Each word she spoke had the unintentional side effect of convincing me that she was some sort of alien, or maybe a poorly designed alien robot. I’d never encountered anyone like this in my life, and that meant I knew better than to ask how someone could be a legacy here. She asked me if I spoke Spanish (Yes) and what kind (Cuban, I guess?). She said this would be of little help to her, as the instructor for her Intro to Spanish course was from Bilbao, Spain, and so probably spoke real Spanish.
Because Dana had glossy brown hair and exquisitely applied makeup and elegant yet somehow still flashy jewelry, it wasn’t long before a guy came and sat between us in the seat closer to her. His name was Ruben and he was, he said, from Miami. I almost pissed myself with happiness until I said, Where in Miami, and he said, A part called Kendall? And I said, That’s not Miami, and he said, How do you know?
I told him I was from Hialeah, had just graduated from Hialeah Lakes High.
—Really? he said.
And when I nodded, he said Oh and pointed to himself, shrugged and added, Private school, then turned his back to me and encouraged Dana to talk about herself as much as possible. They hit it off so easily and had so much in common that I began worrying that I was at the wrong meeting, but just then someone sat on my other side and said hello, introduced herself with a last name and everything.
—I’m Jaquelin Medina, this new person on my left said.
—Lizet, I told her. Ramirez.
I held out my hand for her to shake, something that still felt awkward and unnatural; I was used to kissing people on the cheek to greet them. From the way she leaned forward and then corrected herself before putting her palm against mine, I knew she was battling the same tendency.
Within a few seconds, she was crying—just quiet, smooth tears falling down and off her jawline, following each other down the streak the first had made. I didn’t know what else to say but, Are you okay?
She didn’t turn to look at me.
—I gotta go home, she whispered. This is a mistake.
Ruben and Dana laughed about something, and when I glanced over at them, Ruben had her hand in his, was turning a huge gold ring on her middle finger.
—We’ve been here like a week, I said to Jaquelin. The meeting hasn’t even started yet. Look, where you from?
—California, she said. Los Angeles.
—I’m from Miami, I said.
—I miss my mom, she said. I miss my sisters. My stuff still isn’t here yet.
—Neither is mine! I lied with a fake laugh.
She sniffled and wiped the drops from her jaw, dragging the water onto her neck. She turned her face to me and said, So your parents didn’t come to help you move in?
I folded the letter still in my hands into a very small square. On move-in day, I’d watched from my bed as Jillian’s parents hauled suitcase after suitcase up to our room; the clothes I’d wrapped around the other things I’d packed had filled only three of my four dresser drawers. Later, her parents lugged up maybe a hundred bags from Target, each one containing a plastic contraption intended to house more of Jillian’s stuff. No, Mom, she’d barked at one point, that’s the sweater box. Her mother, who was trying to force the empty flat container into the closet, instead hurled it in her daughter’s general direction with a resigned Fine! and Jillian tossed the box onto her bed, packed it with sweaters, snapped on its plastic top, and slid it under her bed, which they’d already lofted to fit a mini-fridge. They were all so stressed and unhappy that it hardly seemed like a good thing to have your family there, except that later, as I sat on my side of the room, I thought about how, when Jillian called her parents, they’d be able to picture where their daughter sat, would know where the phone was. I unfolded the letter in my lap, then refolded it, going against every just-made crease.
—We couldn’t afford it, I told Jaquelin. The flights up here, I mean.
Jaquelin nodded. She said, My mom doesn’t have papers.
I didn’t know why she volunteered this until I registered that it meant her mother couldn’t get on an airplane. One of my dad’s brothers had a friend who owned a speedboat, and twice a year, the two of them raced out into the Florida Straits and intercepted rafts that they’d arranged to meet and brought them closer to the coast—just close enough that they could relaunch their raft and make it to shore “unassisted” and eventually seek political asylum thanks to the Cuban Adjustment Act. My uncle’s friend charged these people ten thousand dollars each and gave some of that money to my uncle for helping with the runs; my uncle had quit doing this a couple years earlier, after getting his own girlfriend and daughter over from Cuba. I wondered if Jaquelin’s mother knew about this law, this system: she could start the process now, leave but come back via raft as a Cuban, so that in four years she could easily board a plane and fly out to see her daughter graduate from one of the best colleges in America. I wondered if this was really an option, if her mother could take advantage of the holes in the system the way my family and so many others had.
Jaquelin began crying again, sniffling into the heel of her hand to stay quiet.
—I’m sorry, she said. It’s just – it’s hard, right? Wasn’t move-in day the worst?