Make Your Home Among Strangers

by Jennine Capó Crucet

  —There were some things. Going on back at home, I said.

  She didn’t budge, just sat there staring at me, holding her pen.

  —There’s this boy, I said.

  I couldn’t face her as I lied. I focused on the thumbnails I’d obliterated with my teeth, a habit I shared with Leidy and one I couldn’t control, as it happened while I read and studied: I was in no way conscious of it. I’d drawn blood from the right thumb the day before, and that had stopped me—the sudden taste of iron.

  I closed my eyes. I shook my head no—let her think what she wanted to think, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t pin the bad grades on Ariel any more than I could explain to her why I didn’t think of them as bad grades.

  —Oh, it’s OK! she said, too loudly. You know, things happen, with boys.

  I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand before raising my face. She looked around the room, searching for an escape.

  —But you must not be together anymore, correct?

  She nodded, leaned forward as if to make me nod, too.

  —This semester? she said. Because you’re better now. Your work. No distractions, no boyfriend, so now everything’s better.

  I must’ve looked as stunned as I felt, because she said, Oh, I didn’t mean – don’t worry! There are more fish in the sea! Perhaps you don’t even need a fish!

  I laughed, not knowing what else to do, and she watched me laugh and joined in a second later, one moment past natural. I raised my shoulders, then let them fall.

  —So you have no reason to say no, she said.

  —But my grades –

  —It’s fine, she said. She crossed out the note she’d written. Just remain focused this semester. You’re doing super so far. Everything will be better. There is no boy?

  —There’s no boy, I assured her.

  She took the folder from the bench, held it out to me. I took it from her slowly to hide the true electric thrill running down my arms and legs at what her handing it to me really meant. I said thank you. I told her I’d let her know soon, after I talked with my parents, but that I couldn’t imagine anything I’d want to do more.

  Returning to my dorm room that afternoon—the folder in my bag, slapping against my back with every step—I whispered my half of a theoretical conversation into the evening air, the mist of my breath taking the place of any answers. I couldn’t really afford a flight down for spring break, or maybe for Easter, to talk to my parents in person about the internship offer, but I also couldn’t imagine asking over the phone: the phone would make it harder to explain that they could trust this kind of program, that it wasn’t a scam or a trap or a disguise for a prostitution ring. This sort of mistrust, which had come up with my financial aid, only got worse with every document I’d signed and mailed back. They’d drawn the line at my social security card: my dad forbade me from mailing a copy of it and instead made me call to see if I could just bring one to the registrar’s office during orientation (the registrar said that would be too late, and so I managed to get copies sent through a high school guidance counselor). But at least my parents had been in the same physical space when I’d had to argue for something—I didn’t have to make all my points twice, because we all still lived in the same house. I shoved my ungloved hands deeper into my pockets and kept moving, wiggling my fingers to keep them warm.

  * * *

  It would make more sense if what happened a day later had happened right away instead, but the truth is I had all afternoon and the whole night to let it sink in, to fret and fantasize about my summer in the faraway fantasyland of California. I showed the folder to Jillian when I got to our room, and after saying No fucking way! to every page—the loudest one coming when she saw the stipend—she congratulated me before grabbing her toothbrush and putting it in her book bag; she wanted to have it with her, she said, in case she ended up pulling another all-nighter with an All-Nighter, a joke we’d said so many times it had lost all its humor then circled back and regained it. She left for her afternoon class, and I sat in my chair, debating which parent to call first.

  I couldn’t make myself pick up the phone though. I wanted to call Jillian’s parents. Her parents—her parents—would know what to say if she called with news like this. Oh my god, honey! That’s fantastic! When does it start? Maybe we can come out at the end and make a vacation out of it. Oh, sweetheart, what an opportunity! We’re thrilled for you, so thrilled.… It was a good thing, a happy thing, something that meant their daughter was performing at a very high level. Jillian would never have to convince them of that. They recognized good news when they heard it.

