Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

Author:Valeria Luiselli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

TOGETHER ALONE

As I get into bed and curl around my husband’s sweaty back, I can still hear the echoes of these other children, somewhere. I hear the monotonous sound of thousands of lost footsteps, and a dim chorus of voices, weaving in and out of the sentences, swiftly shifting perspectives in the slow, heavy rhythm of the narrative voice, and as I try to fall asleep, I know that this life is mine, and also, at the same time, irremediably lost.

What ties me to where? There’s the story about the lost children on their crusade, and their march across jungles and barrenlands, which I read and reread, sometimes absentmindedly, other times in a kind of rapture, recording it; and now I am reading parts to the boy. And then there’s also the story of the real lost children, some of whom are about to board a plane. There are many other children, too, crossing the border or still on their way here, riding trains, hiding from dangers. There are Manuela’s two girls, lost somewhere, waiting to be found. And of course, finally, there are my own children, one of whom I might soon lose, and both of whom are now always pretending to be lost children, having to run away, either fleeing from white-eyes, riding horses in bands of Apache children, or riding trains, hiding from the Border Patrol.

As my husband feels my body close to his, deep in his sleep, he inches away, so I turn the other way and curl up around my pillow. A kind of future self looks at all this in quiet recognition: what I once had. No self-pity, no desire, just a kind of astonishment. And I fall asleep with the same question the boy asked me earlier:

What happens if children are left alone?

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