Make Your Home Among Strangers (27 page)

While we ate, Mami sat as far from us as she could. Omar couldn't get off work, I kept slurring, even after Leidy kicked and kicked my shin under the table each time I forced out the excuse. Dante crawled around on the floor next to her, moving from cousin to cousin, begging to be lifted. I kicked Leidy back and said it anyway—Next year, you'll see—to Neyda, to people who'd been whispering about my mom's outburst, her door-slamming and her curses to her cousins: Watch, next year, I promised them, my mouth and fingers shiny with the grease of familiar food.

 

21

I CALLED OMAR THAT NIGHT.
I waited until my head was clear, until Leidy and my mom were asleep. I used the kitchen phone, my back against the wall and my butt on the floor again, this time in my mom's apartment. I was ready to hear it from him too now, for him to chew me out for being a baby and a bitch and a bad girlfriend.

—I was wondering if you were gonna pull another Thanksgiving on me, Omar said almost right away, after sighing at hearing me say, It's me, it's El.

Despite what I'd thought up to that moment, it felt good to hear his voice, to hear him say he missed me. He'd just gotten home from his own family's party and was sweet instead of angry because he'd been drinking. But only a little, he said. We were flirty, joking around in a way we hadn't since we'd first confessed to liking each other. He told me some of our friends had called him to go out, telling him to let me know too, since no one had the apartment's new number, but that he was waiting on me to call him first.

—You're the one visiting, he said.

He admitted he did and didn't understand what was up with me, but that he knew I was freaked out about school and the hearing results.
I know how you get
, he said—the same phrase my dad had used at breakfast to warn me about my mom.

—I thought maybe they'd given you the electric chair or something, he said. You never called me back. How bad was it?

I kept quiet. Only a few days had passed since my last exam, but it all felt so far behind me that I couldn't go back to it, not with his voice so close in my ear, with how easy it was to talk to him about anything else.

—It wasn't bad, I said. It was a big misunderstanding. It's fixed now, it's over.

I closed my eyes, praying he wouldn't ask for more because there was nothing else about it I could bring myself to say to him.

—So you don't have to come home?

—No, I said. Are you sad?

I meant it sarcastically, but he said, Yes and no. He said he'd been thinking a lot about me, about how I pushed him away whenever I got stressed, but that he figured we were meant to be, so neither of us had to work too hard.

—What we are is bigger than talking every night on the phone, El, he said, and every little hair on my arms stood straight up. Maybe I
was
making my own problems. When he asked if he could come over the next day, on Christmas, I twirled the phone cord around my finger and said, Why? You got a present for me?

—I do, he said. Got it a while ago.

I let the cord unravel back into place. I hadn't gotten him anything and said so.

—I didn't expect you to, he said. Your roommate what's-her-name made it sound like you'd moved into the library. Still though, a Rawlings T-shirt would've been nice.

He waited and said, It's not like you don't know my size.

I pulled my knees to my chest. A tiny plastic Christmas tree on the dinette table was the only sign in the apartment of what tomorrow was; my mom made us leave Zoila's before any presents were given out or the leftover food divvied up, so there were none of the annual post-Noche Buena trappings: foil-covered containers on the kitchen counter; hunks of flan in the fridge; gift boxes of cheap booze—matching tumbler included, a shiny bow the only attempt at wrapping—left on the floor by the couch. There were no cards from anyone either—the only ones we ever got being from our optometrist's and dentist's offices, from the public library I'd volunteered at one summer, people reminding us of some obligation—and I wondered if my mom had forgotten to update her address with these places.

—I'm sorry, I said. You know people asked about you at Noche Buena?

—Really? he said.

—Yeah. It was kinda bad tonight actually. My mom?

I struggled to think of how to work the entirety of my mom's behavior into one sentence, the way she'd shoved me then let me just drop, the march around the block she took before deciding to come back and eat, the way she'd pushed Leidy away when she asked my mom to hold Dante while Leidy served herself some food, how she'd acted like nothing had happened when she talked to Zoila or Tony or anyone else who'd messed with her about Ariel, but then the minute after she'd helped clear the plates—when the party traditionally
really
got started—she'd yanked Dante off the floor and told us to say bye to everyone while she strapped him into his car seat—We're getting out of here, she'd said, and not added another word the whole ride home.

