Lost Children Archive: A Novel

by Valeria Luiselli

  BIRDS

  Back in the house that afternoon, I helped Papa cook. We prepared the grill outside. Papa threw some coal in the grill and lit it, and I went to the kitchen to get the meat from the fridge, buffalo meat, which is my favorite kind. I got to help him by holding the tray with the meat. One by one, he’d fork a piece of meat and carefully put it on the grill. I stood there and was still thinking in my head of echoes, and everything around me reminded me of the echoes we’d heard earlier on the mountain, Pa’s back-and-forth movements, back and forth, the fire whispering inside the grill, some big birds slapping their wings above us, and even your voice back in the kitchen inside the house, where you were helping Ma wrap vegetables in tinfoil, wrapping potatoes, onions, garlic, and also mushrooms, which I hate.

  I asked Papa if the echoes we had heard earlier that day were like the ones in Echo Canyon he’d told us about. He said yes but no. In the Chiricahua Mountains, in Echo Canyon, he said, the echoes were even stronger and more beautiful. The most beautiful echoes you ever heard, he said, and some of them have been bouncing around there for so long that if you listen carefully, you can hear the voices of the long-departed Chiricahua peoples. And of the Eagle Warriors? I asked him. Yes, of the Eagle Warriors, too.

  I wondered for a while how that was possible, and then I asked Ma and Pa to explain echoes to me more clearly, more professionally, as we all set the table, a long wooden table outside the house, bringing plates, forks, knives, cups, water, wine, salt, bread. I understood the basics. They said an echo is a delay in sound waves. It’s a sound wave that arrives after the direct sound is produced and reflected on a surface. But that explanation didn’t answer all my questions, so I kept insisting, asking more and more, until I think I got them both a bit annoyed, and Pa said:

  Food’s ready!

  We sat around the wooden table, and Papa wanted to make a toast, so he let me and you try some drops of wine in our cups, although he also poured a lot of water into them, to make the taste softer, he said. He said kids in this country were usually not allowed to taste wine, said their taste buds were completely ruined by puritanism, chicken fingers, ketchup, and peanut butter. But we were now kids in Chiricahua Apache territory, so we were allowed to have a tiny taste of life. He raised his cup, said Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua were all beautiful names, but also names to name a past of injustice, genocide, exodus, war, and blood. He said he wanted us to remember this land as a land of resilience and forgiveness, also as a land where the earth and sky knew no division.

  He didn’t tell us what the real name of the land was, but I suppose it was Apacheria. Then he took a sip from his cup, so we all took a sip from our cups. You spat it all out onto the ground, said you hated it, this waterwine. I said I liked it, though really I didn’t that much.

  TIME

  We finished eating quickly because we were so hungry, but I didn’t want that evening to end, ever, though I knew it would end and so would all our evenings together, as soon as the trip ended. I couldn’t change that, but for tonight, at least, I could try to make the night longer, the way Geronimo had the power to stretch out time during a night of battle.

  QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

  I decided to ask questions, good ones, so that everyone forgot about time. That way I could make time stretch longer.

  First I asked the three of you what you wished for the most right then. You said: Frutilupis! Pa said: I wish for clarity. Ma said: I wish for Manuela to find her two daughters.

  Then I asked Pa and Ma: What were you like when you were our ages and what do you remember? Papa told us a sad story about when he was your age and his dog got run over by a tram and then his grandmother put the dog in a black plastic bag and threw him in the trash. Then he said that when he was my age, things got better for him and he used to be the director of the children’s newspaper in the building where they lived. He was in charge of leading an expedition every Friday after school to the stationery shop, where there was a machine called the Xerox that made copies of whatever they wrote or whatever they drew but without there being computers or anything. One time, because they had not written anything or drawn anything for the newspaper, they just put their hands, then their faces, then their feet on the machine and the machine printed copies of that, and then when no one was looking, one boy pulled down his pants and sat on the machine and made a copy of his butt. You and I laughed so hard that the waterwine I had just taken a sip of came all out through my nostrils and stung.

  Then it was Mama’s turn, and she remembered that when she was five years old like you, she was in a living room in a house with her mother and her mother’s friend, and there was a huge fish tank with many fish that she was looking at. At some point, she turned around and her mother was not there, only her mother’s friend, so she asked her, where is my mother? and the friend said, she’s in there, look, she became a fish. And at first Mama was really excited and trying to make out which of the fishes was her mother, but then she started getting scared, thinking, will my mother come back and ever stop being a fish? And so much time passed that she started crying for her mother to come back, and I think that while she was telling this story, she almost started crying again, and I didn’t want that, so I asked her what about when she was my age, what was her favorite game when she was ten.

  She thought for a moment, and then she said her favorite thing when she was ten was breaking into and exploring houses that were abandoned because the neighborhood where she lived was full of abandoned houses. And she said nothing else, though you were curious to know more about those abandoned houses. For example, were there ghosts in them and did Ma ever get caught by anyone like the police or her parents? But instead of telling us more, she asked us, what about you two, how do you think you will be when you are our age and grown up?

