He put his chin on the top of my head. He said, You really don’t think your parents are gonna work to save their marriage?
His stubble scratched my scalp as he said this. It was such a formal, unnatural way for him to phrase the question that I knew he’d practiced it in his head, had maybe heard some TV doctor say it. He must’ve felt a change in my body, a tensing, because just then he slid his hands under my ass and hoisted me up onto his lap all the way, pulled my hips toward his and held me there, my stomach against his half-hard dick, so that I couldn’t squirm away or look at his face. I loved and hated his physical strength—the way he could just move me in and out of his way. I wanted it for myself.
I pushed what probably sounded like a snarky laugh through my nose, but mostly, I was just tired of thinking about my parents. Before my dad forced our frantic move by selling the house, I’d imagined both parents at the airport, a send-off that was officially and formally impossible. Now I couldn’t even picture my dad waving goodbye to me at the gate. Omar didn’t know the details behind what I’d called the choice to sell the house; the three of us—me, Leidy, our mom—all agreed it was too ugly a thing to admit, even to Omar.
—I really don’t want to talk about it, I said.
Out the rear windshield, white and red lights blurred on the expressway, unsteady beams of color. When I was a little girl trapped in the backseat on our way home from visiting one of many aunts in other parts of Miami, I’d relax my focus on the road ahead and let the red on our side of the median blur into a torrent of blood, the white on the other side—coming toward me—a smear of lightning. I always wished we were going the other way, not realizing that nothing about my view would change with that flip.
—You know, you’re not the first person ever whose family hates each other, he said.
—Shut up, they’ve always hated each other, that’s not it.
But I didn’t move away from him. I just kept staring out the back windshield.
That first semester of college, as I grew more and more impatient during phone conversations with Omar, I started to tell anyone who asked that Omar was a monster. He was an animal—more like an animal than a human. It seemed like what other people wanted to hear. To them, Omar looked the part, with his earrings and the close-cut hair and goatee, the wide shoulders, the dark brows, him leaning on his Integra and throwing a sideways peace sign in almost every photo of him I owned. The girls on my floor would ask, Is that a gang sign? and instead of saying, No, you’re an idiot, I said, Maybe, who knows with Omar? Other girls would feel bad for me and claim they understood: the girl who’d made everyone hot chocolate, Caroline, even went so far as to mention she’d read The House on Mango Street in AP English. She said she knew about the kinds of relationships that plagued my community, had nodded in a solemn way when I told her yes, Omar could be rough. Part of me was angry that they were half right: my parents did have a version of that relationship, but it wasn’t at all accurate for me and Omar. Still, I was happy to have something to add to those late nights in the dorm’s common room when I was otherwise quiet, to be included in conversations even if I didn’t totally understand the part I was playing. When everyone around you thinks they already know what your life is like, it’s easier to play in to that idea—it was easier for me to make Omar sound like a psycho papi chulo who wanted to control me. At the very least, it made trying to make friends simpler than it would’ve been had I tried to be a more accurate version of myself.
The truth is, I had to abandon some part of myself to leave Omar in Miami. I had to adopt some twisted interpretation of everything that came before college to make my leaving him the right thing—I had to believe the story I made up for other people. A few weeks into the fall, I stayed up late one night listening to Jillian and half a dozen other girls like Tracy and Caroline talk in our room. I’d been invited by default, since I’d already climbed into bed before the first set of roommates from down the hall came in with an oversized bowl of popcorn. But then these people I knew only from our brief, shower-caddy-toting bathroom hellos sprawled across the foot of my bed like we were really friends. And even though the next morning wouldn’t bring anything more or less friendly when we skimmed shoulders at the bank of sinks, I listened hard to their stories, to what they said about the boyfriends they’d broken up with just before coming to Rawlings. How their mothers all had stories like theirs, how their mothers had all met their fathers in college after having wasted tears on some high school boy that so wasn’t right for them: I understood that the worst “best” thing that ever happened to my mother was falling for my dad. For your heart to screw over your brain—that’s the worst best thing that could happen to anyone.
Omar tugged my hair and said, Everything’s gonna be fine, El.
—I know, I said.
—I’ll come out next semester for sure, once I can save a little, he said.
—I know.
—And we’ve got three weeks at Christmas, he said.
—Right.
He held both my shoulders in his rough hands. Do you want to go? he said.
I didn’t think he meant the golf course. I thought he meant to New York, so I said, Yeah, of course. I think I’m ready.
He blinked twice like he’d just placed contact lenses in his eyes. Then he slid his hands down to my hips and tossed me onto the seat next to him. I bounced there and he reached for his boxers on the floor.
—What? I said, pulling my knees up to my chest.
—You’re ready, huh? He jerked his shorts up his hairy legs, found his jeans and belt, his shirt. You think you’re the guy? Like, I got mine, so peace, I’m out. Then fuck you, bro.
I held up my hands to him, palms out, and said, Okay, what?
He pulled his shirt over his head.
—Wow, you really need to calm yourself down, I said, reaching for my bra between us on the seat. I snapped it on and adjusted the cups.
