Make Your Home Among Strangers

by Jennine Capó Crucet

  But over the rest of my break, we ended up fucking like crazy. Not because I couldn’t control myself, but because of what happened Christmas morning. Omar came over and lifted each of us off the ground when he hugged us and he talked easily with my mother—the first carefree conversation between her and anyone else I’d witnessed since I’d been home. He played on the floor with Dante for over an hour while my mom served him café con leche after café con leche and asked him questions about his Noche Buena, and when Leidy sank into the couch and started crying because Roly hadn’t even called, Omar slid across the carpet and told her Roly was a sorry bastard who didn’t know how lucky he was to have a kid like Dante and a girl like Leidy. My mother rushed over and squeezed his shoulders, kissed him on the top of his close-shaved head, and then sat next to me, putting her hand on my knee and squeezing that too, as if our fight the day before were over. I stayed in one spot that morning, my legs folded tight under me, while he just belonged there in a way that made me want to choke him, and so later, once I’d broken my promise and slept with him, there was no point in not fucking him every chance I got until I was drained of everything. The only thing that got rid of the hole I felt in my chest at my failure to keep the don’t-sleep-with-him vow I’d made less than twenty-four hours earlier—a hole that opened up seconds after I’d pull him out of me after finishing myself—was fucking him again, so I kept at it, tried to make myself wait longer and longer to come, to stave off the worst part of it.

  So just before the first time that break that I had sex with Omar, after the morning in our apartment when I’d watched him maneuver through my problems like they weren’t even real, we said bye to my mom and got in his car—my present still a mystery—and he drove to the beach because I told him I hadn’t seen it since the summer. He grabbed my hand at the first red light and put it on the gear shift with his. The whole time I just wanted to seize his crotch in my fist and squeeze it until he screamed. But I kept my hand under his and he drove and parked and we walked around in the cold sand and he took me to the deserted lifeguard tower where we’d first made out back when we were both in high school, and he made us sit down on its steps. He put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was adjusting his dick in his pants, but then he pulled out this little white box.

  He said, Don’t freak out.

  He said, I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow. This isn’t the ring you’ll have forever, so maybe you can trade it back to me when I get you the real one.

  He said, I want you to know that I think we should get married someday. I want you to wear this up at school so those nerds don’t get any ideas about stealing you from me.

  He tugged the ring—a silver band with three little diamonds on it—from the velvet-lined slit holding it and stuck it on my hand.

  He said, There.

  I felt so frustrated I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pushed him against the steps and shoved my tongue into his mouth—our first kiss since August—then straddled him and felt his dick against my underwear (I’d changed into a skirt before leaving the apartment—we both knew what that meant, though I pretended otherwise, forgetting when I can that I facilitated my own failure that day), and it was all me that did it, right there with the bright sun showing us to the world, me that broke the promise to myself as I pulled my underwear to one side and I slid him in and rocked on him, mean almost, like I was angry, like I was getting back at him: I pictured the steps digging into his spine and hurting him, doing it this new way with almost no love, just want and gnashing teeth and grunts and fuck yeses and his fingers clutching my ass trying to slow me down but no, thank fucking god, finally, there it was—my turn. When I finished, I rocked on him a little longer so that he’d come and not ask any questions, and then I pulled him out with the ringed hand, lifted myself off him and tucked myself into his side, his dick glossy and still hard as he pulled his T-shirt over it.

  —Damn, El, he said. Do I need to ask if that’s a yes?

  He laughed at his own joke.

  I didn’t look at him—I couldn’t yet. I looked at the ring. My almost-engagement ring. A ring that said, You’re a good investment. It felt heavy on my finger.

  But to anyone looking, I was still dressed, still put together enough to get up and walk away. I turned the ring on my hand and felt the sun on my face, my skin waking up and darkening in that light.

  22

  THE MAIL CAME EARLIER IN Little Havana than it did in Hialeah. We’d been a late stop on our old route and were an early one now, so most mornings over break, a rip of booms jarred me awake, the row of metal bins downstairs in the foyer all getting slapped shut. The registrar’s office had notified us that our grades wouldn’t show up before Christmas, so only after the holiday did I obey the leaping reflex at the slams and charge down the stairs—shoeless and usually wearing a long T-shirt like a dress—the mailbox key shaking in my hands. When my grades weren’t there, it was over: I had the rest of the day to forget they were en route, and I’d head upstairs newly exhausted. Mami and Leidy were already at work, so I usually got Omar to come over almost as soon as I got my toothbrush out of my mouth and his ring back on my finger (I kept it off and hidden at home to avoid Mami and Leidy asking any questions), and between having sex on the couch and/or the floor and/or my sofa bed (that last spot only if Dante was at daycare—I considered it really bad luck to do anything with a baby in the same room), we argued about New Year’s Eve. He wanted to call up friends—other couples we used to hang out with—and go to a club, do something huge, and I didn’t want to commit to anything out of fear that my grades, once they arrived, would after everything be too low. I couldn’t imagine getting dressed up and smearing makeup on my face, seeing people from high school and pretending to be happy about the future. So I lied and said I just wanted the night to be about me and him, together at the end of the millennium. I was shameless in my attempts to avoid going out—I even suggested we split the cost of a few hours at a hotel by the airport. He argued that going to a club did not prevent us from going to a hotel afterward. This argument led to more sex, which by then I recognized as the best way to keep us both distracted.

