I smile. Is it weird that doesn’t sound so terrible? I’m no fan of Mass, but I spent enough time kneeling with my parents at St. Anne’s at home that the familiarity sounds…nice. Maybe even nicer if Nico were with me.
“Don’t forget,” Nico says as he leads me up the steps of his building. “Every bite on your plate.”
“Got it. You’ll have to roll me out of here.” I bare my teeth in a silly grin.
That finally earns me a smile. Nico smacks a loud kiss on my cheek and nuzzles me. “Come on, baby. Let’s go eat.”
~
The apartment is at the top of a third flight of narrow stairs, and the building has no elevator. It’s not nice by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not as bad as I thought, considering the way he’s referred to it. The white walls are dingy, sure, littered with scrapes and stains, and the bottom floor bears more than a few graffiti tags, but it’s not like the walls are literally coming down around us or anything.
Even though it’s not as loud as the street, the building is far from quiet. Music vibrates from several doors we pass, and beyond one comes the sound of shouting voices. The halls are narrow, and privately I wonder if Nico’s mother, whom he said has had some back problems, has trouble walking up and down these stairs every day. Managing them with four squirrely kids…eesh.
We stop at an unassuming door, and with another shy smile, Nico unlocks it.
Despite only having six or seven people in it, the apartment feels packed. The front door opens directly into a room that’s maybe four hundred square feet. In one corner, an open door peeks into what I assume is the bedroom; through another clamors the sounds of pots and pans.
This is it: the place where Nico became Nico. The furniture has been pushed to the walls to make room for two card tables that take up most of the center, covered in a white lace tablecloth and surrounded by folding chairs. There’s barely enough space to fit the setup in front of a faded orange couch, which is covered with plastic. The walls, which look like they haven’t been painted in a long time, are littered with posters and paraphernalia: postcards of saints and other Catholic iconography, a few framed, yellowing photos of what looks like Nico and his siblings when they were kids, an ornate, bronze-framed mirror above the sofa. An open closet to my right reveals a stowed murphy bed and some shelves covered by thin curtains.
Even my dorm room, which I share with Quinn, is clearly split between the two of us. She has her half, which she decorates the way she wants, and I do the same with mine. Things are separate. Neat. This room is completely different. I don’t know this family, but I can tell that all of them are scattered throughout the small space. I doubt that anyone but Gabe is a J. Lo fan, just like I’m pretty sure that a poster of an unfamiliar male singer on the opposite wall probably belongs to one of his sisters. I’m guessing that the signed Yankees baseball in the tiny curio shelf by the door belongs to Nico. This apartment isn’t just his mother’s––it belongs to everyone who was raised here.
“Tío!” A loud shriek erupts through the chatter, and a tiny, black-haired girl shoots out from under the table, smack into Nico’s legs, which she proceeds to climb like a tree.
Laughing, Nico helps her into his arms and peppers her face with kisses until she falls apart laughing.
“Stop!” she cries, giggling helplessly. “Keep going! Stop! Keep going!”
With one last smack on her cheek, Nico turns the little girl toward me. They look alike. She has his same latte-colored skin and sparkling black eyes. He gazes at her with obvious adoration.
“Mamita,” he addresses her, “this is my friend, Layla. Layla, this is Allie, my niece. She’s my sister Maggie’s daughter.” Looking up, he scans the room for Maggie, who raises her hand from the couch. Her face is hard, but it softens a little as she looks at her daughter.
I wave back shyly, then turn to Allie. “Encantada,” I say to her.
Her entire tiny face grins, and she addresses her uncle. “Ella habla español?”
I can barely understand her, but Nico turns to me with a half-grin that brings out one of his dimples. “You speak Spanish now, baby?”
I flush. “Um, a little. I’m trying.”
The half-grin turns to a full one, both dimples puckering his cheeks, and I blush. Across the room, Maggie’s eyebrows pop up. Gabe stands up from his seat at the table and sidles around to us.