Omar hated being told to calm down. In fact, saying calm yourself down was the best way to get him to not calm down at all. He grabbed the front seats and hurled himself at the steering wheel, his T-shirt hanging bunched around his neck, his arms still free.
—No, I got it. You’re fucking ready. Let’s go then, he said.
He pushed his arms through the sleeves, grabbed at the keys and turned them, revved the engine. I tugged on my underwear, seeing that, though I’d picked them out because I thought they matched, the bottoms were actually navy blue, the bra black.
—Omar, for real? I yelled. Then, like a mom, I said, Oh-mar, please. Then, Oh! Seriously! Come on already!
He put the car in drive.
—You know what? I said. You’re right. Let’s fucking go.
He turned in his seat and screamed, You’re the one who says she’s ready!
I realized then the confusion, and I almost lowered my voice, but I didn’t know yet how effective that could be. I yelled, To New York, asshole! I’m ready to go to New York, not go from here! But whatever, do whatever you want!
I struggled to find my pants, then twisted them around until I found the leg holes. I shook them out and wiggled them on while Omar cursed up front. I found my blouse and tried undoing the buttons—Omar had just pulled it over my head to get it off, hadn’t bothered the buttons with his bulky fingers—but it was inside out. Omar kept changing gears on the car, which kept lunging forward, then backward, not really going anywhere. I flipped the blouse and opened it, then wrapped the fabric around me, making sure the holes lined up with the buttons by starting from the bottom.
—Hey genius, he finally said.
I didn’t answer, just looked out the window as my fingers climbed up, fastening me into my shirt. He pressed his head against the steering wheel, then lifted it and smacked his forehead with both his hands four or five times.
—We’re fucking stuck, he said.
My hands froze. What do you mean we’re stuck?
—I mean the car. He put his hand on the latch to open th
e door, but before he pulled it, he asked, You dressed?
I murmured yes, and he opened the door, and dim light from the dome overhead suddenly yellowed everything.
I scrambled up to the front seat in time to hear Omar say, Oh fuck.
All he’d done was stand up, so I said, What?
He stepped forward and I heard what sounded like a wet fart, and then he said, Are you fucking serious?
I tried to look past his legs in the doorway at the ground, but my eyes were still used to the dark. I couldn’t see anything but him.
* * *
How could I not have thought about the possibility of mud? About the Miami rain that soaked the grass every day in the summer? We’d driven onto the rough—a word I didn’t yet know meant the long grass, grass meant to be long, to slow things up for a golf ball. We’d glided onto it in the dark and rocked the car with our bodies enough to dig us in deep.
I will always—always—give Omar credit for trying everything he could to get us out of that mud without anyone’s help. His sneakers were ruined that night, along with the shirt he was wearing and the jeans. The towels from the backseat, already wet with sweat, were also ruined once he used them to clean the mud off his face, arms, body.
I got to keep clean, mostly. Everything I was told to do—press the gas, then try neutral, then turn the wheel all the way left, then all the way right, now straight, straight!—involved me staying in the car, not getting slapped with mud. I stepped out only once, right after I’d pressed the gas down all the way like he’d said to do while he rocked the car from behind. I heard Omar scream and I thought maybe I’d been in reverse and had killed him—Oh my god, I thought, I ran him over!—so I threw the car in park even though it wasn’t going anywhere and jumped out, felt my flip-flops sink and the mud seep between and over my toes. It wasn’t even cold; the mud was as warm as the air around us. I’d sunken in so fast and deep that when I lifted my leg, my shoe made a sucking sound but wouldn’t budge: if I’d tried to step forward, I would’ve fallen face-first. So I turned at the hip, holding on to the Integra’s roof for balance, and saw Omar, who, covered head to toe in so much mud, really looked like a monster.
Only when it hit one A.M.—after an hour and a half of trying—did I venture to say, Omar, it’s late. My flight was at seven forty-five the next morning. Omar called his friend Chino, who found the number for a tow truck and gave it to us. Chino offered to come out himself, but thankfully Omar said Don’t worry about it and hung up before he could ask any questions.
The tow truck didn’t even take ten minutes to find us. The swirling yellow and red lights mounted on top of the truck reminded me how even this last time, we’d never really gone that far from anything.
—What were you guys doing out here? the tow truck guy said.
Neither of us answered because we figured he already knew. He couldn’t be older than thirty or thirty-five. He laughed, and then, on the way back from the bed of his truck, chains in hand, he said, Which of you two had the smart idea to park in this shitfest?
We left that question unanswered, too.
The tow truck’s lights were what attracted the police. Omar finally got the ticket we’d been promised so many times before. When I told him I’d help pay off both—the ticket and the cost of the tow—he said forget it.
—A going-away present, he said.
I wanted to laugh, but Omar wasn’t even hinting at a smile. So I kept the laugh to myself. I never thought of him as particularly funny either.
