Artwork originally posted here.

Seba fluffed his feathers one more time before getting into his car. They’d dry out quickly— the California desert air was good for at least that. He still had the habits of a bird from a humid clime. But the shudder was half involuntary in another way: his body trying to shake off a latent feeling of… askewness, perhaps, with the water droplets. Opening the door, he folded himself into the seat and started the engine, pulling out of the Spectrums’ parking facility. The sun sat in the southwest, descending toward the horizon. Good,he thought, it’ll still be light when I arrive.

He used to listen to the radio while driving, but found the stimulation too much. Now, he enjoyed being alone with his thoughts. And even when they weren’t exactly what he’d term “enjoyable,” he preferred their company to the endless blare of political commentary and pop music that occupied every frequency. He didn’t need to hear about walls or… he stopped himself before he went farther down that track, flicking off the radio dial in his head.

Glancing in his metaphorical rear-view mirror, he realized again that Kevin had acted as a catalyst. At that mobile age between childhood and adulthood, he’d taken the leap of faith into a new country and a new language, diving in just as he had in the Paraná as a child. (The waterfowl members of the Kosciusko clan had always loved swimming.) After a couple weeks of living with Seba in Williamsburg, they’d decided that it would probably be best for him to live with his Almiron cousins in Los Angeles. With their consent, he boarded a flight from coast to coast. Seba knew it was the best decision: so long as Kevin was determined to remain in the United States, better for him to live with relatives, some his own age, who wouldn’t be hopping around the country every other day for most of the year. Seba didn’t exactly trust himself to parent. He’d leave that to his own parents or, in a pinch, his aunt and uncle. They were experienced and dependable.

Seba pulled the car onto the on-ramp and around a cloverleaf to the northbound lanes.

Sabés vos, it’s surprising how little you can know someone you’ve known your entire life, Seba thought. Then he issued a retraction and correction: No, it’s surprising how much you can misread someone right in front of your face. Projection is a heady brew.

He’d attributed Kevin’s eagerness to move about to youthful energy, expressed as wanderlust. He’d never really had reason to expect any different. For all his avian heritage, Seba felt a lot more like a boat: floating, but tethered in the choppy waters by an anchor. And that anchor was sunk deep into the Paraná’s red-muddy waters. The banks of that river, overlooking Paraguay, was one place he could easily picture young Seba: half-empty stomach and fewer colors in his beak, yes, but still a splash of vibrant yellow and velvet black against a backdrop of red and green. It didn’t occur to him until recently that others operated in other ways.

That is, until his parents told him that they wanted to come north, too. With all Seba’s younger siblings. They’d been talking amongst themselves since the 2015 All-Star Game and their trip to see Seba play, and felt that they should break the news.

Seba could have anticipated this, perhaps should have. After all, his father had moved the family from Obera to Eldorado years before, seeking betterment of their status. “Kosciusko” itself was a sign of movement: that wasn’t a criollo name, let alone a Guarani one. It’s what people did: moved to where they had the best chance of stability, when they could plant their roots most securely.

The Paraná wasn’t my anchor, he thought, revising his previous assessment. Family was, and I’d never seen them anywhere but Eldorado. I never imagined them anywhere else.

I never really imagined myself anywhere else. This, all this, wondrous and fortunate, was a temporary stop: my roots were back there in the vermilion soil of my home.

Come to think of it, I never suspected, in all my good fortune, that I myself could become my family’s anchor.

He exited the freeway. There had been a remarkable lack of traffic. The unexpectedness of this in Los Angeles only contributed to Seba’s sense of uncanny dislocation.

The immigration papers had been painful and painfully tedious, and despite the rhetoric swirling around newcomers, had been processed within a couple months.

He managed to find his father a position with a local construction company.

He never told them, nor did he have any plans to tell them, what the house had cost, but they knew he had paid for it in cash. He’d pay the property taxes as well. He’d picked it for the security of the neighborhood and the quality of the local schools, where he’d learned that avians were accepted and bilingual education was top-notch.

That, and the half court in the backyard.

The first time he’d stopped by, he could have sworn that he saw young Seba standing at the edge of that half-court, beak agape. He’d never known anything but the four-room vivienda and the cracked concrete and netless hoop of the local Mormon church. This… this was opulence of the incomprehensible variety.

He pulled into the driveway between parallel rows of palms, dusted with white dirt that the next rain would wash away. There were other cars already here: he noticed his aunt and uncle’s as well as some others’, probably their church friends who had helped unpack earlier today, while Seba was running drills.

His approach had been heard and as he opened the door, he heard the happy squawks of his little brothers and sisters as they pelted out of the front door toward him. He caught the scent of a full asado wafting over the roof, surrounded by familiar laughs and voices in jovial conversation.

He could not restrain the corners of his mouth from smiling as his siblings ineffectually tackled his thighs. Scooping up one under an arm and perching the other on his shoulder, he surveyed the house and took in a breath.

There he was, in his mind’s eye but real as day, tall and lanky and shoeless, shirt stained with red dust captured by sweat, basketball with the logo worn off, standing alongside. Young Seba looked at older Seba with an unspoken question, an equivocal beckoning.

Seba got solemn for a second as his siblings squirmed, urging him on. “Bueno,” he said at last. And speaking to no one anyone else could see, with some hesitation, he said, “Vení. [C’mon.] Welcome home.”