Lost Children Archive

by Valeria Luiselli

  I ran so fast for so long. I was still shouting, can you hear me, Major Tom? And I turned around to look behind me, but you were not there anymore. Major Tom? I shouted many times all around me. You weren’t there at all. I must have run too fast for her, I thought inside my head. I must have run too fast, too fast for her little legs, thinking you were keeping up, and you just didn’t. She’s so useless sometimes, I thought then, but of course I don’t think that for real. You probably got distracted by something small and stupid like a rock in a funny shape or a flower that was purple.

  You were not anywhere. I kept on looking, shouting, Major Tom, and then Memphis, for minutes or hours, till I noticed there were longer shadows growing slow under things and I got angry thinking maybe you were hiding and then scared and guilty thinking maybe you’d fallen and were crying for me somewhere and I was also nowhere for you to see me.

  I walked back toward the Maverick Room diner, where we’d last been together. But I stayed some feet away from it, by the train parked outside it, because the area outside the diner was full of adults, men and women, tall and strange and not trustable. Later, I climbed up to the roof of a train wagon, the same train wagon I had taken a picture of earlier that day. I climbed to the top of it, using one of the side ladders. Up there on the train-top, I knew, no one would be able to see me, no matter how tall they humanly were.

  I opened my backpack and took some of my stuff out to keep me company. I took out the binoculars, the Swiss Army knife, and the Continental Divide Trail map, and I hit the map with my fist and spit on it, because I realized that by following that trail, the only thing I had managed to do was to get you and me divided, and I felt so stupid, like I’d walked straight into a trap no matter all the warnings. I put everything back into the backpack. It was no use, having my things there, they were no company now. From the roof of the train car, the sky looked almost black. A few stars showed up in the sky. The song about the astronaut kept coming back to me in my head. Except now the part about the stars that looked very different felt like a curse that the sky had cursed us with.

  LOST

  VIGIL

  Where were you, Memphis? Did you know we were lost? When I first realized that we were lost, I thought that if Pa and Ma never found us, we would still be together, and that was better than not ever being together again. So all the while as we were getting more and more lost, I was never scared. I was even happy to get lost. But now I’d lost you, so nothing made sense anymore. I just wanted to be found. But first I had to find you.

  And where were you? Were you scared? Hurt?

  You were strong and mighty, like that Mississippi River we had seen in Memphis. That I knew for sure. You’d earned your name because of that. Do you remember how you earned your name? We were in Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee, in a hotel that had a swimming pool in the shape of a rational guitar, like the guitar in the song called “Graceland” that Ma and Pa sang aloud together, they knew all the words, even if they sang off-key. We were all lying on the beds in the motel room, with the lights off, when Pa started telling us how Apaches earned their names. He told us that names were given when children got more mature and had earned them, and they were like a gift given. The names were not secret but also they couldn’t be used just like that by anyone outside the family because a name had to be respected, because a name was like the soul of a person but also the destiny of a person, he said. Papa named me Swift Feather, which I liked because it sounded like an eagle and at the same time like an arrow, which were two fast things I liked. I gave Papa his name. I think it was the best name because it was based on a real person. It was Papa Cochise, which he had earned because he was the only one who knew about real Apaches and could tell all of their stories whenever we asked him to and even when we didn’t ask him to. And he named Ma Lucky Arrow, and I thought that suited her well, and she didn’t complain, so I guess she also thought so.

  And you. You, who wanted to be called either Guitar Swimming Pool, which we didn’t let you get called, or Grace Landmemphis Tennessee, like in the song. So you got Memphis, and that’s why you’re Memphis now. Ma also told you then that Memphis was once the capital of Ancient Egypt, a beautiful and powerful place by the Nile River, protected by the god Ptah, who had made the entire world just by thinking or imagining it.

  But where in the world were you now, Memphis?

  ERASED

  This you should know about yourself. On long drives, you always could sleep. I’d close my eyes and pretend to sleep, thinking that if I pretended long enough, I would fall asleep. Same thing at night, no matter where or what, you’d dig your head into any pillow and suck your thumb and fall asleep like it was easy. Most nights I couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried, and I would just lie there hearing our voices the way they’d sounded inside the car all day, but kind of broken or far away, like echoes, but not good echoes.

  Ever since I was very small, I could never fall sleep. Mama tried many different things. She showed me how to imagine stuff. Like, for example, I had to imagine my heart beating in the dark space of my body. Or other times, to imagine a tunnel, which was dark, but from where I could see light on the other side, and imagine how my arms slowly transformed into wings, and tiny feathers grew out of my skin, my eyes always focused on the tunnel, and as soon as I reached it, I’d be asleep and that’s when I would be able to fly out the other side. Mama had shown me all these techniques, and even on the worst nights, after a while of trying, they worked.

