Make Your Home Among Strangers (19 page)

We followed my mom's voice as it ricocheted off the concrete stairwell. She was talking, talking, talking, talking: This person moved out, this apartment has a parakeet even though it's no pets allowed, did you see they painted this wall to cover up some graffiti? I lugged my bag up the stairs and wished she would keep her voice down. She seemed excited to have people close by to spy on and talk about. The wheels of my suitcase slammed again and again against the steps, the echo like an audience clapping.

The apartment was clean, the carpet in the living room section of the main room vacuumed so recently that I could still see the lines from it and Leidy's latest footsteps. It smelled like laundry, like a spray-can version of fresh sheets. In every electrical outlet, there was some kind of deodorizing thing plugged in, and immediately I imagined Dante ingesting the chemical goop heated inside each of them. There were some papers stacked neatly on the dining table, flyers with slogans and a poor-quality photo of Ariel on them. There was only one poster, which took up the bottom half of the window facing the street and which said,
ARIEL ***IS*** HOME
—that middle word underlined several times and written in a different color than the other two. I was happy the sign wasn't in Spanish; it meant my mother wasn't blending into the neighborhood as easily as she thought she was.

Mami stood next to the television and opened her arms wide, her bracelets sliding toward her elbows. She yelled, Welcome back! and then gestured to the coffee table at a plant, a mix of jagged-edged leaves and tiny flowers clustered together like a colorful brain. A stick topped with a small Mylar balloon, the words
CONGRATS, GRAD!
on it, was shoved in its dirt. And on the couch behind the coffee table was a large, clear balloon dotted with white stars and topped with coils of red bow—and inside the balloon, a blond teddy bear with a similar red bow around its neck, holding a fabric heart. The bear sat on a pile of shredded green plastic ribbon meant to look like grass, the same stuff that padded our Easter baskets when we were little girls. I stepped forward to read the writing on the heart.
I LOVE YOU,
it said, and I feigned delight.

—You guys, I squealed. I hugged Leidy again and Dante let out a half-burp. When I turned to hug my mom, she'd disappeared.

—Where'd she go? I said.

I stroked Dante's arm with one finger, then placed his open hand on his mother's shoulder. We heard Mami's bedroom door shut.

—She's being
weird
, Leidy said. I think you're weirding her out.

I pulled my sweatshirt off over my head. Dante started to cry, but Leidy stared past him at me, looking almost sorry for me. I left my bag by the door and stepped over to the bear on the couch. I yelled, Mami?

Through her bedroom door, I heard a muffled, ¡Ya voy!

I sat down and put the balloon on my lap. The bear inside shifted and fell against the balloon's back side, reclining.

—I'm not
weirding her out
. I barely said anything to her on the drive here.

I rolled the balloon to try to right the bear inside: it flopped over too far, landed facedown in the shredded plastic. So I rolled it the other way.

—Well whatever it is, she'll get over it. Just ask her about Ariel or Caridaylis.
That'll
make her talk.

It was late afternoon, the time of day when I usually fell asleep at my desk, my face in a book, an unofficial nap. I was so exhausted. I felt like I might cry. Instead I said, I saw her picture outside. Is she his new spokesperson?

Leidy laughed then said, Not really. I think Mami's still auditioning for that part.

She plopped down beside me and Dante's hand immediately went to the balloon, which he rubbed and which made a fart-like noise. He yanked his hand away and examined it for traces of the sound. I should've asked Leidy what she meant, but instead, I just swirled the bear and mumbled, Yeah.

—Don't worry, she said in a fake-cheerful voice. She'll get over it. She
has
to. You're here for like three freaking weeks!

Mami still hadn't come out of her room. Part of me was proud of myself for having such good intuition—I
knew
something was wrong—until I realized that my mom's reaction meant she, like me, must not have liked what she saw coming toward her at the airport.

