Infinite Country

The chapter begins by relating the birth of Talia in Delaware. Talia is named for Talia Shire, the actress who played Sylvester Stallone’s wife in the Rocky movies. The narrative then quickly shifts back to the family’s difficulties in South Carolina. While there, Mauro works briefly at a pet food packing plant. Native North Americans are suspicious of them since their arrival came just after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. On one occasion, Mauro is beaten by two men. When layoffs come to the plant, Mauro insists that the family move further north. He squelches discussions of returning to Colombia because violence has erupted there once again. He has also taken to drinking heavily.

Talia’s birth in Delaware is a positive for Elena. The delivery is easier than her previous ones. However, as when Nando was born in Texas, hospital workers come to her and asked if she would be willing to have a tubal ligation. Elena’s perception of a new child is quite different than that of the North Americans: “Elena was uneasy with how the nurse spoke of her babies as burdens. She never thought of them that way. In Colombia people said a baby arrives with a loaf of bread under its arm” (43).

Recognizing the crisis his drinking is placing his family in, Mauro goes to a church and prays for relief from his alcohol addiction. He promises Elena he will not drink again. Elena accepts his statement while at the same time recognizing that her commitment to him goes beyond him fulfilling his promise.

After Talia is born, the family is reported for unlawful occupancy: Seven people are living in their apartment with only two on the lease. Faced with one week to find another place to live, Mauro searches for another dwelling in the area. He falls asleep in the family’s decrepit minivan and is awakened by the police tapping on his window. Though he has committed no crime, he is now in the police system for having no driver’s license and no insurance. Elena is forced to borrow $500 from the people they were living with to get Mauro out of jail, and the police confiscate their vehicle.

The family boards a bus to Newark, New Jersey, where they move in with an immigrant named Dante and his wife, Yamira, moving into the family’s basement. Elena works with Yamira cleaning houses, learning some very stringent rules for caring for the property of North Americans, while Mauro goes to work in a factory making cans of hairspray.

Mauro has started drinking again, often going with Dante and others. When Dante cashes Mauro’s paycheck for him on one occasion, Mauro notices some of the money is missing. In the discussion between them, a fight breaks out, and the police are called. When they find that Mauro is undocumented, he is arrested and then turned over to ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Upon hearing this, Elena does not realize Mauro will now inevitably be deported.

Engel shifts her attention back to Talia in Chapters 8 and 9. Sitting in a café, Talia listens to a news report about her escape. Thus far, four of the dozen girls who escaped have been captured. Talia changed her appearance by stealing a T-shirt from a clothesline. She spots a stranger about Mauro’s age sitting alone in the café and approaches him for help. She says her name is Elena and that she has run away from boarding school, that she has no money and wants to get to Bogotá. He tells her he is a French tourist named Charles who has fallen in love with Colombia and might never leave. Talia asks if they can speak privately. Sitting in front of a church, smoking cigarettes, they negotiate what help he will give her. If she will spend the night with him, in the morning he will drive her to Bogotá in his car. She agrees if he will buy her some clothes.

That evening, Charles tells Talia about himself, attempting to groom her for sex. She lays in the bed while he sleeps on the sofa. She remembers the different rooms she has slept in and seen, focusing on the room she will share with her sister if she makes it to North America. She reflects on the shifts in her relationship with her grandmother and her father. When Charles gets up and comes to her, she allows him to speak and touch her hair and then speaks: “‘That’s enough.’ Her eyes had yet to open, but her tone made him retract his hand, rise from the bed and return to the sofa” (61). Later that night she awakens and finds him partially nude in bed with her, though she has not been molested. She rises silently, takes his wallet, and sneaks out.

Talia finds a young man on a motorbike as soon as she leaves the Frenchman and offers him the wallet, having taken the cash, if he will give her a ride out of town. His appearance does not inspire confidence, and she thinks about the advice other girls in the reformatory gave her about protecting herself. Still, she sets off with him, her legs wrapped around him and her chest pressed against his back. He agrees to take her partway to Bogotá. His name is Andrés, though his nickname is Aguja, “needle.”

On the trip, Talia remembers her father coming into her life first as a street person when she was four or five and living with Perla. He told her many stories about the creation of the world, much to the consternation of Perla, who wanted Talia to cleave to the biblical version of creation through Adam and Eve. As Perla developed dementia, Talia held onto a story from a movie about a deceased grandmother coming back to visit her family. It helped her deal with Perla’s death. Talia goes to lengths to encourage her deceased grandmother to visit, but it never comes to pass: “[…] after Perla died, she never came to see Talia, even as Talia kept vigil and whispered her grandmother’s name until she fell asleep” (67). Talia decides Mauro was right—that Perla is engaged in a long trip that ends in the center of the earth and new life.

Back in the reformatory, one of the girls says she can contact the spirits of the dead and have them visit the living. Talia gives her a slice of pork with the request that Perla will visit her that night in her dreams. The spiritualist agrees, but the visit never happens. The chapter ends with Talia explaining some of her story to Aguja, who agrees to take her a little bit farther toward Bogotá.