Make Your Home Among Strangers

by Jennine Capó Crucet

—Not that! Jesus! Why are you acting like this?

  I zipped up my jacket even though the room was too hot.

  —Don’t worry about it.

  He held the envelope up in front of my face and said, I’m not going to. I couldn’t be happier. I thought you’d get that better than anyone, but clearly I’m wrong.

  He picked up his bag, slung it back over his shoulders.

  —Ethan, I’m sorry. I’m just upset, okay?

  He faced me again, his lips drawn into his mouth. It doesn’t matter, he said.

  He looked at the ground, and his hair flopped over his forehead.

  —I was so happy when I saw it was you in here, he said. I’m an idiot.

  With the long edge of the envelope, he tapped the table twice, then looked through the glass walls down the hallway. He said, Forget this, I’m getting another RA to fill in here, then calling my mom to get that over with. Then I’m celebrating.

  I tried to undo what I’d done by saying as he walked away, Your mom’s gonna freak, she’s gonna be so proud of you.

  He shrugged, tapped the glass door with the envelope like he had the table.

  —She won’t know what it means. But she’ll be happy to hear I won’t be moving back home for good this summer.

  Someone came through the door—a resident who Ethan said hi to. His hello was just a nod, a stiff hand raised: serious and so Not Ethan in its perfunctory delivery that it proved how much I’d hurt him.

  —I swear I’m happy for you, Ethan. I didn’t mean what I said before to come out like that. I’m the idiot, okay?

  —Have a good spring break, Lizet. Maybe I’ll see you when you get back.

  I wasn’t going anywhere, not until Easter, but I couldn’t explain why now, so there was no point in correcting him. The study lounge’s glass door closed after him. He turned back with a little envelope-accentuated salute—the closest thing to a joke he could muster—before disappearing down the hall.

  * * *

  I was grateful that I had our room to myself over spring break, with no chance of Jillian walking in with only a Hey and stuffing a change of clothes in her bag before leaving again. Ethan was away—he’d gone to New York City with friends at the last minute as part of his celebrating—and since Jillian had put a password on her computer, I spent the days at the library, studying and writing then deleting e-mails to Ethan and also racking up work hours by picking up all the shifts abandoned by people who’d headed somewhere warm, money I needed to pay off the plane ticket. By the middle of the week I’d gotten lonely enough to e-mail Jaquelin—she had to be around—but she wrote back saying she was spending break on a service trip with some organization in Honduras, and I hated her so much for being this ideal Rawlings minority student that I deleted the e-mail without looking at the pictures she’d attached to it. Sending sunshine your way, she’d written; frustrated as I was, I believed she was really trying to do that.

  During each library shift, I worried I’d run into Professor Kaufmann. Right before break, she asked if I was leaving town (she’d scheduled the lab work so that we wouldn’t kill or damage anything because of a week’s worth of inattention), and I lied and said I was headed home to Miami. She said she wanted to check in about the internship when I got back, about some forms I should be receiving in the mail. Any and every tall woman who came through the library’s entrance that week was greeted by a half-hidden version of me cowering behind the library’s security desk; I only emerged once I saw that it wasn’t Professor Kaufmann pushing a coat’s hood back from her face or stomping snow from her boots. And once classes started again, she didn’t ask me to stay behind to talk, didn’t e-mail me a reminder to linger after lab. The forms she’d mentioned never arrived in my campus mailbox, and I figured she must’ve realized I wasn’t applying for the internship and was silently upset. In the days before my Easter flight, I kept waiting for her to make me admit I’d misled her, and the dread of that moment followed me around campus, sat with me during lab or at work, and was only eventually crowded out by fear—of flying, yes, but of so much more—the instant I heard the click of my seatbelt on the airplane.