* * *
In the airport on Saturday with two hours to go until my Thanksgiving return flight really left, I sat near my gate across from a bank of pay phones and thought about calling Omar. I wondered if I could get him to come out to the airport. It was a longer trek from Hialeah, but the way he drove, he could make it in twenty minutes if he caught all green lights. I wondered if he’d waste time being mad over the phone and use that as an excuse not to spend the gas, or if he’d just rush over, wanting to see me so bad that he didn’t care I’d been home and not told him. I wondered if I’d have to beg him—if I would beg him—to come see me. We’d have a couple hours to talk before my plane would start boarding. I’d maybe get to hear someone say they were going to miss me.
I decided to make it a test. He picked up on the third ring.
—What do you mean, you’re here? he said. You’re like, outside?
—No, I’m at the airport.
—No fucking way, he said. So, shit! You need me to come get you?
—Not exactly.
It turned out not to matter: he was stuck at work, asked everyone around to cover for him and not one person said they’d do it. I didn’t know if this meant he’d failed the test or not. I could turn it whichever way I needed.
Eventually, after a pointless conversation about his pizza-for-dinner Thanksgiving and the Ariel news and the custom rims he’d saved for and just bought and which friends were doing what that night, he asked me why I hadn’t told him anything about the trip.
A voice over the airport’s PA system answered in my place, announcing a gate change for a flight that wasn’t mine.
—I would’ve paid for you to stay an extra night, he said after the voice finished.
—I couldn’t let you do that.
—Why not?
—Because we weren’t talking, I said. Because of that last fight about my hearing.
He was silent for a second, then said, I didn’t know we were fighting like that.
I almost said, You don’t know anything, but could already hear him shooting back, See what I mean about dramatic? And he’d be right.
—Plus, you’re probably broke after those rims, I said.
—God El, he said. You are so fucking stupid.
I was ready, then, for the conversation to be over. I said, I know.
He told someone on his end to give him five more fucking minutes, then said into the phone, Are you gonna pull some shit like this at Christmas?
I mumbled no, but then reminded him that he already knew my travel plans for that day. It was the return flight for my original ticket.
—We’ll see if I remember, he said, but he laughed.
—We’ll see if I care, I said.
—How you gonna be like that when you’re the one who comes home and doesn’t even tell me?
There was still so much time left until we’d start to board, but I said, Omar, they’re calling now, I gotta go. I’ll see you in a few weeks, okay?
He sighed into the phone, then said, Fine, Lizet. I gotta go too. But will you at least call me tonight? So I know you got there alive?
—I thought you were going out with Chino and them, I said.
I wanted to hear that he’d stay home tonight and talk to me, that he’d carve out a chunk of time from his boys and give it to me so we could figure things out, and if he did that, he’d pass some other little test, and I’d stay his girlfriend.
—I’ll have my phone with me, he said. I’ll pick up.
I said okay even though I wasn’t sure if I meant it. We both knew that I wouldn’t call him—I’d let him call me that night, give him one more hurdle, and if he never did, that would settle the other tests he’d only half passed.
I was about to just hang up on him when he asked, So you hear yet?
—Omar, I told you I’ve been here but I’m leaving.
—No, I mean the thing at school. The investigation thing. What happened?
—Oh that.
I considered lying to him, saying everything was fine, that I’d already heard and I was clear to stay. But he’d know that wasn’t true, would sense it in the way I’d force those words out, as false as the thug image of Omar I’d given people up at Rawlings. The difference between him and the Rawlings audience was that he knew me better, or more precisely, he knew the version of me that couldn’t lie to him, not yet.
—There’s another stupid meeting, where they’ll tell me the decision. I’ll probably find out when th
at is like the minute I get back, I said.
The weight of that truth made me clutch the phone to my face and slide down in the plastic seat.
—Well good luck with that, he said.
He cleared his throat, the sound crackling in my ear, then said, Seriously, good luck. I actually mean it.
And then he hung up on me.
9
FROM THE ROWS OF SHUT DOORS and the absence of wet boots outside of them, I figured I was the only person back on my floor. I was in our room just long enough to leave my bags in the middle of the carpet separating Jillian’s side from mine—she’d be back Sunday, and I planned to spend my night alone spreading myself over the whole room just because I could—before turning around and heading immediately back into the cold, to a building everyone called the Commons, where our mailboxes lived.
It had snowed all day, but some miraculous group of people apparently still worked that weekend, plowing the sidewalks and paths for those of us unlucky enough to be on campus. Everything felt louder for the unnatural silence—no cars searching for spots in the parking lot, no one smoking or talking on their dorm’s front steps. My sneakers against the clean pavement made soft, dry taps; the only real sound around me was my jacket’s plasticky swish.
The Commons could feel deserted in the mornings whenever I made it to breakfast, but that Saturday night, the place felt post-apocalyptic empty. Inside, the snack shop that served fried things—normally open until two A.M.—was closed, a metal grate I’d never seen before pulled down over the entrance. In the TV lounge across from it, a screen glowed a beam through the dark over the body of just one person, a guy with his head thrown back against the recliner holding him, a baseball cap over his face.
Make Your Home Among Strangers Page 7