While waiting for me to say something, Omar let out what sounded like a little burp or a sigh, then said, You there? So I abandoned any hope of nuance or complexity and just said, My mom is super pissed at me, I think. She's not talking to me.

—Uh-oh, he said.

His voice sounded like he was ready to hear the rest of a joke, and I knew it could turn into that, so I said instead, You know they set a place for you at the table?

—Ha! Why'd you tell them I was coming?

—No, I didn't. It just
existed
. It started this bad fight with my mom.

He shushed me. He said, Everything's cool now, we're talking again, El. It's cool.

—Okay, I said. I was sort of thankful he didn't want to hear it, because it meant I didn't have to think hard about anything for a little while.

—Listen, I said, come whenever you want tomorrow. No, wait. Come as early as you can.

He laughed and said, So you want me to come early, huh?

—Omar, god! You know what I mean. Just – just come over tomorrow.

—All right, he laughed.

I inspected my knees, the spikes of hair on them I needed to shave.

—Hey, I said. I should warn you I've gotten really, really fat since you last saw me.

—For real? I heard him shift the phone to his other ear. I didn't expect him to play along with my joke, but he said, Like how big are we talking?

—I probably gained two, three hundred pounds I'm guessing.

He whistled into the phone. He said, You're still fucking weird, El, but that's okay I guess.

After a second he said, I can't blame you for beefing up for the winter.

I laughed, and he said, But is it okay if I'm still ripped as hell? Because I am fucking
fine
. I'm still lifting like crazy and I am so fucking cut up these days it might be hard for you to keep your fat hands off me. That's okay, right?

I'd blocked out so much of our last night together before leaving for New York—the humiliating tow truck, the birth control I didn't mention because he'd assume it meant I was planning to cheat on him. But the good parts of that night—him sucking on the spot where my shoulder met my neck, the lick of cool air that rushed over the tips of my breasts just as he'd snatched off my bra—flared in the quiet of that moment like headlights through the windows. I thought of his chest and arms stretching the fabric of the Rawlings shirt I hadn't bought him, of the way Jillian had gawked at the very first picture of him I'd ever shown her, her mouth an open O.

—I guess that's fine, I said.

*   *   *

I spent a good hour after hanging up sitting in the living room and promising myself I would not have sex with Omar, no matter how good he looked, no matter what else I ended up doing with him out of sheer horniness. I will not suck his dick and I will not have sex with him, I told myself as I thrashed around on the living room couch, hoping to work out my frustration in advance of seeing him while Leidy and Dante and my mom slept in their rooms. I told myself Omar could suck on any part of me he wanted, stick anything he wanted into me, so long as it wasn't his dick. As long as his dick didn't make its way into any orifice, I'd be free and clear to let our relationship dissolve. We could be what Jillian called friends with benefits, except the one benefit she'd talked about—sex—would be the only thing we
wouldn't
do. Because sex with Omar meant too much: Omar was my first, and I was his second (though he'd only done it with the first girl three times—she was older than him, an aspiring dancer for the Miami Heat that he'd met at a club the summer before we got together). Sex meant, for both of us, that we were a serious couple destined for something together, and until I had my grades—until I knew for sure what my future at Rawlings would be—I didn't want that pressure back again. I vowed not to let it happen.

But over the rest of my break, we ended up fucking like crazy. Not because I couldn't control myself, but because of what happened Christmas morning. Omar came over and lifted each of us off the ground when he hugged us and he talked easily with my mother—the first carefree conversation between her and anyone else I'd witnessed since I'd been home. He played on the floor with Dante for over an hour while my mom served him café con leche after café con leche and asked him questions about his Noche Buena, and when Leidy sank into the couch and started crying because Roly hadn't even called, Omar slid across the carpet and told her Roly was a sorry bastard who didn't know how lucky he was to have a kid like Dante and a girl like Leidy. My mother rushed over and squeezed his shoulders, kissed him on the top of his close-shaved head, and then sat next to me, putting her hand on my knee and squeezing that too, as if our fight the day before were over. I stayed in one spot that morning, my legs folded tight under me, while he just belonged there in a way that made me want to choke him, and so later, once I'd broken my promise and slept with him, there was no point in not fucking him every chance I got until I was drained of everything. The only thing that got rid of the hole I felt in my chest at my failure to keep the don't-sleep-with-him vow I'd made less than twenty-four hours earlier—a hole that opened up seconds after I'd pull him out of me after finishing myself—was fucking him again, so I kept at it, tried to make myself wait longer and longer to come, to stave off the worst part of it.

