—Please e-mail me, she said. Do it, OK?
She shifted the purse to her other shoulder, said, Good luck with everything.
I got the feeling she really meant it, like she was saying this to some old version of herself, but when she shut the door—not hard enough; she had to open it again and then slam it—I took the card in my other hand and ripped it in half, then ripped it in half again, then again and again, until the feathery edges of the paper wouldn’t let me pull them apart any more. I let this bland confetti, dampened by the sweat on my palms, slip piece by piece down to the van’s floor, where they nestled in with the mint wrappers left by someone before me, someone who’d done a better job of planning for this last leg of their trip. I wished for a piece of gum, for something to bring the saliva back to my mouth. I knew I had nothing, but I tugged my backpack closer to me and looked anyway, hoping some other version of myself had thought ahead.
The driver—after shouting, ¡La Pequeña Habana! over his shoulder to me, his final passenger—left me alone in the back. I eventually found a stub of an eyeliner pencil at the bottom of my bag’s front pocket, and I used my reflection in the now-dark window to line my eyes as best I could, the blocks of my old neighborhood blurring by. I also found an unwrapped cough drop, and after smudging the lint off with my thumb and blowing on it a few times, I decided to pretend I knew how it got there in the first place and tossed it in my mouth. It was so old that it didn’t taste like anything, and little traces of the paper wrapper once protecting it somehow materialized and scratched around in my mouth like bits of sand. I swirled this almost-something for a long while, tricked myself into believing the cough drop hadn’t yet totally disappeared.
4
I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE MY MOM’S new building in the dark, couldn’t remember right away which window on the second floor was hers: I’d lived there only three days before leaving for Rawlings. The complex was a brighter peach than my memory had made it over to be, an orangey hue that too closely matched the Spanish tiles curving their way across the flat roof. A reggaetón remix blasted from the open windows on the building’s first floor, the noise giving me permission to ignore the male neighbors leaning against the chain-link fence that separated a block’s worth of sidewalk-hugging grass into lawns. On my last day there, Mami, Leidy, Omar, and I had each pulled a stuffed suitcase down the stairs; now I replayed each turn we’d taken in reverse, decided on a window, and tugged my bag up the too-tall front steps of the building’s entrance.
My knock on the apartment door was answered only by the suddenly-gone sound of the television as someone on the other side muted the volume, pretending no one was home. I heard Dante’s baby-quack, then a sharp Shh. I’d planned to yell Surprise! from outside the door just as it opened, but instead, after knocking two more times, I had to say, You know I can hear you guys. It’s me.
Then, a few seconds later, Me as in Lizet?
I heard the chain slide back, then hands moving down to the other locks. My sister opened the door, Dante on the floor behind her.
—What the fuck are you doing here? she said.
Her emphasis should’ve been on the word fuck, or maybe on here, but not on you. She’d been expecting someone else? But seeing how much she looked exactly like herself—her smooth cheeks with only the left one dimpled, her almost-black eyes and their long lashes, her dark and falsely blond-streaked hair pulled up in the same loose, messy bun she always wore around the house to avoid denting her blowout—made me so happy that I didn’t think to ask what she meant.
—Leidy! I screamed. Oh my god, Dante! He’s so big!
—Lizet? my mom said from somewhere behind the door, which Leidy still hadn’t opened all the way. I pushed it slowly with my whole hand just in time to see my mother rushing at me from the couch, already crying.
—Pero niña, she said, her hands in the air like someone getting called on stage for The Price Is Right, que tú haces aquí? You’re supposed to be at school!
I didn’t even recognize the squeal of my voice when I said, Mom!
She coiled her arms around my neck, latched her hand to the back of my head and pulled, buried my face in her shoulder. Her own neck was damp—wet from sweat or tears—and the salt from either or both met my lips.
—You’re not supposed to be here, she said, then said again.
She swayed our hug side to side. Her fingers fanned open to cradle my head, and one of her rings got tangled in my hair, tugging my scalp. Instead of ouch, I said, I know, I know.
Behind her, the TV glowed with the still-silent news, which wasn’t normally on at that hour. On the screen was the dirty, tanned face of a little boy not looking at the camera: my first glimpse of Ariel Hernandez. A young woman was dragging a wet towel up and down and across his cheeks. Without me knowing, without me even being aware of the race, he’d beaten me to Miami by a few hours. I looked away from the TV and over Mami’s shoulder back to Leidy, whose hand still rested on the doorframe, her mouth a half smile.
