Make Your Home Among Strangers (9 page)

I turned to Omar and shoved my face into his neck. I bit him around his ear, tugged with my teeth on his fake diamond earring. He squeezed my hand again.

—Me and you need to have a serious conversation, he said.

I dropped the baby wipe on the car floor and splayed the fingers of that hand and mashed his mouth with my palm, laughing to myself and poking my fingertips into his eyes. I pushed his whole face away from me and swung my leg into his lap. He let go of my hand and grabbed my thigh, pulled it then slapped it, then grabbed it again.

—See? he said. Now why you gotta go and do something like that? Fuck it, El, you're making this tough.

Puffy little bags hung beneath his eyes, each shiny with sweat. He was trying to tell me, through the slats of my fingers, that this was hard for him, that he wanted to not miss me, to not want me to stay. He pulled my hand off his face and bit my palm, my wrist. I flipped him off, then tried to pick his nose with my middle finger.

—Maybe I don't need to be worried, he said. You're too weird for anybody but me to want.

—That's true, I said.

I was convinced he was right, but I could've only felt that way in Miami, in that car.

He pinned my wrist behind my back and pulled me toward him. He breathed out hard through his nose—something he did a lot and a sign he was mad at himself for liking me so much. He imagined himself a tough guy; he thought of us as a couple that shouldn't be but
had
to be, that some outside force made him want my perceived weirdness despite his better judgment (and I was weird, in that neighborhood, in our school of five thousand people with only a slim percentage of us going off to college full-time). He had to think this, because otherwise he had to admit I was always on my way to being too good for him. He kissed my forehead, and it felt less like a goodbye and more like the start of something much more dangerous for each of us: the beginning of who we were going to be.

He put his chin on the top of my head. He said, You really don't think your parents are gonna work to save their marriage?

His stubble scratched my scalp as he said this. It was such a formal, unnatural way for him to phrase the question that I knew he'd practiced it in his head, had maybe heard some TV doctor say it. He must've felt a change in my body, a tensing, because just then he slid his hands under my ass and hoisted me up onto his lap all the way, pulled my hips toward his and held me there, my stomach against his half-hard dick, so that I couldn't squirm away or look at his face. I loved and hated his physical strength—the way he could just move me in and out of his way. I wanted it for myself.

I pushed what probably sounded like a snarky laugh through my nose, but mostly, I was just tired of thinking about my parents. Before my dad forced our frantic move by selling the house, I'd imagined both parents at the airport, a send-off that was officially and formally impossible. Now I couldn't even picture my dad waving goodbye to me at the gate. Omar didn't know the details behind what I'd called the
choice
to sell the house; the three of us—me, Leidy, our mom—all agreed it was too ugly a thing to admit, even to Omar.

—I really don't want to talk about it, I said.

Out the rear windshield, white and red lights blurred on the expressway, unsteady beams of color. When I was a little girl trapped in the backseat on our way home from visiting one of many aunts in other parts of Miami, I'd relax my focus on the road ahead and let the red on our side of the median blur into a torrent of blood, the white on the other side—coming toward me—a smear of lightning. I always wished we were going the other way, not realizing that nothing about my view would change with that flip.

—You know, you're not the first person ever whose family hates each other, he said.

—Shut up, they've always hated each other, that's not it.

But I didn't move away from him. I just kept staring out the back windshield.

That first semester of college, as I grew more and more impatient during phone conversations with Omar, I started to tell anyone who asked that Omar was a monster. He was an animal—more like an animal than a human. It seemed like what other people wanted to hear. To them, Omar looked the part, with his earrings and the close-cut hair and goatee, the wide shoulders, the dark brows, him leaning on his Integra and throwing a sideways peace sign in almost every photo of him I owned. The girls on my floor would ask, Is that a
gang sign
? and instead of saying, No, you're an idiot, I said, Maybe, who knows with Omar? Other girls would feel bad for me and claim they understood: the girl who'd made everyone hot chocolate, Caroline, even went so far as to mention she'd read
The House on Mango Street
in AP English. She said she knew about
the kinds of relationships that plagued my community
, had nodded in a solemn way when I told her yes, Omar could be rough. Part of me was angry that they were half right: my parents
did
have a version of that relationship, but it wasn't at all accurate for me and Omar. Still, I was happy to have something to add to those late nights in the dorm's common room when I was otherwise quiet, to be included in conversations even if I didn't totally understand the part I was playing. When everyone around you thinks they already know what your life is like, it's easier to play in to that idea—it was easier for me to make Omar sound like a psycho papi chulo who wanted to control me. At the very least, it made trying to make friends simpler than it would've been had I tried to be a more accurate version of myself.

The truth is, I had to abandon some part of myself to leave Omar in Miami. I had to adopt some twisted interpretation of everything that came before college to make my leaving him the right thing—I had to believe the story I made up for other people. A few weeks into the fall, I stayed up late one night listening to Jillian and half a dozen other girls like Tracy and Caroline talk in our room. I'd been invited by default, since I'd already climbed into bed before the first set of roommates from down the hall came in with an oversized bowl of popcorn. But then these people I knew only from our brief, shower-caddy-toting bathroom hellos sprawled across the foot of my bed like we were really friends. And even though the next morning wouldn't bring anything more or less friendly when we skimmed shoulders at the bank of sinks, I listened hard to their stories, to what they said about the boyfriends they'd broken up with just before coming to Rawlings. How their mothers all had stories like theirs, how their mothers had all met their fathers in college after having wasted tears on some high school boy that
so wasn't right
for them: I understood that the worst “best” thing that ever happened to my mother was falling for my dad. For your heart to screw over your brain—that's the worst best thing that could happen to anyone.

Omar tugged my hair and said, Everything's gonna be fine, El.

—I know, I said.

