—You know the coast guard? She pointed her fork at me, then Leidy, then said, They almost didn’t believe the fisherman that called them. They thought Ariel was a doll when they saw him, he was sitting so still on the raft. They almost left him there.
She told us that pretty much everyone she met—her vecinos, she called them now, neighbors she hadn’t talked to until that day—was somehow related to Ariel’s relatives here or to Ariel himself. She would not be surprised, she said, if we were somehow related to him, too.
I asked what I thought was a simple, obvious question: What about his dad?
My mom stopped chewing, swallowed, and said like a speech, Well it’s the father’s family that’s taken him in. They knew Ariel was coming – it was the father that told them. And what does he care? He let them leave. He has a whole new family in Cuba. New wife, new baby, everything. He gave them his blessing.
She had her fork in her fist as she said this. She stabbed the next piece of meat on her plate and shoved it in her mouth.
—Where’d you hear that? I asked.
—From everyone!
I closed my eyes, the word citation suddenly coming to me, and said, Right, okay.
Then, after more chewing, But who exactly?
—What is your problem? Leidy yelled. What do you care who said it? Of course it’s true. We’re on the freaking front lines here.
—I’m just asking about sources, Leidy. Not every ref standing on the street knows –
—So you don’t believe me now? Mami said.
She threw her fork onto her plate. The clang of it sounded like the start of so many other fights, but my question really came from an honest desire for accuracy. She picked up her napkin and started wiping imaginary crumbs off the edge of the table and into her hand, mumbling something about disrespect, and I wanted to tell her how my writing seminar professor had—as we sat in the high-ceiling box of her office three days after I’d handed in my first research paper—shown me a highlighted block of sentences in my work, then pulled out another sheet, a photocopy from a book I remembered using at the library, the same sentences surrounded by a red square. She placed them side by side and asked me what was going on. I said I didn’t know, because that was the truth: I did not know what the problem was. I said, I copied that from the book I cited in the bibliography—the last page of my paper? Had she missed it? No, she hadn’t missed it. What’s wrong then? I said, but she slid the pages away from me, tucked them into a folder she’d already labeled Ramirez, L. (plagiarism issue), and suggested we hold off on the rest of this conversation until we each spoke with the Dean of Students. I was so bewildered that I’d stupidly said Thank you and then bolted, my chair making a hideous noise against the wood floor. My mom wouldn’t understand any of this as an explanation for my sudden sensitivity to how one cited their information; she’d backtrack and ask me, Wait, why’s a teacher talking to you outside of school? She raised the hand catching the crumbs over my napkin and dumped them on it, her fingers opening and closing to shake them loose.
—I believe you, Mami, I said. I didn’t mean anything bad by it. I was just asking if you heard that on the news or something, is all I meant.
My mom leaned back in her chair, calm now, but Leidy snorted and said, We are the freaking news, Lizet. She tore a slice of steak into tiny gum-able threads and pushed them one by one into Dante’s mouth with the tip of her finger.
Like the TV still running in the background but on mute during dinner, my mom eventually circled back to the facts and events she’d started with, and I piled more rice on my plate, ready to pack my mouth with food if she asked, Now tell me the truth, Lizet, how are things really going up there? I would need the chewing time to figure out what to say that wouldn’t be considered lying. When she noticed the hill of rice, she stood at her chair and leaned over the table, picked up the serving plate in the center and slid the last hunk of steak from it, tipping it so that all the juice and onions smothered everything. There was no way I could finish it, and I said, Mom! I’m fine! I just wanted rice!
—You haven’t told me, she said, how’s the food up there?
She scraped the serving plate clean with her fork and then sat back down. The food at Rawlings was decent, though everyone else talked like it was amazing, singing the praises of what we were told was the largest salad bar in the Northeast. There were other supposed wonders: sandwiches that everyone called speedies, made on demand by a chef and not a work-study student; something called the Mongolian Grill that I hadn’t tried because the color and consistency of the sauce choices made me think of house paint. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly, a lot of soft-serve ice cream, a lot of pasta with grilled onions on top.
—Actually the food is great, I said. My school has the largest salad bar in the Northeast. It’s like a thing they brag about.
—Wow, Leidy said. That’s ah-maze-ing.