  I decided to hold the offer in me for one night, to let the invitation and what it meant be just mine. The moment I told either parent would be the moment the news started to erode, to be questioned and confused. I wanted to be selfish and keep it, let it run around unencumbered through one night’s dreams. To put off for one day the fight toward not a Yes—I would never get a Yes—but toward the answer that got me to Rawlings: Fine, Lizet, do whatever the hell you want.

  But I should’ve at least called my father that day. It turned out to be the only night when the internship offer stood even a chance of being received as good news, the last night before things got much, much harder.

  28

  THE WALK BACK TO MY ROOM from my Spanish section the next morning brought with it a phenomenon for which very few people or things—no ice-cream-infused orientation week assembly, no e-mail blast from the Office of Diversity Affairs, and certainly in my case no big sister or older cousin—could’ve prepared me. Later, I’d see it: Of course my not calling home had a flip side. Home, it turned out, was just as reluctant to talk to me. And much later, I’d learn from other first-in-the-family-to-go-to-college people—Jaquelin, other friends I made and sometimes lost—that I wasn’t alone, that at some point in our time away, we’d all had our moment of familial reckoning: one friend’s moment happening over a winter break, his first morning back home, when he woke up in his apartment and found his mother still there, finding out then that weeks and weeks earlier, she’d been laid off and was still not working; another friend’s moment coming in an airport, when she saw, next to her mother, her father waiting for her and in a wheelchair—a month earlier he’d fallen off a roof at work and would maybe never walk again. Why didn’t you tell us? we all asked, only to be told, You couldn’t do anything from up there, or, We didn’t want you to worry. Maybe they tried, You’re always so stressed, so busy. And we each heard these excuses exactly the way we thought we were meant to hear them, with a confused rage pounding in our ears that translated their words into brand-new hurt: Like you even care about who you left behind. Like you didn’t decide to abandon us first. We never admitted that we’d needed to believe them when they told us nothing was wrong.

  I say this only as a long-overdue explanation to Caroline, Tracy, and the other two white girls—should they ever read this—who stood in the TV lounge as I passed it on my way back from class that morning. I was headed down the hall to my room, practicing in my head what I’d say to my parents to explain the internship, when I heard on the midmorning news show surging from the screen those girls watched a story about Ariel Hernandez. The last thing I expected to hear in the hallway was that voice, then to see, on that television screen, my mother’s face.

  I veered into the TV lounge and yelled toward the voice, What are you doing here!—not registering that Mami was still far away in Florida. All four girls jumped and turned around; I hurtled past them, my arms wrapped around my Spanish textbook. I dodged the couch and stopped just short of the TV, not caring that I blocked their view. My mom’s name suddenly appeared on screen in a title beneath her head: Lourdes Ramirez, Madres Para Justicia (Mothers for Justice).

  Nothing Leidy or Omar had said in our calls or their messages had indicated that my mother was still heavily involved with the Ariel protests—what was she doing on a national news show with some official-sounding words after her name?
I couldn’t make sense of her face, which was not wet or blotchy like the last time I’d seen her near Ariel. This face had foundation powder dusted over it, a little thick but evenly applied. This face had mascara slicked onto its eyelashes, brows gelled into submission, blush swooped on the right bones, lip liner with—I could barely believe it—coordinating lipstick. This face didn’t shake or scream or let itself get messed with tears; this face had talking points. This face was professional. I was glad I’d heard her voice first, because I might’ve passed right by the face alone.

  —Oh my gosh, can you move? one girl said behind me.

  I answered her with Shhh and a slap at the air. My mother, answering a question I’d missed, said without blinking, We are here because his mother is not. That, sir, is our mission.

  —Oh wait, another girl—Tracy—whispered behind me. That’s Jillian’s roommate, she’s Cuban, from Miami.

  —Jillian from your floor? another girl said.

