—I have to tell you something, I said.
—We’re breaking up already? Then he said, Kidding.
He sank down into his chair, hiding his height.
—I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about me either, I said. Those mittens? Those ones I had when we went skating. Those mittens aren’t mine.
He looked into his own mug, swished it in a circle. Color rose up his neck in blotches, connecting the dots.
He took too long to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I felt sorry for him, the way his skin was such a traitor, but right then I wished for something that good at giving me away.
—Yeah you do, I said.
I leaned forward and wrapped both my hands around the mug again.
—My roommate gave them to me, I said. I guess she sees me as her charity case.
He still wouldn’t look at me, but I needed him to understand I was an ally, a member of the same band. I decided to admit it: I said, So the thing about being an RA next year?
He slid up in his chair, tall again, his eyes hooded by his pale eyebrows but finally meeting mine. He said, I get it, you don’t have to –
—I do need it. I gave a breezy snort and said, Where do I sign up?
He shook his head.
—It’s too late. The deadline passed. But knowing you, you knew that already.
I nodded because he was right: I’d looked it up the day I got back to campus.
—Thank you for – for letting me know that about you, he said.
He spun his drained mug between us.
—So that ring, it’s not really from your mom, is it?
—No.
—Did your roommate give you that, too?
—No.
—So … you are engaged to the Miami Dolphins?
That he was still joking made me not want to admit it exactly. I worried that if I did, Ethan wouldn’t keep doing this, wouldn’t continue acting like he enjoyed my company. Saying I was engaged to Omar would turn the way we kept trying to make each other laugh into a problem—at least to me. And unlike the first time I admitted it, I now knew his mom almost married young; I didn’t want him putting me in the same category as her, as my own mom. And Omar did say it wasn’t my real ring, that he only meant it to keep other guys away: certainly Ethan didn’t count as other guys. With a thousand miles between us, couldn’t I afford to be vague? It’s not like me and Omar were a list of procedures in a lab write-up.
—It’s OK if you are, he said. Even if it is to the Dolphins. You’re really engaged?
—Only to their mascot. To an actual dolphin. That’s okay, right?
His tense laugh shot across the table. He said, That’s fine with me. Dolphins are smarter than us. Besides, I could never compete with a dolphin.
I pulled my bio textbook closer to me. He was too smart, too witty.
—Good thing you aren’t trying to, I said. Because you’re graduating.
—Exactly, he said, pointing at me. That is exactly right.
We’d saved it, whatever it was; we’d given each other permission to keep going.
—Now drink your shitty coffee and don’t talk to me for another thirty minutes, he said. Time to get strict. I haven’t earned a single beer.
—My roommate saw you at an arch sing last Saturday, I said.
—God I hate those things. Get to work.
—Did they cover any hard rock hits?
—The bonds of friendship coerced my attendance, OK? Now stop distracting me.
—You’re friends with someone in an a capella group? What would Pearl Jam say?
—Seriously, he said. I’ll kick you out of the group.
—One guy is a group?
—Lizet, really. Don’t try me.
He stopped talking. I watched to see if he would smile down at his book, but he didn’t. We both got back to work.
—The Mountain Goats, he whispered to a page ten minutes later. That’s just one guy.
* * *
As winter got colder and the semester went on—and with Omar’s ring on my right hand instead of my left—I stayed ahead of my work in the lab thanks to the extra hours I put in. I visited Professor Kaufmann’s office a few more times, too, though usually about stuff I read for my bio lecture or even for calculus: it was helpful to get her take on things like parametric equations or the Krebs cycle. Ethan’s Happy Hours became part of my week the way another class would. Other people did materialize, and in time I became one of what the group called the Regulars, even without the after-work beers. Leidy’s calls dropped down to once a week when she got tired of leaving messages with Jillian, but even the weekly calls felt stilted and tired—she was annoyed that I’d asked to schedule our calls for a standing time instead of her calling whenever she wanted or needed. Scheduling shit like a white girl, she said, but I knew she was just mad, that she’d get over it. It didn’t matter that things were off between us: I saved my real worries for Omar, who I could call as late as one or two in the morning when I’d get back from lab, and who I made check on my mom and sister at regular intervals so that I could shrug off my guilt long enough to get lost in my work.
She get trampled in front of his house lately? I’d ask, making it seem like a joke though I dreaded what he might say. He’d laugh and answer, Nah, she ain’t doing that anymore.
Good, I’d say, thankful—but more than anything relieved—that my mom’s adventures on the streets of Little Havana were dying down now that the legal battle over Ariel was so stalled and convoluted it was no longer fun being involved. Don’t worry about her, Omar said week after week, and as my first set of exams came up, I was grateful for the permission to scratch her off the list, to put her out of my mind by believing she’d given up.
27
WHILE WAITING TO HEAR HOW I’d done on those exams, I got an e-mail from Dr. Kaufmann. We weren’t getting our grades back from her that way—that exam had been a lab practical, so we already had some sense of how we’d done—but my history with e-mails from professors was not good, and even though we talked in lab and during her office hours, she’d never e-mailed me before. My hands shook as I swerved the cursor to open it.
