Make Your Home Among Strangers (41 page)

My stomach growled again, a deep, smothered roar.

—Yeah, I said. I'm – what do you mean I'm not Cuban? I was born here, yeah, but I'm Cuban. I'm Latina at least, I said.

—Latinos are Mexicans, Central Americans. You're not that either, he said.

—What? Dad, are you – other people think I'm Cuban.

He stood up from the bed and moved out through the door, leaving me alone as he said, Okay, sure you are. Whatever you say, Lizet.

This is my roommate, Liz. She's Cuban.
Jillian said it just like that to every single person she introduced me to. I wanted to grab my dad as he left, shake him, tell him, Listen, if
Latino
means Central Americans, then why is that word on half the e-mails I get from my school's advising office, and why does it mean
me
? Shadows moved across his shoulders as he walked away; then I saw what they really were—new spurts of dark, grayish back hair.

From the bed, I said, You think I'm not Cuban but you also think our house was just a house.

He opened and shut the fridge, then a drawer; there was the sound of a metallic pull and snap. If he'd heard me, he was pretending he hadn't. He came back into the bedroom with a plastic spoon and an open can of fruit cocktail, the kind that's mostly peaches. He loved these little fruit-filled tins, made me or Leidy or my mom pour them, syrup and all, over two scoops of vanilla ice cream and bring them to him after dinner almost every night. It was a job we rotated, making and then delivering this dessert to him on the couch, and once, when he made me the maddest I'd ever been—a fight about Rawlings that led him to say he wouldn't buy me a plane ticket, that I wouldn't go to college
at all
, that he would never in his life allow it—I'd volunteered to prepare it. I was alone in the kitchen, and I blew my nose into my hand and then let the clear tear-induced snot drip out over the ice cream before covering it with the fruit, the syrup from the can matching the snot perfectly. I'd handed it to him, watched him eat and enjoy every bite.

—Here, he said, holding the can out to me. Eat this so you feel better.

I tried not to cry as I spooned the too-sweet fruit into my mouth. The cherry, only one per can as decided in some factory somewhere, was an artificial pink, more like a gumball than anything that had once been on a tree. I swallowed a peach slice without chewing it. There were maybe four in there total, along with something grainy and lighter that I took for a chunk of pear. I saved that for last.

—Do you need me to take you to your mother's?

—Well eventually, yeah.

—Lizet, he said. You cannot stay here.

I held the spoon in front of my face. He raised his arms up to indicate the walls around him and yelled, There's no room!

—I can sleep on your couch.

—That's not even my couch! It's Rafael's!

I drank the syrup from the can, tasting more metal than sweetness.

—No, I said. That's the couch from the family room. I remember it.

I finished off the syrup and said, You can take me on Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. It's gonna depend.

He should've asked
Depend on what
, and I could've used that to leap into what I needed from him: show up with me and tell my mom she wasn't going to any vigil.

—What! No! he said. No. I have to work tomorrow.

—You have to work on Good Friday?

—Yes, Lizet, I work every day. I'm not off reading books all the time on a four-year vacation. I'm
paying
for that vacation.

—One, I said, it's not vacation, but think whatever you want.

I got up from the bed and walked as steadily as I could manage to the kitchen, pretending to look for the trash. He followed me out there, pulling my suitcase with him.

—And two, you're not paying much compared to what you would if you'd stayed with Mom. So the least you can do is let me stay here until Saturday or Sunday morning.

To remain calm and distract myself from this mean truth, from how I'd said it as payback for him calling my time at Rawlings a vacation, I imagined myself descending on my mom's apartment, my dad at my side, the two of us barging through the door just as she was putting on her makeup and practicing, in the bathroom mirror, what she'd say to the cameras that day, all while Dante and Leidy slept in the room across the hall from her. Wash that shit off your face, I'd say, and my dad would say,
Now
.

—You think the money I have to give your mother every month doesn't go to your school bills? he yelled.