  That pattern lasted until my grades showed up on Friday, on December thirty-first. The envelope sat crammed in the very back of the bin, bent as if the mailman had punched it down the metal tunnel. I pried it from the box’s back wall and ran upstairs, my bare feet slapping the steps, turning the envelope over and over in my hands and thinking of how it was Leidy, not me, who’d spotted the faint pencil marks on the gifts from my dad a week earlier. What if neither of us had noticed the scrawled names and she’d opened mine, seen what my dad had written about her and Dante? I’d hid that envelope inside a shoe and tucked the shoe into the front pocket of my suitcase, zipping it shut. I planned to shove this new secret in there along with that one.

  Back inside, I scrambled onto the couch, folded my legs under me, and pulled my long T-shirt over them. The refrigerator rumbled against the kitchen wall, but otherwise the room was quiet—it hit me that the reason I could open my grades right away and with no one around was because Leidy and my mom’s jobs had them working a half day on New Year’s Eve. Their jobs meant I was always the only one home when the mail came. I should’ve felt bad, or guilty, but as I peeled back the seal in the same way I had with the envelope from my dad, I only felt grateful to be alone.

  The sharply folded page stayed shut against itself as I pulled it out. I tugged at its corners and rested the paper on my lap. I’d expected, I realized, some kind of paragraph, some kind of explanation with words. I’d expected to have to scan sentences and search out the grades: for this information, like everything else at Rawlings, to feel hidden from me but also somehow in plain sight. So I was surprised to see, on the left-hand side, a list of the courses that had defined the last four months, and across from each, lined up on the right margin and connected to the course title by a series of underscores like a line of stitches, the grade. The only A listed was at
tached to my PE course, and I’d been expecting it (in fact, I think I would’ve been the most surprised by anything other than an A in swimming). What I wasn’t expecting was the column of B-minuses leading to that A.

  A column of B-minuses: I ran my finger down the line to make sure I was seeing each one of them correctly. I held the paper up to my face, inspecting the curves of each letter just to be positive the Bs weren’t smudges. There was no need to sort through the conditions surrounding my scholarship money or what courses I would or wouldn’t be forced to take; the string of B-minuses meant none of that mattered. The grades in bio and chem meant that I’d done so well on the finals that I’d counteracted my earlier failing midterm exam grades, but the B-minus in my writing seminar meant both that I’d done well on the final paper and that my professor had shown mercy. I latched on to that last aspect—mercy—and instead of basking in the idea that these grades were a huge accomplishment, I sobbed: they’d all let me off easy. I remembered the tone of my hearing and thought, They want to keep their Cuban above water for another semester. They know how bad it would look, with so few of us even being admitted, or maybe they wanted to see how things with Ariel Hernandez turned out, and here I was, an authentic source of information (they knew my address, didn’t they?). But almost as quickly, another fact pushed that feeling away: the exams in the chem, bio, and calc courses were graded blindly—we were assigned ID numbers, and only those appeared on our answer sheets. So those scores were, in a way, pure. And somewhere inside of me, I knew this meant I was smart enough to be a Rawlings student, that whatever question I—or anyone—had about whether or not I deserved to be there should’ve stopped existing for me in that instant. But that’s not what I felt, sitting on the couch in basically my underwear, the bottoms of my feet black with dust from the stairwell, my stale breath wafting back at me from the paper. As I ran my tongue over my caked-on teeth, all I really felt was relief. I didn’t feel like celebrating because I’d proven I was capable of doing the work at a high level; I barely registered that that’s what I’d done. No, I felt like celebrating because my worrying about those grades—the dread lurking under the last month of my life—was over.

  I sank into the couch and closed my eyes, mumbled Thank you to the ceiling. I considered calling my dad to brag before remembering the money—that he’d think I was calling for the extra fifty dollars. And what was there to say really, when for sure he’d see my B-minuses as weak grades. You haven’t gotten a B since middle school, he’d say. How could I explain it to him, or to my sister or to Omar—These grades are different—without sounding like an asshole? I decided not to call anyone, to instead give myself a few more minutes of just me and those grades and what they meant, to register the new subtext, even if I couldn’t name it for what it was: I can do this. I am, already, doing this.

  * * *

  When Omar eventually showed up at the apartment that morning, Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, a greasy bag of buttered Cuban bread in the other, and with a visible boner I worked to ignore tenting his silvery basketball shorts, I told him that my grades had shown up—All As and one B, I said, a kind of translation of my real grades into how they felt rather than what they were—and he declared that news, as I knew he would, reason to really fucking celebrate.

