If I Tell You the Truth

by Jasmin Kaur

  I don’t know when I began to cry but my words left my mouth between sobs: “That’s my mom. Can I talk to her? Can you open the window?”

  The officer eyed me warily and then reached inside to lower the window.

  “Mom?” It’s all that managed to escape my lips: the first word I learned and the only one that would ever matter. She turned and her eyes, so often guarded fortresses, filled with tears when they locked into mine. I watched as a lifetime of pain finally revealed itself across her face.

  “I love you, Sahaara. It’s going to be okay,” she managed.

  “How do you know that, Mom?”

  “Just promise me you’ll go to your class tomorrow.” There was desperation in her voice. She was actually serious.

  I laughed at the ridiculousness of this. Of everything. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Okay.”

  desperate measures

  For eighteen years, Mom and I kept the truth of her immigration status hidden from anyone who couldn’t be trusted with our lives. Mom built barbed-wire walls around her story with the belief that silence was her greatest defense. Her only option.

  But here I was, standing alone in a parking lot, certain that if I had already lost everything, breaking that silence couldn’t make it worse.

  I hit share and Instagram posted my black picture and long caption. I read back my own words, wiping tears off the screen as they fell:

  My mom is an undocumented immigrant. She’s raised me as a single parent in Canada for the last eighteen years. Tonight, CBSA officers picked her up. I don’t know what’s happening and I don’t know what to do but I can’t lose her. She has worked her ass off for the last two decades just to raise me and earn her way to Canadian citizenship. She deserves to stay here. If you know *anything* about immigration and border security, PLEASE help.

  Bounding feet splashed toward me. “Sahaara!” a familiar voice called, and I was suddenly engulfed in Maasi’s rain-dampened arms. “What happened?! Where’d they take her?”

  “I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I just—I showed up at the SkyTrain and she wasn’t coming out of the station but I thought she was just late and then—I saw her come out with a cop and he put her in his car. And I asked where he was taking her and he was just like—he was like, they have questions about her immigration status. And he said CBSA is coming to pick her up.”

  “Fuck. FUCK!” She placed a hand on her forehead and pushed back mulberry hair. “We’re gonna figure this out, all right? Did he say where exactly they were taking her?”

  “Yeah—the Immigration Detention Center. I wrote down the address. Shit! Should I have just followed the car? I wasn’t even thinking.”

  “No, Sahaara, it’s okay. Let’s just calmly think this through, all right?”

  I stared into her red-rimmed eyes, tears pouring from mine. “Maasi . . . what do we do?”

  “We should’ve met with a lawyer right away. Like, right after that thing with Gurinder Aunty happened. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to convince her—”

  “Let’s just call a lawyer now,” I interrupted. There was no point tearing ourselves apart over things Mom wouldn’t let us do.

  Within seconds, Maasi had pulled up the number for Sajjan Law Office and she was dialing. My chin tilted toward the moonless sky and I sent a desperate prayer up to whatever the hell ran this fucked-up universe. Please, just let her be okay.

  “Hello? Oh, it’s an answering machine.” Maasi listened to the recording as my stomach wrung itself tight. “Hi, this is Joti Thind. I called last week about setting up a consultation for my friend who’s hoping to become a Canadian citizen. My friend was taken by, um, by CBSA. Any help you could provide would be deeply appreciated. Thank you!”

  “Can we leave now? To the—the detention center?” Those three words unsettled the pavement beneath my feet. Was Mom sitting in a cement cell right now? Was she being interrogated by cops? Screamed at? Being told to get the fuck out of their country?

  “I’m gonna just park my car here and then let’s jump into yours.”

  Maasi jogged across the parking lot to pay for parking and I couldn’t think straight. Stillness was an impossibility when every second was sand slipping through an hourglass. I paced, endlessly circling the trunk of my car as though my motion would carry me to Mom quicker. I stared at the cement, the cars, the trees, the sky. I tried to focus on something, anything, everything, but my breath was sharp and shallow. The parking lot was a tumbling Ferris wheel propelled by my fear.