—I have to stay at least the night. At least.

—You're obviously not taking
math
up there!

I opened the lower cabinets one by one and in no rush, until I found—in the cabinet under the sink—the one with the plastic grocery bag hanging from inside its door, being used for garbage.

—I'm taking calculus. It's harder than math.

I held out the can and tilted it side to side, said too sweetly, Do you guys recycle?

—¡Ah carajo! he yelled.

I dropped the can into the bag, which was already full of used paper towels and the milky sleeves that once held stacks of saltines, and went to the couch, passing right in front of Papi with my shoulders as relaxed as I could make them. I sat down, ran my hands over the vinyl on either side of me, sweeping imaginary crumbs to the floor. I slipped off my shoes and pulled my feet up, my legs curled at my side. He put his hands on top of his head, laced his fingers. Flecks of deodorant clung to his armpit hair like snow.

—We need to call your mother, he said.

—Don't, I said, but I didn't move. I kept my hands on the couch cushions. I said, If you don't want me here, I'll go to Omar's. I don't want to do that, I'd rather stay here, but it's up to you. I cannot go to Mom's yet.

I made sure to keep my shoulders still and my voice calm, a posture that went against everything rocking inside of me, everything I'd ever seen or been raised to do when we were furious with each other, and then I said, In fact, when I
do
go to Mom's, I need you to go with me. I think it would work better if she saw us both.

I swallowed. I said, Because I don't think seeing me is going to be enough. I think everything that happened with you and her is part of why she's latched on to this kid. I'm not blaming you, I swear, I know it's my fault too, but I just – I cannot do this by myself.

I looked down at my hands, the skin on the backs of them still cracked from the cold that continued to reign over the Rawlings campus, refusing to let in the spring, a season I'd yet to meet. The one-year anniversary of the day's mail bringing news of my acceptance had passed a couple weeks earlier. What we were coming up on, then, was the anniversary of me telling my parents I'd applied and that I'd already sent in the paperwork saying I accepted the offer, that Rawlings had happily sent me a waiver for the deposit when I called to ask if I could have just a little more time to find the money. They said we qualified as a low-income family, I'd said to my father just before he'd torn through the house, making holes in the walls with his fists. Now, he put those fists in the pockets of his jeans. He almost smiled.

—You flew down here by yourself, he said. You found that school, you filled out all those papers, all by yourself. You got down here for Thanksgiving by yourself. You didn't need me then. You didn't even see me that first trip.

My hands went numb, my feet suddenly freezing at my side. If he'd screamed at me I'd have known what to do, but he seemed just as calm as I was pretending to be.

—The best I can do, he said, is you can stay here tonight. Tomorrow I'll take you to your mother's. That's it, that's the best I can do.

—Okay, but –

—But nothing. I'm not getting down. I'm not going inside. I'm not helping with this. I see the news too. I'm not getting involved with whoever she thinks she is now.

—Okay, I said again, trying to find some calm inside me. Okay, but what about – forget her, what if you do it just to help me?

He reached over, and I thought he was going to touch my shoulder or my cheek or something, and the thought of that kind of contact made my eyes water, made me worry I would undo this new way of behaving and throw my arms around his legs, my face pressed into his stomach as I cried,
You can't do this to me, you can't leave me on my own like this
. But he didn't reach for me: he grabbed the cordless phone on the coffee table. My suitcase waited in the middle of the living room, where he'd left it.

—You're still at that school, right? I'm helping you enough.

He dialed with his thumb and before I could ask who he was calling, he barked, ¡Rafael! ¡Oye! Quédate la noche allá con tu mujer, que tengo alguien – no, cochino, mi hija, que llegó aquí de sorpresa del colegio. Sí, sí. No, gracias. And he hung up.

When he saw me crying—only a little, and calmly, no move to wipe my face—he sighed and said, You can have Rafael's bed. He just changed the sheets.

—I'm fine here, I said.

