On the phone with the immigration lawyer four weeks ago: “I just have one question. What can we do at the school to get this boy out of a homeless shelter?”
“He needs someone to offer him a home and then we can begin the process of going through family court and applying for an SIJS visa.”
Five minutes later, calling my husband (which I NEVER do) in the middle of a school day:
Bruce: “What’s up?”
Me: “I just have one question.” Loooong pause.
Bruce: “Yeah…?”
Me: “Would you be willing to take this boy into our home?”
Bruce: “This boy who’s been in your class for three weeks and we know nothing about?”
Me: “… Yep.”
On the phone with the social worker, one day later:
Social worker: “Our ultimate goal is to place him with a Spanish-speaking family, although it doesn’t always work out that way. He told me that you might be willing to take him, and just so you know, I already Googled your house and everything I could find out about you. And I just have one question.”
Me: “Yes…?”
Social worker: “How do you feel about taking in a teenage boy when you have three teenage daughters living at home?”
(This was the easiest of these questions to answer).
In an email to the school psychologist, counselor, registrar, and social worker: “I just have one question. How does one take in a student in a situation like this?”
Response: “We don’t know.”
In my living room, three weeks later, meeting with the Undocumented Refugee Minor team of five adults–an interpreter, a bilingual social worker, a coordinator from Lutheran Family Services, a Guardian ad Litem lawyer, and a caseworker from the Department of Human Services. My puppy jumps from couch to couch, hovers on the floor with toys he begs them to throw, sniffs in their on-the-floor bags. Fabian holds the laser pointer and fiddles with the dog’s rampant scavenges for its source in the depths of the hardwood floor.
Social worker: “The primary goal of this program is to reunite you with your family. Let’s talk about all the family members you have in the U.S.”
So begins a lengthy discussion about every reason why his four family members cannot take him. One with a crime, one with a house too full, one in prison, and an uncle in Connecticut he doesn’t know.
Social worker: “Let’s talk about the uncle you don’t know. What if you went to visit?”
Fabian: “It’s too far.”
Social worker: “We could buy you a plane ticket. Pay for a hotel.”
Fabian: “…”
Social worker: “We don’t have to decide today. You can think about it. It’s always an option for your future. OK?”
Fabian: “OK.”
Fifteen minutes later, the meeting is coming to an end.
Social worker: “Now you both have the chance to ask any questions that you have.”
My quiet son, with red eyes and pulling his hands away from his downturned face, looks up and says, “Solo tengo una pregunta.”
We wait for the interpreter to repeat his words.
Fabian: “I just want to know how many times you are going to keep asking me to reunite with my family. Because I was in a homeless shelter for four months and no one in my family did anything for me, and I don’t want to reunite with them.”
Every mouth in the room: Silence.
I just have one question: What would you do?
Knowing that his journey across four borders and a lifetime of woes has ever-gratefully placed him in your living room. Knowing that you will lose sleep over this, waking in the middle of the night to police sirens thinking that ICE is coming, worrying that he will hate you, that he’ll turn back and re-cross those borders, that he won’t fit into your family. Knowing that when he sits in your classroom with all the others, they might make somewhat-joking, somewhat-bitter commentary about “your son.” Knowing that your daughters will get jealous over him being allowed to watch a movie on a weeknight or having a specially-made dinner and a piñata for his birthday. Knowing that people in your life are going to question every aspect of this choice (“College is coming up… can you afford this?” “Are you sure he’s not a criminal?” “Are you worried about having him in a house with three teenage daughters?”).
Knowing that for every day of your life, from the moment when he raised his face and asked his singular question, you will never forget its weight on your soul, on your humanity.
I just have one answer: love. It is the only response that is worth listening to out of every possibility. It is the only way to get through each of the borders that we must cross, each of the dark memories that plague us all, each of the questions we have always asked about what we could do.
We could love each other just a bit more.
