Infinite Country(38)
He wanted to convey to his daughter the price of leaving, though he had difficulty finding the words. What he wanted to say was that something is always lost; even when we are the ones migrating, we end up being occupied. But Talia wasn’t listening, already tiring of her father’s stories. He felt her detaching from him, from their city. She saw their new apartment as a temporary place, counting down until she could leave it. What she didn’t know, Mauro thought, was that after the enchantment of life in a new country dwindles, a particular pain awaits. Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it’s ugly and distorted; you’ve become a scorned, unwanted creature.
He knew Talia believed her journey to be a renewal, and it would be. He hoped the love of her mother and siblings would be enough to soothe her when she met the other side of the experience, when she would learn what everyone who crosses over learns: Leaving is a kind of death. You may find yourself with much less than you had before.
It seemed to Mauro that in choosing to emigrate, we are the ones trafficking ourselves. Perhaps it was the fate of man to remain in motion and seek distance, determined by the will of Chiminigagua, because humankind’s first migration was from the subterranean world beneath the sacred lake, driven out by the great water snake, to the land of the jaguars and the kingdom of the condors above.
* * *
Elena called to ask Mauro to pack Perla’s statue of the Virgen de Chiquinquirá for Talia to take on her trip north. He said it was lost in the move. They’d looked everywhere for it. He was very sorry he hadn’t told her before. He worried that to Elena it was just another Mauro apology. He wanted to say he regretted not only losing the statue but all the ways he’d disappointed her, and because he hadn’t yet found a way to restore their family to what they once were. But after a pause Elena only asked about Talia, why she wouldn’t return her mother’s calls. Mauro was relieved to change the subject but not that he’d have to lie again.
“She’s just busy getting ready to leave. She can barely sleep from excitement to see you. After Saturday, you two will have all the time in the world to catch up.” He wasn’t sure she believed him. In fact, he was fairly certain she did not. But she didn’t insist or probe anymore.
That afternoon, at a religious store on Calle 64, Mauro bought Elena a new statue, shorter and not as detailed as the one Perla had so loved, but he took it to a nearby church and asked the priest to bless it. He hoped Talia would tell Elena this much when she delivered it to her.
* * *
Mauro studied the map of Santander trying to imagine routes Talia might have taken to get home. What were the odds that a fifteen-year-old runaway girl could cross several provinces and navigate the mountains alone and unharmed? He refused to picture her hitchhiking, rain-soaked and hungry, tried not to think of where she’d been sleeping. He wondered if she’d paired up with one of the other girls as travel companions and prayed she was safe, reciting mantras that she’d soon be home, trying to conjure such a reality by preparing her luggage for her departure, her paper ticket tucked safely in a dresser drawer. Clothes folded and arranged in neat piles, packed in a suitcase he bought at El Centro Andino, its shell pink as a passiflora, her favorite flower.
He’d bought gifts for Karina and Nando. Candies, discs of Colombian music. A necklace for Karina and a leather belt for Nando. Not much but it was what he could afford, even if he was sure they were used to nicer, less folkloric things in the north. He’d taken Perla’s photos out of their frames and packed them in an envelope along with a letter for Elena. He was embarrassed of his handwriting, how he hadn’t stayed long enough in school for it to be shaped into something more presentable, ruining many sheets of paper trying to keep his sentences in straight lines, wanting to communicate that she was still his only love and asking her forgiveness for every way he’d fallen short.
When she returned, Talia would see her father had a gift for her too. During the years when they were getting to know each other as father and daughter, when she was still in only Perla’s care, she glimpsed the ink on his forearm. She asked Mauro what it said because she couldn’t yet read.
“Karina.”
“Like my sister?”
He told her yes and watched her curiosity melt to hurt. Talia didn’t say so, but he knew she must have wondered why Karina’s was the only name written on his body. He could not explain there was no money to spend on tattoos. Karina’s name had been a whim, in the euphoria of the days after her birth, when he ran to the tattoo shop that had existed then around the corner and had his arm branded with his daughter’s and mother’s name. He remembered when he came home to show Elena. Skin tender and bloody, covered in ointment and a clear film. She brought his arm to her lips and kissed their baby’s name. The following year, when the three of them were in the United States, she would trace those same lines with her finger as if they held a kind of promise.
Now when Talia looked at her father’s arms, above the calloused hands she’d rub with her perfumed lotions every night when he came home from work as had been their ritual for years, she would see her brother’s name etched above her sister’s, and above Nando’s name, Talia’s own name in filigree script.