Make Your Home Among Strangers

by Jennine Capó Crucet

  Leidy was mad enough that she refused to take me to the airport Monday when it was time for me to go. My mom didn’t have the chance to refuse me this; she’d chained herself to Ariel’s house the morning of my flight, and I couldn’t bring myself to go over there and bend down and kiss her goodbye where she sat on the sidewalk. My father called to offer me a ride, having watched the news and figuring I might need it. Too embarrassed that he was right, I told him I was fine, that Mom was excited about taking me. He said, That’s fine, and then hung up, and on the plane I realized that he’d probably seen not just the coverage but my mom herself on TV, her wrists bound to Ariel’s fence, her legs dusty from the concrete beneath her.

  So Omar—the first person I saw that trip to Miami—was the last person I saw, too. I met him several blocks from the apartment: I had to walk almost a mile to find the first street not blocked off by police. When I opened the Integra’s door, his face was dry but it was clear he’d been crying.

  —You too? I said. Did you really think the family could just keep refusing to hand him over? Jesus, does it really take leaving Miami to see that was impossible?

  He stared straight ahead. He clenched and unclenched his hands around the steering wheel. I watched him swallow.

  —So I guess we’re over then, he said.

  And I was so surprised at where his mind was and at how far my own thoughts now lived from his that I grabbed his arm and squeezed it. I said, God Omar, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I can’t.

  He nodded slowly, nostrils flaring, and said, No I figured, then just drove, his lips pulled into his mouth the whole ride. He hugged me like I’d never come back when he dropped me off, but he didn’t park like last time, the hug happening in the middle lane of the airport’s departures area.

  So there was no one to call when I got back to campus, no one who wanted to hear I’d made it back safely. Only Jillian, studying with earphones over her ears—she pulled them off as I walked through our door. And though she eventually asked about the raid and what she’d seen on the news, and though she wanted details I’d never be willing to give her, she gaped at the bandage on my hand and began her interrogation with an almost sweet question, the first full sentence she’d spoken to me in weeks: Are you OK? Liz, please, tell me you’re OK.

  I sat down on my bed, dropped my bag at my feet, cradled and covered the hurt hand with the good one, and said, It’s so good to see you.

  34

  DESPITE HAVING TRIED TO TRADE shifts with someone before leaving, I still had to work at the library that night, and I sat there dazed, lulled into a kind of desolate trance by the dozens of people passing in and out of the doors who didn’t feel like they’d abandoned their families to be there, who didn’t know how it felt to be ambushed by your country and your own mother in a one-two punch. For most of my shift, when someone set off the sensors, I didn’t even call them back to my desk to check their bag—I just waved them off, because it felt wrong to be sitting there, a thousand miles from where I’d been that morning. What were a few lost books? I couldn’t care less. I waved and waved while staring down at my other hand, a finger tracing the grain of the wooden desk.

  But I raised my head after one very long set of beeps to find Ethan right in front of me, his arm reaching back, a book from one of the special collections in his hand that he’d used to intentionally anger the sensors, the word BERKELEY stretching across his chest on a sweatshirt.

  —You’re not supposed to let this leave the building, he said.

  I hadn’t gone back to Happy Hours since our fight—I’d missed the last two while in Miami—and since he hadn’t e-mailed me to find out where I was, I figured he was waiting for me apologize. But I didn’t know how to do that without bringing up problems his example told me to keep to myself.

  —Thanks, is all I could make myself say.

  He put the book between us on the desk. He’d gotten a haircut, lopped off all the length and buzzed the top almost as short as the sides. It made him look older, like someone on his way to being gone. It very much suited him—made his jaw look stronger, his eyes more brilliant without hair to obscure them. I stared at him until he waved his hand in front of my face in slow passes.

  —Hello? Are you getting paid to be a zombie now? You look tired.

  —Nice to see you too, I said. What’s left of you.

