The Arrival by Anna Elin Kristiansen

Fear is gnawing at my insides when I snap my compact shut. Getting caught up in my looks is of no use now. I’m tired – beyond tired, actually, and no amount of powder or mascara will change that. When I meet him, I know I’ll feel naked and transparent. He’ll see right through my façade because I’m half him. My tricks come from him, so he’s bound to know them already.

The noise on the plane has died down and aside from me, the Unaccompanied Minor, it’s only a few stragglers left. Throughout this forever-lasting trip, I’ve resented my UM status, but now that the moment is near, I don’t mind dragging out the meeting. Up until this point, I’ve worn my UM sticker with shame, mumbled responses to chirpy flight attendants, sunk into chairs in the back of airless rooms and lost myself in my phone. Secretly, though, I’ve been watching the others. Children, most of them much younger than I am, on their way to second homes, to another parent living in some far-flung corner of the globe. Will there be hugs waiting for them as they shuffle their way through the exits? Or do they take off resisting the whole thing, wishing they had proper families all listed on the same address, living under the same roof, all of them still getting on?

“Iris?”

I nod without looking at her.

“Great! You do look like an Iris.” It’s one of the chatty ones. Her accent is just like his and I find this unsettling.

“Let’s get you out, shall we? Got everything?”

I nod again, throwing my worn strap across my shoulder, falling into steps behind her.

“Nothing else?” she calls out, though she’s only about a ruler’s length away from me. “You can’t get it back in a minute.” She winks, perhaps thinking me an idiot and a first-time flyer. It’s not strictly speaking true as I’ve travelled once with Mum and then again earlier this year when I went to London with my classmates, but I suppose I carry the air of someone not quite familiar with things. I shake my head, trailing her through the now empty plane. She walks briskly through the snaking disembarkation corridor and remains a step or two ahead but checks back every so often to make sure I follow. To her, I’m the last obstacle before her free time begins, the last burden to sign off on and then shove onto someone else. I wonder what her freedom looks like. Will she go home to her own apartment or stay in a paid hotel? Will she go out to a bar and get drunk without anyone threatening that she’ll lose out on privileges? The memory of Mum makes me want to crawl into myself. Mysteriously, now that I’m so far away from her, I want her near. I thought I’d had enough of her for a lifetime, picturing myself shutting the door on her as soon as I could and going off for a year or so without calling her much.

While I wait for my bag, my adult companion chats to a sleek-looking guy wearing a similar uniform. Mine is the last one on the conveyor belt which is perhaps a bad omen. I intercept its circular journey, pulling out the elongated handle, taking care so it doesn’t get stuck halfway. Mum bought it a few weeks before my flight, crying while I filled it with stuff. It’s gained a scratch or two while in transit but I don’t mind it looking less new. I don’t want him to think I’ve gone to too much trouble, not before I know what’s up. Or perhaps I don’t want my half-brothers to mock my keenness and my obvious naivety behind my back. Now that I’ve got my bag, my companion springs into action, waving a flirtatious goodbye to the guy. I glance at the doors marked with toilet signs.

”Sorry,” I say. ”Can I just pop in there for a minute?”

A flash of annoyance creeps across her immaculately made-up face. ”Sure,” she says, trying to hide her impatience. ”Go ahead, no worries, I’ll be right here.”Perhaps she thinks that I should have told her that earlier, so she could have had more time with the guy. Or perhaps she can’t for the life of her understand why I didn’t pop in for a pee while waiting for my bag.

I leave my incredibly large suitcase with her and escape into the bathroom. It’s stuffy and smelly, but only one booth is occupied. I turn on the water, splash some on my wrists and neck. It’d be nice to be a guy now, to be able to wash my face, but I’m not a guy and I’m not about to ruin the little make-up I’ve got left. At least my eyeliner is fairly intact, I note when I lean in close to study my face in the mirror. Then I feel dizzy. When the woman who is in here flushes and emerges from her booth, I’m gripping the wash basin with my eyes closed, trying to calm my nerves. I need some water, but I probably shouldn’t drink from the tap, not in a foreign country. Our teacher didn’t even let us do that in London, and that was just a small ocean away. Now I’ve travelled across half the world; now I’m in a place where toilet water spirals the other way. I’m in a place where I wasn’t born and where I definitely don’t belong. What am I even doing here? This was the stupidest idea ever.

”Are you okay?” the woman asks while washing her hands. I nod, still with my eyes closed.

”Bad flight?” she asks, grabbing some paper towels. I nod again, murmuring turbulence, remembering the pilot’s voice. I hadn’t mind it, had slept through most of it, imagining the sky a boundless cradle rocking me back to sleep.

She leaves and I open my eyes, trying to recognise the person staring back at me from the mirror. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been half a person. Not quite as human as everyone else, spinning off like a satellite, anchored to this planet only by that fragile force called gravity. I’ve painted my face to keep madness at bay. Blue against black. White against red. I’ve been picking fights with Mum, feeling trapped inside this mind that keeps asking me questions that it rarely dares to speak out loud. Mum doesn’t answer anyway, and perhaps I know in my bones why she’s been so secretive. He never wanted me. And if one half of the duo that created me didn’t want me at all, what does that make me? It’s something I don’t want to think about but do anyway. A half-mistake. Something that doesn’t quite fit. It makes me wrong, and it sometimes makes me mad. Because why would he decide that? Mum received me, she raised me, and despite her weirdness and her extremely annoying ways, I know she loves me for real. I think I’ve always known that, have depended on it and taken it for granted the way I do soil or air or water. Never before have I inconvenienced him, not until now. It’s terrifying, this hoisting yourself onto someone that you’re not sure is fully into the whole business of caring for you.