  Tracy must’ve nodded, because no one behind me asked me to confirm. Lizet, I almost said without turning around. My name is Lizet—you know that—and it’s also my fucking floor. A man’s voice off camera said, Can you tell us what else your group is doing to prevent this latest court order from being enforced?

  So the phrase attached to my mom’s name, Mothers for Justice, was this group, and my mother was, at least at the moment, its spokesperson. How could Leidy and Omar have kept the existence of this version of my mom from me all these weeks—and worse, how could I have tricked myself into believing them each time they said everything was fine? From right behind me, a chirp: Caroline’s voice.

  —Um, Liz? Hey, is everything OK?

  —Why is she – what’s going on?

  There was a pause—maybe a silence during which the four girls searched each other’s faces, ponytails shaking with their Nos. I turned around and saw they’d all backed up, their thin legs pressed against the couch seat. It wasn’t until I faced the TV again that one of them got brave enough to answer.

  —Ariel Hernandez is going back home. His dad’s coming to get him, Caroline said.

  —What! His dad? Since when?

  I pressed the volume button, kept clicking the plastic bar even when the set was as loud as it would go, like a lab rat desperate for more food from a dispenser. I looked for Leidy and her red tube top in the background—but nothing. Behind me, feet shuffled against the carpet, moving a step or two away.

  —We’ve begun a twenty-four-hour prayer vigil, my mother said into a microphone, looking at the camera dead-on. She said, We started two nights ago and will continue through Easter. One or more of us will keep a constant prayer for Ariel, for his family here in Miami, and for the soul of his mother in heaven.

  —Since when do you pray? I asked the TV.

  My mom’s face shrank down into a small box in the upper-right corner as some other footage played on the screen: a little boy sitting on someone’s shoulders next to Ariel, who sat on his uncle’s shoulders, the caption reading Ariel and Friends. Her face expanded to take up the screen again, and I wondered if the reporter would ask about the obvious cartoon series Ariel and Friends should spawn.

  From behind me, as I tried to listen to the questions and my mom’s answers and fill in the blanks set up by the people I’d trusted most, there was this quick, whispered conversation, the kind of semi-private banter I recognized from months earlier—the morning I first saw snow, when they’d watched me and play-by-played my reaction, me just their freezing spectacle: So wait, that woman is one of his relatives? They didn’t say but I think so. Wait, she’s his mom. No, I think she’s just related to his mom. I thought his mom was dead. Then who was that before – the girl they showed? That’s his cousin or something. But she’s his legal guardian now? No, this woman is. No, she’s just some lady. I think she’s their social worker. Maybe she’s their lawyer? She’s not their lawyer.

  I spun around, dropped my textbook on the ground, the pages splaying at my feet.

  —Will you shut the hell up? I yelled. I’m trying to figure out how the fuck this happened.

  I don’t know why I cursed, sounding so much like Leidy all of a sudden—the one person supposedly still physically close enough to Mami to have stopped her from whatever Mothers for Justice was. When was she planning on telling me anything, when Mami got arrested? When Ariel and Caridaylis moved in with us? Caroline stepped up to me, her puffy lilac vest zipped tight over her flat chest, the same vest she’d worn the day of the first snowfall, when she’d made us all hot chocolate from scratch.

  —There’s no need to get like that, she said.

  I put my hand in her face and said, Right, except that’s not your fucking mom on TV right now, so just get the fuck out of here.

  —Jesus Christ, she said, and the girl behind her said, You don’t have to be nasty.

  Tracy, standing farthest from me and wearing a wide mint-green headband, said, That’s your mother? Really?

  I felt the spark then—the flare that shoots up at being challenged—what Weasel must’ve felt and had thrown in my face before Christmas when I went looking for my dad, the rage with which my mom once fainted but that she now channeled into a microphone over a thousand miles away.

  —Yes, that’s my mom, I said to Tracy’s headband, to her restrained hairline. You want to say something about it?