  30

  THOUGH I NEVER TOLD OMAR I’d seen my mom on the news and that I knew about the weeks-long vigil, I did tell him a few days out from my arrival that I’d found some mythical last-minute deal on an Easter flight. When he asked me why Easter—his voice rising, sounding more than a little panicked—I said, I just feel like I should be home for the day Jesus resurrected himself. He didn’t say anything except, Yeah I guess, and I worried I’d gotten it wrong and given myself away, that Easter celebrated something else: I hadn’t been to church since my first communion, and even there I had no solid memories—only that I forgot to take off my lace gloves in the bathroom before I went to wipe. I asked Omar to pick me up from the airport, then gave him a chance to confess everything he’d been keeping from me. I asked him, Is there a reason why I shouldn’t come home for Easter, Omar? No, he said. I even asked, Is something going on I don’t know about? I really do think I gave him enough with that, that this test was almost too easy. Still, he failed it. No no, he said. He coughed for a few seconds then said, We’ll go to the beach while you’re here. So I knew he’d keep my trip a secret, since he was already keeping so many secrets from me.

  Omar paid to park and met me at the gate instead of driving around until spotting me, which is what we’d agreed on over the phone. Under other circumstances I would’ve found the gesture sweet, but this was another Thursday night with me in Miami for a holiday my family didn’t celebrate. This was me trying to—what? What the hell was I doing there? That’s what I thought when I saw him waiting near a bank of chairs, because that’s what his face said: El, what are you doing here?

  The first thing he actually said after I pulled away from his stiff hug was, Where’s your ring?

  I told him I left it at school, that I didn’t want to lose it on the plane, and I pretended to struggle with my bag to avoid looking at his face. I’d taken it off for good the night I booked the flight, had dropped it in the mug on my desk that held my pens and pencils right after clicking Purchase. He said, Really?—his voice so tight and uncomfortable that I knew he didn’t believe me as much as he wanted to when he said, Right, that makes sense.

  The ride home felt just as awkward, but he bought my I’m tireds as I leaned against the car door, the street rumbling too close under me. When I first sat in the Integra, my butt dropped into its bucket seat hard: I’d forgotten how low his car was, and as we zoomed through the concrete layer cake of the parking garage, I imagined my ass scraping against each speed bump that the car tipped its way over.

  Once he’d navigated away from the airport to the expressway, he veered in what felt like the wrong direction, the sign for Hialeah three lanes away on the other side of the road, indicating a different on-ramp than the one we were hurtling toward. I said the first of many things neither of us expected over that trip.

  —I’m not going to my mom’s.

  —What are you talking about? You can’t stay at my place, my mom would –

  —I know, I said. Drop me off at my dad’s.

  He huffed like I’d said something funny, asked if I even knew where my dad lived since selling the house, if I’d even talked to him since August. When I said yes, I did, and yes, I had—that I’d seen my dad over Christmas but hadn’t bothered to tell him because it wasn’t his business and please, could he just stop talking and take me to the Villas—he knew right then that I’d find a different way back to the airport come Monday.

  I hadn’t planned to see my dad, but the silence sitting between me and Omar the rest of the drive made me see how much I needed my dad’s help, and that I could’ve never asked him in advance. The angry rumble of the streets beneath me, the cologne-saturated air wafting up from the car seats, the strict grids of the neighborhoods out the window: all these things confirmed that this was the only way to ask him—just show up, my bag behind me, and
tell my dad what we had to do in the morning.

  —I don’t think anyone’s here, Omar said as he slowed down.

  I ducked to look past his head and worried he was right: my dad’s town house was the only dark one of all those we’d passed on our way through the Villas. But his van was there. It was only ten forty-five—no way he’d be asleep already. All my life, even with my own late nights, he always stayed up past me as he shuffled bills and other papers at a living room cabinet that folded down, becoming, when he pulled a chair up to it, his desk.

  —It’s fine, he’s here, I said. Open the trunk.

  I was already out of the car and sliding along its side when Omar said from the driver’s seat, I’m not leaving you in this place like this.

  He wouldn’t open the trunk. I asked him again. I knocked on the car, the metallic thuds sounding to me like the noise my fist would make against his head were I to knock on that. I knocked harder.

  He still didn’t open the trunk; he got out of the car instead.