  But that night, lying on top of the boxcar in front of that diner, thinking maybe you were in there with those strangers, or maybe lost in the desert getting farther from me, it was the opposite. I didn’t want to fall asleep even though my eyes kept closing. The rooftop of the train car was a good lookout point, and I knew I shouldn’t move from there, because of course I knew the rule: that when two people get lost, the best thing is for one to stay in the same place and for the other to do the looking. I thought you would be looking, because you probably did not know this rule. So although I wanted so much to go out looking for you, I stayed right there, lying on my belly, my face facing the diner, my arms crossed by the edge of the gondola. I took out the lost children’s book, shaking it inside the backpack to make sure there were no pictures stuck inside it, and holding my flashlight, I tried to read a little.

  While I read, I forced myself to think, imagine, remember. I had to understand where we’d gone wrong, where the continental divide curse had cursed and divided us. I tried to think the way I know you think. I thought, what would I do if I were Memphis and we got divided? She’s smart, I thought, even though she’s small, so she will come up with a plan. She wouldn’t have gone back into the diner, no way. She wouldn’t have got near the adults there. But where were you, Memphis? I had to stay put for the rest of the night, looking up now and then at the neon lights spelling Maverick Room. I had to be patient and not lose hope, and concentrate on reading about the lost children, with my flashlight, until the sun came back and my thoughts were not so dark and confused like they were then.

  (THE NINTH ELEGY)

  Before the first siren sounded across the train yard, like the bugles calling reveille on camps where he’d been trained, the man in charge was awake and ready. Anticipating the siren, he’d woken the seven children, one by one. He’d lined them up from youngest to oldest, ten steps apart from one another along one side of the track. The train would be approaching at the sound of the third siren, he’d told them, and when it blared, they were to stand guard and repeat in their heads the instructions he had given them. It would not stop, he told them. It would only slow down a little while it changed tracks. Stand still looking toward the approaching train, in the direction of the caboose, he told them. Don’t talk, breathe slowly. Only boxcars and gondolas had side ladders. Some tank cars had side ladders, too, but these should be avoided. This they already knew. Make sure hands are not sweaty or arms limp. F
irst wait for the person at the end of the line to jump aboard. Then focus on the next approaching boxcar or gondola and spot a side ladder. Keep your eyes on the ladder; zero in on a single bar as it comes closer. Reach out, clasp the bar with one hand, run with the train, don’t step too close to the track and the spark-spitting train wheels. Use accumulated momentum and leg strength to push against the ground, leap up, clasp a lower bar with the other hand, swing inward, and pull body weight toward the side ladder using arm strength.

  Most of the children had forgotten all these details. He told them he would stand behind each one of them as one by one they gripped onto a side ladder bar. He’d run with each of them and push from behind as they pulled themselves up, starting with the first child, the youngest, and working his way forward toward the seventh. Once on the ladder, they’d have to hold tight and stand still. He would catch on last and climb to the top of a car, and once the train reached full speed, he would go from car to car to collect each of them from their ladders, help them up, and take them to a gondola. If someone hesitated, if they failed, if they fell, they would get left behind.

  So at the sound of the third siren, they’d stood still, feeling the hot gravel below them, trying not to think, not to remember, not to pray. But time passed quicker than their minds could wonder or flake, and so did the train. The first, the second, and the third child were on board before the fourth could spot a ladder. He’d missed two ladders, and had almost missed a third, but the man in charge had slapped him across the head, and he’d finally reacted. He’d darted after the ladder, both arms held out “like a sissy playing tag with a motorbike”—as was later recounted to the others by the man in charge. The fifth and sixth children had managed as well as the first three had, even though the man in charge had pushed them so hard against the ladder bars they’d almost bounced off back to the ground speeding below them.

  And there at last stood the seventh boy. He was the oldest, and the only one who could read well and do numbers. While the man in charge was working his way up the line toward him, he’d checked off in his mind first boy, second boy, third boy, and he’d also begun reading the strange words written on the train passing before him: Car Equipped, Gross Weight, Container Limit, End, Inch, Tread Con, Shoes On, Container Limit. Then, when he noticed the fourth boy was having trouble and maybe would not make it aboard, he started to read the words aloud, openly disobeying the instructions given by the man in charge, Noninterchange Cars, Equipment Register, Container Guides Must Be, Inch, Tread Shoes, Jack Lift Here, Jack Lift Here, Hand Brake Only Applies on the End Track, Interchange Cars. He read them louder and louder as the man in charge approached him: Equipment Register, Plate H, Containers Max Weight, Plate I. They sounded to him like the pages of a strange and beautiful book: Container Guide, Remove All Debris, Dock Here, Minor Inch Tread, Container Guide, Exceeds Plate, Container Guide. And when it was finally his turn, he spotted the upcoming, still blurry side ladder, reading Use Shoes, Pull Release Load, Trucks, Controlled Interchange, Car Equipment. He was now screaming the words out and the man in charge was running behind him, asking what the fuck was wrong with him, to which he only replied with more train-words, Special Break Beam, See Badge, Special Break Beam, See Badge. He was sure he would not make it, but suddenly, like a bird spreading out its new wings, he opened his arms outward, Plates, Container, Special Break Beam, Carrier Net, 20 Feet Container Limit, and then grasped and gripped a bar, flung closer, Special Break Beam, Next Load, felt a push on the bottom of his right sit bone, Any Load, Break Beam, Container Guide, and pulled himself inward, pulled hard against an unexpected kind of centrifugal force, thinking and no longer speaking the last spotted words: Remove All.

