This last lie I told her because I couldn’t hurt her with the truth. It was enough that one of us knew we’d been replaced. I couldn’t tell Leidy what I’d seen—where I’d really found our mother—because Leidy should’ve been the focus of my mom’s energy after I left, Leidy who should’ve gotten more from everyone who supposedly loved her. I kept the image of my mom with Caridaylis—a girl whose age split the fifteen months between me and Leidy—to myself, never told my sister about the kiss our mom pressed into the top of that girl’s head, about the wailing and the rocking, about the hand making those circles on her back. When Mami came home, her face and hands still stained with pepper spray, I let Leidy think this came from the morning riot our mother wasn’t part of. I’ve never told Leidy the truth, and when I think about all the ways I came to abandon her, I hold this one mercy close as redemption.
Leidy was mad enough that she refused to take me to the airport Monday when it was time for me to go. My mom didn’t have the chance to refuse me this; she’d chained herself to Ariel’s house the morning of my flight, and I couldn’t bring myself to go over there and bend down and kiss her goodbye where she sat on the sidewalk. My father called to offer me a ride, having watched the news and figuring I might need it. Too embarrassed that he was right, I told him I was fine, that Mom was excited about taking me. He said, That’s fine, and then hung up, and on the plane I realized that he’d probably seen not just the coverage but my mom herself on TV, her wrists bound to Ariel’s fence, her legs dusty from the concrete beneath her.
So Omar—the first person I saw that trip to Miami—was the last person I saw, too. I met him several blocks from the apartment: I had to walk almost a mile to find the first street not blocked off by police. When I opened the Integra’s door, his face was dry but it was clear he’d been crying.
—You too? I said. Did you really think the family could just keep refusing to hand him over? Jesus, does it really take leaving Miami to see that was impossible?
He stared straight ahead. He clenched and unclenched his hands around the steering wheel. I watched him swallow.
—So I guess we’re over then, he said.
And I was so surprised at where his mind was and at how far my own thoughts now lived from his that I grabbed his arm and squeezed it. I said, God Omar, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I can’t.
He nodded slowly, nostrils flaring, and said, No I figured, then just drove, his lips pulled into his mouth the whole ride. He hugged me like I’d never come back when he dropped me off, but he didn’t park like last time, the hug happening in the middle lane of the airport’s departures area.
So there was no one to call when I got back to campus, no one who wanted to hear I’d made it back safely. Only Jillian, studying with earphones over her ears—she pulled them off as I walked through our door. And though she eventually asked about the raid and what she’d seen on the news, and though she wanted details I’d never be willing to give her, she gaped at the bandage on my hand and began her interrogation with an almost sweet question, the first full sentence she’d spoken to me in weeks: Are you OK? Liz, please, tell me you’re OK.
I sat down on my bed, dropped my bag at my feet, cradled and covered the hurt hand with the good one, and said, It’s so good to see you.
34
DESPITE HAVING TRIED TO TRADE shifts with someone before leaving, I still had to work at the library that night, and I sat there dazed, lulled into a kind of desolate trance by the dozens of people passing in and out of the doors who didn’t feel like they’d abandoned their families to be there, who didn’t know how it felt to be ambushed by your country and your own mother in a one-two punch. For most of my shift, when someone set off the sensors, I didn’t even call them back to my desk to check their bag—I just waved them off, because it felt wrong to be sitting there, a thousand miles from where I’d been that morning. What were a few lost books? I couldn’t care less. I waved and waved while staring down at my other hand, a finger tracing the grain of the wooden desk.
But I raised my head after one very long set of beeps to find Ethan right in front of me, his arm reaching back, a book from one of the special collections in his hand that he’d used to intentionally anger the sensors, the word BERKELEY stretching across his chest on a sweatshirt.
—You’re not supposed to let this leave the building, he said.
I hadn’t gone back to Happy Hours since our fight—I’d missed the last two while in Miami—and since he hadn’t e-mailed me to find out where I was, I figured he was waiting for me apologize. But I didn’t know how to do that without bringing up problems his example told me to keep to myself.
—Thanks, is all I could make myself say.
He put the book between us on the desk. He’d gotten a haircut, lopped off all the length and buzzed the top almost as short as the sides. It made him look older, like someone on his way to being gone. It very much suited him—made his jaw look stronger, his eyes more brilliant without hair to obscure them. I stared at him until he waved his hand in front of my face in slow passes.
—Hello? Are you getting paid to be a zombie now? You look tired.