—And plus? Leidy said. You got enough days here this visit to maybe go sit in the sun for a while. You look worse than last time, she said. You look so freaking
white.

Dante went for the balloon a second time, pulling his hand away and inspecting it when once again the rubbery noise came out from under it. He kept at this until Leidy finally stopped him.

 

16

MY DAD CALLED THE APARTMENT
only once: the night I got in from Rawlings, to make sure my flight had landed and that I'd been on it. But since he sensed my mom standing nearby—
She's right next to you, isn't she?
—he didn't ask anything else or arrange to see me, said only that he'd call back. Three days later, by the morning before Noche Buena and the rowdy family party that came with it, I still hadn't heard from him, and because I wanted to remind him of what he'd be missing—he had less family in the United States than my mother did, had celebrated Noche Buena with her side since he was seventeen—and because my campus-wide-scream-induced decision to finally confront him about the house still hung over me, I decided to set off to my tío Fito's apartment, starting my search with the brother who took him in right after he left my mom. I came to this plan after asking myself,
What is the most Latina thing I could do right now?
I'd thought about my choices in these terms since my first night back, when during dinner I described the new coral paint job on the house across the street as
sufficiently tropical
and Leidy laughed back that I should
quit talking like a white girl
. I decided the most Latina thing I could do was this: drive to my dad's brother's apartment, demand whoever was there to tell me where my dad lived now, then drive to
that
place and yell as many fuck-as-adjective expressions at Papi as I could generate while standing in the street in my flip-flops. It would be a lot like the fights between him and my mom, and therefore definitely
not
white
.

I got to Fito's Hialeah apartment half dreading that my dad's van would be in the visitor's spot, but it wasn't, which meant I would get a practice run at yelling at someone in addition to the lame sassing of the rearview mirror I'd done at red lights on the drive there. Two of Fito's sons, cousins a little older than me, stood talking and smoking in front of the apartment's sliding glass doors, which led out to a railing-surrounded patch of concrete just off the complex's parking lot. I locked the car and walked up to the railing into the open arms of my cousins, who were, as they put it,
chilliando
(not a word, but I kept that to myself, since identifying something as
not a word
was a Leidy-certified white-girl thing to do). We hugged and they held their cigarettes way out from our kiss-on-the-cheek greeting. I stood still for a second, the railing against my hip bone as my hand worked the gate's latch, and waited for them to say welcome home or something, but the blank faces watching me from behind swirls of cigarette smoke just said, So wassup, prima?

—I just got back from New York, I said, knowing they'd think I meant the city.

—You went on vacation? the older one said.

I only knew him as Weasel—most of us just called him Wease—and wasn't positive on his or his younger brother's actual names even though we all counted each other as cousins: they always called me and any other girl cousin prima—primita if we were little. The younger one we all just called Little Fito, after his dad.

—No, college, bro. I was away at
college
. I just got back from like four months away.

—No shit, Little Fito said. All the way in New York? That's fucking crazy.

—Woooooow, Weasel said, obviously less impressed. He put his cigarette back in his mouth and held it there, turning his head to the parking lot.

—I thought we didn't see you because of your dad! Little Fito said. Or, I mean, you know, your mom?

He looked at his cigarette like it could answer the delicate etiquette question of how to reference my parents' separation.

—My dad never mentioned I was away at college? I said.

The tip of Weasel's cigarette flared orange.

—No! Little Fito said. I mean, yeah, he did, but we figured you were
around
, like at Miami Dade or FIU.