—But – here I am, I said. Surprise, happy Thanksgiving.
—Get inside, come come, Mom said, ending our hug by pulling my arms, her rings taking with them several strands of my hair. You must be starving, que quieres?
She hurried toward the kitchen and began listing what was in there—did I want a snack like crackers with cream cheese and guayaba, or should she microwave the leftover rice and chicken, or some plátanos, or she could also slice up the rest of an avocado that was going to go bad any minute now so someone should eat it. The stream of options trailed away as Leidy swooped down and grabbed Dante, who let out a sharp, brief scream, then went silent. He raised his hand and smacked Leidy flat on the mouth. She seized his arm and pinned it to his side with one hand, and he turned and gawked at me, his mouth open but grinning, as Leidy, left with nothing else to do, dragged my bag in from the hallway.
* * *
After searching for soap to wash my face in a bathroom that felt more foreign than the massive one in the dorm, I eventually emerged from that white-tiled closet and sat next to my mom on the couch. A plate of cold chicken and rice waited for me on the glass coffee table as the news about Ariel played in front of us. I told my mom detail after detail of my trip, all the planning that went into it, every word of my story bouncing back to me off the side of her face.
—It’s a Thanksgiving miracle, Mami said, echoing the news anchors.
But she was talking to the TV. She turned to me only during commercials, staring at me while I ate, her mouth wrinkled with a sort of regret.
—I was looking forward to getting you at the airport your first time home! she said during a local commercial for Mashikos Menswear. And during the next commercial—this one ringing with the familiar jingle for Santa’s Enchanted Forest—she said, I was gonna bring you flowers, that first time! You stole that from me!
I pushed my food around my plate.
The jingle played on, and over it she said, How could you keep this from me all these weeks? All this time you’ve been lying.
—I wasn’t lying, I just didn’t tell you –
She shushed me as the news came back on. The coverage seemed to reset her reaction to me: she forgot she was shocked I was there each time the screen flashed back to the live shot of the house belonging to the relatives who’d claimed Ariel—a house not two blocks from our building. Leidy tried to ask me if I’d seen the news truck when the shuttle dropped me off—I hadn’t—but Mom silenced us with a palm in the air before I could answer. So during the next commercial, I invented a story about my night in Pittsburgh that involved a sad Steelers fan and a prostitute in the room next to mine, hoping it would keep my mom’s attention.
—I couldn’t sleep thanks to the crazy sex noises and all the crying, I said.
But she cut off my mocking of the groans I’d supposedly heard.
—You think it’s funny? A place like that, you could’ve gotten raped. You know that, right?
I half scoffed a Mom, ple
ase but she was glaring at me. I pulled my legs up and hugged my knees to my chest, and she turned back to the screen, the corner of the nail on her middle finger rooting around her bottom teeth for leftovers. Around that finger, she said, It’s like you don’t think about things, like about anyone but yourself. Like you forget how bad the world is.
Leidy gave a collaborative grunt, and I thought about confessing my lie to undo the very unintentional direction my story had taken the conversation. I hadn’t really heard anything while trying to fall asleep the night before in Pittsburgh—just sirens outside, cars rushing down the street below, nothing I wasn’t used to from home—but I didn’t know how to tell them, without it sounding like bragging, that once I figured out how to turn off the disco ball overhead and got used to the weird staleness of the sheets, I fell asleep watching myself breathe in the mirror on the ceiling, my too-long hair fanned around my head like a dark cloud, amazed at where my own planning had landed me.
Leidy paced around the living room with Dante in her arms, bouncing him in an effort to make him fall asleep but shouting questions at the TV at the same time: But this Ariel kid, why is he famous? So okay, he just got here but so what, take a number, bro. I mean, what makes him so special?
—His mother died, my mother said, then kept saying: a new chant, this one to the TV, to the bare walls of her apartment.
She grabbed the remote and scanned up a few channels, but every one of them ran the same footage on a loop, my mom engaging with it through a one-sided call-and-response that reminded me of the very few times we’d gone to Mass. They’d show the shot of the inner tube, and she’d whisper, His mother died. The snippet from an interview with the fisherman who’d first spotted him: His mother died. The beachside reporter (why was he even on the beach when they’d brought Ariel in hours earlier?), foam-topped microphone in hand: His. Mother. DIED.