  The siren blared again, and the train reached full speed. All seven of them were now clinging to ladders on different train cars. A dark exhaustion overtook the seventh boy, still clinging on to a bar by the inner bend of his elbows. The wind was beating fresh on his face, and he forgot for a moment there were others he needed to look after. He forgot there were six others who were gripping bars like he was, some closing their eyes, some smiling softly, the two girls howling at the sky in a wave of relief and maybe joy—because they had made it, they had all made it.

  The seventh boy suddenly remembered the man in charge, who was running breathless behind the caboose. He looked back and spotted him, running behind the train looking like a terrified rabbit. He was sure, for a second, that the man in charge would not make it, not ever come back up to their gondola, and he hoped so hard that he almost started praying, but he remembered that strange wise man in the first train yard who had told them they should never pray to any god when they were riding trains. So he just bit his lower lip and watched.

  The man in charge kept running behind the train—thinking, as he ran, “Always be ready”; hearing, in the back of his mind, the far echoes of bugle blares in early morning; telling himself, “I was always the first one up, always awake before daybreak, motherfuckers,” knowing he could not spell or read the words bugle or blare or reveille, but could run after trains like no one else. And as the man in charge sprinted the last final steps, he promised himself that once he was atop that gondola, he would find that smart-ass boy, the seventh one, the little reader of words, the fucker. And oh, how slowly he would damage him, first his mind, then his body. He’d squeeze all the smart words out of his mouth, then cut his tongue off; he’d force him to see nightmares with his sharp little eyes, then scoop them out of their sockets; with his bare hands, he’d rearrange the boy’s nimble bones and derange his pretty face until there was nothing recognizable left of him. Then, finally near enough, the man in charge clung onto a metal handle, and flung himself up, as the train sped through the barrenlands toward the northern deserts.

  ITEMS

  I dug my face into my crossed arms and shut my eyes. I did not want to read the next elegy, and I did not. I was too afraid to read more, afraid that the man in charge would find the seventh boy and punish him. What would he do to him? I thought, in my mind, of what I would do if I were that boy, and how I’d try to get away from the man in charge. I made escape plans, imagined ways out, jumping off the train, or pretending I was already dead so he wouldn’t kill me again. Until, I think, I fell asleep and started dreaming similar dreams.

  I’m sure I was dreaming because I had a pipe in my mouth, and of course I don’t smoke, even though I have wondered about it before. I had a pipe, and you slept next to me and sucked your thumb. I didn’t have a lighter or matches so I didn’t actually smoke, not even in the dream. I only wanted to smoke. It wasn’t so much like a dream but like a thought or feeling that kept coming back to me, needing to be solved but staying not solved. What I kept thinking in the dream was: Where will I find the matches or the lighter? Pa and Ma always had one or the other, in his pocket and in her bag. So I looked in my pockets in my dream but there were only rocks, coins, a rubber band, crumbs, no matches. Then I looked in my backpack and instead of all my stuff, there was only The Book with No Pictures. In real life, you used to laugh when we read it to you. So in the dream I woke you up and read it to you. And when I read to you, still in the dream, you laughed so hard it woke me up for real.

  When I woke up, what I thought was there was not there anymore. I looked around for the neon lights spelling Maverick Room, but none of that was there. The sun was rising. It took me a moment, but I realized that the boxcar of the train on which I had been reading, and dozing off now and then though I tried not to, was moving. I felt the wind blowing against my face, and then my blood rushing to my cheeks, and a hollow inside my stomach. I felt horror.

  I forced myself back into my mind. I forced myself to think again. To imagine. To remember. To rewind that train that was moving so fast, to rewind it in my mind, and understand. I took my compass out of my backpack, and the needle showed the train was moving west, which was the right way. Then I remembered I had told you, right before we’d
gone inside the diner on that day we’d got divided, that the plan was to climb atop the train outside the diner and ride that train to the west toward Ma and Pa in Echo Canyon, and all of a sudden I knew. I knew you had to be there, too, somewhere, on that same train, which actually was moving. And though I couldn’t see you, I knew you were okay ’cause I’d heard you laugh inside my dream. I knew I would have to wait for the sun to come out first, but I’d find you.

  LIGHT

  And when the sun was up, higher than the peaks of the mountains far away, I knew I had to start looking.

  You wouldn’t be on any of the gondola rooftops, because it was too hard to climb the metal ladders. Also, because I was up on the roof of a gondola, I could see across the rooftops of all the other ones, and I took my binoculars out of my backpack and looked through them, to double-check, and they all were empty. Nothing in the many gondolas in front of me, toward the train engine, and nothing in the three gondolas behind me, toward the caboose. This train was different from the lost children’s train, because it was people-less. If you were going to be anywhere on it, it was either going to be on one of the connecting platforms or inside one of the gondolas. But you’d probably be too afraid to climb into a gondola, even if you’d found one that wasn’t locked, because who knows who or what was inside those dark spaces. So I thought if you’d be anywhere, it had to be on a connecting platform between two gondolas.