32
I WANTED TO ASK HER a million questions. How often do you sleep there? How much work are you really missing? But each one seemed too pointed, too worried, too quickly exposing why I’d ditched Leidy to come along with her. We passed the now-smaller circle of women praying outside of Ariel’s house. She waved to them but we didn’t head over to join it, and I asked her why not.
—Your clothes, she said.
My jeans were a little thin at the knees but clean, my T-shirt maybe a bit tight across my chest. She lifted the latch on the chain-link gate surrounding the house across from Ariel’s, the one I’d seen in pictures on the news with the white tent covering the lawn.
—No, it’s just you’re not wearing black, she said. Come on, you can stay inside.
—Was I supposed to –
—It’s fine. Just come inside.
—I can go back and change, I said, still standing outside the gate.
She climbed up the three concrete steps to the house’s front door and pushed it open, waved for me to follow.
Once inside, it was hard to remember we were only a couple blocks from the apartment. The overhead lights of a small kitchen bled out into what looked like the dining room. Every window was covered with sheets and duct tape, but the sheets hung loose at the bottoms, allowing people to look out when they needed or wanted to. The house was packed and loud with talking. Right away I almost lost my mom in the crowd; she slipped between men and women she seemed to know, touching their shoulders as she passed. I tried to stay close, though my book bag made it tough to squeeze around people. When she stopped, I pushed up right behind her. We were stuck against a long table loaded with food: a platter piled high with grilled chicken drumsticks, pink and brown juices pooling beneath them; aluminum trays filled with yellow rice next to stacks of Styrofoam plates; hunks of Cuban bread cut from a long loaf and then sliced in half again. I was about to ask if I could grab a piece of the bread—I was starving—when my mom handed me a plate. She forked a couple slimy plátanos onto it.
—Eat something, she said.
I slid the bag off my shoulder and tucked it between my feet.
—Where’d all this come from? I said.
—Everywhere. People bring things, places donate things.
Someone pushed by me to stab a chunk of avocado from a bowl on my right—a younger guy with dark hair and a thin beard. He looked like someone I could’ve gone to high school with. My mom continued to load my plate for me—rice, chicken, tostones, black beans drenching all of it. The guy did the same thing, grabbing a handful of forks and stocking his plate mostly with sharing-friendly foods. My mom nudged the plate into my hand and said, Hi Victor, and the guy said, Wassup Lourdes. He leaned away from the table and bent behind me, kissed my mom on the cheek while chewing. I watched him leave, and he only looked back at me once—with green eyes so surprising they looked misplaced, transplanted into his head from some long-lost Cuban cousin of Ethan’s—just before he looked down and hid them and pushed his way into the crowd, his plate of food held high over his head.
—You know him? I said to Mami.
She used a new, empty plate to gesture around the room.
—I know everybody.
I nudged my bag a foot or so along the floor and turned to lean against the table, my butt pushing over a stack of napkins. As I shoveled rice into my mouth, I saw the things I’d expected to see: banners with too many words on them, their messages confused and in two languages; Cuban flags propped in corners; women standing in pairs, bent in to each other, holding hands and praying. But it was creepy because it was not that creepy. People smiled, people laughed. People weren’t posing; they had no clue how crazy the cameras blasting their images around the country made them look. My mom asked, You okay here for a second, and before I answered she left for the kitchen.
Near the house’s rear entrance, in what was once a back porch now converted into a full-blown room, the guy named Victor and other younger guys—guys my age or a little older—stood on the brink of the cinder-block-walled backyard, the people outside smoking cigarettes, their caps backward or to the side, the smoke pouring from their nostrils as they talked at each other. I ran my tongue over my teeth, hoisted my bag to my shoulder, lifted my plate over my head, and moved toward them.
I stood just inside the house, eating and listening for a minute to the guys outside. People speared food off Victor’s plate, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He just stared at me with his borrowed eyes, with no shame in a way that made me nervous. He chewed and swallowed. Crickets cut in and out between the words of another guy’s story about how he’d almost punched a reporter, and in the middle of all that, Victor blurted out, I know you.