A Story of Parenting
Across Two Cultures
by Marguerite Welch
Genre: Multicultural Contemporary Fiction, Drama
For fans of Little
Fires Everywhere, a novel that explores the ambiguities of motherhood and
salvation through the anguished relationship between a troubled, undocumented
Mexican teenager and the grieving, upper-middle-class mother who takes her in.
After the drug overdose of her teenage son, Helen, a privileged white woman,
takes in Mia, a troubled and undocumented Mexican teenager.
Although they initially fill each other’s voids, Helen’s lofty expectations of
Mia eventually test that bond and Mia, tortured by guilt and starved for
affection, runs off with Diego, an MS13 gang leader. While Helen, bereft over
losing another child, tries to reconstruct her life, Mia’s life with Diego
spirals into a nightmare: Just after she has his baby, he goes to jail for
multiple murders. As each woman moves forward through her own challenges, Helen
confronts her deep-seated prejudices, while Mia battles her own demons in
search of self-identity and meaning in her life.
A haunting and suspenseful cautionary tale, Borrowed Child is
about what happens when a well-meaning inclination toward “salvation” goes
awry.
[A] detailed and occasionally heartbreaking portrait that
pays special attention to the physical and emotional struggles of a young
undocumented immigrant." —Kirkus
“With the grace and complexity of The White
Album by Joan Didion, Borrowed Child examines how intention and
action, especially for white people, might misinterpret the complexities of race
and power in the United States. With gorgeous writing, Welch subverts
expectations and gifts us a nuanced view of prejudice.”—Melissa Scholes Young, author of Flood and The Hive
Amazon * B&N * Simon & Schuster * Bookbub * Goodreads
CHAPTER
1: HELEN
For
more than a week I could not make myself open the door to Mia’s room. When I
finally raised the shades, light illuminated the space like a stage set: the
rumpled bed, the hot pink lipstick on the dresser, the closet door agape,
revealing the outfit I gave her for church. Gray wool slacks dangled awkwardly
from a plastic hanger, the silk blouse discarded in a
dusty corner along with one dirty sock—all clues, remnants of a life lived on
this stage. But was it the beginning of the play or the end?
Mia had just started her senior year in high school. I knew
she was intimidated by all the college visits and apprehensive about submitting
the applications, but I had convinced myself that she was ready to say goodbye
to her old life and start anew. Sure, we’d experienced difficulties and
detours, what family doesn’t? But I believed all was resolved; believed, that
is, until one random Wednesday in late September when she never came home. No
one saw her—not her teachers, the office staff, or her counselor. No one knew
where she was.
At first, I thought Mia had gone off with friends and simply
forgotten to call. She would have called, wouldn’t she? Maybe she had gone back
to her birth mother’s home. But that seemed unlikely. I pulled out my cell
phone every few minutes to see if I had missed a text. By 8:00 p.m. I called
her mother.
“Maybe she go off with drug dealer boyfriend,” Carmen said
in broken English.
What drug dealer boyfriend? I wanted to cry out, but knew it
was pointless. I couldn’t understand her rapid-fire Spanish and our adversarial
relationship over the years had made meaningful communication impossible.
Carmen’s lack of concern for Mia’s welfare had always mystified and infuriated
me.
“You no call the police, okay?” Carmen added. It had been my
experience that people in the Hispanic community often panicked when they saw a
uniform. It wouldn’t do any good to get the police involved and might make it
worse.
“Okay, but please call me if you hear anything,” I
pleaded.She never called.
I cried on my husband’s shoulder. “How could Mia do this?
Something must be very wrong.” Don was upset too, but couldn’t resist giving me
that “I-told-you-so” look, patting my hand with a restrained sense of
obligation rather than genuine concern, or so I read it at the time. Now I
understand how needy and unfair I was. He had always been so loving and
supportive no matter how crazy my schemes and passionate my interests, whether
he understood them or not.
The saying “opposites attract” could not have been truer in
our relationship. He was a man of science. I was a dreamy artistic type. He
read Naval Institute Proceedings. I read poetry. He liked spaghetti. I liked
sushi. He couldn’t tell a petunia from a daisy. I was a gardener. And yet, life
together was better than apart. When our boys came along, he was an involved,
loving father who disciplined with love and loved unrestrainedly. But, at that
moment, if I could have gotten beyond my own conflicted feelings of hurt and
worry, I could have seen by the way his hand shook as he picked up his Maker’s
Mark on the rocks and took a couple of quick gulps that he was genuinely
concerned about Mia’s absence.
It was too hard. Both of us felt the stab of an old, only
partially healed wound, for which Mia had been a temporary anesthetic. Don
banged his drink down on the table, half surprised by the noise, and hugged me
silently, afraid to say a word, one pain masking another. An image swam to the
surface: Sammy’s grin and tousled mop of blond hair. How could we have been so
unaware of the troubled waters beneath that sunny smile? The dark, anxious
place that became his secret home beyond our reach and knowing. Now, clueless
again, we had let another child slip through the cracks and I was left
clutching her abandoned lipstick until my palm bled.
Marguerite Welch is a writer, artist, photographer and
sailor whose essays and reviews on fine art photography have been published in
the NEW ART EXAMINER, WASHINGTON REVIEW OF THE ARTS, AFTERIMAGE and other local
and national art publications. Short personal essays and travel pieces have
appeared in BAY WEEKLY, WANDERLUST and CHESAPEAKE BAY MAGAZINE. Her travel
memoir, WATERBORNE: A SLOW TRIP AROUND A SMALL PLANET, published by Seaworthy
Publications in September 2019, documents a 14-year world circumnavigation
undertaken with her husband in their 38-foot sailboat Ithaca. In her spare time
she tends her garden on the banks of the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland
where she and her husband have lived for 40 years.