When the Spanish-language news showed, for the eighth time, Ariel’s hand being waved for him by his uncle’s grip as they left the hospital that afternoon, I asked my mom if she was trying to tell me something. She said to the TV, Tell you what? and so I stood up and walked away—she yelled to my back, Well I’m glad you’re home even though you lied to me!—and went to what I thought of as my sister’s room. It was technically our room, but I hadn’t slept there enough nights to really feel that, and I didn’t have a real bed; we had left it in our house, knowing it wouldn’t fit in the new room. I’d be sleeping on the pull-out sofa that separated Dante’s crib from my sister’s mattress.
I pushed a pile of blue and white baby clothes and blankets to one side of the sofa and lugged my suitcase up onto the other, unzipping it just as Leidy came in behind me.
—We could’ve cleaned if we knew you were gonna be here.
—No, I know, don’t even worry about it, I said. Did you guys do Thanksgiving dinner?
She lowered Dante into the crib and handed him a stuffed bunny, the long ear of which he shoved in his mouth. I opened the top drawer of the dresser and tried to make space for my stuff.
—Sort of. It’s Dante’s first Thanksgiving so yeah, we made like a chicken and some mashed potatoes or whatever, and Mom said grace.
She sat down on the floor next to the pile of baby stuff and pulled a shirt loose from it, then folded the shirt into a tiny square.
—But this stupid kid on the news! Mami couldn’t stop watching it, and so I was like hello? So in the end dinner sucked.
I should’ve asked for details about the day then, for more about Ariel Hernandez, or about Dante’s dad—if he’d called or been over—or about our own dad (same questions), but I thought I already knew the answers. As recent as the end of our parents’ marriage was, Leidy and I were not at all shocked that they were no longer together. They got married a couple months after Mami found out she was pregnant with Leidy, and they each blamed the other for having to drop out of high school so close to finishing. They should’ve left each other dozens of times before that summer, maybe right after my dad refused to buy Mami a plane ticket to Cuba to see the dying mother she hated for disowning her from afar after getting pregnant before marriage; or later, when I started middle school and Mami became a Jehovah’s Witness for a few intense months and bullied my dad to convert or else she’d take us away and go live with my tía Zoila. Because my parents married as teenagers, their relationship sort of froze there, stuck at that age where every fight is The End and probably should be. We were known on our Hialeah block as the family whose arguments spilled into the front lawn. Leidy and I knew to listen for the words Are you fucking crazy, Lourdes?—which meant: time to go outside, get in the grass on our hands and knees, and look for Mom’s wedding ring. They fought constantly, more so in the couple years leading up to that fall and mostly about Leidy’s pregnancy and her boyfriend’s refusal to marry her—the exact inverse of the choice my dad had made when he got my mom pregnant. It should’ve been a family disaster except that it coincided with me announcing that I’d applied to out-of-state schools months earlier without their knowledge and would be leaving at the end of the summer. Which is why my father decided to leave, too: he no longer saw the point, he said, of being around women clearly set on behaving as if he hadn’t stuck around in the first place.
The air conditioner kicked on, sending a buzz through the window trapping it in place. It jarred me to hear an AC in the winter, and the whole room, with me in it, seemed like a huge freaking mistake. I felt stupid for even wanting the attention I thought I’d get by coming back. The processed air hit me and I shivered. If I was going to be invisible and miserable and cold, I could’ve stayed at school, saved myself the money. I kept unpacking my suitcase.
—Why did you not tell me you were coming? Leidy said.
I shrugged. I said, I wanted it to be a surprise.
—So nobody – like nobody here – knows you were doing this? Not even Omar?
—No one, I said.
She sucked her teeth and stood up, a tiny tower of folded baby clothes in her hands. And you’re supposed to be the smart one? she said.
Her face suddenly next to mine at the dresser, I said, What the fuck is your problem?
—Mom’s right, something could’ve happened to you and who would’ve even known?
—Oh come on.
—I’m just saying you should’ve told me. I can keep a secret, okay? I mean, at least I would’ve kept her away from the TV so she could enjoy how you showed up here. Now she’s like all distracted.
