Make Your Home Among Strangers

by Jennine Capó Crucet

  She raised her head and shrugged. Bueno, you’ll be home late tonight but it’s a free country. Do you want to come?

  —I don’t know, I said. Maybe I should.

  —Don’t do it for me, she snapped. Come because you want to, not because of me.

  —Well I’d do it for both, I said, my voice too quiet after hers. For both reasons.

  She wagged a finger in my face, No no no no. Think about what you want to do, but don’t come for me. I don’t want that.

  I kept my eyes on the sofa bed as she shuffled away, her house sandals scuffing against the hallway floor.

  * * *

  We slipped back north to the go-to Hialeah liquor store where Omar could reliably use his brother’s ID to buy a bottle of lime-flavored Bacardi and two already-cold cans of Sprite: we’d have to pregame once we got close to Ozone, he said. He’d called Chino (who had a new girlfriend I’d never met) and some of the other couples we went clubbing with a few times before I left that summer, but people’s plans were set—had been for weeks in some cases. If we wanted to drink—and we did—we’d have to mix our own shit in a parking lot, Hialeah-style.

  I took a shot right from the bottle after Omar handed it to me when he got back in the car, the warm alcohol singeing as I took two long glugs. He seemed impressed but then pulled over and said, Well I better lock that in the trunk now. Cops, Lizet. The bottle rolled around behind us as he drove through our old neighborhood toward the expressway.

  —I was thinking we’d pass by my place real quick so you could say hi to my mom, since she hasn’t seen you yet. But not the way you’re going, he said.

  He poked me in the stomach, said, And not with you looking like that.

  I opened my can of Sprite, sipped it to wash away the rum’s burn.

  —Thanks, I said.

  I crossed my arms over my belly, spun the ring with my thumb. His fingers curled around the inside of my thigh.

  —You know I’m just playing, he said. Though you do have to come see my mom at some point or she’s gonna think something’s wrong with you too.

  The skyline zoomed outside my window, and I felt the alcohol seep into my fingertips and calf muscles, felt my chest expanding underneath my skin. It must’ve been that tingling coupled with the city, that double dose of booze and what felt like every light in Miami showing off like a rainbow, that made me not register the you too until later, after we’d parked, chugged, paid, and made it through the line, past the velvet rope—the cans refilled with Bacardi tucked into my purse—onto the middle of the packed dance floor. The bass shattered inside my body, every joint and bone humming, and when it moved up from my heart into my brain, when I felt it bounce back to me off the arms and hips of strangers pressed around me, those little words—you too—lodged themselves in my mouth and had to come out.

  I lashed my arms around Omar’s shoulders and screamed into his ear, You too! Wait! Who’s too!

  —What? he yelled in my face.

  I read the word more than heard it, the music screeching around us. I stood on my tiptoes and put my mouth on his ear, his diamond stud scratching my bottom lip, Your mom! What you said in the car! Who’s the too! Who does she think something’s wrong with!

  He shook his head no, winced while he did it. I fake-pouted and put one hand on each side of the V of his collar, bunched up the material and yelled—little fist pounds on his chest partnering up with each word—Tell me now! Tell me now!

  He looked up at the club’s ceiling soaring high overhead, mirror-paneled in places to multiply the strobes and colored lights freaking out around us. I watched his throat—he swallowed—as lights danced over his neck, bounced off his new silver chain and flashed into my eyes. Omar leaned forward, his whole face pressed against the side of mine.

  —Your mom, he screamed down at me.

  He leaned away, made the universal symbol for crazy—pointer finger looping by his temple—and then came back close and said, Ariel Hernandez.

  The DJ’s voice boomed around the room, and I jerked my head around, searching the mirrors above us, thinking for an instant that God was yelling.

  —We got thirty minutes left before Y2K, people! Make it count in case we all fucking die at MIIIIIIIIIDNIIIIIIIGHT!

  The crowd cheered over his drawn-out vowels, everyone throwing up their hands as a siren blared at the same pitch as the song.

  —Are you serious, I screamed at Omar.