  The hand went to his hair, fingers spreading out to hide as much of it as he could. Maybe in the instant I was getting called a sellout in a Little Havana backyard, Ethan was chatting about his upcoming move to Berkeley with some stylist, some girl like my sister working the clippers around his ears and saying So you’re getting a doctorate, what kind of doctor are you gonna be?—a mistake I might’ve made just a few months earlier, a mistake people like me made. I propped my elbows on the desk, leaned my face into my open hands, covered my eyes.

  —So you don’t like the haircut?

  —You look like a different person.

  —Is that a good or bad thing? he said. He pretended to laugh.

  I kept my eyes covered and tried to keep all feeling out of my voice. I said, I haven’t seen you in a while.

  —You stopped coming to Happy Hours.

  —You’ve been avoiding me too, right? It’s not like you don’t know where to find me. You found me now.

  —Yeah, well, I figured you were still mad at me for getting into Berkeley.

  —I was never mad about that.

  —Whatever it was, it wasn’t OK. Can you maybe put your hands down and talk to me?

  I pressed my fingers harder into my eyelids until I made false light glow from them, just to the point of pain. I wanted to be back home, not having what now felt like a frivolous conversation. His sweatshirt, the glass doors, the rare book on the table—all of it felt so pointless, so small. I kept my hands up.

  —Ethan, I just got back from Miami like hours ago, and I’m sorry but I just can’t talk to you about this right now.

  —Why were you in Miami? he said.

  I couldn’t handle Ethan the RA trying to console me about something he didn’t have to think about unless he wanted to—another reason to resent him. I blinked into my fingertips. Please go away, I muttered.

  —You’re not wearing your ring, he said. Did something happen?

  I pulled my hands from my face.

  —I wasn’t home for that. Seriously, what part of Go away do you not understand?

  —You know, Lizet, I don’t know why I’m standing here either. If anything you should be apologizing to me.

  He was talking too loud for the library’s foyer, but I didn’t care. There were worse things in the world than talking too loudly in the library. There were much worse things than hearing the basest version of what you might want from someone thrown at you right when you’re the happiest you’ve been in weeks.

  —Okay, fine. Sorry I told you the truth. Are we done here?

  He surprised me by saying, No, we’re not.

  He leaned over my desk and said, I don’t know what’s going on with you. I know you’re – or were, I don’t know – serious about someone, and I’ve tried to be respectful of that. But I still thought we – look, it’s not what you said. It’s how you said it. You insulted the fact that I like being around you. You made me feel like an asshole when I’ve tried really hard not to be an asshole with you.

  I slid the book to my side and dropped it with a slap into the return bin even though special collections books were supposed to get reshelved immediately. The sound was meaner than I wanted, but I needed him to leave me alone—there was no room left in my imagination for a version of my life that included someone like Ethan. I pushed my fingernail into a knot in the desk’s wood, tried to scrape away some of its shine.

  —Did Berkeley send you that sweatshirt? I said.

  It was the closest I could come to the way we’d always played around, so easy and so quick and subtle, like before. I hoped he’d heard the compliment beneath it—That just loo
ks right on you—but he shook his head.

  —OK, I think I’m done here, he said.

  —Come on, Ethan. Do we really need to do this now?

  His Adam’s apple churned at his throat, like an animal fighting its way out. If he’d found me at work before I’d gone home, I would’ve asked him to come back after my shift—maybe even feigned sickness to leave early—and I would’ve confessed everything: Do you watch the news? Have you heard about this kid? I could’ve told him about the internship happening on his coast, how I wanted to do it but felt like I shouldn’t. If he’d found me before I’d promised Leidy I’d come home, I could’ve asked him how far Berkeley was from Santa Barbara. Maybe you could visit me this summer. Except now none of that mattered: I needed to be home and Ethan didn’t need to be anywhere he didn’t want to be. I sat up in my chair, tired of how he made me feel, jealous of how lucky he was to have survived long enough at Rawlings for his priorities to change for good. There was no way to explain to him and his sweatshirt why I no longer cared how many books were kidnapped from the library.