  We settled on Ozone. Omar got us on the list (which only meant he’d given his name and phone number to random people with clipboards standing outside other venues in the weeks leading up to that night) at three different clubs, but Ozone, because it was essentially a huge tricked-out warehouse in downtown Miami, was the one he felt most certain we’d get into before midnight. Leidy had always owned better club clothes than me, and now she willingly let me borrow something from her side of the closet—a big change from our typical fights over, say, a mesh or fringe-trimmed shirt that she’d claim I’d stink up with my armpits, her standard objection to letting me use her club clothes. She pulled out a ridiculous magenta halter top; I initially mistook it for a bandana and said, No I need a shirt. She unwrapped its straps, like tentacles, from around the hanger and held it up to her own chest. There was a big cutout shaped like a teardrop down the middle of it, presumably to show off some major cleavage. It didn’t seem like enough material to rein in Leidy’s chest—not after Dante. Her fingers worked the various tangles in the straps, then she tugged the halter into place over her T-shirt, revealing its snakeskin pattern: jagged zigzags shining in a darker magenta. I’d never seen this shirt before. She managed to corral her breasts into it, and even though she sucked in her stomach, a roll of new fat popped out under the shirt’s bottom edge. She put her hands on her hips.

  —What do you think of this? she said.

  I leaned back on my hands. That, I said, is one hot fucking top.

  She laughed and undid the knots after glimpsing herself in the mirror.

  —I bought this like a month after Dante was born. It’s my goal shirt.

  Her breasts spilled back out and she was able to breathe normally again. She held the shirt between two fingers like a rag and dropped it on my lap. Go for it, she said.

  I passed on her recommendation of her slit-up-the-side go-to club skirt—I imagined some strain of skanky Ozone bacteria lurking on Omar’s hands finding an easy way into my body; people were already referring to that club as Hoe-zone—and opted instead for a tight pair of black capri pants that sat very low on my hips.

  Later, as she and Dante watched me in the bathroom mirror while I smeared on eye shadow, she said, You look so hot Omar’s gonna freak out when he sees you.

  —Whatever, I laughed.

  My mom yelled my name from the couch, where she was watching the news and also on the telephone with a neighbor, talking through the next day’s Ariel Hernandez rally. Neither Leidy nor my mom had asked about my grades, but neither even knew they were coming. I yelled back, What? And without getting up or lowering the TV, she yelled, Omar llamó ahora mismo que he’s on his way.

  I yelled to the mirror, Okay!

  —You want me to take a picture of you guys before you leave? Leidy said. Mami’s camera has film, though who knows if she’ll let me use it on you in that shirt.

  A brush loaded with more silver-gray shadow hovered above my eyelid.

  —Do I look way too slutty? Tell me the truth.

  She zeroed in on my reflection and said, Lizet, you look amazing.

  I never showed my stomach that much, but the halter top only made it down to halfway between my breasts and my belly button, so there was a lot of exposed skin. The parallel vertical dents visible along my torso—almost full-fledged abs—surprised me, and I was mad at my body for taking a semester’s worth of stress and looking better for it, for rewarding the punishment I’d put it through over the last month with results I hadn’t been shooting for. Being that thin—thin enough that my ribs stuck out—was the best evidence for how miserable I’d been. But that was over; I could stock up on calories flowing back into me via alcohol. I was ready to be me again, and this slutty-looking version was getting me there. I piled on the eye shadow, went back to the little pot to load up on more.

  * * *

  We took one picture, and when I look at it now, I can’t believe it’s me, which is why I still own it; it’s proof I was that girl once, that we’d all stopped to celebrate her. It’s also proof I was happy that day, still basking in the glow of my B-minuses. I’m smiling so hard all my teeth are visible—more snarl than smile. Omar’s arm is slung around my waist, and his face—goofy, his grin lopsided—still registers the shock of seeing me dressed like that. Leidy snapped it, though by then my mom had hung up to say bye to us before we left for the club. Mami followed me post-picture back into our room, when I went to grab my ID, Omar’s ring, and the credit card I’d opened that fall, the one I’d used to buy my Thanksgiving flight.

  —Tengan cuidado tonight, okay? Mami said. Don’t let Omar drink too much. People get crazy on New Year’s.

  —Don’t worry, I said. We’ll be care
ful.

  —And be quiet when you come back, she said.

  She tugged my shirt down in a useless attempt to cover more of my stomach, pinching my skin by accident. She said, I have to be up early tomorrow.

  —For the rally? I said.

  She nodded. This year will be hard, she said. People are starting to listen to his father, as if he should get any say.

  —I’ll be quiet, I said.

  She bent her head down and rested her forehead on my collarbone and mumbled, I’m so worried, Lizet. I feel so, so tired, worrying about all this.

  In her voice lived the same exhaustion I’d felt right after finals, the voice I’d used with anyone I spoke to between that last exam and getting on the airplane home. I put my nose in the part of her hair and breathed in the salty smell of her sweat, of food grease. It was the closest I’d physically been to her since she’d shoved me against the wall at Zoila’s house—and before that, since she’d hugged me at the airport. I kissed that part, that clear in-between space, the wiry hairs of both sides like threads across my lips. I said, Maybe I can come with you? Tomorrow, I said. To the thing.