  He came closer because he couldn’t hear me, but I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away, then plowed through the churning mob toward what I thought were the bathrooms. It turned out not to be the bathrooms at all, but a freaky black-lit and people-stuffed hallway leading to a semi-hazardous stairwell that came out at another dance area of the club, this one on the roof and playing remixed Spanish music. Smokers congregated by a railing far from the speakers that looked out over the back side of downtown, and I headed there, grateful for the bites of cooler air prickling my arms and shoulders.

  —El! Omar eventually yelled from behind me, his hand clamping onto my arm. You can’t just take off like that, there’s a million people here.

  I whipped away from his grip.

  —Leave me alone, I said. Why does your mom think that?

  —You asked, okay? You can’t be pissed at me.

  —How’s she more crazy than anybody else!

  I paced around in the small square I’d claimed by the railing. I didn’t know why people like my dad and Omar were freaking out over my mom acting and responding like a typical Cuban mother to this kid. Wasn’t she supposed to do that? Weren’t we supposed to be loud and cry when someone put a camera in front of us? Weren’t we supposed to fight, to see ourselves in Ariel’s face and fate, to act our part? I put my hands over my eyes and dragged them down, likely smearing my makeup the way Jillian always did when she was too drunk. I wiped my palms on my capri pants with a smack and said, Isn’t your mom watching this Ariel shit?

  —Of course she is, he said.

  He seized the railing with both hands and hung back from it, looked out at the city.

  —But your mom started saying some weird shit, he said. And on TV. My mom doesn’t like what your mom’s doing, how she plays shit up for the cameras.

  —My mom fucking cares, okay? Maybe she’s a little overzealous about it, but who fucking isn’t right now?

  —Overzealous, he said, buzzed enough to repeat the word spelling-bee style, to come that close to admitting he didn’t know what it meant. And I was drunk enough to skip right over disappointment or frustration or surprise and say, It means like obsessed with something, like hard-core obsessed.

  He shrugged off the lesson by putting his hands up and saying, Whatever you want to call it, but that sounds like one way to put it.

  —Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be? These angry exiles? I mean (—and here I borrowed Ethan’s “community building” air quotes, though I wasn’t quoting anything—), the world is watching us! My roommate in fucking New Jersey is watching us!

  —El, what the fuck are you talking about?

  Colored beams flicked over our limbs, parts of us bright, other parts in the dark. A red light flared above Omar’s head, but instead of making him glow the way Ethan did the night he learned my name, Omar’s head was just a black hole, his face all in shadow. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see myself anymore—I recognized it as exactly that, even at the beginning of it, when I couldn’t name it: Lizet playing a part. I’d thought a shirt from Leidy’s clubbing stash would cover me by not covering me, would turn me back into El, but I was separate from her now, aware I was putting her on, and that colored everything. Omar was grabbing my wrists to stop me from running away again.

  —I want to go, I screamed. I want to go, I want to go now!

  He yanked me to his chest and said through his teeth, Stop, stop it. My body slammed against his and I turned my face to the side, smearing lipstick on his shirt as I did it. That’s when I saw our audience: pe
ople were watching us argue. Women much taller and thinner and tanner than me—women who looked like the TV version of Miami that wasn’t me but that my shirt was striving for—tapped their grinding boyfriends with a long fingernail and then pointed that nail right at me. Look at her, the thrust of one’s chin said. Another’s forehead tipping my way: Check out that crazy bitch.

  —What you looking at, you fucking hoe? I screamed at one, but she ignored me.

  Omar turned me away from the dance floor, pinning my arms behind me in a hug.

  —Have you seriously lost your mind? he said in my ear. I dropped like a hundred bucks to get us in here. You want to get us kicked out?

  I said into his armpit, I don’t care.

  I swayed for a few seconds and said again, I want to go. I want to go already.

  He wrapped his whole hand under my chin; I thought of Rafael, how he’d done the same thing despite barely knowing me.

  —El, it’s not even midnight.

  —I don’t care, I said.

  I wrestled my face from his grip to flick my eyes over the crowd, but I couldn’t find the woman I’d just yelled at. She’d been reabsorbed into the dance floor’s anonymous mass—or maybe she hadn’t been there at all. I looked back at Omar to find him scanning my face. He might’ve been saying something. His mouth dimmed as he peered into one eye, then the other, then back again: maybe I was closing them? The sky behind Omar and his face—both were dark enough. That I was closing them made enough sense. I lifted myself up on my toes, my legs stretching, and smashed my mouth against his.

