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?
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.