  —I said I’m not leaving you here. I can’t. No one’s even here, are you crazy?

  I kept knocking all the way through that. He came around to the back and laid his palms on the trunk, leaning forward over it after checking that his T-shirt covered his belt buckle, to avoid scratches.

  —Get back in the car, he said.

  I put my hand on the latch hidden below the boxed-in A ornament and flicked it over and over again, the sound of it worse than any damage I was really causing. Between these thunks, I said, Did you tell my mom I was coming?

  —No, he said. Stop that already.

  —You say anything to Leidy? Tell me the truth.

  —No! Lizet, come on, quit it!

  Inside the town house, at the window I remember being in the kitchen, a fluorescent light flickered and flickered and then finally stayed on.

  I said in a singsong voice, I’m gonna break it.

  Omar threw his hands up and ducked into the driver’s side. The latch suddenly had more resistance, could go past the metal piece I’d been slamming it against, and the trunk glided open with a hiss. I grabbed my bag and began hauling it out, letting it scrape against the lining at the edge of the trunk.

  —Watch it, Omar said, back next to me, but he didn’t make a move to help. He knew better. And so did I: I slid my hand to the back of the suitcase to make sure the wheels cleared. I planted the thing on the ground next to me.

  —Well thanks! I said. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled like a clown. Bye!

  —El, are you serious?

  —What? I said. Thank you for the ride here. What else do you want me to say?

  —Who do you think you’re talking to? he said. He closed his eyes, put his hand over his face, smeared it down—a reset. He stared at my bare hand until someone said my name like a threat—my dad’s voice.

  Omar stepped away and said with a forced laugh, Mr. Ramirez, hey, ¿como anda, como está? He put out an arm to shake my dad’s hand, but my dad didn’t take it.

  —What are you doing here, my dad said to me. You’re supposed to be at school.

  He wore only a pair of jeans, paint splattered in the usual places, and a new gold chain I’d never seen circled his neck. He crossed his arms—the face of his watch flashing light at us—and opened his legs, leaned to the right to see me around Omar’s big block of a body. I couldn’t see my dad’s face though: he was backlit and still a little too far away, but from his voice I knew he was mad.

  —I came home for Easter, I said.

  —Easter? he said. Since when do you –

  And then he stopped, looked up at the sky, said, Ay dios mío. He closed his legs and let his arms drop.

  —Mr. Ramirez, Omar said. I just want to say I had no part in getting Lizet here like this, this was totally her idea, I didn’t know she’d make me drive here to your place.

  —Omar, he said, you should go now.

  —Yessir.

  He put his hands in his pockets as he backed up against the car. My dad jerked his head toward the apartment door, recrossed his arms.

  —Lizet, come inside. Now.

  —Dad, I said.

  But he’d already turned around and was heading in.

  Omar rushed at me with wide steps and raised his palm in the air between us. He looked angrier than I’d ever seen him.

  —I don’t know what you’re pulling here, he said, but I’ve never been bad to you, you know that, so there’s no reason for you to do me like this.

  —There’s not?

  I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and jerked it past him. I waited for the sound of his car door to slam but it didn’t come.

  —Lizet, what the fuck did I even do!

  —Like you don’t know, I yelled. You should go now. You heard my dad.

  He stomped to the car and dropped his body into it, slammed the door and lowered the window in one smooth motion. He said, more to the steering wheel than to me, I give up with this shit.

  I slapped my own chest and yelled, Why don’t you watch the news and figure it out yourself like I did?

  —That’s why you’re mad at me? El, what the fuck were you gonna do from up there?

  I pointed at him and said, Exactly, Omar. That right there, what you just said? That’s exactly why I’m here. To fucking do something since you and Leidy obviously didn’t.

  —Oh! Okay yeah, he yelled. So now you know how to handle everything, huh? You got it all figured out, don’t you. You think you’re so fucking smart.

  He threw the car in reverse, shook his head as he turned the wheel. I’d made it halfway up the concrete leading to my dad’s door when Omar lowered the passenger-side window and yelled my name, made me stop.

