L– scoots off the waiting room chair and feels her mother’s attention on her immediately.

“We have to wait here,” her mother says.

L- climbs back up on the chair.

L- wiggles her toes and then her hips but she stays in her seat and waits. Her mother returns to her own thoughts, or wherever it is she goes when her attention is not on L-. L- stays quiet too, asking her questions of the insides of her head. Finally, the loudspeaker calls the number on the ticket G- has been squeezing between her fingers.

“Come on,” G- says.

Wordlessly, L- follows her mother through the swinging door separating the waiting area from whatever is behind the vestibules where the people who fill out papers behind glass windows sit.

A man in gray slacks appears before them. “G- M-?” He stumbles over their last name, putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable and then trying to fix it. G- doesn’t correct him.

“Yes,” G- says.

“Good,” the man smiles warmly, and then clears his throat. His face returns to stone. “Please follow me,” he says.

He leads G- and L- through a gray hallway lined with framed pictures. Bright orange flowers on the walls give L- cheer. She wishes she can stop to look longer at the birds with the white heads and curved yellow beaks. She recognizes the flag with red and white stripes she’s seen everywhere lately.

Mid-hallway, the three of them enter a room together. The man takes a seat behind a heavy wooden desk and gestures for G- to sit across from him. L- climbs into the seat next to her mother’s.

The man pushes his wire rim glasses further up his nose. He rifles his fingers through several pale yellow folders stacked on their spines in a desk organizer sitting atop the desk. He chooses one and flips it open.

“Ms. M-, the State of California acknowledges your petition for citizenship to the United States of America,” he says. His tone is neutral; businesslike. L- wonders only one thing — the thing her mother has worried over since they landed — will we get to stay? She listens for that word, which she only recently learned, from his mouth. Stay. She wants to become an Alien of the United States.

“To ensure your loyalty to the United States of America, I will ask you a series of questions,” the man says. He opens a second, worn, pale yellow folder already lying on the desk, and places his middle finger on a line of text at the very top of the topmost paper.

L- listens to her mother answer the first question and then the second. By the third, her hips are wiggly all over again and she can listen to nothing else except her own voice that insists she stay still, quiet, and small. She thinks of a mouse. She thinks of crumbs. She thinks of the picture taken in their Moscow apartment where she is beaming at the camera and throwing her arms open in a proud, “Tada!” Only two of those images make her feel small so she chides herself for remembering the third. She doesn’t know why she thinks of the third but it seems to bubble up without her permission.

L- squirms and tucks her legs beneath her butt. Stay put! She rocks ever so slightly on them and silently chews her lip. She concentrates on keeping still until she hears the man ask, “…just you and your daughter?”

“Yes,” G- responds.

The man and G- do not look away from one another while they’re talking. L- puffs her chest. She is getting good at invisibility.