  My cell phone notifications had become an almost endless buzz and I dared to look: missed calls from Jeevan, comments on my Instagram post, and a few DMs. With a deep inhale, I checked Instagram first.

  Rhea Gill commented “omg ☺” on my post and Roop wrote that she was “soooo sorry.” Marisol from art class commented “check DMs!” Sunny had liked the post but said nothing. No calls from him. Not even a text.

  When I opened Marisol’s DMs, I gasped at the flood of messages still pouring in.

  Marisol: Sahaara! Omg I’m so sorry your mom was detained! I had no idea you were dealing with this.

  Marisol: My cousin volunteers at All Humans Are Legal. It’s this immigrant rights org that helps ppl who are undocumented.

  Marisol: Hold up . . . im gonna add her to the convo

  Marisol: if they’re trying to deport your mom, All Humans Are Legal might be able to stop them or delay the deportation

  A new conversation popped up with me, @sunandseamari, and @valeria_xoxo.

  Marisol: Sahaara, this is my cousin Valeria. She’s the one who volunteers at All Humans Are Legal. I screenshotted your post and sent it to her (I hope that’s okay!!)

  Valeria: Hi, Sahaara! I hope you and your mom are okay! Could you tell me more about the situation? My team and I will try our best to help! ❤

  My fingers fumbled as I quickly typed the facts I knew like the lines on my palms. Nineteen years in Canada. Undocumented for fifteen. We were just waiting to file her sponsorship papers. We just needed a bit more money.

  Valeria: Can I call you in a little while? I’m gonna see if I can get ahold of my other organizer. I just started as an intern but she’s been working on cases like this for decades.

  Sahaara: Yeah . . . we’re gonna just drive to the immigration detention center right now . . . I’ll give you a call on the way.

  Valeria: the detention center at the airport?

  Sahaara: yeah. fuck.

  kiran

  midnight, september 1, 2020

  beneath a moonless sky

  “P-please let me stay,” I stammer. A plane tears through the night sky above me and a shiver steals through my body. When I landed at Vancouver International Airport nineteen years ago, it was a place that told me new beginnings were possible. Today, it is a portal that will return me to a cage I thought I’d escaped long ago.

  The male officer chuckles without glancing back. “Ah, so you do speak.” His voice is light and contemplative, like my fear is a novelty. Like it’s a small excitement to an otherwise dull job. “We’re actually heading to the Immigration Detention Center in the airport basement. We don’t usually just throw people on flights.” The woman seated beside me flashes him a look before she notices my gaze. I think she smiles but all I can see now is her clothing: it’s not a typical police uniform but it doesn’t matter. CBSA is embroidered into her black jacket and my eyes are hooked to the gun in its holster. An ugly memory begins to surface. I bite the inside of my cheek and my lungs scrape my ribs. My ribs balloon against my skin. My skin cries sweat. The air rings sharp and my mouth is metallic.

  It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. I make myself promises that I know I can’t keep.

  Somehow when I step inside, I can almost smell that ungodly odor from the other interrogation room. The dark place behind the veil. All those years of burying, all that work to hide from its memory, and now I am here in its dizzying re
configuration. The other room wasn’t so clean. The dampness of its concrete floor washes over me as though the time between then and now was an eyelash blinked. The sickly sourness returns, the sweat and urine trapped in that humid, windowless cage. Like this room, it was no wider than a cell, no longer than a coffin. A ringing grows in my ears, piercing louder and louder until staticky fuzz forms around the edges of my thoughts. No. Breathe. Focus. Concentrate on where you are. Sahaara needs you to stay present.

