Yesterday we renewed our kid’s American passport. Out of bed earlier than we wanted, hurry up and wait at the embassy. Walk past the line up the block of folks waiting for their visa appointment, straight to the American Citizen Services counter; no cell phones, no liquids, no snacks. Inside the security perimeter, pass another line of visa applicants, folks shuffling papers and folders and Argentine passports. My husband’s hand in mine.
We sit in the waiting room. The staff gives our kid crayons and a coloring book, “America the bee-autiful!” above the cartoon outline of a flag-emblazoned bee. On our side of the room, five people in chairs wait to be attended. On the other side of the room, the visa line snakes back and forth, back and forth. People shuffle like their papers. An official asks, over and over again: Why are you planning to travel to the US? Have you been outside of Argentina anytime in the last five years?
In 2017, before Trump took office, my not-yet-husband got stopped coming into the States at Houston International Airport. Asked questions for hours. He had a return ticket, was well within the conditions of his visa. They just wanted to make sure he wasn’t thinking about doing anything that would break those conditions. Just wanted it to be known that the visa could be revoked, if need be. The implication there that what “need” meant could be determined using reasoning opaque enough to seem capricious.
I sat in the exit hallway, unable to contact him, waiting. Waiting. We almost missed our flight. The state making its power felt.
We talked to an immigration lawyer, after. If we get married, will it help? He laughed, suggested we take off our rings when we go through immigration.
We’re renewing our child’s passport because it’s expired. We’re renewing it now because we aren’t sure what will remain once the promised purge of the civil service begins. Once the state is portioned out, handed off to those who hawk the market’s efficiency but, in practice, simply skim off the profits. I hand my child the blue crayon to color in the bee. I remember Rhett Butler’s line in Gone with the Wind: “There’s good money in empire building. But there’s more in empire wrecking. “
I jump with our five-year-old on the embassy carpet, trying to get their wiggles out. Another American makes them an origami fortune-teller. He’s in his twenties, in jeans and a slightly ragged t-shirt. In the other line, men wear button downs and women wear pumps.
Bring photos to show the physical progression, baby-toddler-preschooler-child, the instructions said. The first time we’ve printed physical copies in years. Won’t they look nice hanging on the wall? I have twine and tiny wooden clothespins, plans worthy of Instagram. As if a few snapshots can actually capture the transformation of the last five years. One of the polite fictions with which bureaucracy clothes its capriciousness.
The official makes my husband and I raise our right hands and swear the information we’ve provided is correct. On the line for the applicant’s signature, she writes “child present.” She gives our kid an American flag sticker. An unintentional pun.
Hanging in the arcade we walk through as we exit is a display of war photos. Mommy, what’s happening there? Pointing at a picture of a building, the top third engulfed in flames. I don’t know, I tell them, instead of saying I am a product of empire.
My mother is all-American, a member of the homecoming court in Normal, Illinois; daughter of a Naval officer who served in the Pacific during WWII. My father is a self-made immigrant, who never would have met her if the US-backed dictatorship in his home country had not destroyed the university department he’d been planning to teach in after finishing his PhD.
I am the child of two American citizens. For now.
My husband’s US visa is also expired. He will have to go back to the embassy and stand in the visa lines: on the street outside the security perimeter, outside the waiting room then again inside the waiting room. Americans will pass him walking in and pass him walking out. Have you left Argentina in the last five years? Why are you traveling to the US? The state making its power felt.
We have a plan to go back to the US for a visit next August. I had thought about going to WorldCon in Seattle. If my husband’s visa gets renewed. If it still feels safe to take a mixed family across the border. If.
All my life I’ve struggled to figure out what I’m feeling. Spent energy, fishing around in my mind and body, trying to understand what’s going on in there. This week I have gone the other way: spent energy keeping them boxed up, so that I can make breakfast and lunch and dinner, put away the leftovers, do preschool pick-up, read Danny Dragonbreath and The Gruffalo. Smile as I kiss our kid goodnight.
The feelings rise anyway, as I look at the pictures we printed out: second birthday party, third, fourth, fifth. A cake decorated with whipped cream and M&Ms, cupcakes with blue buttercream, chocolate ganache. What will the world look like, the next time they blow out the candles? What will have changed? What will have held?
The twine and clothespins stay in the drawer, for now. Tomorrow is another day. If it feels right, I’ll hang the pictures up. If they stop making me think of polite fictions, of the state showing its power. If.
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