She wanted to meet with me outside of class; she had something she’d like to discuss one-on-one. The e-mail was written with the same troubling vagueness as the one I’d received months earlier from my writing seminar professor, but this was much worse: this was Dr. Kaufmann. This was a class required for my major. And this—whatever I’d done—would be strike two, and no matter how understanding the one woman at my hearing had seemed, there was only so much Rawlings would tolerate.
I scanned my mind for what this could be about. Had I left a supply closet or fridge unlocked? Had I open centrifuged one of the specimens she’d asked me to look at when it was supposed to be closed centrifuged? Had she glanced over my shoulder at my class notes and seen the list of embarrassing questions only I seemed to have and which I’d scribbled under the heading Things to Look Up Later? I’d been so careful around her so far, hoping to make up for all the times I raised my hand and revealed how little I knew, all the times she caught me pretty much fondling the equipment—the elegant pipettes, the test tube racks that kept everything snug and in place, the magical autoclave incinerating all evidence of use and making everything perfect over and over again. It could’ve been any or all of these things: she was so smart that I was certain she’d put these observations together and conclude, long before I figured it out, that though I was eager and good at keeping contamination at bay, I wasn’t cut out for the hard sciences. I wrote her back, composing my e-mail in a word processing program first to make sure the green squiggly line of grammar impropriety didn’t show up under every clause, and confirmed I could meet with her Monday at noon, right after class. She wrote back a cryptic, That will be more than fine.
The three hours of that week’s lab class felt like a goodbye. I stacked each petri dish as if it were the last time I�
�d be allowed to handle those delicate circles of glass. I swished saline solution for longer than was needed, looked at the agar coating the bottom of plates as if its nutrients were intended for me and were about to be withheld. When a question popped into my head, I kept my hand down and didn’t even bother to write it in my notebook.
I watched Professor Kaufmann for clues all class but saw nothing, though she’d already proven herself good at masking frustration with kindness. You could drop an entire tray of beakers, and she would smile and in a too-high voice say, That’s OK! I sometimes thought I was the only one in the class who saw through her, could tell how very upset she was at all that shattered glass on the floor: I knew it from the way she’d say Hmmm as she accosted the student culprit with a broom and stood over them, pointing out a missed shard here, a tiny speck there. She’d wait until they put the broom away before noticing another piece, then instruct them to go back to the closet and bring the broom again.
I approached her lab bench once everyone had left. She was scribbling something on some graph paper, and I glanced at what she wrote once I was closer. Whatever it was, it was in German—probably not a good sign—and it was underneath a series of equations that meant nothing to me and which were in no way related to our class.
—Liz! she said. Oh, super! Come here, please!
She stood and let me have her seat. I sat there for a good minute, watched her keep working as if she hadn’t just asked me to sit down. Her pen dug into the paper and I wondered if she had two brains—wondered if there were a way I could split my own mind like that, be in one place but let my mind hang out wherever it wanted.
She slapped the pen down on her notebook, and without even apologizing for the awkward three or so minutes we’d been right next to each other but not speaking, she said, Thank you for staying after class. I see you’re eager to know what this is about.
—Yes, I said. I tried to keep my back straight; I found trying to maintain good posture more painful than just slouching. Even seated on her high stool, I was still looking up at her. I said, Is everything okay?
—Yes, of course. Thank you for asking.
I figured then that I should stop talking lest I incriminate myself, but she smiled at me and nodded as if I’d kept speaking, as if I was saying something at that very moment.
—Yes, so, she said. You are enjoying the lab so far?
—I love it, I blurted out. It’s my favorite class this semester.
—Super! she said. That’s super.
She nodded some more. After a few additional seconds of painful silence and sustained eye contact she asked, Are you interested in becoming a research scientist?
I thought I wanted to be a doctor, but that didn’t seem like the right answer.
—Yes, I said. I am.
—Good, super. Because there is something you should do then, a program.
She slipped a hand beneath her pad of graph paper and slid out a glossy folder. I closed my eyes, not wanting to look at it: here it was, the remedial program for students needing extra help, forced in front of me like that list of campus resources I’d printed out last semester as my only hope. The folder was white with a crimson stripe down the front of it, a gold logo embossed at its center.
—This is connected to my research group. It’s a summer position at our field laboratory off the coast of Santa Barbara, in California. You would be perfect for it.
—A summer position? Like an internship?
—Yes, yes. You are perfect for it. I would like you to apply. I will nominate you.
She said this louder, as if the problem were not that I didn’t believe her, but that I couldn’t hear her.
—But it’s your lab, you run it?
—Weeeeell, she said. She laughed in a sweet way. I do run it, yes, she said. So perhaps let’s say you have a very strong chance of getting it since I’m nominating you and I also choose the students. You do have to apply, technically, but there is always a Rawlings student. Each year I bring the strongest freshman from among the various lab sections.
—Oh, I said.
