Excerpt from BORROWED CHILD by Marguerite Welch:
Leader #1 gestured to Tío Juan to move out ahead with a lighter and flick three times if he
saw anything suspicious. It seems we were getting close to the border crossing, and it was better that Juan get caught than the leader himself. Sensing my distress, Tío Juan looked back and gave me a wobbly thumbs-up before slowly disappearing in a gray veil of moonlit haze. Then something that looked like a tree trunk moved. Leader #2 released my arm and melted into the darkness while Leader #1, who had been walking with Carmen the last couple of miles, evaporated just before the tree trunk pointed a flashlight at us and yelled in very bad Spanish, “Quick! Lie down. Don’t even think about moving or we’ll beat you up and leave you here like desert trash.” We all stared at our shoes.
A little later, US Border Patrol guys pushed us into the back of a pickup truck and took us to a cement detention center surrounded by a high metal fence, where crowds of people were clustered in groups, waiting in long lines in front of white folding tables, or sprawled on mats trying to stay out of the sun. After two days we were taken to the border on the Mexican side,
where we walked back to the same ramshackle house where we had stayed that first night. I was almost relieved and prayed that maybe we would go back home now. But that crazy dream
became another nightmare when Tío Juan found a group of fifteen other people who were planning to take a different route to the border near Nogales. At least it didn’t involve climbing
over a mountain range.
Now it was even hotter. By the third day there was no water. My mouth was dry. I was dizzy with the heat, seeing things shimmer as in a dream. When the sun went down, we were instructed to hide in some bushes and wait for a truck to pick us up. After an hour or two, a big van came, and all fifteen people squeezed in the back. There were no seats or windows. Carmen, pushed toward the front, stretched her arm toward Tío Juan and screamed his name as he was squished back in a corner with me. When the van started with a lurch, Carmen cried out, lost her balance, and a wave of people fell on top of her. Everyone was yelling and pushing. I heard Carmen’s stifled cry: “I can’t breathe . . .”
Finally, the driver stopped and told the three of us and another woman to wait along the side of the road. When a smaller van stopped to pick us up, Carmen sat in the front seat, a small bruise forming under her eye and a button torn off her shirt. Her hand trembled as she waved back at us and nodded that she was okay. We drove for hours in silence until the sky turned dark
purple. Then the van stopped and dumped us out on the side of a deep ditch where we followed behind a coyote in a ragged line, pressing our bellies against the dirt as flashlight beams
swept over our heads. On the coyote’s signal, we ran across the road and climbed under a barbed wire fence that grabbed at our clothes and scratched our skin. When the woman with us
got entangled in the fence, Tío Juan tried to help, but finally she had to wriggle free of her sweater and leave it in a pink tangled mess on the fence before the spotlight swept by again.
Just then I looked back to see my little picture frame illuminated by purple light; it was sitting in the middle of the road. Oh no. It must have fallen out of my backpack. My heart was
beating so hard, I thought my chest would explode. “I can’t leave it,” I cried out as I pulled away from my uncle’s arms and dashed back into the road to pick it up. I paused for a second to bury it deep in my backpack, then I crawled back under the fence and ran down the dark path to catch up with the group, stumbling and terrified that I would be left behind.
After walking a little farther in the dark, we came to another road and hid in the bushes. Slowly, out of the dark a black shoe-box shape rolled to a stop beside us. A really fat guy got out and said in Spanish, “Welcome to the United States.” After the coyote gave him some money, we all slid onto the leather seats, totally exhausted but finally feeling somewhat safe. I slouched against the rear window and listened to everyone breathing. As we hurtled into the night, occasional headlights passed by like random stars. I had no idea where I was or where I was going with people I barely knew. I felt like I was trapped on a spaceship to the moon. One cold tear rolled down my cheek. I reached into the side pocket of my backpack, pulled out the photo of Mamá Tina and Papá, and pressed it against my heart.
From BORROWED CHILD by Marguerite Welch. Copyright Marguerite Welch. Available July 14
BORROWED CHILD by Marguerite Welch
A Story of Parenting Across Two Cultures
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.
Women’s Fiction Family Life [ She Writes Press, On Sale: July 14, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798896363422 / eISBN: 9798896363439 ]
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About Marguerite Welch
Marguerite’s photographs have been exhibited in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland galleries, and her articles on photography have appeared in numerous art journals. Her short fiction, memoir, and travel writing have been published in Bay Weekly, Wanderlust, and Memoir Magazine.
Marguerite and her husband Michael live in Annapolis Maryland where she sails, gardens, writes, does art projects, and gratefully watches the ever-changing colors of the Severn River from her porch swing.
Her travel memoir Waterborne was published in 2019. Her novel Borrowed Child will be available in July 2026.
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