I crammed my underwear into my half of the dresser drawer, then went back to my suitcase for more clothes.
—Look, maybe you know how to buy a plane ticket on a computer to go wherever, but that doesn’t make you somebody that can just be all like whatever about it. That’s not what being independent means.
—Okay Leidy, I get it.
—I’m not trying to say anything, okay? I just get why Mami’s pissed, because honestly, you had me you could’ve told, and for like a whole twenty-four hours no one knew where you were, and just because we didn’t know that we didn’t know doesn’t mean it’s all fine now, okay?
—Fine. God, I said.
I slammed the drawer shut. She opened it back up slowly and tucked the baby’s things next to mine.
—That’s it, all right? I’m not gonna say anything else about it. I just feel like somebody should say it, and it’s not gonna be Mami right now.
She stood by the dresser and raised a hand to her mouth, chipped away at her nail polish with her teeth.
I sat down on the sofa bed, my arms folded across my body. Beyond us, in the living room we could see if we poked our heads out from the bedroom door, the TV screamed with an interview of some government person saying Ariel’s arrival could turn into a political issue, and our mother screamed back, Political issue? Is this guy serious? His mother is dead!
—Fine, you know what? I’m sorry I’m here.
—It’s not like that, Leidy said. Don’t be sorry. I’m happy you’re home.
/> I thought then that she’d sit next to me, but she stayed standing up, pulling another soft thing from the pile shrinking next to me, this time holding a onesie against her chest as she folded it in half, then in half again.
—I don’t gotta work tomorrow, she said.
—Awesome, I said, meaning it.
She stopped mid-fold and almost laughed.
—Awesome! she parroted back, her voice high and in her nose. She threw what she was folding into the drawer, pushed it shut, then slung her hands under Dante’s arms. She raised him to her face and cooed to him, Awe-some, awe-some! What other stupid words you picking up at that school?
5
MAMI WOKE UP BEFORE THE SUNRISE on my first morning back—a habit left over from marriage: she always made our dad his café before he headed to a jobsite—and learned from Radio Mambí that the very first rally to support Ariel’s Miami family not only was happening that morning but would be held just two blocks away, in front of the house owned by Ariel’s U.S. relatives. She kissed me on the forehead while I was still asleep, told me she was going and that she’d left café con leche for me in the microwave. All you gotta do is press start, she said, and from the bedroom door, she either said or I half-dreamed, I’ll be back by lunch. So I spent Friday morning on the living room floor, playing silly singsong games with Dante, who I was surprised to realize I’d missed. He was eight months old by then and could do several new things that made him more appealing to me: crawl, talk a little, sleep through the night. More than my mom’s new apartment, or our old house belonging to someone else now, or the things from my old room stuffed into half a new one, it was Dante’s unexpected heft when I lifted him out of his crib that made me understand how much could change in three months.
Thanks to the holiday, Leidy was off from the salon, where she mostly worked the phone and booked appointments, swept hair off the salon floor, and sometimes did makeup. She spent her day off just sitting on the couch, flipping between back-to-back episodes of Jerry Springer and the news coverage about Ariel, avoiding what seemed like the chore of playing with her son or taking him to go see his father. I wasn’t sure if Leidy and Rolando were talking to each other and, though I never admitted this to Leidy, I didn’t blame him for wanting to stay away from her, considering what she’d done: When Roly didn’t propose to her during the last slow dance at prom, or in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Grad Nite, or while receiving his diploma in front of a couple thousand people at graduation, Leidy decided to force the issue and stopped taking the pill the week after school finished in June. On a mid-July morning the summer before my senior year, while our parents were at work, she screamed my name from the bathroom, and seconds later, she blasted into my room holding a stick she’d peed on three minutes before. I figured from her joy that the test was negative, but then she showed me the plus sign as she laughed and cried at the same time. She smashed me in a hug and said, Roly is gonna freak out! I started crying too and saying Oh no oh no—the same reaction I had while waiting those three minutes for my own results from my scares with Omar. What was happening inside Leidy, I realized, was my own worst-case scenario, but Leidy shook my shoulders, the stick still in her fist and now against my skin, and said, Aren’t you gonna congratulate me?
Make Your Home Among Strangers Page 3