  —No, Lizet, we don’t need to do this now. Don’t worry, we won’t do it at all.

  He backed away from the desk.

  —I’m just saying I’m sure we both have real things to worry about.

  —I’m sure we do, he said.

  He reached out his arm and drummed on the desk with his fingers, and I remembered the day he introduced himself to me at that exact spot, and I think he was thinking the same thing, how it would make perfect sense if this ended here, too. We both knew I wouldn’t go back to Happy Hours; I’d gotten through finals once without them, and I would do it again. The day his bag triggered the sensors, I’d been mean—I didn’t even give him my name—because I was busy puzzling through my probation letter. He’d been charmed by it then. All these months later, his future was so much closer to what I’d wanted for myself, before accepting my real fate.

  —I’m going to go, he said. I better go.

  He knocked on the table once. I said, Yeah you better, to keep myself from grabbing his hand, to make myself help him go.

  —Have a nice life, I said to the swinging door, and I imagined the quip Ethan could’ve tossed back at me, the meanest, most true reply: I will. Unlike you, I can plan on it.

  * * *

  When I showed up for lab the next week, Professor Kaufmann glided by my bench and said, We missed you last Monday. I thought she was about to ask me the same questions Jillian had inevitably ventured—where was I during the raid, did anyone I know get hurt or arrested—but instead she asked me to speak with her after class. This resulted in me mismeasuring and mishandling anything that required measurement and handling during the lab. At the end of class, as I waited for the room to empty, Professor Kaufmann sorted papers on her lab bench, and I thought about how lucky she was to have nothing but her work, her research—how lucky she was to be able to lose herself in project after project. Maybe she’d seen the news, had recognized me in the face of a woman chained to a fence in Miami, knew that that woman being there meant I was chained to something, too. I thought she’d make it easy for me this time by saying not to worry about the internship, that she’d nominated someone else.

  —So do you have your forms? she said after the door shut behind the last student.

  —Huh? I said. Then I remembered the envelope from California at the apartment, the papers Leidy had kept from me until I showed up there, papers I left in the top drawer of my dresser in Miami after promising to come back for the summer.

  —I thought you’d bring the forms, she said. You never mailed them in.

  She looked at my bench as if they’d be there, as if I were just as awkward as her when it came to talking to another human.

  She said, Your name wasn’t on the list of flights, and when I checked with Santa Barbara they said they never received your paperwork. So you must have it now, yes?

  —No, I don’t have it. Are you – have you been watching the news? About what happened, what’s happening down in Miami?

  —No, she said, but she smiled and nodded. Oh, she said. You mean the little boy. It’s very sad. It’s very complicated!

  —Right, yes. Well I didn’t know until now but it’s not going to work out, I think. I can’t participate this summer. At the internship with you. I need to be in Miami then.

  —Oh no! she said, genuinely surprised, but she didn’t ask for details.

  After a pause filled solely with her nodding, I said, Because of that boy. My family – well, my mom is sort of involved in the protests, and it’s been tough on my sister and her baby. I have to be there this summer to sort of help deal with that.

  She nodded slowly through my whole explanation and stopped just after I stopped. She said, Why?

  —Well because. Because it’s my mom, so I should be there.

  She blinked. I don’t understand, she said. What will you be doing down there?

  —Like, supporting them. Her and my sister.

  —Oh! You’ve found something with better funding?

  —No, no, I mean like other kinds of support, I guess.

  —I see, she said.

  She picked up her pen and wrote something; I recognized it as some sort of integral. She scratched it out, wrote something else.

  —It’s hard to explain, I said.

  And I regret what I said next: It’s like a cultural thing, I said.

  —Ooooh, she said. Oh, well, then I’m sorry it won’t work out.

