Free Paris Was the Place by Susan Conley

all-day school. There were cedar steps up to a metal slide. One day I climbed a knotted rope that hung beside the slide and jumped into the sand. My mother, in jeans, stood with the other moms over to the side. I loved these mornings because I got my mother to myself. But they were always filled with anticipation—the sweet wait for Luke to be home. I found her and leaned against her and ran my hand over her thigh, claiming her. Then she and I knelt in the sand and shaped a moat and a castle, using my green pail. She was like all the other mothers that day, or better even. She loved the sand. We worked on the castle until it was time for Luke to come home from school. Then we got in the car. I said I wished Luke had been there, because it was the best castle we’d done. Sometimes things weren’t real until I shared them with him. It’s still the same today.
    I look at the girls. “You are all learning to live in this really hard limbo.”
    “Limbo?” Moona asks. “What is this limbo?”
    “You are unsure if you will go home or if France is now your home. Limbo means things that are not certain.”
    “I am not liking this limbo.” Gita crosses her legs and looks angry. “I am not thinking this limbo can last very much longer.”
    I urge them to ask for more help at the center—Band-Aids and aspirin from Roselle, the nurse who comes on Wednesdays, help filling out the asylum forms from the lawyers on Thursdays, instructions from caseworkers on Tuesdays. I say their caseworker can tell them what to do about visiting hours, because sometimes a family membershows up. Sophie told me this caused a problem last Friday. An uncle of Esther’s arrived. Esther saw him in the hall talking with Truffaut, and began sobbing. No one’s sure what this uncle means to her or why he was here.
    “Gita,” I say. She looks straight at me from her seat on the couch. “Your limbo is guaranteed to last until sometime in June. That’s the month of your asylum hearing.”
    “June,” she repeats.
    “It would be great if you could practice your testimony every day.”
    She starts laughing and has to put her hand over her mouth to contain herself. Her laughter is uncontrollable—almost like a fit—she’s got so much emotion inside her that she has to leave the room.
    I ask the girls to write down the word “help.” Moona explains it to Rateeka and Zeena. I say, “I want you to get comfortable with this word. It’s a good one. Can you make sure you’re asking your caseworker for enough help? And your lawyer and me? Ask me for help.”
    Gita comes back into the room. “Willow, I am sorry. I was laughing. Then I was crying and I couldn’t make it stop.”
    She stays after class when the other girls leave for their rooms. “I understand help,” she tells me. “I can ask for help in French and in English and in Hindi. But I am not asking my maa for help because I do not want to ruin things for her or Morone. This is why they do not know where I am. None of them know.”
    She flips the pages of her notebook until she finds the picture of her house in India she drew in our first class. “In Jaipur we were having the cow. Plus the long walk to school. But at night all the women in the village would come together in the yard where the fire was lit and we would pick the rice and I would be braiding Morone’s hair or she would be doing mine. There were six families. We were all cooking over the fire. Meat almost always came on Saturdays. I will never go back, but I wanted you to know that about my country because it is good for friends to understand where each comes from and I hope you are my friend.”

    I TAKE the metro from St. Denis north to a stop called Barbès-Rochechouart, where I switch to the No. 2 line, which I take all the way to Victor Hugo. Luke and Gaird are giving a birthday dinner for their friend Andreas, a kind man who imports Scandinavian furniture to Paris and sings Broadway show tunes to himself. I get to their