  He didn’t push me off, or stop me to say I needed to drink some water, or ask me to control myself. Omar was lucky; he was still just one Omar—not broken like me, an El and a Liz trapped in one head. Omar didn’t have to analyze what Omar would do. He just kissed me back, biting my bottom lip in a way that would later cause it to swell and crack. He lifted me off the ground, my arms still trapped behind me, and hoisted my body against his. But I didn’t open my legs. I let them hang, making him carry the whole deadweight of El until he eased me back to the ground.

  —Okay, he said. That’s what you want, then let’s go.

  I squeezed his hand as he dragged me through the mess we’d just navigated. I let him be the shield that pushed between dancing couples and around the swarm eight people deep at the bar. There was, incredibly, a line to leave the club—they were stamping hands for reentry because Ozone would be open until nine the next morning—and I hid behind Omar then, too, breathing slowly and deeply through my nose the whole time, assuring myself that thirty minutes couldn’t have disappeared so quickly: I would not be here, standing among strangers, when Y2K brought with it whatever was coming. I would not have on this shirt, these pants. They would be on the floor of Omar’s car, probably, but that was closer to starting over. That was something I knew how to do.

  But in his car, after he’d moved it to the darkest corner of the emptiest floor of the parking garage and we’d made the customary climb—Omar first, then me on top—to the backseat, I moved in all the familiar ways, but it wasn’t working. I shut my eyes tighter, made myself louder, but I couldn’t stop thinking about home. I wrapped my hand behind Omar’s head and shoved it down—ignoring his annoyed Ow! because I didn’t want to see his face—but that only put me right back in my room, with Mami’s head on my collarbone, my nose nestled between the two halves of her hair. The parts of me normally up for the work of sex started to feel raw, and I panicked I wouldn’t come, that this time would be the first where I couldn’t use Omar to escape anything. Omar must have felt my hips lose their roll, my movements become more mechanical, because he smacked my ass and huffed into my ear, in a voice pained with want, I’m close, I’m close, try to come with me, I want you to come, too.

  And that was it, what I needed to do: I would drink my weight in water when I got home, I’d gulp it down in the shower I’d make myself take, and I’d wake up with the sun and go with my mom to that fucking rally, to see for myself what she was like, who she was that scared everybody so much. I screamed with relief, finally, at the simple knowledge of it, of having put myself back together with that choice. It felt almost easy—like floating, like letting a wave bring you back up after it’s broken over you.

  23

  I LET THE WATER POUND ME on the back for another half a minute before turning the clear plastic knob and grabbing my towel. I had ten minutes to get ready before Mami left with or without me, she said, and I was more wrecked than I thought I should be. I’d felt pretty sober by the time Omar dropped me off and, once inside the apartment, my vision started spinning only after I plopped onto the living room couch to sleep, a spot from which I’d be sure to hear my mom once she was up.

  Dante was standing in his crib when I went back into our room, my towel around me like a dress, and since the sun was all the way up, I lifted him out and draped him across Leidy’s chest. I yelled, Happy New Year, as he said bah bah bah bah and pounded his fist against her chin.

  —Shit, she said. She rubbed her eyes but sat up on her elbow when she realized I was on the edge of the bed, my hand still on Dante’s back to keep him in place on her. How was it, she murmured. How was Ozone?

  —It was okay.

  She pulled her pillow out from under her head and threw it on the floor.

  —Okay? Oh-kay? Do you not understand I was stuck here with this guy all night? You gotta do better than okay, she said.

  Her breath smelled weirdly sweet beneath the normal badness of any morning.

  —I don’t know, he’s pretty cute, I said. I pressed my hand down on his back and wiggled him on top of her. He put out his arms and stiffened his legs, some kind of reflex, his body curving up like someone in free fall from an airplane. You’ve done worse, I said.

  —True. Last New Year’s I couldn’t even drink. Was Ozone crowded?