“Hey, NYU,” he greets me with the same nickname his brother sometimes uses. He looks at me knowingly. I wonder again if he’s said anything about our awkward meeting.
He kisses me lightly on both cheeks, and I relax into the familiar gesture. My mom’s family never does this––they barely touch anyone––but my dad’s family does. When I visited them a few years ago, I thought I’d never get all the lipstick off my cheeks.
I think of my dad then, and wonder where he is right now. What he’s doing. If he’s happy now that he’s home.
Nico jokes a little more with Allie before he puts her down and pulls out a chair for me at one of the tables.
“You want a drink, baby?” he asks, holding up the paper bag of beverages he brought.
I shake my head. “I want to give your mother the appetizers I picked up. Also, I need to use the restroom.”
Nico gives me a funny look and points at the kitchen. “Just through there.”
I walk into the kitchen, where two women who could be sisters are arguing in Spanish as they lean over a sauce pan full of rice and a cooked half-turkey. They both are short and slight, barely clearing five feet tall, and with identically pulled-back hair that flies out around their temples. The younger, whom I’m guessing is Selena, Nico’s youngest sister, speaks in rapid, irritable Spanish with the other, waving around her long, painted fingernails and making the costume earrings that hang almost to her neck swing wildly. The older woman, obviously Nico’s mother, listens stolidly, occasionally clicking her tongue and shaking her head at her daughter’s opinions.
They silence immediately when I walk in.
“Hello-hola,” I venture, holding out a hand. “Um, yo soy Layla. Un amigo de Nico.”
“It’s una amiga. You’re a girl,” Selena says as she shakes my hand. “And I speak English.”
I flush. “Oh, um, I know. Nico just told me that your mom doesn’t.” This is weird. I don’t like talking about the woman as if she’s not right there.
Selena smirks. “She can speak a little. And she understands everything, so you don’t have to worry.”
I flush. “Oh. Right. Okay.”
I turn to Nico’s mother and hold out my hand. She looks at it for a moment, then shakes it lightly, her hand barely moving.
“Carmen,” she says, continuing quietly in heavily accented English. “Nice to meet you.”
I nod shyly and hold out the food I brought. I am Cheryl Barros’s daughter; I know better than to visit someone’s house empty-handed.
Carmen accepts the bag and pulls out the selection of French cheese and baguettes that cost me about half of my budget for the week. I didn’t know what to bring, so I just bought the kinds of things my mother would. Carmen takes out a Saran-wrapped lump of bleu, then looks at Selena and says something in Spanish that I can’t understand.
Selena examines it. “It’s cheese, Mami. The good kind.” She looks at me, and there’s a little kindness in her brown eyes.
“Oh. Thank you,” Carmen says to me. She holds up the cheese, and then hands it and the bag to her daughter, who moves around the tiny kitchen looking for a plate.
“Of course,” I say. “Thanks for having me.”
We stand awkwardly until I remember the other reason I came in.
“Um, could you tell me where the bathroom is?” I ask quietly as I look around and see nothing like it. “El baño?”
Both women look at me strangely, echoing that same expression I just got from Nico. Okay, I know my Spanish is bad, but is it really that bad?
“Over there,” Selena says, pointing to the corne
r.
I follow her gesture and immediately realize why I missed it. The door to the “bathroom” looks like a cabinet, a flimsy stall made of painted plywood that surrounds a toilet installed in the middle of the kitchen. No sink, unless you count the one in the kitchen. A door that would only provide privacy if you’re sitting down. That’s it.
I swallow and meet both Carmen and Selena’s faces straight on. I know then what they’re expecting––what they’ve all been expecting since I walked in. I’m the rich white girl, someone who should think she’s too good for this place, for them.
But it’s just a bathroom. It’s just an apartment. And ultimately, the only things that matter are the people inside it.
So I meet both of their gazes and smile.
“Gracias,” I say and push the door open.
