back. She grabs the pen from the social worker, checks the second box, and signs her name. Her tears turn to heavy sobs. She sees the TV watchers turn and stare, but only for an instant; Maria knows they are used to tears.

            Still sobbing, Maria lowers her head into her arms. The cadejo amulet swings away from her neck. She takes it in her hand, twisting it around so its red eyes look up at her. The folktale says that the white cadejo keeps its evil counterpart from stealing the souls of its believers, especially children. Maria takes off the charm, walks quickly over to Rosalita’s cot, and gently slips it around the sleeping child’s neck. Then she turns and rushes from the room, shaking uncontrollably.

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