  You raised your hand to speak and so got to speak first. You said, I think I will know how to read and write. And then you said you would have either a boyfriend or a girlfriend but that you’d never marry anyone so you didn’t have to tongue kiss, which I thought was smart. Then because you didn’t say anything else, I got to speak. I said I would travel a lot, and have many children, and would cook buffalo meat for them every day. For a job, I’d be an astronaut. And as a hobby, I would document things. I said I would be a documentarianist, and I said the word so quick that I think maybe Pa heard documentarist and Ma heard documentarian, and no one minded.

  CREDIBLE FEARS

  That night, when everyone was asleep and I couldn’t sleep, I snuck out of our bedroom, took the car keys from the top of the refrigerator, and went outside. I crossed the porch, walked slowly to the car, opened the trunk, and looked around in the dark for Ma’s box. I wanted to read what happened next in the lost children’s story, in the red book, but this time I wanted to read out loud and record some more, like I’d done with Ma the day before. I didn’t want to make a racket looking for the recorder in the box, so I just took the entire box with me. I was about to go back inside the house when I remembered that Ma kept her recorder in the glove compartment most of the time, and not in the box. So I walked back to the car, opened the passenger door, put the box down on the seat, and looked in the compartment. It was there. Ma’s big road map was also there. I took both things, the road map and the recorder, opened the box’s lid just enough to sneak them inside it silently, then tiptoed back to the house, and across the house into our bedroom carrying everything. You were fast asleep and snoring like an old man, Memphis, and occupying most of the space. I put the box on the floor for a moment, pushed you to your side, being extra gentle, and switched on only the little bedside lamp so I wouldn’t wake you up. You stopped snoring, turned around, belly facing the ceiling. Then your mouth opened a little and you started snoring again. I climbed into my side of the bed and sat there, with Ma’s box in front of me.

  Very carefully, I opened it. I took out the road map, the recorder, and the red book with my pictures inside its pages, and put all three things on the
bedside table, under the lamp. I was about to close the box again and get ready to read when something came over me, which I cannot explain. I felt like I needed to see what else was in that box, look at all the things that I knew were always under the little red book, things I wasn’t allowed to look at so never did. But no one was watching me now. I could shuffle the things in the box around all I wanted. As long as I put everything back in its place after, Ma would never even notice.

  One by one, I started taking things out of the box, slowly, making sure I put everything in order on the bed, so I could put it back later exactly the same way. The first thing I took from the top of the box I put on the left-foot corner of the bed, which was my corner, the second thing next to it, then the third, fourth.

  It was more stuff than I thought. There were a lot of cutouts and notes, and photographs and a few tapes. There were folders, birth certificates and other official things, maps, and some books. I put each thing on the bed, one next to the other. At some point, I had to get out of bed and walk around the edges, so I could reach everything better. By the time I took out the last thing, I’d taken up most of the space in the bed, and even though I didn’t want to put anything on top of you in case you moved between the sheets and messed everything up, I ended up having to put some maps and some books on top of you.

  I spent a while looking at all of Mama’s stuff, all laid out, walking around the bed, back and forth, until my head was spinning with feelings. Finally, I took a folder labeled “Migrant Mortality Reports” and opened it. It was full of loose pieces of paper with information, and I looked through them, I tried to understand what they were saying but couldn’t, there were many numbers and abbreviations, and it was so frustrating to not understand. I decided to focus on the maps, because at least I knew I was good at reading maps. I took one that was right on top of your knees, or maybe your thighs, I couldn’t tell, ’cause of the sheet. The map was strange. It showed a space, like any map, but in that space there were hundreds of little red dots, which weren’t cities because some of them overlapped with others. When I looked at the map key, I realized the red dots stood for people who had died there, in that exact spot, and I wanted to vomit, or cry, and wake Ma and Pa up and ask them, but of course I didn’t. I just breathed deep. I remembered Ma and Pa making five-hundred-piece puzzles walking around the dining table in our old apartment, how they looked serious, worried, but at the same time in control, and that’s how I decided I should stand in front of all that stuff lying on our bed.

  There was another map similar to that one, which I’d put right on top of your belly. It also had many red dots, and I was about to skip it because it made me feel sick, but then I realized it was a map of exactly where we were going to go in Apacheria. The map was missing most names of places, but I was able to make out the Dragoon Mountains in the west. Then, in the east, the Chiricahua Mountains, where Echo Canyon was. And between the two ranges, the big dry valley where there was a dry lake called Wilcox Playa, though on this map the name didn’t appear. Papa had shown me other maps of this same part of Apacheria many times, pointing to places and telling me their names. I had to repeat them after him, especially the names that were important in Apache stories, like Wilcox, San Simon, Bowie, Dos Cabezas Peaks, and Skeleton Canyon. I felt proud of it now, that I knew my way around Apacheria so well without even having been there yet. In Ma’s map, for example, even if the names weren’t written on it, I think I spotted the town called Bowie, north of the big dry valley, right on the railroad tracks, which is where Geronimo and his people had boarded a train after their final, final surrender. I also spotted Skeleton Canyon, southeast of the Chiricahua Mountains, which was where Geronimo and his people were captured before boarding that train in Bowie, and of course Dos Cabezas Peaks, which is where the ghost of Chief Cochise still walks around.

