Make Your Home Among Strangers (40 page)

I hadn't planned to see my dad, but the silence sitting between me and Omar the rest of the drive made me see how much I needed my dad's help, and that I could've never asked him in advance. The angry rumble of the streets beneath me, the cologne-saturated air wafting up from the car seats, the strict grids of the neighborhoods out the window: all these things confirmed that this was the only way to ask him—just show up, my bag behind me, and tell my dad what we had to do in the morning.

—I don't think anyone's here, Omar said as he slowed down.

I ducked to look past his head and worried he was right: my dad's town house was the only dark one of all those we'd passed on our way through the Villas. But his van was there. It was only ten forty-five—no way he'd be asleep already. All my life, even with my own late nights, he always stayed up past me as he shuffled bills and other papers at a living room cabinet that folded down, becoming, when he pulled a chair up to it, his desk.

—It's fine, he's here, I said. Open the trunk.

I was already out of the car and sliding along its side when Omar said from the driver's seat, I'm not leaving you in this place like this.

He wouldn't open the trunk. I asked him again. I knocked on the car, the metallic thuds sounding to me like the noise my fist would make against his head were I to knock on that. I knocked harder.

He still didn't open the trunk; he got out of the car instead.

—I said I'm not leaving you here. I can't. No one's even here, are you crazy?

I kept knocking all the way through that. He came around to the back and laid his palms on the trunk, leaning forward over it after checking that his T-shirt covered his belt buckle, to avoid scratches.

—Get back in the car, he said.

I put my hand on the latch hidden below the boxed-in
A
ornament and flicked it over and over again, the sound of it worse than any damage I was really causing. Between these thunks, I said, Did you tell my mom I was coming?

—No, he said. Stop that already.

—You say anything to Leidy? Tell me the truth.

—No! Lizet, come on, quit it!

Inside the town house, at the window I remember being in the kitchen, a fluorescent light flickered and flickered and then finally stayed on.

I said in a singsong voice, I'm gonna
break
it.

Omar threw his hands up and ducked into the driver's side. The latch suddenly had more resistance, could go past the metal piece I'd been slamming it against, and the trunk glided open with a hiss. I grabbed my bag and began hauling it out, letting it scrape against the lining at the edge of the trunk.

—Watch it, Omar said, back next to me, but he didn't make a move to help. He knew better. And so did I: I slid my hand to the back of the suitcase to make sure the wheels cleared. I planted the thing on the ground next to me.

—Well thanks! I said. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled like a clown. Bye!

—El, are you serious?

—What? I said. Thank you for the ride here. What else do you want me to say?

—Who do you think you're talking to? he said. He closed his eyes, put his hand over his face, smeared it down—a reset. He stared at my bare hand until someone said my name like a threat—my dad's voice.

Omar stepped away and said with a forced laugh, Mr. Ramirez, hey, ¿como anda, como está? He put out an arm to shake my dad's hand, but my dad didn't take it.

—What are you doing here, my dad said to me. You're supposed to be at school.

He wore only a pair of jeans, paint splattered in the usual places, and a new gold chain I'd never seen circled his neck. He crossed his arms—the face of his watch flashing light at us—and opened his legs, leaned to the right to see me around Omar's big block of a body. I couldn't see my dad's face though: he was backlit and still a little too far away, but from his voice I knew he was mad.

—I came home for Easter, I said.

—
Easter?
he said. Since when do you –

And then he stopped, looked up at the sky, said, Ay dios mío. He closed his legs and let his arms drop.

—Mr. Ramirez, Omar said. I just want to say I had no part in getting Lizet here like this, this was totally her idea, I didn't know she'd make me drive here to your place.

—Omar, he said, you should go now.

—Yessir.

He put his hands in his pockets as he backed up against the car. My dad jerked his head toward the apartment door, recrossed his arms.

—Lizet, come inside.
Now
.

—Dad, I said.

But he'd already turned around and was heading in.

Omar rushed at me with wide steps and raised his palm in the air between us. He looked angrier than I'd ever seen him.

—I don't know what you're pulling here, he said, but I've never been bad to you, you know that, so there's no reason for you to do me like this.

—There's
not
?

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and jerked it past him. I waited for the sound of his car door to slam but it didn't come.

—Lizet, what the fuck did I even
do
!

—Like you don't know, I yelled. You should go now. You heard my dad.

He stomped to the car and dropped his body into it, slammed the door and lowered the window in one smooth motion. He said, more to the steering wheel than to me, I give up with this shit.

I slapped my own chest and yelled, Why don't you watch the news and figure it out yourself like I did?

—
That'
s why you're mad at me? El, what the fuck were you gonna do from up there?

I pointed at him and said, Exactly, Omar. That right there, what you just said? That's
exactly
why I'm here. To fucking
do
something since you and Leidy obviously didn't.

—Oh! Okay yeah, he yelled. So now you know how to handle
everything
, huh? You got it all figured out, don't you. You think you're so fucking smart.

He threw the car in reverse, shook his head as he turned the wheel. I'd made it halfway up the concrete leading to my dad's door when Omar lowered the passenger-side window and yelled my name, made me stop.

—Whose fault is it that you weren't here, huh? Maybe you need to think about
that
.

I was ready for the tire screech of him driving off, a final flourish that would give me the space to yell
Fuck you
like the end of any normal fight, but the only sound was the mechanical whir of him putting the window up, the click of his locks keeping me out, the hum of the engine as he rolled away. And then unexpected, terrifying quiet.