I couldn’t believe she meant me, that I’d been doing that well. My write-ups were getting good scores, but they were twice as long as anyone else’s for all the missteps and questions they contained. I put my hand on the folder and pulled it toward me by the corner. I said, So is this for like minority students or something?
—No, it’s for my lab in California, she said. I’m sorry if I’m not being clear. Your work in class is fantastic. I think you will be great. You should do it!
She put her hand at the top of the folder and pushed it all the way to me. She then clasped her hands together, dropped them into her lap, and said, Please open it!
I jumped at her voice, then did as she said. In the center prongs were creamy-feeling pages that explained the lab, the experience I would get, the projects I’d contribute to, and near the end, a page explaining the scholarship money for housing and the travel subsidies and something called a stipend. I figured out quickly, thanks to the numbers being stacked on top of each other like in my Rawlings bill, that a stipend meant I’d get paid to be there. I wanted to grab the folder and run to the dorm, show it to Jillian and ask if it was real. The experience alone was worth it: I would’ve gone for free—no, I would’ve taken out another loan to go all the way to California and work in a real lab, a for-real lab run by Professor Kaufmann. I was taking out bigger loans for less interesting experiences. I flipped back to the pages describing the projects, recognizing in some of them the language from Professor Kaufmann’s faculty Web page. She’d singled me out to be part of her research, part of her network. I turned past those pages before looking too eager and embarrassing myself.
Tucked inside the folder’s back pocket was the application. It asked for a short essay about why I was interested in the program and how I came to find out about it (though small, the program was open to applicants all over the country). It asked for a list of past research experiences and other extracurricular activities (freshmen were allowed to list activities from their senior year of high school, which made me feel much better) and a short explanation about how each extracurricular had furthered or enhanced my interest in research. It asked for a reference letter and the contact information for your reference—Professor Kaufmann had already signed this form and written, on a Post-it note pressed to the top right corner, Lizet: Don’t worry about this page. It asked for a copy of a graded lab write-up. It asked for a transcript, for my grades.
Despite being proud of my B-minuses because I understood what lived behind them, I was fully aware they were not great grades by Rawlings standards. Professor Kaufmann had no idea that my GPA was below a 3.0. My work in her class—I was sure of this because it was my goal—reflected the grades I wanted, not the ones my past mistakes had shaped: put a line through it and keep going. I pulled out the checklist of the application’s required parts from the folder. My hands shuddered as I held it, so I let it drop to the bench, only pointed, for a second, at the line that said Official Transcript.
—I think my grades –
I felt something sharp rise in my throat. I wanted so badly not to confess this to her, to preserve her idea of me being fantastic in lab. I swallowed, but it didn’t go away.
—You get that from the registrar. Official only means it is sealed in an envelope.
—It’s not that.
I pointed to the line again, then put my hands in my lap. I breathed in through my nose, willing my voice to come out at its natural pitch. Then I said something I’d never said before.
—My grades are not very good.
She blinked, the half smile never leaving her face.
—Oh, I’m sure they are more than fine.
The same phrase from her e-mail, the one that had made me worry. Her English was always perfect, but as I searched for reasons why she wouldn’t understand me, for why she was making me admit my incompetence again, I let language be one of them. I closed the
folder but left it where it was on the bench.
She asked, What’s your GPA?
So I told her.
—Oh, she said. Then her smile came back, her spine straightened. But what is it in your science and math courses?
I could almost hear her rationale floating from her brain to mine: she’d defaulted to Occam’s razor—all other things being equal, go with the simplest solution—so of course the problem was some wayward grade in an English or history course. Those pesky humanities! That must be it! Many a fantastic biologist had been foiled by a required literature course.
—The same, I said. It’s the same.
She blew air from the side of her mouth. It billowed through her bangs.
—Well that doesn’t make any sense, she said. Your grades should be higher.
I winced. They should, I said.
She turned to her pad, scribbled something down. When I sat up straighter to see it, it read 3.5 min a must? She kept the pen in her hand and, as if it were a problem thrown to the class that she’d already solved but wanted us to puzzle out, asked, So why are they that low?
My hands sat curled in my lap. I thought of blaming Ariel Hernandez. I knew I could formulate a version of things where it really was his fault, and using him would make the grades seem more like a triumph than a mediocre showing. If other people could use him, why couldn’t I? And maybe it was true: maybe I knew he was on his way over, could feel or hear, because of the salt water in my blood, his mother making plans from across the Florida Straits. The daughter of the president of Thailand was a student at Rawlings—surely she had big things on her mind, and surely those things got in her way of studying for an exam, and surely she got a pass here and there for it. For the past six weeks, I’d worked hard at being less Cuban, at trying to pass as anything but Cuban. I’d refused to be an ambassador, but to get this internship, maybe an ambassador was what I needed to be: I needed to play it up to explain away the grades. I could say I was the daughter of someone important and legitimately connected to the whole affair—a judge, a congressman. I could even play along with my mom, claim Caridaylis as a sister. I had to try; Jillian had just landed her dream summer in entertainment law through her mom’s friend. It was my turn to hustle.
Make Your Home Among Strangers Page 27