~
In the end, it’s a pretty normal Thanksgiving. The only difference is that I only understand about ten percent of what’s said. All of the Solteros fall in and out of torrents of Spanish that are very different from the stiff, formal version I’m learning. I’m quiet for most of the meal, trying to understand what I can, listening intently whenever Nico leans over to translate.
But besides that, it’s the same, just dished out on a mixed set of dishes instead of my mother’s china. The half-turkey is just as moist, and they put marshmallows on the pan of sweet potatoes too. There are a few dishes that are unfamiliar, Puerto Rican-style foods that are clearly favorites of Nico’s and his siblings’. I make sure to take a second serving of the arroz con gandules, the yellow rice dish with peas and peppers. It’s not hard––it’s freaking delicious.
After a while, the family lapses comfortably into raucous conversation with each other, appearing to forget that I’m even there. Nico and his sisters throw insults at each other over the pumpkin pie, Gabe gets in trouble for talking with his mouth full, and Allie breaks every awkward silence with some adorable phrase. I try to smile when, every so often, I catch Carmen openly examining me, but for the most part, I eat my food and feel thankful that I’ve been included.
At the end, after Nico and Gabe have finished clearing the dishes away, Carmen looks around the table with a contented expression, in that same way any parent looks when all their kids have come home together.
“Listos?” asks Carmen. Her kids stop talking, and like a wave, everyone stands up.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
It’s very abrupt. One minute, we’re sitting around, laughing, but also talking kind of awkwardly, and the next, everyone is getting ready to go. Most Thanksgivings I’ve been to usually end when people migrate to a living room to watch football and loosen their pants while they sink into a food coma. Except, I realize, the television in the corner is maybe big enough for one or two people to watch. And there aren’t enough comfortable seats for everyone to relax.
Nico winks as he hands me my coat. “We’re going to Tía Alba’s place,” he says. “K.C.’s mom. It’s where we always go after the meal at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She puts on a party for all the family.”
I cover up, trying and failing to swallow the newly formed lump in my throat. Party? Family?
“Come on, baby,” Nico says, taking my hand in his as we follow his family out the door. “Let’s go.”
~
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nico
It’s dark as we follow my family out into the cold night air and start down the street to the high-rise where Alba, K.C.’s mother, lives.
The dinner went well, I think. My sisters were a lot nicer than I thought they would be, being relatively careful only to talk about Layla when she was legitimately out of earshot. Gabe was his usual eager-ass self, working hard to entertain my guest while he threw around big words, trying to sound smart while Allie threw pieces of pasteles at his face. Ma was Ma, quiet and watchful as always. I can’t tell yet what she thinks of Layla. She’s never been the type to trust outsiders, and even if Layla has a last name like Barros, she’s still an outsider.
Jesus Christ, I’ll never forget the look on her face when she followed my mother out of the kitchen carrying the plate full of that smelly fuckin’ cheese. I had no idea what she’d brought for dinner. I could have told her that my family wasn’t going to eat food that smelled like it had been lost under the couch for two weeks. I’m more adventurous than the others, but even I didn’t want to eat that stuff. It smelled like feet.
But her face. Her poor, beautiful, embarrassed face. You could tell she knew the mistake she’d made as soon as she set the platter of that crap on the table. We all stared at it. No one wanted to touch it. And then she turned to me.
“I brought cheese,” she said and bit her lip.
Yeah. I was already a goner before she did that, but I can’t say no to that face. Not when she looks at me like that, dying for someone to like her. So I leaned over, loaded a piece of bread with the slimy blue shit, and took a giant bite while my sisters laughed behind their hands and my brother watched with eyes about the size of our dinner plates.
“Ewwww!” Allie cried from across the table. “He just ate the mold!”
“Hush!” snapped Maggie.
“It’s delicious,” I said with my mouth full.
Beside me, Layla looked like sun was beaming straight out of her face. I’m not going to lie; that shit tasted like feet too. But I’d eat a whole closet of shoes to make her happy. And after catching her watching us with a gleam in her eye, I think my mother knows it too.