I was a breath away from telling him about Rawlings before thinking of Leidy. The fourth or fifth time she accused me of acting white was the afternoon of my second day home, when I told her how, when I'd gone to pick up Dante from daycare, the girl ranked ninth in my graduating high school class was there, working as a teacher's helper and five months pregnant with her boyfriend-turned-fiancé's kid. Without really thinking about it, I told Leidy that seeing that girl there was depressing. I think my exact words were,
It just really bummed me out
. She'd said, What the fuck is
bum you out
? Jesus, you sound
so freaking white
. I'd said, What does that even mean, stop saying that, and she'd said, Then shut the fuck up already, before storming from the living room, claiming Dante needed his diaper changed. I'd hurt her feelings without realizing it, which, based on my time at Rawlings, felt to me more
white
than anything else I'd done since being back—that, and what seemed like my atypical reaction to the daily Ariel Hernandez protests, which I felt were pretty intense but which most of Little Havana treated as a totally acceptable response. My inability to get as upset as my mom about Ariel's possible deportation made me for the first time worry that Rawlings could change me in a way that was bad.

I decided to explain Rawlings to these cousins by saying how I'd first thought about it, which wasn't accurate, but it would get me past them into their apartment.

—The school I'm at is more like UM than FIU in that it's freaking expensive, but it's sorta different, like the football team is shitty, and I got this stupid scholarship that covers a lot of it, so, yeah, that's why I'm there.

Little Fito nodded and smiled, said, A scholarship, damn.

Weasel pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, tossed it over my head into the parking lot, grabbed the sliding glass door's handle, and said, You want a beer?

Inside sat Tío Fito—Fito the Elder—eyes glassy and with a can of Becks (la llave, we called it, because of the little drawing of a key on the logo) snuggled between his legs. He was watching a Marlins game, which confused the hell out of me until Little Fito explained it was a tape of the 1997 World Series.

—Two years later and he still don't believe we won it, Little Fito said.

Weasel laughed and went to the fridge to get cans for everyone. I almost joked that I was just happy they were watching anything other than the news like my mom, but then I thought better of saying her name, or Ariel's.

Tío Fito stood up after placing his can on the tile floor and staggered over to me for a hug. He was shirtless and, aside from the preponderance of gray chest hair, the broken little veins sprawling over his cheeks, and the deep lines on his forehead that spelled out the eleven years he had on his younger brother, looked pretty much like a beer-drenched version of my dad, down to the goatee and the heavy eyelashes. He was the only one of my tíos to come from Cuba on the Mariel Boatlift, and his English wasn't as good as it would've been had he arrived earlier and as a young teenager, like my father.

—Meri Cree ma! he slurred.

His hug was loose and floppy. The warmth of his bare chest and back felt weird—almost damp—against the insides of my arms.

—Merry Christmas, Tío. Where's Papi?

He shuffled out from our hug and dropped onto the couch. He breathed in sharply, then pressed his hand to his belly and burped.

I laughed, then said toward Little Fito, He's drunk already? Isn't it maybe too early for that?

From the kitchen, Weasel said, Shut the fuck up.

—Eh? Tío said. ¿Tu papá? No here.

He shook his head and flapped an arm around to indicate the living room and kitchen of the apartment.

Weasel yelled in my direction, You forget how to speak Spanish in New York?

—Relax, Wease, Little Fito said behind me.

—No, Tío, I mean where does he
live
?

—You don't know where your dad
lives
? Weasel yelled into the fridge.

—Okay,
that's
just messed up, Little Fito said.

I whirled around to him and yelled, He never
told
me.

Beers in his hands, Weasel yelled from the kitchen doorway, You ever
ask
?

I hissed at them,
Of course
, and believed it for all of two seconds. Because, as I turned back to Tío Fito, whose face, in the glow of the TV screen, looked brighter and younger than it should, I scanned the last four months—the short phone conversation at the end of study week, the messages I'd left him, the brief goodbye on my mom's building's steps—for the moment where I actually said the words,
Papi, can I have your address?
Or even,
This is my phone number here at school.
I couldn't find it—it wasn't there—and I started to worry that Papi had a good reason to be mad at
me
.

—He's still in Hialeah, Tío said in Spanish.

He kept his eyes on the screen while picking up his can and said, In the apartments by your old house, what are they called? The Villas, him and that Dominican guy from his job, they're roommates.