  I stood, clutching my towel at my chest, and said, It was. It was crazy. I’m going with Mom now but I’ll tell you everything later if you want.

  She pulled Dante to her side and sat up all the way.

  —Going with Mami where? she whispered.

  She motioned for me to shut the door. I picked up her pillow and tossed it to her as I did what she asked.

  —To this thing down the street for Ariel. The New Year’s Day rally thing.

  —Are you joking? You can’t go to that.

  —Why not?

  I grabbed my plainest white underwear from my suitcase, figuring today would be a no-Omar day, and slid it on under my towel. I turned my back to Leidy, let the towel drop to the floor, and wrestled on a bra.

  —Because it’s gonna get out of hand, she said.

  —We’ve been before. Remember at Thanksgiving? When we saw Mom on TV and ran down there?

  —Then was different, she said.

  Our mom had ended that day by talking to the media about her two little girls and how they were just like Ariel, and we didn’t contradict her there, in front of the cameras, didn’t identify ourselves as those two little girls. But on the walk back to the apartment, after the camera crews left, Leidy hissed into Mami’s red, blotchy face, Mom! You can’t exaggerate like that! What were you thinking?

  I stared into the closet and said, I forgot to tell you, your shirt was a hit last night.

  —I know what you’re doing, she said.

  I thought she meant changing the subject, but she whispered, You want to see it for yourself. You’re not going for Ariel. You’re going for her, right? So you can say you saw it.

  I flipped the hangers on my side of the closet, trying to hide my surprise at Leidy understanding my motives so precisely. I said, Either way, so what?

  —I did the same thing, she said. Back before you got home. But I didn’t tell her I was going, I just went with Dante like ten minutes after she left.

  I kept my back to her, but I said, And?

  —And? She cries a lot and finds a microphone and tells a bunch of stories to make those people like her.r />
  I turned around, T-shirt in my hands, and she moved to the edge of her bed, closer to me, bending forward and whispering.

  —She told that Caridaylis girl that she was a single mom. She straight-up stole my life story with Roly but made it hers and put it in Cuba twenty years ago! She tells people we all three came on a raft together. She tells people I almost fell out of the raft on the second day, and you were a baby she was breast-feeding until her milk turned to dust.

  The shirt I’d snagged off the hanger fell from my hands. I couldn’t move.

  —She really says that, Lizet. She goes (—and here my sister threw her voice so that it was an octave higher but even quieter—), Hasta que mi leche se hizo como polvo. It’s freaking gross. It’s like she’s Miss Dusty Tits on the news.

  —How can she say that? I said. I sat down on the still-made sofa bed, my head pounding from my hangover. How come nobody’s called her on it?

  —I don’t know! Maybe because no one knows us here? Maybe because she’s made all these friends that are saying the same shit? I’m not gonna be the one to say something.

  I almost said, Maybe she thinks it’s true now, thinking of the way I’d morphed my idea of Omar up at Rawlings. Instead I said, Dad must’ve seen – what you’re saying –

  —You think he’s seen her interviewed?

  —He did, maybe, I said. He didn’t tell me anything, the stuff you’re – but he seemed worried. Omar’s mom I think, too. But I didn’t know why.

  —Well now you know. It’s probably Dusty Tits.

  I picked the shirt off the floor and yanked it down over my head, over my torso.

  —You’re still going, Leidy said. You don’t believe me?

  —I do, I said. I just – why didn’t you tell me this sooner?

  —I’m supposed to leave a message about Dusty Tits with your roommate?

  —You should’ve told me, Leidy.

  She said, Whatever, and clutched Dante against her stomach like a teddy bear. He held absolutely still in response. I did and didn’t think Mami capable of co-opting Leidy’s story and making it her own to get into the good graces of the family—but mostly of the girl, Caridaylis—taking care of Ariel. Her version of our life made me more Cuban than I technically was, degrees of Cuban-ness being something I’d never thought about until Rawlings, until the Where Was I From From question. Mami’s invented version made me a more authentic Cuban, and part of me wanted to hear her tell it. I wanted to see how she pulled it off, if she had to convince herself before she could convince anyone else, or if just saying something and having people believe it could make it real. I stood up and rummaged through the drawer for my shorts.