The Leavers(105)

“There are some women who’ve been here a lot longer,” Lei said. “There’s a woman named Mary who’s lived in America since she was six months old. Born in Sudan. Was in college, had a travel visa, got arrested at the airport after coming home from studying in France. The government says her parents never adjusted her immigration status when she was a baby and she needs a physical examination to complete her application to change her status. Of course, an exam costs three hundred bucks and they won’t give it to her at Ardsleyville. And she can’t access her bank account because ICE put a hold on her name.” Lei shook her head. “Typical.”

Nobody knew anything. There were too many cases in the immigration courts, Lei said, and we didn’t get things like lawyers, only a judge who decided if you would stay or go. None of us knew when we would see this judge, if the authorities would release us from custody, where we would end up.

I WAS SLEEPY, SO sleepy all the time. My legs ached from not walking enough. Once or twice a week, the guards let us out into the courtyard for an hour, a rectangle ringed by barbed wire, large enough for us to stand no more than arm’s length apart. Beyond that was a giant American flag, flapping in the hot wind, and an open yard surrounded by more wire, which housed a separate prison that Lei called the Hole. The men were in other tents beyond that, tents we couldn’t see.

There were days I stayed in bed, itching under the blanket. I assumed the sun was still swapping seats with the moon every twelve hours, though for all I knew the sky could’ve become green, the sun now square, the stars extinguished and smeared like mosquitoes on the underside of a slipper. De-ming, de-ming—your name hammered a drumbeat between my eyes. I had wanted to move and now you would think I left on purpose.

I scratched my arms so hard the skin broke into angry red snarls. You might forget my face. The next time I saw you, your voice might be lower. Leon might find another woman. I had the ring he gave me, and I twisted it around my finger, felt it pinch my skin.

Starry night. Grassy field. Cricket chorus. Clucking chicken. You. I tried to visualize all the things I loved. If I produced more saliva, I could pretend I wasn’t so thirsty. Glass of water. Cup of tea. Wet kisses. Leon. I tried to relax, hoping for a few hours of sleep before the first bed check. Warm hands. Loud music. You.

I told Lei about you, how good your English was, the way you took care of Michael. But every day I worried more. Were you doing okay in school, was Vivian feeding you enough, and were your clothes clean? You needed a new pair of shoes, your feet were growing so fast, you couldn’t walk if your shoes were too tight, and who would buy you shoes, how could you walk?

WEEKS, THEN MONTHS PASSED. I lay on my back in the top bunk. There wasn’t enough space to lie in any position except on my back and perfectly still, a lesson I’d learned when I rolled off the bunk and fell onto the floor. I pulled the blanket over my face, exposing my feet. Then I got up and went to eat with Lei.

She was sitting with a woman named Samara, who was from Pakistan. The three of us could communicate using the spotty English we knew.

Some of the women were planning a protest, Samara said. There were church people who held a vigil outside the tent, and somehow Mary, the woman who’d lived in America since she was a baby, had gotten in touch with them.

“The guards won’t care if we protest,” I said.

“I saw what they did to people who protested before you both came,” Lei said. “Three guards kicked these women until they bled. Then they got deported. What makes you think it’s going to be different now?”

DAY 203. SUNLIGHT BLAZED onto the tent roof. I sat on my bunk, reached under my shirtsleeves, applied nails to skin, and scratched. I knew my arms were already inflamed and split red, but scratching produced the sweetest pain, the most exquisite fire. When I scratched I could dig my fingernails into all the unspoken words of the past months.

I began to hate Leon and Didi, to want to forget them. Had they even tried to find me? Maybe it was better this way, to pretend they didn’t exist. Missing them was worse. So was waiting.

WE MADE A PLAN. When the guards let us into the courtyard, we weren’t coming back in. One woman would deliver a list of our complaints. The church group had gotten in touch with journalists, who would come and film us so that Americans would learn about the tents. The government would shut down Ardsleyville and we could go home.

I didn’t think it would be that easy, but we had to try something. It was better to participate than to acknowledge we had no options.

Lei refused to be a part of it.

After lunch, the guards unlocked the door to the yard and we walked outside. After a few minutes we began to move around, changing from bunches to lines and corners. We spelled out letters. H-E-L-P. So that the news helicopters could see us from above.

I stepped behind Samara, rolling my sleeves up in the heat.

“Your skin is broken,” Samara said. “It looks painful.”

I pulled my sleeves back down. “It’s nothing,” I said.

We stood for a long time, waiting for something to happen, for the church people, the journalists. But nothing happened except the guards got angry, yelling at us to go in. Lei and the other women on the opposite side of the yard returned to the tent. Samara and I stayed standing. The sky remained blue and still. There were no birds in the desert, no cars driving on a nearby highway, no cool ocean lapping my ankles, only hot sky. Then I heard it, a buzz slicing the air. The buzz grew louder and I saw a shape circling the clouds, a blue dot no larger than a bird, and the bird grew bigger and the buzz was thundering.