  I study my surroundings to escape my head. To stay in my head. A black metal table rests beneath my quaking hands. Against the wall ahead of me is a large rectangular mirror. I remember the mirror from that show Joti used to watch—there was always someone standing behind the glass who could see into the room. A broken woman blinks in the fake mirror. Her eyes—my eyes—are bloodshot and puffy and exhausted. If I look at myself for a moment longer, I’m sure I’ll cry again, so I guide my gaze elsewhere. The door to my left is painted a smoky gray. There’s some sort of recording device sitting on a rolling cart next to the door. It reminds me of a VCR from the ’90s.

  The door creaks open and my heart jolts up my neck: it’s the officer who was driving the car. He eases into the chair across from me but doesn’t so much as glance in my direction. The details of his face are finally in focus: a thick black mustache hides his upper lip and his hairline is slightly receding. He taps his fingers on the table impatiently and doesn’t bother making small talk. Every so often, he checks his phone or glances at the door. I assume he’s waiting for his partner.

  The cop who finally arrives is not the Asian woman who was sitting next to me in the car. This officer is Punjabi. Her auburn hair, dark against her skin, is pulled into a sleek French braid that rests over her shoulder. She’s wearing that same black polyester jacket.

  “Sharon asked me to take this one,” she says, and the mustached officer releases an irritated sigh.

  “I’m Officer Gill. I’m with Immigration. I’m an inland enforcement officer.” She extends a faint-brown hand that I struggle to shake. I want to tell myself that there could be safety in her name. That our shared ethnicity might mean she’ll regard me as human. But I know power doesn’t work this way. “You’ve already met Officer Andrews, it seems.” I nod, unable to maintain eye contact. My gaze moves to my hands and stays there.

  “How are you, Kiran?” she asks.

  I nod as a response, eyes still lowered.

  “Officer Mathews had concerns about your legal status. He said you weren’t able to show him proper Canadian ID and he had some questions about your background.”

  I remain silent and she takes this as a cue for her next question. “Do you have a lawyer that you’d like to represent you? If you don’t have one, we can assign one to you.”

  “No, I—I don’t have a lawyer.”

  “So you’d like us to assign one?”

  She wants to assign me a lawyer? Do they work for the police? Can I trust them? I think back to all the reasons for my silence. The men I willingly followed into danger because their names and suits and certifications lulled my instincts.

  Through gnawing fear, I say yes. There’s nothing else I can do.

  When she places the lawyer on the phone, the two officers leave the room. He asks me just as many questions as the cop on the SkyTrain platform and I don’t know which ones to answer. I reluctantly tell him about Sahaara, how I overstayed the student visa, how I’ve been here for nineteen years. I don’t know if I should tell him why. The cement walls and officers standing just outside remind me that I can’t trust anyone.

  His voice is static over the phone. “And your daughter was born in Canada, correct?”

  “Yes.” At her mention, the lawyer’s voice becomes distant and I am swallowed by my thoughts. If they deport me, I know I can rely on Joti and Aunty Jee. She’ll have a roof over her head. She’ll be okay.

  I’ve lost track of his words for some time but hear him clearly when he says, “You should tell them about your daughter.”

  The questions come like rapid fire. So fast that there’s hardly time to prepare my responses.

  “So where were you coming from when you got off the SkyTrain?” Officer Gill asks.

  “Vancouver.”

  “What were you doing in Vancouver?”

  I hesitate. She can’t know that I was working. “I was eating dinner.”

  “Who were you eating with?”

  “I—um—I was with my friend. Joti.” Shit. I probably shouldn’t have said that.

  “And where does she live?”

  “Surrey.”

  “Was she on the train with you?”

  “Yeah—she—she got off the train on the stop before—at Surrey Central.”

  “And how do you know her?”

  “I used to go to university with her.”

  “Where did you study?”

  “At Simon Fraser.”

  “And you were going to SFU as an international student? What were you studying there?”

  “Biology . . . and yes. An international student.” Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m spilling everything. Should I be saying all this? Fear draws all the words off my tongue and eats away any semblance of a plan.

