Lost Children Archive: A Novel

by Valeria Luiselli

  The Lordsburg train station looked more like a train yard than a station. There were a few old train cars parked there but no real station with people coming and going with suitcases and other things you normally see in stations. It looked like a place where everyone had died or simply vanished, because you could feel people and almost smell their breath around you, but there was no one to be seen. We walked along the tracks for a little while, heading west, I think, because we had the sun in our faces, though it didn’t bother us because it was already low in the sky. We walked along the tracks until we had to step around a parked train, and as we walked around it, we spotted an open diner, and the diner was called the Maverick Room. We stood looking at it for a long time, with our backs against the parked train, wondering if we should walk over and go in. It was just some steps from the tracks, right after a strip of gravel. I was scared to go into the diner, but I didn’t say it. You really wanted to go in, because you were thirsty. I was, too, but I didn’t say that either.

  To distract you, I said, hey, I’ll let you take a picture of the train, and you can hold the camera all by yourself. Of course you agreed immediately. We took a few steps away from the train, stood midway between the train car and the Maverick Room. I took out the camera and Ma’s red book from my backpack, the way I always prepared before a picture. Then I let you hold the camera, and you looked through the eyepiece, and just as I was telling you to be patient and make sure you’d focused well, you pressed the shutter, and the picture slid out. I caught it just in time, quickly put it inside Mama’s red book to develop, and threw the camera and the book back in my backpack.

  You asked, what’s the plan now, Swift Feather?, so I told you that the plan was to wait for the picture to develop. Then, again, you said you badly needed water, which I knew, because your lips were all chapped. And I could tell you were close to throwing a tantrum, so I said, okay, okay, we’ll go into the diner. And what’s the plan after that? you asked. I told you the plan was to jump back on that train car after we got something to drink at the diner. I said we’d sleep on the roof of that train, and that the train would probably depart the next morning, heading west, which was the direction to Echo Canyon. I didn’t know what I was talking about, of course, I was just making everything up, but you believed me because you trusted me, and this always made me feel guilty.

  I thought: The plan for now is, we will go inside and we will ask for water sitting at the long counter and pretend that our parents are coming any minute, and after drinking the water, we will run away. It won’t count as stealing because glasses of water are free anyway. But I won’t tell Memphis this part, I thought. I won’t tell her we will have to run away after drinking the water, because I know it will scare her and she doesn’t need to be scared.

  REVERBERATIONS

  The sun was low in the sky when we walked into the diner. As soon as we walked in, I knew we shouldn’t stay too long in there or we’d start looking suspicious, like we were alone, no parents. We sat at the long counter on high stools with bouncy foam. Everything around us was shiny, the napkin holders, the big loud coffeemakers that smell so acid, the spoons and forks, even the face of the waitress was shiny. You, Memphis, asked the waitress for crayons and paper, which you got, and I asked for two waters and said we’d wait for our mom and dad to come to order real things. The waitress smiled and said, sure thing, young man. The only other person, aside from us and the waitress, was an old man with a round pink face. He was standing a few feet from us, dressed in blue. He was drinking a tall glass of beer, and was eating chicken wings and sucking the stuck meat from between his long teeth. I could see you wanted some chicken, too, ’cause your eyes got all tear-swollen and mad like birds fighting for space on branches.

  But we weren’t going to risk it. I said, focus on your picture, and so you drew a girl figure and wrote Sir Fus in Love, and then said it said Sara Falls in Love. I didn’t want to correct your spelling because it really didn’t matter that much, because who was going to see the drawing except us anyway?

  The man went to the bathroom and left his dish full of chicken wings right there. The waitress was in the kitchen, and when I was sure no one was watching, I reached over and snatched two chicken wings from his plate and handed you one, which first you held tight in your hand, and then, when you saw I was quickly eating mine, you did the same. And when we’d eaten the last bit of meat on them, we threw the bones under the counter.

  Then the waters came, with a lot of ice. I took sugar packets and emptied them into our waters and then I put a bunch of them in my pocket, for later. And the waters were so good and sweet, we drank them so quickly, so quickly that I was all of a sudden ashamed to leave. My legs felt heavy and embarrassed, for the waters and also for the evidence of the chicken-wing bones under the counter. We sat there in silence for a while, and I helped you with your drawing and made a heart around Sara Falls in Love, and we both made shooting stars around her and some planets. But even when I was concentrating on coloring in the planets, I knew in my mind I couldn’t pretend for much longer to still be waiting for our parents to come in.

  I was about to not know what to do next and mess everything up when something happened that was lucky for us. I think you brought us the luck. Mama always said you had a good star above you. The man next to us with the round pink face and long teeth stood up and went to the jukebox in the corner. I think he was drunk because he took a long time messing around with it, pressing buttons, and his body moved a bit from side to side.

  Finally, a song came up—and this was the lucky part for us. It was one of our very own songs, yours and mine, one of the songs we knew by heart and had been singing in the car with our parents before we got lost or they got lost or everyone got lost. The song was called “Space Oddity,” about an astronaut who leaves his capsule and drifts far away from Earth. I knew we both knew the song, so I started up a game for you to follow right there. I looked at you and said, listen, you’re Major Tom and I’m Ground Control. Then slowly I put imaginary helmets on both of us, and both of us were holding pretend space walkie-talkies. Ground Control to Major Tom, I said into the walkie-talkie.

  You smiled so wide, I knew you understood my game immediately because also you usually do. The rest of the instructions came from the song, but I was lip-singing them, looking straight at you so you wouldn’t get distracted by something else, because you’re always distracted by tiny things and details.

  Take your protein pills, I said. Put your helmet on, said the song, and then ten, nine, eight, commence the countdown, turn the engines on. You were listening to me, I knew. Check ignition, said me and the song. And as the countdown for space launch went down, seven, six, I slid off the stool and started walking backward toward the door still looking at you and lip-singing really clear. Five, four, and then you also slid off the stool holding the picture you’d drawn with Sara falls in love, three, two, and then came one, and right on one, we were both on the ground and you started following me, walking slowly on tiptoes and opening your eyes like when you’re looking at me underwater. You could be so funny sometimes in your face. You were moonwalking, but forward, and smiling so wide.

  No one in the diner noticed us, not the pink man, not the waitress, who were talking up close to each other, almost touching noses across the bar. We had already reached the swinging doors, exactly when the song gets louder, this is Ground Control the astronaut shouts into the microphone in the song. And I knew we’d made it when I held the door open for you and suddenly we were stepping through it and were both outside, safe and free outside, not having been caught by the waitress, or the man who was eating those chicken wings, or anyone.

  We were invisible, like two astronauts up in space, floating toward the moon. And outside, the sun was setting, the sky pink and orange, and the freight trains parked on the tracks were bright and beautiful, and I ran for it so fast across the gravel and around the train in front of the Maverick Room, and beyond the train tracks, and laughing so
hard my bladder almost exploded from all the icy water we’d drank. And I ran more, crossed the big road and then ran along smaller streets until I reached the desert shrub, where there were no more houses or streets or anything, just shrubs and sometimes tall grass. I kept on running ’cause I could still hear the song, but only in my head, so I sang it in pieces out loud as we ran, like I’m floating, and like the stars seem different, and also my spaceship knows which way to go.

  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 instru
ctions 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. First 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.