I push the bathroom door open in a surprising flash of anger. It disappears as quickly as it came but I try to hold on to it, try to make it stay so I can draw some strength from it. She smiles when she sees me, a smile of recognition but also of something else – relief, perhaps – and starts walking towards the exit signs. I walk too, watching the grey floor, thinking of all the feet that have done this before mine. How many bodies and how much weight can a floor take before it collapses? If we stop renovating buildings but kept using them, how long would it take until they started disintegrating by themselves? Hundreds of years or much less than that? Thoughts like these help me move forward, they help keep the crackling fires in my stomach from spreading like wildfire, but they don’t transport me all the way. Suddenly, nerves slow my steps. We’re only a few steps away now from the doors that open and close automatically. I know that they will release me into the unknown, will have me fully at his mercy. The crowd presses onward and at first my resistance is only physical, but then my head catches up.

I choke.

I can’t.

I stop.

My chaperon has caught on that I’m not immediately behind her and stops, too.

“Come on,” she says, her voice still chirpy but I sniff out a tinge of something else. Surprise? Irritation? “Can’t stop here.”

My legs won’t move, though. Baffled, I lower my gaze to look at them.

“I’m coming,” I mumble, but I can’t seem to make my body obey my mind’s signals.

I’ve come so far, been cooped up in an airplane for so long, changed planes, slept, watched bad movies, been bored, uncomfortable, and nervous. But I haven’t run away, haven’t called Mum to abort the whole mission, haven’t started crying or had another type of fit. Will I stumble now, so close to the goal? So close to making this meeting, so close to him?

My companion looks at me, bewildered. “Come on, you,” she says. “Your father’s waiting for you, isn’t he? Did you forget something?”

There it is. A possessive pronoun coupled with a noun that I’ve only tasted in the silence of my room, now wide out in the open. Flying about in the air, perfectly audible to everyone. Your father. The person Mum put down as an answer to the questionnaire’s final dotted line. Who will meet the unaccompanied minor at his/her final destination? Please provide the full name, as stated on his/her identification papers, as well as the person’s relationship to the Unaccompanied Minor.

Where would I go, anyway? I can’t go back to the plane, even unaccompanied minors like myself understand that. If I were to regret this and turn back, I would have to change my return flight and get on another plane. I’m sure such things could be arranged, though. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have to stay with him. Mum has put more money on my card than I could have imagined even in my wildest dreams. Knowing I could book my own hotel room is a little exhilarating, a little freeing.

I know he’s out there, though, and I know he’s been waiting for me. Perhaps his family is there with him. Inside the knot of anxiety, there’s also the seed of curiosity. Something that wants to know. Something that feels a little hopeful that I could belong here, in this country I’ve yet to see. Something that wants to illuminate that unknown part of me that I’ve never seen before.

“Here. Take my hand, we’ll do this together.”

My companion sidles up close, is reaching for my hand and is speaking in a soft but firm tone. This sobers me. I’m not about to emerge hand in hand with her like a toddler. I shake my head, willing my legs to move. Courage. Courage, courage, courage.

I sense the movement of the crowd before I merge with it. It’s less of an effort, really, to follow the surge than resist it. My legs feel it, too. Accompanied by the sound of her encouraging voice, I put one foot ahead of the other. The sliding doors are approaching and I can see light spilling through, one traveller after another slipping through to the other side. Compared to the fluorescent lighting of the luggage retrieval room, natural light appears piercing. Blinding.

I’m near now. Next time, it will be me coming through. I take one sharp intake of breath, fill my lungs with new smells, adjust my ears to new sounds. Then I step into the unfamiliar light of the arrival hall, searching the waiting crowd for a familiar face. They’re all a haze at first, but then something emerges from the soft contours of a male silhouette. It’s something that I recognise, something that I know, something that’s familiar yet so, so new and frightening. I’m here with nothing but myself, wanting him to receive me, wanting him to care for me. I’m here despite the odds, despite any guarantees that he’ll do what Mum thinks he will. I’m here because something happened sixteen years ago, a chance meeting that should have had no consequence.

He’s seen me too, and he’s raising his hand in some kind of greeting. The family isn’t there with him which is a relief, really.  This meeting is for us. I raise my hand back and some of the nerves loosen their stubborn grip when I see that he’s trying to smile at me. He looks teary-eyed behind the smile, which is odd because he doesn’t know me apart from our sometimes awkward video chats across the many time zones that used to separate us. It’s obvious that we share genes, though. I saw it from the first time he popped up on the screen. The shape of his face, his curls and his nose – they’re all mine. I can’t smile back, not yet, because I’m too raw and too uncertain of this life, and I’m way too new in this place. But some day, I think as I go to meet him, I’d like to try. I’d like to try, and I’d also like to belong here, in this strange unknown world that seems to be opening itself to me, seems to know me already, even though I don’t know it back at all.

Anna Elin Kristiansen

Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay – airport passenger arrivals sign showing wordage, a landing airplane, and a little white figure with a suitcase.