  —Whose fault is it that you weren’t here, huh? Maybe you need to think about that.

  I was ready for the tire screech of him driving off, a final flourish that would give me the space to yell Fuck you like the end of any normal fight, but the only sound was the mechanical whir of him putting the window up, the click of his locks keeping me out, the hum of the engine as he rolled away. And then unexpected, terrifying quiet.

  My dad had left the front door open, so the cold air inside and the rattling of the window unit met me seconds before I crossed the threshold. All the lights were on now, and the door to his bedroom, visible from the apartment’s entrance, was open. He sat on the edge of his bed, his hands rubbing his knees as he mumbled to the carpet. He’d grown back his goatee: he looked like my father again. The bed beneath him was neatly made, and the thought of him making his bed, scooting around it to pull the sheet corners tight, made so little sense to me that I almost sat down on the couch and held my breath to wait out the rocking feeling in my chest.

  But I didn’t have the chance. He waved me into his room, saying, Hurry up, come here. I left my suitcase by the couch but he said, No, that thing too, come on. I held my palm out toward it as if to ask why, and once I’d dragged it in, he murmured, Because Rafael, he’s not home yet, I don’t want him to think – why the hell do you make me explain everything to you! Why do you always ask so many fucking questions!

  I blurted out, Oh please, don’t even start. If that were true, I’d know why you sold the house like that.

  The second surprise of the night for me—that I said that, that I let the fuck you trapped inside find its way out to the person who deserved it the most.

  He sat up straight, stunned, and I backed away from the bed’s edge. His chest stopped moving. His hands froze on his knees. He was in that instant making a choice: to slap me for what I’d just said and accuse me of the disrespect I’d shown, or to let it sit there in the room so as to find out if the reason I’d shown up out of nowhere was something more substantial, something even more worthy of punishment. His upper lip twitched, his mustache hairs curling into it like the spirals holding together a notebook.

  —I sold the house because I couldn’t think of a better way to hurt your mother.

  He cleared his t
hroat, and his next words came out a little louder.

  —I thought you’d figure that out without me having to tell you. You’re the smart one, remember?

  His face puckered like he’d been hit with a rush of heartburn, his elbows locked and his hands still on his knees. He said, Why would you be hurt? You’d already decided to go.

  He resumed rubbing his knees over his jeans, the sound scratchy.

  —Shit, you’d already told that school you were coming. And I thought your sister would move in with that asshole once he got over himself. So I figured, might as well make Lourdes miserable for once.

  He shrugged but turned his face to the wall.

  I focused on his room’s disgusting ceiling, the same smear of lumps and stains as the rest of the town house, the rims of my eyes feeling less full with that shift. The water rings in that room had been painted over, though I didn’t have to strain to find them lurking in the corners. I knew if I said, Well you were wrong, that everything would spill over in a bad way, into the kind of tear-laden brawl he was used to having with my mom. All I had to do was look at him and it would start, familiar and easy. So I pointed my chin higher.

  —Lizet, come on. It’s just a house, it’s over. Please, okay?

  He stood up but sat right back down when he felt how close that movement brought him to where I stood. The bed took up almost the whole room, only a U of a path around it on three sides, the head of it up against the far wall. He shifted over to the bed’s edge farthest from me—his way of asking me to sit with him.

  I left my bag—up to then an anchor, a podium—and sat down. Neither of us said anything. Then my stomach growled so loudly that it sounded fake, like I’d made the noise with my mouth. He jolted at the rumble but didn’t make a joke about it or—as my mom would’ve done, as she’d done the very first time I came home to her, mere seconds after I surprised her at her door and without waiting for a growl to cue the question—offer me anything to eat. I felt dizzy again, the room swaying in the direction I’d moved to sit on the bed, so I focused on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to push the feeling away. The room smelled of damp carpet, of dirty socks and sweat, but the cloying cover of fabric softener and dryer sheets hovered over all of it. That wet air moved in and out of me, made me feel worse.