‘I SWEAR THERE WAS A RIVER’

Mariella Saavedra Carquin: I’m from Peru. We came to the U.S. when I was five—my sister was six. My parents had very big ambitions for us. My mom was a professor; my dad was a computer analyst. So they were always pushing us in a very calm way. But as an immigrant, I think you always feel like your parents left everything for you to come here. So that’s embedded in your mind, even if you can’t even verbalize it ... I think writing has always been the way that I navigated through things.

‘I SWEAR THERE WAS A RIVER’

If I pick one up bit by bit maybe I can start to make sense of the

whole of the things we were supposed to do of the plans we had made

I don’t know if anything can be put back together when we came we

got off and walked down and somehow made a life and we walked and we

walked and then somewhere along the way we decided to stay because

place grounds you and lives are formed and somehow you find you

can’t leave this new place you try calling home but the language

isn’t yours and the people are not yours and then your sense of yours

becomes fragmented I swear it made sense somewhere sometime at least

that’s what they told me when they narrated their lives before coming

how they had known what to do but then you come and there isn’t the

river that guides you my father was confident when he went back that

he would find his way told the cab driver to make a right make a left

make another left I swear that’s where my home is but he went in

circles and then he went in zigs and zags until sharp corners injured

my father and eventually he got out of the car to make sense of things

and that’s when he saw that time just keeps going so he got back in

the car and told the driver I don’t know where the river is and the

driver told him the river dried up and my father fell except he didn’t

fall but somewhere in his mind something fell and broke in pieces

and he feigned putting them in a puzzle box to hold while he told the

driver can you help me can you tell me where I live and the driver

said of course and led the way and my father saw that home wasn’t back

where he came from whatever that means as if you can come from one

place and hold that place cuz daddy forgot except he didn’t forget it

was the river that dried up. it was the river that dried up. it was the

river that dried up.