The New York Times Magazine 47her own fi nances. Now, however, Fanny slept on a heap of blankets
on the fl oor of the bedroom of Laura’s teenage brother, Nando. She
tucked the pile under Nando’s bed every morning and dragged it out
every night. ‘‘FANNY AND NANDO! ’’ the door to the room announced in
colorful sticker letters, but Nando had a bed and she didn’t, and Nando
had two parents and she had none.
ROSARIO WOULDN’T STOP talking about coming back, and it
made Fanny anxious every time she thought about it. Where would her
mother get the money for the smuggler’s fee? What if she were deported
again? People could be sent to federal prison for illegally re-entering
after being deported. Even if she did make it back, what kind of life
would they have, with Rosario all but in hiding? But Rosario just said
Fanny was being negative; she had to trust her. A few days after one of
their fi ghts about it, Fanny fainted again. The feelings were back.
As the weeks stumbled on, Fanny stopped saying things like ‘‘I want
you back’’ and ‘‘I wish you were here.’’ ‘‘Mom, I can’t talk,’’ she’d say
instead. ‘‘I have to go to the mall.’’ Or she’d say she was at a friend’s
house. Or she’d ask her to stop mapping out her return to America,
which was the only thing Rosario thought about now — that, and Fanny.
Who was Fanny with? What was she doing? Where was she going? If
Laura’s mother was taking care of Fanny, and Fanny thought she could
take care of herself, where did that leave Rosario?
After a while, Rosario stopped telling Fanny about her plans to return,
though she kept Alejandro updated. She didn’t want Fanny to worry,
but she agonized over keeping it secret. ‘‘If something bad happens to
me,’’ she thought, ‘‘Fanny won’t know.’’
Two days after Christmas, Fanny went to stay at Alejandro’s place,
where she sometimes shared a bed with Max, their dog. She didn’t
know what time it was when she half-woke in darkness. Someone was
in the room with her. No, someone was in bed with her. Someone who
had put arms around her. Someone who was crying.
‘‘Oh, my God,’’ Fanny said. She turned over, disbelieving, needing to
make sure. She had told her not to come. She couldn’t have come. But
somehow, almost exactly three months after Rosario left, here she was.
‘‘I missed you, I missed you,’’ Rosario whispered through her tears,
stroking her daughter’s hair, because now Fanny was crying, too. ‘‘Noth-
ing was going to keep us apart. I love you. I love you. I love you.’’ While
Fanny had been celebrating Christmas at Laura’s that week, Rosario
had been jammed in the back of a smuggler’s car for the daylong drive
from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo, then walking across the border into
Texas, then riding a bus to Dallas. She had hired the same smuggler
she had used the fi rst time but decided on a route safer than the desert
hike through Tijuana she took before, paying him extra for a fake green
card to show to the immigration agents who checked everyone’s IDs
on the bus. The trip had cost her $7,000, money she’d borrowed from a
close friend, her brother and her old boss at her janitorial job in Geor-
gia. Once she made it to Dallas, another car arranged by the smuggler
took her to Georgia.
Now that she was back, though, Rosario didn’t want anyone to know,
in case it somehow got back to ICE. She dreaded another knock on
the door. She dreaded being sent back again to depend on her broth-
er’s generosity, to the isolation and the poverty,
to the dreary past. Refusing to take any chances,
Rosario didn’t tell anyone she had returned except
the people who helped pay for the smuggler. She
made Fanny and Alejandro keep her secret, even if
it meant lying to the family who had been caring
for her daughter. So they did.
For months, Rosario laid low in her old apart-
ment, afraid to leave the house even to walk the
dog when her kids visited. What if ICE came back
to check the place? She asked Fanny if she wanted
to move back in with her, since she was living with a family she barely
knew, but Fanny said she would be fi ne, and Alejandro pointed out that
it would be tough for Fanny to live with someone who was in hiding.
Fanny was relieved: Her furtive visits to her mother meant hours stuck
inside. Then she felt guilty. She was trying not to say too much to Rosario
about the other family. She didn’t know how, exactly, to tell her mother
that she had come to think of somewhere else as home.WHEN LAURA CAME through the door after work one afternoon in
January, Fanny greeted her with a ‘‘Hi, sister!’’
‘‘Hi, sister,’’ Laura replied, plopping down next to her on the brown
couch, where Fanny sat cross-legged in skinny jeans and a school-logo
hoodie. Laura put an arm around her, tapping at her phone as they
talked. Within a few minutes, Fanny had given up on her homework.
‘‘So yesterday, me and Mom had the conversation about why I don’t
talk to Jesús anymore,’’ Fanny said to Laura. Jesús was a boy who had
been texting Fanny.
‘‘Which mom?’’ Laura asked.
‘‘Mom Mom. Mom 2,’’ said Fanny, holding up two fi ngers. She
meant Laura’s mother. ‘‘I said Jesús is the kind of dude who watches
‘SpongeBob.’ ’’
Laura was the one who talked to Fanny about friends and boys, about
who was having a baby and who was going out. The other sister, Ana, was
the one with the closet full of clothes Fanny was always borrowing even
though they didn’t quite fi t her yet, the one with the bag full of makeup
she was teaching Fanny how to use, the one with the independence
and wherewithal to help with the household bills, the one Fanny could
see herself growing up to be — ideally not too long from now. Nando,
15, was the one she swapped marching-band gossip with, the one she
stayed up talking to long after they were supposed to be asleep, the one
who shared her belief that Fanny had brought a small ghost from her
old house to his. And Mom 2, who cleaned houses for a living, was the
one who teased Fanny about her sweet tooth, cracked her back when it
felt funny and taught her to do her own laundry. ‘‘You’re turning into a
woman,’’ she said. ‘‘You have to learn how to do your own stuff .’’
At dinner around the oval kitchen table that night, Fanny sniff led
quietly over her foam plate of pork stew, refried beans and chicken
fl autas. ‘‘I think I’m getting sick,’’ she said, as the adults around her
chatted in Spanish. She laid her head on the table. ‘‘I’m going to hate
going to school tomorrow, and they’re going to check my temperature
and say, ‘Oh, you got a fever, we’re going to have to call your parents.’
Like, who are you going to call?’’
‘‘What about brother?’’ Laura asked.
‘‘He’s going to have to get out of work.’’ The school wouldn’t let
her leave on her own, so Alejandro would have to pick her up, but he
couldn’t always get permission from his boss to leave. Rosario didn’t
want to risk being seen.
‘‘If you have a fever, there’s no point in going to school,’’ Laura said.
‘‘I’m going to go to school,’’ Fanny said, head still down, fl inching at the
idea of staying home alone. ‘‘If they send me back, they send me back.’’
Getting up from the dinner table now, Fanny threw away her plate and
resettled on the couch with Nando, their eyes fl icking back and forth
between their phones and the TV. Nando eventually
disappeared into their room, and it was just Fanny
on the couch, still sniff ling, her throat afl ame with
what would later turn out to be strep. The Disney
Channel was playing the fi nal episode of ‘‘Jessie,’’ a
show about four siblings and their beloved nanny,
Jessie. Onscreen, the kids were saying a tearful
goodbye to Jessie. ‘‘Family members are like plan-
ets,’’ Jessie told one girl. ‘‘The force of love keeps
them together,’’ the girl replied, nodding. Fanny
let her head droop against the back of the couch,SHE CALLED THEM
‘FAMILY FRIENDS,’ BUT
IN TRUTH, SHE HADN’T
SPENT MUCH TIME WITH
THEM BEFORE GOING
TO LIVE WITH THEM.