I thought he'd try to convince me, maybe grab my suitcase and put it in Rafael's room, but he smacked the sides of his jeans and said, Do whatever you want, Lizet.

He walked to his room but stopped first at Rafael's door, turned the knob, and opened it all the way. When he got to his own doorway, he didn't turn around, but he yelled, I swear he just changed the sheets, I saw him do it this morning.

He didn't close his own door behind him. I gave up after a few minutes: more than anything, sleeping on a couch would set me up for everything to go worse from then on. The least I could do for myself was take the bed my dad had negotiated for me, get some real rest. I dragged my bag to Rafael's room, the wheels catching on the overly plush black rugs he'd used to pad the places around his bed. I lay in a straight line on top of the mattress and slept like that, all my clothes still on, without even washing my face or brushing my teeth, as much as I wanted to do those things. But I didn't want to open my suitcase, dig around for my toothbrush, ask my dad where he kept his toothpaste. Even after I heard his snores half an hour later, even after I peered in and saw that he was on top of his bed, facedown and hugging his pillow under his face, pants still on, also refusing the comfort of covers, even then I still kept that stale taste in my mouth, told myself I'd get rid of it come morning.

*   *   *

The sound of him on the phone again, but hearing it from Rafael's room: my dad told the office of the contractor he worked for that he'd be late that morning. He had a family emergency concerning one of his daughters and could he please make up the hours that afternoon or Saturday, and no, he wasn't fishing for overtime, he just needed to get his daughter to her mother and he just wanted that one hour of pay back. I don't know what the person on the other end decided; my dad didn't tell me and I didn't ask.

He drove me to my mom's apartment as promised. The only thing he asked during the drive—the Miami sun blaring through his van's windshield, his tools and ladders rattling behind us, filling in the silence—was if I ever gave Leidy and Dante the money from Christmas. He'd asked me that before: when I called him in January from school to say I'd made it back safely and pretended I'd forgotten about the fifty he claimed to owe me.

I said, Yes I gave them the money. I said, You asked me that already.

He didn't respond, and I understood he wasn't really asking. He'd meant it to remind me he was a good person, a good father. Neither of us spoke the rest of the ride.

It was only eight thirty when he rolled away, leaving me and my suitcase on the sidewalk after saying through the van's open window, Be careful, but there were already people standing down the street outside of Ariel's house. Two blocks away, a long oval of women all in black pressed up against his fence. I went upstairs hoping to see my mom before she left for the day—unlike my dad, her job with the city meant she got Good Friday off—but it was Leidy who got the door, who looked surprised to find me behind it and then suddenly not at all surprised, who told me, a glob of wet cereal on her collarbone and Dante crying behind her, that Mami had left before the sun was even up—hours ago.

I pushed past her and hoped my suitcase would roll over her painted toenails, chipping the polish and screwing up one of the few perks she got from working at the salon. All I said as I wheeled toward her feet was,
You
must be happy to see me.

Leidy and I then fought the old way, the big way, the way that felt, after the night before with my dad, less like a fight and more like a script I was following. We knew what to do and where it would end: I called her a liar and accused her of pushing me out of our family. She called me a snob and said I didn't care about anyone but myself. I told her I'd stayed at Papi's the night before and she called me a traitor, and I said she'd been listening to Mami too much and told her if she really wanted to see a traitor she should look in the mirror. There was a lot of yelling and stomping around and picking up of a crying Dante and
Don't you dare pick up my kid!
threats. There was aggressive unzipping of suitcases and fierce proclamations of
You're not sleeping in my room
and rebuttals of
This is
our
room
, and
She's
our
mom
and
What gives you the right
, et cetera, et cetera. Until it wound down and flared up and wound down again, until the crap in Dante's diaper found our noses and made us gag through our stern mouths, the room eventually smelling so bad we had to step out into the living room, where the curtains were open and from where we watched the crowd down the block grow and grow, the line of people headed to join it passing like a parade.