  Tracy and Caroline and another girl drew together, their shoulders touching, instinctively clinging to the pack to avoid being picked off one by one. But the fourth girl, who had yet to say a word, crept backward, her eyes on the carpet the entire time, as if willing me to notice she wouldn’t be able to identify me in a lineup later if it came to that. She slinked out of the room, her hands shoved in her pockets as she turned in the doorway and all but sprinted down the hall. No one but me noticed she’d left.

  Caroline held her head at a practiced angle and said calmly, Don’t get so upset, OK? Take a second to just calm down.

  Why did she have to say that? Why did she try to step in and help me when the smartest thing those girls could’ve done was what their friend did and just walk away? I stepped closer to them, to her, and felt taller, stronger for the high-school-born pride and fear—the adrenaline churn of some hallway fight an accidental blow sucked you into. I scanned the room for a chair, for something light but significant I could eventually throw.

  —Calm down? I shouted. Are you shitting me! Out of nowhere my mom is on national television, this whole fucking spectacle obviously way outta hand –

  —No, exactly, Caroline said. That’s why his dad’s coming, to end all this –

  —Come on, Tracy blurted. The man just wants his son back.

  —That’s not the fucking point! I yelled. Besides, the guy knew they were coming, he knew their whole plan, they had his blessing! His dad caring now is just some propaganda shit on the part of Castro and the Cuban government!

  I’d heard all this while in Miami—was hearing it again behind me now, part of my mother’s bullet points—but I didn’t know, when I repeated it, if I believed it: it was easier to feel rage about Ariel than regret about not being home to have stopped Mami myself, so it’s possible I wasn’t really convinced of what I’d said until all three of those girls rolled their eyes like a reflex. There is nothing like the whites of someone’s eyes to convince you how very true what you believe is, how very much you must act on it.

  —Are you really too stupid to see that? I said.

  I stepped over my book, the soaked toe of my sneaker hitting Caroline’s boots.

  —You want to tell me I’m wrong? You want to tell me I’m lying?

  —OK, she said, putting her hands up. Wow, OK.

  She stepped back and almost fell down into the seat of the couch, but she only wobbled, watching me the whole time like I was some animal she’d just failed at taming.

  I shoved the beak of my fingers into the embroidered pattern of letters on her vest—The North Face, it said—and she let herself sway with the
force.

  None of them pushed me back. They were afraid of me, and I couldn’t believe it. There were three of them, three of them, all taller than me. In high school, this was a no-brainer: I should’ve been the one avoiding physical contact, the one looking for the fastest way around them and out of the building. I should’ve been the one ready to duck. Instead, I let them keep this nonsense switch; I widened my stance and stepped right on Caroline’s boot. I leaned all the way on it. She should’ve smacked me for it, or at least pushed me off—I even closed my eyes, ready for it in a deep-down way—and when she didn’t do it, when my sneaker collapsed her boot’s toe, I knew we were from very different places, and I could push her, push all three of them, as far as I wanted, as far as they expected me to go.

  —No one’s saying they don’t believe you, Caroline said slowly.

  I slid my foot off her boot.

  The third girl, now the farthest from me, said in too cute a voice, I just feel like he needs to go back, get back to his life, to his school and stuff.

  —You feel like? Let me ask you, what kind of life do you think he’s gonna have in Cuba? Tell me. You really think he can go back? He can go back to school and say to the kid next to him, Oh in Miami I had a puppy and I ate steak every day and we had soap and toilet paper and freedom of speech and the air inside buildings was freezing cold? You really think Castro’s gonna allow a liability like that on his island? In a place where the news is censored? You’re telling me that can really happen? After how good he’s had it here?

  They watched me with steady faces, with thin lips parted, as if dealing with someone holding a knife to their own wrist. I said, That kid’s life in Cuba won’t be worse because it’s Cuba. It’ll be worse because he knows what life is like here.

  —He doesn’t belong here, Tracy huffed. Just because he got a taste of the good life –