Layla looks up at the high-rise with surprise when everyone starts through the revolving glass door. “K.C.’s mom lives here?”
She was expecting another apartment like my mom’s. Maybe something a little bigger that could accommodate all the family, but roughly the same. That used to be the case––Alba, my mother’s best friend, used to live just downstairs from us in a bigger two-bedroom place. But the first thing K.C. did when he started to make some money was upgrade his mom’s apartment.
It’s hard not to be jealous. I’d love to do something like this for my mom one day, but who knows if that will ever happen. Nice apartments usually require all the tenants’ names to be on the lease, and that’s not something my mom is willing to do.
“K.C.,” is all I say, and Layla nods. She’s been to his apartment in Hoboken. That place is crazy nice.
We take the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, and as soon as the doors open, salsa music floats down the hall. Layla looks at me nervously.
“I thought this was just a family thing,” she says.
I squeeze her hand. “It is, sweetie. But this family is…big. It’s a generous term. You’ll see.”
Inside is a familiar scene to me, but Layla holds my hand like she’s about to drown. Alba has a big space, even bigger with her furniture pushed to the walls for the party. Her big table is filled with a potluck of foods, mostly leftovers people brought from their own Thanksgivings. The place is full of people I grew up with. People I call family, but who are really just a part of the extended network that helped raise my mother and, by default, her kids. Countless tías and tíos, their kids, and their kids’ kids scurry around the apartment. Layla watches curiously as I greet most of them with a quick “bendición,” accepting kisses to my cheeks from the aunties and a few uncles too, letting the older ones murmur “Dios te bendiga.” It’s close to fifteen minutes before we’re able to make our way to the far side of the room, where I can toss our jackets on a pile by the balcony and get us some drinks.
Layla’s a champ––she clutches my hand with a death grip, but nods politely at everyone she meets and accepts kisses where they’re offered. They look curiously at her, but she’s not the only stranger at the party––a few other people have brought their girlfriends or boyfriends to meet the family too. It’s hard. I can’t come out and say that’s what she is, because she’s not. Every time I have to say she’s just my “friend,” there’s this stabbing in my chest, so eventually I just tell them she’s Layla
and let them make whatever assumptions they want.
Most of the people here are Puerto Rican, which means the older ones mostly speak Spanish, but the younger ones, like me, speak English peppered with Spanish or a mix of both. There’s a playlist blasting a mix of Latin music from Alba’s stereo, and already the group is getting boisterous. Even the line of men standing against the picture windows like a line of pigeons are starting to move a little with the music.
Beside me, Layla polishes off her cup of coquito. “Wow,” she says. “That is really good.”
I smirk, then take her cup for a refill. Alba really went all out this year––coquito, the coconut and rum drink, is usually something we have at Christmas. I wonder if my mom asked for it since I won’t be around this year. K.C. was moaning all last week about missing it since he was hired for a big party in Vancouver over the weekend.
Layla starts to loosen up. She still looks a little like a scared deer, but her hips are starting to undulate to the music, some random bachata song.
I nurse a beer, but my eyes stay on her. She catches me watching and immediately turns red. It’s fuckin’ adorable.
I snake a hand around her waist. “You want to dance, baby?”
“What?” Maggie’s loud fuckin’ voice blasts from at least three people over. “You want to dance? Since when do you dance?”
I roll my eyes. My sister had a few drinks already back at the apartment, and the people she’s standing with shake their heads and laugh. There is nothing Maggie likes more than giving me shit. I give her a rude hand gesture behind Layla’s back, which Maggie ignores. Behind her, Selena covers a laugh, and across the room, Ma watches us with interest.
“I can dance,” I insist. I look back at Layla. “I can dance.”
“I didn’t say you can’t,” Maggie says as she moves over to us. “I said you don’t. You hate bachata. You don’t even like salsa.”
Layla watches our exchange curiously, but stays silent. I feel myself turning a little red.
Lost Ones Page 12