  She rested the pen on the pad and smiled again, said, It’s a shame that your family won’t let you participate.

  —No, it’s not like that, I said. I just feel obligated to be there for them.

  —So ask them! Perhaps they will let you come!

  —It’s not them letting me or not letting me, I didn’t even talk to them about it.

  —I don’t understand. I had the forms sent weeks ago to your home address.

  —It’s just very bad timing, I said. I’m really sorry.

  —Bad timing?

  She picked up her pen, clicked it closed, returned it to the exact same spot.

  —This is fine, she said. Thank you for being clear. Perhaps just keep thinking about it? About the offer? Perhaps that’s all for now, she said.

  I thanked her for understanding even though she obviously didn’t, but her confusion about how I’d be helping my mom and sister opened up a place for all the disloyal parts, all the parts that were jealous of Caridaylis. Still, in declining the internship, I was keeping my promise to my sister and making up for other failures. Of course Professor Kaufmann didn’t understand. She was destined for a bigger life than I was—was already living it. I’d been stupid to see myself following in her footsteps and having a life like hers, and the severity and intensity of the protests and counterprotests in Miami over my last weeks at school proved me right. And so did Ethan, with his silence; I didn’t see or hear from him again until the onset of study week, when he sent me an e-mail. The subject line read only Hi, and all he wrote was, You OK, OK? As if our first joke were a magic spell that could conjure the swagger I’d wielded at that party months earlier, back when something as silly as wielding swagger could even count as a priority. So I didn’t write back. And anyway, there was no point: we were leaving campus in a matter of days, him for good, and I didn’t deserve whatever goodbye he imagined. I was proud of myself for giving him that, for releasing him from the obligation I might’ve let myself become. I felt in those weeks that school was a job: finish my courses with the highest grades possible and get back home. It brought me a sense of calm, to recognize my place, to admit I could only rise so far above where I’d come from and only for so long. It was even a relief—to have removed the pressure of long-term success by accepting that it was just beyond me—one that led me to have the second-best semester I’d ever have at Rawlings.

  35

  ARIEL HERNANDEZ LEFT THE UNITED STATES for good on a Wednesday in June of that year. I’d bee
n living under the cold war of our apartment for just over three weeks on that day, back in time to witness the worst of a different set of protests, the ones aimed at letting Cubans know that Other Miami had suffered enough of our antics.

  Leidy was behaving in what I now think of as a civil manner. She’d started dating this guy named David, a cop she met while trying to track down our mom the day I flew back to school. They were the ones to pick me up from the airport—in David’s patrol car, Dante’s car seat in the back with me—when I came home for the summer. I was the first one to be nasty: You don’t mind that my sister has a kid? I said through the air holes in the Plexiglas separating him and Leidy from where Dante and I sat. I was cranky, dismayed at how much summer loomed ahead of me, embarrassed to be in the back of a cop car like a suspect.

  —No way, he said. He had a buzzed head and wide, clean fingernails, the tips of his fingers the only thing steering the wheel, and he did that with such ease that I was jealous of him, of Leidy for having him.

  —Dante being around is how I knew right away that your sister puts out, he said.

  Leidy smacked his arm but laughed with her whole body. I liked him from that moment on.

  We were careful with and around each other: it was the only way to deal with our mom, who vacillated between distraught and enraged. She’d been fired from her job, and though Leidy had corralled her into applying for unemployment, the money wouldn’t last long, and it wasn’t enough anyway. They’d scaled back on Dante’s daycare since Mami was around to watch him more, but twice Leidy had come home from the salon to find a note on the fridge from Mami saying she’d stepped out to go lie down in the street in a protest on Calle Ocho, or to speak on camera with a news crew she’d seen pass by on their way to Ariel’s old house. Both times, Dante was still in his crib, playing alone, or, the second time, sleeping in a wet diaper, but this was Definitely not okay, as Leidy had put it, and I agreed with her.