Leidy looked down at the test again, and I wanted one for myself: some test that would measure whether or not I was really headed for the same future. When she left for Roly’s house, I went to the library and found those lists made year after year by important people, the lists of the very top schools in the country. These schools, I saw, were next to impossible to get into, but like the plus sign on Leidy’s test, I wanted whatever result my actions brought—positive or negative—to indicate something irrefutable about me.
Leidy correctly predicted Roly’s freak-out, but she didn’t predict him leaving her once she confessed, a few weeks later, that she’d stopped taking her birth control and had purposely not informed him of that decision. Our dad wanted to step in, maybe talk to Roly’s parents, but Leidy said she didn’t need his help: she was certain Roly would see his son growing inside her and forgive her, would go back on his decision to throw away the four years they’d been together—basically since freshman year! she told anyone who’d listen—and do the right thing, even if it was true that she’d lied to trap him. We all kept waiting for it, buoyed by her certainty, by the example of our own dad’s choices, our own family’s origins. I made a mistake of my own, thinking that the biggest difference between a college and a university was that a college (which I thought must be more like Miami Dade Community College than Florida International University) was easier to get into. So I sent off applications to that year’s top three colleges without anyone’s knowledge or help or blessing just to see if I could get in: just to know if I was meant for something other than what Leidy and my mom had done for themselves.
A couple days after mailing them, I told Omar I’d applied on a whim to only one out-of-state school: getting rejected from one wouldn’t sound as bad as three come April.
—I thought you didn’t want to leave Florida, he said.
His hand reached around and hugged the back of his own neck, and I knew for him Florida was another word for Omar.
—Leidy’s pregnant, I said.
He made the requisite Whoas and Holy Shits, but those eventually led to I’m not totally surprised and, finally, At least you’ll make a cute maid of honor.
I thought of how three phone calls and a few faxed pages of the tax return copies my dad had already given me (for verifying my reduced school lunch application) was all it took to get the fee waivers for those three applications, and for the first time, I wanted not just to get into one of those colleges but to go—like immediately. I wanted to be gone already. It was a relief to think maybe I’d given myself a chance, and with that came a new feeling: guilt.
Omar elbowed me in the ribs and said, What? You know it’s true. He’s gotta marry her, probably should’ve proposed to her already.
But he never did, and even when Leidy went into labor, he refused to show up, instead dropping by the hospital hours after (with a couple friends but no gift) to see Dante—just Dante—on his birthday: March 25, six days before the arrival of my Rawlings acceptance. I’d spent the intervening months driving Leidy to her doctor’s appointments, going with her to Babies R Us and La Canastilla Cubana, planning her a baby shower that Roly’s mom refused to attend but for which Blanca—Omar’s mom—made three kinds of flan; all this while barely missing class and staying on top of the clubs I’d joined as a freshman, back when I had time to waste. I didn’t know the rule about thick or thin envelopes—I wouldn’t get the two rejections for another week—so when I read Congratulations on the Rawlings letter, I thought the sleep deprivation from having Dante in the house was making me see things. But I read it again, right there with the driveway’s hot concrete burning my bare feet, and I started to organize my arguments as to why I should be allowed to go. I folded the letter back into the envelope and ran on my tiptoes to the house, already knowing none of my reasons would work: unlike with Dante, my parents hadn’t been warned this was coming. And unlike Leidy, I couldn’t even try for a little while to pretend this was an accident.
The next morning, on the anniversary of Dante’s first full week around and with no more visits from Roly to hint that meeting his son had changed his mind about Leidy, I faked my mom’s signature on the deposit waiver the school had mailed along with my letter and returned with it the card saying I accepted my spot in the class of 2003. I eventually mustered the ovaries to show them the folder full of papers Rawlings had sent me with my financial aid package, using the official-looking forms to confuse them into thinking it was too late to fight me about it. Leidy didn’t really care; she’d miss the help but was relieved there’d be one less person around to see how completely wrong she’d been about her own plan and Roly. But my betrayal—that is the word my parents used over and over again for what I’d done—gave them permission to finally abandon their marriage, and my dad took my impending fall exit to mean he could do the same, but even sooner.