—I'll come out next semester for sure, once I can save a little, he said.

—I know.

—And we've got three weeks at Christmas, he said.

—Right.

He held both my shoulders in his rough hands. Do you want to go? he said.

I didn't think he meant the golf course. I thought he meant to New York, so I said, Yeah, of course. I think I'm ready.

He blinked twice like he'd just placed contact lenses in his eyes. Then he slid his hands down to my hips and tossed me onto the seat next to him. I bounced there and he reached for his boxers on the floor.

—What? I said, pulling my knees up to my chest.

—You're ready, huh? He jerked his shorts up his hairy legs, found his jeans and belt, his shirt. You think you're the guy? Like,
I got mine, so peace, I'm out.
Then fuck you, bro.

I held up my hands to him, palms out, and said, Okay,
what
?

He pulled his shirt over his head.

—Wow, you really need to calm yourself down, I said, reaching for my bra between us on the seat. I snapped it on and adjusted the cups.

Omar hated being told to calm down. In fact, saying
calm yourself down
was the best way to get him to not calm down at all. He grabbed the front seats and hurled himself at the steering wheel, his T-shirt hanging bunched around his neck, his arms still free.

—No, I got it. You're fucking ready. Let's go then, he said.

He pushed his arms through the sleeves, grabbed at the keys and turned them, revved the engine. I tugged on my underwear, seeing that, though I'd picked them out because I thought they matched, the bottoms were actually navy blue, the bra black.

—Omar, for
real
? I yelled. Then, like a mom, I said,
Oh
-mar,
please
. Then, Oh! Seriously! Come
on
already!

He put the car in drive.

—You know what? I said. You're right. Let's fucking go.

He turned in his seat and screamed, You're the one who says she's ready!

I realized then the confusion, and I almost lowered my voice, but I didn't know yet how effective that could be. I yelled, To
New York
, asshole! I'm ready to go to New York, not go from
here
! But whatever, do whatever you want!

I struggled to find my pants, then twisted them around until I found the leg holes. I shook them out and wiggled them on while Omar cursed up front. I found my blouse and tried undoing the buttons—Omar had just pulled it over my head to get it off, hadn't bothered the buttons with his bulky fingers—but it was inside out. Omar kept changing gears on the car, which kept lunging forward, then backward, not really going anywhere. I flipped the blouse and opened it, then wrapped the fabric around me, making sure the holes lined up with the buttons by starting from the bottom.

—Hey genius, he finally said.

I didn't answer, just looked out the window as my fingers climbed up, fastening me into my shirt. He pressed his head against the steering wheel, then lifted it and smacked his forehead with both his hands four or five times.

—We're fucking stuck, he said.

My hands froze. What do you mean we're stuck?

—I mean the car. He put his hand on the latch to open the door, but before he pulled it, he asked, You dressed?

I murmured yes, and he opened the door, and dim light from the dome overhead suddenly yellowed everything.

I scrambled up to the front seat in time to hear Omar say, Oh
fuck
.

All he'd done was stand up, so I said, What?

He stepped forward and I heard what sounded like a wet fart, and then he said, Are you fucking
serious
?

I tried to look past his legs in the doorway at the ground, but my eyes were still used to the dark. I couldn't see anything but him.

*   *   *

How could I not have thought about the possibility of mud? About the Miami rain that soaked the grass every day in the summer? We'd driven onto the
rough
—a word I didn't yet know meant the long grass, grass meant to be long, to slow things up for a golf ball. We'd glided onto it in the dark and rocked the car with our bodies enough to dig us in deep.

I will always—always—give Omar credit for trying everything he could to get us out of that mud without anyone's help. His sneakers were ruined that night, along with the shirt he was wearing and the jeans. The towels from the backseat, already wet with sweat, were also ruined once he used them to clean the mud off his face, arms, body.

I got to keep clean, mostly. Everything I was told to do—press the gas, then try neutral, then turn the wheel all the way left, then all the way right, now straight,
straight!—
involved me staying in the car, not getting slapped with mud. I stepped out only once, right after I'd pressed the gas down all the way like he'd said to do while he rocked the car from behind. I heard Omar scream and I thought maybe I'd been in reverse and had killed him—
Oh my god
, I thought,
I ran him over!—
so I threw the car in park even though it wasn't going anywhere and jumped out, felt my flip-flops sink and the mud seep between and over my toes. It wasn't even cold; the mud was as warm as the air around us. I'd sunken in so fast and deep that when I lifted my leg, my shoe made a sucking sound but wouldn't budge: if I'd tried to step forward, I would've fallen face-first. So I turned at the hip, holding on to the Integra's roof for balance, and saw Omar, who, covered head to toe in so much mud, really looked like a monster.

Only when it hit one
A.M
.—after an hour and a half of trying—did I venture to say, Omar, it's late. My flight was at seven forty-five the next morning. Omar called his friend Chino, who found the number for a tow truck and gave it to us. Chino offered to come out himself, but thankfully Omar said
Don't worry about it
and hung up before he could ask any questions.

The tow truck didn't even take ten minutes to find us. The swirling yellow and red lights mounted on top of the truck reminded me how even this last time, we'd never really gone that far from anything.

—What were you guys doing out here? the tow truck guy said.

Neither of us answered because we figured he already knew. He couldn't be older than thirty or thirty-five. He laughed, and then, on the way back from the bed of his truck, chains in hand, he said, Which of you two had the smart idea to park in this shitfest?

We left that question unanswered, too.

The tow truck's lights were what attracted the police. Omar finally got the ticket we'd been promised so many times before. When I told him I'd help pay off both—the ticket and the cost of the tow—he said forget it.

—A going-away present, he said.

I wanted to laugh, but Omar wasn't even hinting at a smile. So I kept the laugh to myself. I never thought of him as particularly funny either.