  “So, I’m guessing you were here on a student visa?”

  My back hot and sweaty, I shift in the chair. “Yes.”

  “And that would’ve expired in 2004 based on what you’ve shared. So why didn’t you return home at the end of your time in university? Did you finish your biology program?”

  Although my head is lowered, their expectant gazes burn into me. If the interrogation is a test, this question is simply pass or fail. I search silently for an answer I never studied for. Each escaping second quickens my heartbeat, proving my guilt.

  The male officer speaks before I find my tongue.

  “Officer Mathews—the one you spoke to at the SkyTrain—he said your daughter was there to pick you up. Tell us about her. Where was she born?”

  “In Canada.”

  “Is her father Canadian?” The churning engine that is my stomach reignites with a roar.

  “No.”

  With the slightest upward glance, I watch him turn to Officer Gill. “Something isn’t right here,” he says as if I am a TV show, a topic to discuss and not a human who can hear. “I got more questions about this one.”

  “Hmm.” Officer Gill notes something down on a piece of paper.

  Officer Andrews returns his attention to me. “Is he here as well? The father?” The mention of him in this room is propane to my terror. The back of my neck prickles.

  “No.”

  “So, where is he?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Eyes to your palms. Stay calm. Breathe.

  “Don’t wanna talk about him? What’s the story?” I glance up, despite myself, and there they are: two ice-pick eyes piercing straight through mine. Just like another pair once stared emptily into me, demanding that I look.

  I try to tell myself that he’s not the same man. That this isn’t the same. But it’s too late: the curtain is ripped away and I am eighteen once again.

  behind the veil

  and here

  i imprison a truth i cannot hide from

  because although the memory

  handcuffs my body without permission

  i wield my own pen

  and all i’ve ever begged for is control

  no one needs this poem

  it is dark in my blood

  and nothing to be relived

  and even if i recounted

  the visceral details

  the gruesome retelling

  was never enough evidence, anyway.

  i will always be guilty.

  the veil tears

  “Miss Kaur? Kiran? Are you all right?” Officer Gill asks.

  “I—I—I—” I heave through sobs but can’t go on. The whole room is whirling.

  “Can I get you some water?”

  “I—can’t—CAN’T—go back.
He’s there—in Punjab—and the election—please—please don’t—please. I’m begging you. Please let me stay.” I give up on words and cry into my open, thrashing palms.

  “What do you mean, Kiran? Are you in danger?” Her voice is quiet. “Take your time.”

  I jerk my head to nod without removing my hands from my eyes.

  “Are you in danger from someone in India? In Punjab?”

  I nod again.

  “Would you be able to explain who this person is and what danger you’re in?”

  I look her in the eye, not with courage but with something more brazen. Reckless and hopeless and desperate all at once. “I was raped. When I was eighteen. By my fiancé’s brother. He was the DGP—the chief of police—of Punjab. Hari—Hari Ahluwalia. And—and—I didn’t know what to do. I was pregnant and I was moving to Canada for school. And I thought I could start a new life here. And be safe. But my visa expired and I can’t go back to Punjab. I have nowhere to go and what if—what if he finds me?—and my daughter—she’s Canadian. Please. I can’t leave her.”

  Officer Gill nods slowly as I speak. Officer Andrews crosses his arms as he surveys me intently. He says, “We have no record of you filing for asylum status in all the years you’ve been here.” He cocks his head. “Why is that?”

  “Because—because I couldn’t go back. I can’t go back. What if the asylum request got rejected? What if—what if—and the immigration consultant told me that my daughter could sponsor me. She’s eighteen now. She’s a Canadian citizen. She can sponsor me. We just need more time—we’ll have the money. Please, just let me stay until she can sponsor me. For her sake, let me stay. Please.”

  The two officers glance at each other. “No asylum filing,” the man scoffs, speaking again as if I’m not here. He folds his puffed arms tight across his chest, surveying me at his leisure.