My dad had left the front door open, so the cold air inside and the rattling of the window unit met me seconds before I crossed the threshold. All the lights were on now, and the door to his bedroom, visible from the apartment's entrance, was open. He sat on the edge of his bed, his hands rubbing his knees as he mumbled to the carpet. He'd grown back his goatee: he looked like my father again. The bed beneath him was neatly made, and the thought of him making his bed, scooting around it to pull the sheet corners tight, made so little sense to me that I almost sat down on the couch and held my breath to wait out the rocking feeling in my chest.

But I didn't have the chance. He waved me into his room, saying, Hurry up, come here. I left my suitcase by the couch but he said, No, that thing too, come on. I held my palm out toward it as if to ask why, and once I'd dragged it in, he murmured, Because Rafael, he's not home yet, I don't want him to think – why the hell do you make me explain everything to you! Why do you always ask so many fucking questions!

I blurted out, Oh
please
, don't even start. If that were true, I'd know why you sold the house like that.

The second surprise of the night for me—that I said that, that I let the
fuck you
trapped inside find its way out to the person who deserved it the most.

He sat up straight, stunned, and I backed away from the bed's edge. His chest stopped moving. His hands froze on his knees. He was in that instant making a choice: to slap me for what I'd just said and accuse me of the disrespect I'd shown, or to let it sit there in the room so as to find out if the reason I'd shown up out of nowhere was something more substantial, something even more worthy of punishment. His upper lip twitched, his mustache hairs curling into it like the spirals holding together a notebook.

—I sold the house because I couldn't think of a better way to hurt your mother.

He cleared his throat, and his next words came out a little louder.

—I thought you'd figure that out without me having to tell you. You're the smart one, remember?

His face puckered like he'd been hit with a rush of heartburn, his elbows locked and his hands still on his knees. He said, Why would
you
be hurt? You'd already decided to go.

He resumed rubbing his knees over his jeans, the sound scratchy.

—Shit, you'd already told that school you were coming. And I thought your sister would move in with that asshole once he got over himself. So I figured, might as well make
Lourdes
miserable for once.

He shrugged but turned his face to the wall.

I focused on his room's disgusting ceiling, the same smear of lumps and stains as the rest of the town house, the rims of my eyes feeling less full with that shift. The water rings in that room had been painted over, though I didn't have to strain to find them lurking in the corners. I knew if I said,
Well you were wrong
, that everything would spill over in a bad way, into the kind of tear-laden brawl he was used to having with my mom. All I had to do was look at him and it would start, familiar and easy. So I pointed my chin higher.

—Lizet, come
on
. It's just a house, it's over. Please, okay?

He stood up but sat right back down when he felt how close that movement brought him to where I stood. The bed took up almost the whole room, only a U of a path around it on three sides, the head of it up against the far wall. He shifted over to the bed's edge farthest from me—his way of asking me to sit with him.

I left my bag—up to then an anchor, a podium—and sat down. Neither of us said anything. Then my stomach growled so loudly that it sounded fake, like I'd made the noise with my mouth. He jolted at the rumble but didn't make a joke about it or—as my mom would've done, as she'd done the very first time I came home to her, mere seconds after I surprised her at her door and without waiting for a growl to cue the question—offer me anything to eat. I felt dizzy again, the room swaying in the direction I'd moved to sit on the bed, so I focused on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to push the feeling away. The room smelled of damp carpet, of dirty socks and sweat, but the cloying cover of fabric softener and dryer sheets hovered over all of it. That wet air moved in and out of me, made me feel worse.

—I think I need to eat something, I said.

—They don't give you dinner on the plane?

He'd only been on one flight, ever: when he was fourteen, the forty-five minutes in the air between Cuba and Miami. I think he thought longer flights were more luxurious, maybe the way I imagined first class to be on the other side of the curtain blocking the aisle.

—Not really, I said. You get like a soda, some chips.

—Que mierda, he said. For all that money they should at least give you dinner.

I said, I know, right? And then I started rambling, fast, telling him a story Leidy told me about finding Dante's daycare, how she thought lunch was included—she hadn't even asked the white lady who took her on the tour about lunch, that's how pricey the weekly rate seemed to her—only to get a call at work halfway through his first day asking where she'd placed his food when she'd dropped him off. The story tumbled out in the hopes of keeping my dad from asking the next logical question, which would lead to why I was there, which would lead to me asking him for his help—something I was suddenly not ready to do.

—You got anything to eat? I said, tossing the question out with a voice like something shiny and distracting, a set of keys jingling in the air. I stared out the door, willing him to lead us to his kitchen.

—Did your mother pay for this flight? he asked. Because I
know
it's not in the budget.

—No, I said. I bought the ticket myself.

—You shouldn't be wasting money like that.

I reached for the suitcase and pulled it to me, blocking one path around the bed.

—She doesn't know I'm here, I said.

He laughed, a sad note, hung his head and said to the carpet, So that's why she didn't want to pick you up from the airport?

—No Dad, not here like your apartment. Miami here. I flew down because no one – because somebody has to get her away from those people, that protest vigil.

His jaw tensed. He did not look up from the floor.

—We get the news, you know, up there, I said, my voice ringing off the bedroom walls. I mean, do you have any idea how the rest of the country is seeing this? I'm tired of it. We look like a bunch of crazy people.

—What's with this
we
crap, he said. I'm not with her, you're not even here.

—We as in Cubans, I said.

He smiled with only one side of his mouth. He laughed again.

—You're not Cuban, he said.

This hurt me more than anything else he could've said—more than
Who cares what anyone up there thinks
, more than
Like there's anything you coming down here is gonna do
—and I think he saw it in my face, saw how impossible what he'd just said sounded to me.

—Don't look at me like that! he said. You're American. I'm wrong?