  Then I noticed that on this map, right in the center of the valley between the Dragoons and the Chiricahuas, Ma had marked XX with a pen, and then made a big circle around the two X’s. It was the only map where she’d made any markings. I wondered what that meant. I thought about it for a long while, and out of all the possibilities I came up with, I think this was the one: Mama had made those marks because she was sure that some lost children were there. Two children: XX.

  Then I realized: maybe the two X’s were the two girls Mama often spoke about, Manuela’s daughters, who had gone missing. Mama had good instincts, she was Lucky Arrow, after all. So if she was looking for them there, they were probably there, or somewhere near there. And then I had an idea that felt like an explosion in my head, but a good explosion. If the girls were there, maybe we could help Ma find them.

  ELECTRICITY

  So this is what I decided. The next morning, before Ma and Pa woke up, you and I would leave. We’d walk for as long as we could, like the lost children had walked, even if we might get lost. We’d find a train and board it, heading toward Apacheria. We’d walk into the valley where Ma had circled those two X’s. We’d look for the two lost girls there. If we got lucky and found them, we’d all head together to Echo Canyon, where Pa had always told us we could be easily found if we got lost, thanks to all the echoes. And if we didn’t find the girls, we’d still head to Echo Canyon, which, according to Ma’s map, was not too far from the place where she’d marked XX. I knew, of course, I’d get into big trouble for this. Ma and Pa would be so angry when they realized we had run away. But after a little while, they’d be more worried than mad. Ma would start thinking of us the way she thought of them, the lost children. All the time and with all her heart. And Pa would focus on finding our echoes, instead of all the other echoes he was chasing. And here’s the most important part, if we too were lost children, we would have to be found again. Ma and Pa would have to find us. They would find us, I knew that. I would also draw a map of the route you and I would probably follow, so that they could find us at the end. And the end was Echo Canyon.

  It was silly of me to have broken a promise and looked inside Ma’s box. But also I finally understood some important things after looking at all that stuff, understood them with my heart and not only with my head. Though my head was spinning, too. But I’d finally got it, and that’s what matters, ’cause now I can tell you about it also. I finally got why Mama was always thinking and talking about all the lost children, and why it seemed like she was farther and farther away from us every day. The lost children, all of them, were so much more than us, Memphis, so much more than all the children we ever knew. They were like Pa’s Eagle Warriors, maybe even braver and smarter. I also finally understood what you and I had to do to make things better for all of us.

  ORDER & CHAOS

  I got so excited about my plan that I even felt I should wake everyone up to share it with the family, which of course I didn’t do. I breathed deep and slow, trying to keep calm. I put all of Ma’s things back in her box, in the right order, or almost, because you had turned around on your side and made a bit of a mess.

  Before I closed the box, using the lid for support, I drew the map of my planned route. I based my map on one of the maps in Ma’s box, the one where she’d made the circle around the two X’s. First I drew the map, in pencil. Then I drew the route you and I would take, in red. Then, in blue, I drew the route that I imagined the lost children in Ma’s book might take. And the two routes, red and blue, met at a big X, which I made in pencil, and which was kind of at the same spot where Ma had marked XX on her map.

  When I was finally finished, I looked at the map, and rubbed my stomach butterflies. It really was a very good map, the best I’d ever made. I put it at the top of the pile of things inside Ma’s box, right on top of her map with the two X’s. I knew she would find it there. Before closing the box, I thought maybe I should also leave a note in case my map was not clear enough to them, though it was clear enough to me. So I unstuck a blank Post-it from between the pages of one of the books in the box, a book called The Gates of Paradise, and wrote a note like old telegrams in sto
ries, saying, went out, will look for lost girls, meet you later at Echo Canyon.

  I still had to take the box back to the trunk, and I did. I crept outside, opened the trunk, put the box in its place. And when I went back inside, I felt like I was a finally almost a grown man.

  § MAP

  § MAP

  § MIGRANT MORTALITY REPORT

  Name: HUERTAS-FERNANDEZ, NURIA

  Sex: Female

  Age: 9

  Reporting Date: 2003-07-09

  Surface Management: Private

  Location: SMH

  Location Precision: Physical description with directions, distances, and landmarks (precise to within 1mi/2km)

  Corridor: Douglas

  Cause of Death: Exposure

  OME determined COD: COMPLICATIONS OF HYPERTHERMIA WITH RHABDOMYOLYSIS AND DEHYDRATION

  State: Arizona

  County: Cochise

  Latitude: 31.366050

  Longitude: –09.559990

  § MIGRANT MORTALITY REPORT

  Name: ARIZAGA, BABY BOY

  Sex: Male

  Age: 0

  Reporting Date: 2005-09-19