Dear Margaret Bennett

What a shame we never met under different circumstances. For example, I am looking for a Pilates studio to continue my practice, twice a week. You could be a Pilates friend, we could recommend a pediatrician to each other, we could talk about the same TV series. We did not get to do that because we moved here a few months ago, after Mike was given the opportunity to transfer to the local office of the pharmaceutical company he works for. The house where we've now settled has a pool, and I would love to organize something to meet the other moms from school this summer, maybe a little birthday party for the kids once the house is at last in order.

Instead, we met exactly once, and we did not have time to get past the most fundamental facts. I barely know about your husband Dan, your son Tyler, who is a year older than mine. I know nothing of you Margaret, only that you are brave. This letter from an almost-stranger is to tell you the story that precedes that terrible moment when the two of us found ourselves together.

The first thing you must have noticed about me is that my skin is white, I am tall, my hands are those of a middle-class woman with a delicate gold chain and my wedding ring, manicured nails, shoulder-length hair with little arrangement because of course, I have an eight-year-old boy named Luke who goes to school with yours, and a four-year-old named Bella. My clothes are not exactly fashionable, but they are the clothes of someone who has been worried about other things for years. It is not intentional camouflage, I promise. It is possible we like the same skin products and that we will soon go to the same hair salon.

What is not easy to guess is that my parents brought me on a plane when I was an infant, and my first memories are of a suburb of Texas. The first time I realized I did not have papers was at 16 when I wanted my driver's license. My world transformed into another one and I could never again forget this difference. My future suddenly beyond my control, more beyond my control than other teenage girls'.

All of this is impossible to guess if you see me at the organic supermarket, walking our golden retriever, if you hear my accent that does not have a trace of anything because—I confess with some shame—I never learned to speak my mother's language. She still sends me text messages and I respond to her in English. That is simply how it happened.

There was no way you could have known all that at the school pickup that day, when the daily commotion transformed into chaos because federal agents arrived and planted themselves at the exit to ask for IDs, to take photos of all of us with their phones and search for us in their databases. I was waiting for Luke and begging him to come out soon, to go unnoticed among all the other children, and I was gripping Bella's hand so hard that she started twisting to break free.

There was a moment when I met your eyes among the eyes of others. You saw the terror on my face, the tears about to spill from my eyes, my hands shaking out of control. Somehow you perceived all of this before the federal agent saw it and you decided to approach me and start a conversation as casual and practical as the one we would have had if we had been friends our whole lives. Your son came out first but you did not abandon me—instead you kept laughing at my side, lightly touching my arm to calm me, cloaking me in the invisibility of your appearance as a nice, normal mom. As absolutely normal as we all want to be.

I did not know what to say to you, did not even know. I wanted to tell you everything: that my life has been a series of uncertainties and bureaucratic disasters. That at 26 when I was already married to Mike I was able to apply for DACA and finally have work authorization, a social security number, a driver's license. That no, being married to a citizen does not do anything for me. That I could never go on vacation to Cancún, or to my grandmothers' funerals, or to Mike's family reunion in Ireland. I had to pay for college without government help. Every two years I have to go to a hostile office to pay five hundred dollars and put a folder of documents on the table that assure I am who I say I am, that I live where I say I live. In exchange for all of that I have no guaranteed future, no path that would allow me citizenship.

When Luke finally came running out of the school gate and came to me, you said "let's go in my car, why take both!?" and we all got into your family car that is almost identical to mine, and without saying a word we went to McDonald's where the kids are forbidden to go, and we ate forbidden fries ourselves while we watched them slide down the playground equipment as if they had won the lottery.

I will not lie to you: this accident of my birth fills me with rage. It has nothing to do with me, I did not do anything to deserve it. I have always been the best person I could be, I did everything right. It tempts you to think that nothing makes sense: not doing homework, not following the speed limit, not limiting screen time or avoiding eating French fries.

Sitting at that plastic table under the McDonald's lights we talked, while my heart returned from its journey to my stomach. I did not want to burden you with my problems. Why tell you that just two weeks ago I was not only in the middle of a complete move, the house still packed in cardboard boxes, when the government decided that my lifelong struggle was over, and that I had lost. That the fragile security I had acquired in this country, in this middle class, in this fantasy life. Instead we talked about school, about the neighborhood, about the kids: our safe ground, our hand to the earth.

I would like to tell you in this letter not to worry, that I have a plan. That there is some legal avenue I have not discovered yet, that an intervention by the government or the opposition or the courts will save me again, give me a few more years. That there is some other life waiting for me in a country where I have never been. That they will never tear me from my home and from my days, that my children will never have to ask for me. That my white skin, my education, my status as a suburban mom will protect me somehow. That I am brave, that I am not afraid, that I can face anything with dignity. I would love to, Margaret, but I cannot.

In the end we exchanged numbers and said goodbye in the now deserted school parking lot. I went home trembling, the adrenaline of the entire day at last draining from my limbs. Luke and Bella played all afternoon, played with their tablets, did their homework. Mike arrived at dinner time and when the kids went to sleep, in the darkness of our new life, we went over our contingency plans. I know you have them too. I know you have a mental list of the people, the places, the phone numbers, the allergies, the children's fears, the messages we have for them for the future. All mothers have a plan for the eventuality of our absence.