So just before the first time that break that I had sex with Omar, after the morning in our apartment when I'd watched him maneuver through my problems like they weren't even real, we said bye to my mom and got in his car—my present still a mystery—and he drove to the beach because I told him I hadn't seen it since the summer. He grabbed my hand at the first red light and put it on the gear shift with his. The whole time I just wanted to seize his crotch in my fist and squeeze it until he screamed. But I kept my hand under his and he drove and parked and we walked around in the cold sand and he took me to the deserted lifeguard tower where we'd first made out back when we were both in high school, and he made us sit down on its steps. He put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was adjusting his dick in his pants, but then he pulled out this little white box.

He said, Don't freak out.

He said, I'm not asking you to marry me tomorrow. This isn't the ring you'll have forever, so maybe you can trade it back to me when I get you the real one.

He said, I want you to know that I think we should get married someday. I want you to wear this up at school so those nerds don't get any ideas about stealing you from me.

He tugged the ring—a silver band with three little diamonds on it—from the velvet-lined slit holding it and stuck it on my hand.

He said, There.

I felt so frustrated I couldn't stand it anymore. I pushed him against the steps and shoved my tongue into his mouth—our first kiss since August—then straddled him and felt his dick against my underwear (I'd changed into a skirt before leaving the apartment—we both knew what that meant, though I pretended otherwise, forgetting when I can that I facilitated my own failure that day), and it was all me that did it, right there with the bright sun showing us to the world, me that broke the promise to myself as I pulled my underwear to one side and I slid him in and rocked on him, mean almost, like I was angry, like I was getting back at him: I pictured the steps digging into his spine and hurting him, doing it this new way with almost no love, just want and gnashing teeth and grunts and fuck yeses and his fingers clutching my ass trying to slow me down but no, thank fucking god, finally, there it was—my turn. When I finished, I rocked on him a little longer so that he'd come and not ask any questions, and then I pulled him out with the ringed hand, lifted myself off him and tucked myself into his side, his dick glossy and still hard as he pulled his T-shirt over it.

—Damn, El, he said. Do I need to ask if that's a yes?

He laughed at his own joke.

I didn't look at him—I couldn't yet. I looked at the ring. My almost-engagement ring. A ring that said, You're a good investment. It felt heavy on my finger.

But to anyone looking, I was still dressed, still put together enough to get up and walk away. I turned the ring on my hand and felt the sun on my face, my skin waking up and darkening in that light.

 

22

THE MAIL CAME EARLIER IN
Little Havana than it did in Hialeah. We'd been a late stop on our old route and were an early one now, so most mornings over break, a rip of booms jarred me awake, the row of metal bins downstairs in the foyer all getting slapped shut. The registrar's office had notified us that our grades wouldn't show up before Christmas, so only after the holiday did I obey the leaping reflex at the slams and charge down the stairs—shoeless and usually wearing a long T-shirt like a dress—the mailbox key shaking in my hands. When my grades weren't there, it was over: I had the rest of the day to forget they were en route, and I'd head upstairs newly exhausted. Mami and Leidy were already at work, so I usually got Omar to come over almost as soon as I got my toothbrush out of my mouth and his ring back on my finger (I kept it off and hidden at home to avoid Mami and Leidy asking any questions), and between having sex on the couch and/or the floor and/or my sofa bed (that last spot only if Dante was at daycare—I considered it really bad luck to do anything with a baby in the same room), we argued about New Year's Eve. He wanted to call up friends—other couples we used to hang out with—and go to a club, do something huge, and I didn't want to commit to anything out of fear that my grades, once they arrived, would after everything be too low. I couldn't imagine getting dressed up and smearing makeup on my face, seeing people from high school and pretending to be happy about the future. So I lied and said I just wanted the night to be about me and him, together at the end of the millennium. I was shameless in my attempts to avoid going out—I even suggested we split the cost of a few hours at a hotel by the airport. He argued that going to a club did not prevent us from going to a hotel afterward. This argument led to more sex, which by then I recognized as the best way to keep us both distracted.