By Sabina Guardado

“Sorry to bother you. We’re trying to locate Mrs. Aurelia Menjívar. Have you seen her recently?”

Their house sits along a steep hill, pillared and well-groomed like all of its neighbors. Through the white trim of the front window, standing atop a pristinely maintained Afghan rug, she can envision the tantalizing American myth. She believes it, running a cloth over their crystal center table — the image is brutally compelling. The Prescotts are generous people; they smile with teeth when they hand her the check and opine about her precious ironing skills in front of guests. She’s family, they say. And she can pretend, on these days when she’s alone in the window, looking out at sun-soaked planters maintained weekly by a gardener, that she is one of them. But tonight they will eat her albóndigas with spaghetti and call it Meatball Monday.

Noon now, and she’s on her knees with the thin vacuum attachment that reaches under the frills of the couch. Her back whines, echoing the ache that used to follow a day of picking sugarcane in the fields back home. She would refuse to leave until her basket overflowed — a point of pride for her family. This new domestic labor is mercifully shielded from harsh sun and sticky air, but daily bleach fumes leave her longing for the smell of sweet earth.

The electric hum swells and ripples over the crown molding, extending her presence across the house. She’s under the 19th-century ottoman when the thud of a car door penetrates the vacuum’s noise. Her hands still. The whir spins to silence. She sits back on her heels to wait. The click of shoes on the brick walk-up rattles the door until a sharp knock shakes her.

A roll of fear gathers in her ribcage, prodding at her lungs. It releases painfully with the strike of the second knock — she might vomit. But the fist’s courtesy will be short-lived. So some deep instinct in her heart pulls a rag from her waist and ties it around her thick hair, curls tucked away under bleach-dried cloth, and she advances toward the door. Her hand reaches for the brass handle — just polished.

She has anticipated this moment for weeks. Practiced to exhaustion, wondering what her instincts might reveal when the time comes. It infects her daily life: reciting English words until she can no longer hear an imperfection, plagued by reminders at the dinner table as her sister speaks of the latest person to disappear. She lives in constant mental exodus, braced for disposal, ready to be earmarked and tossed in a truck — always one exhale away from upheaval. She holds her breath. The handle turns, and her eyes struggle to adjust to the bright light of day.

There they stand, tall and oriented in an imposing triangle. No details of their faces register, nor their first words — her brain is swollen with adrenaline.

“Good morning, ma’am.” The frontman steps forward. She resists the urge to step back. Her blood pulses in dense coils as if it will break and spill from her eyes. He pulls a paper from his pocket.

“Sorry to bother you. We’re trying to locate Mrs. Aurelia Menjívar. Have you seen her recently?”

The words roll over her forehead, and her eyes twitch as the man standing on the left takes a tissue from his back pocket and thrusts it into his nose, poking and prodding, smushing his skin up into a snout.

“Ma’am?”

Her heart restarts and she looks down at the picture in his hands.

And there she rests, looking up at herself — flattened and abstracted from a different time. How strange seeing her familiar face held by tense, white hands. The camera at the offices had made her skin darker. She was darker then, the tropic sun had saturated her skin with color. And she was fuller then too, living on plantain, fatty pork, and beans — food she loved the flavor of. Below her head she saw her name, printed by a machine and above, a big English word in red, capital letters.

She remembers the cameraman’s smile that day. His bureaucrat fingers had shaken her hand kindly and slotted her picture into a file. For a moment, she had believed the state saw something beautiful in her face. Maybe the cameraman was simply in a good mood, amused by her broken English. The brief warmth in his eyes had vanished with the flash of the bulb, and her image began its descent into the database, passed between unfamiliar hands wrapping her in red tape. That day, she renounced her being to them. The system distilled her. Itemized and dated for American expiration.

She looked so proud and alive against that grey backdrop — chest up, chin high. She would have had it framed if she could, but her naive face was slid into a folder, someone else took a seat, another flash went off, and her sister picked her up. She wonders how many fresh hearts in the office that day have since received the same knock. There is no comfort looking at this picture now, clenched by sweaty hands smudging the ink. The face on that paper does not breathe, work, or pray. Yet somehow it outranks the body that stands before it. A single stamped word in red letters unmakes her into a category. Absorbed into the bureaucracy, she can be sifted, assigned, disposed of.

The frontman’s voice shakes her, “Have you seen Mrs. Menjívar?”

She looks straight into his eyes, praying her voice won’t break. “No, sir, I have not seen her.”

Accented vowels slip on her rigid tongue, but her grammar is perfect. He nods with disinterest and turns to the man on his right. The right man is looking at her with pinched eyes, searching for something in her face. The frontman turns back. He puts her back in his pocket.

“If you see her, call this number. We need to locate her as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.” She forces her eyes to stay in contact with his as she takes his card, finally registering the wrinkles and dull tone of his face. The men turn to leave and shiny black shoes click away.

She remains standing on the welcome mat — frozen in a half-smile as they walk down the brick steps. The right man looks back once more and his attention scrapes her skin. She drops her half-smile as the door clicks shut. The rag’s stiff texture clings to her hair and pulls strands from her bun as she runs down the hall. She vomits in the downstairs half-bath and packs her purse. Her favorite perfume and book of prayers drown beneath spare clothes and rags as she stuffs the bag. She knows better than to be found here again. ■