—No, por favor, he said, his hand reaching out for me again, his eyes flicking around the room as if watching a fly. ?Quieres café? I make you café!
He darted to the kitchen. Down in my lap, the viewbook’s pages showed off places I now knew well—the library, the stunning student union—even the hockey rink, a picture I’d never dwelled on for too long but that now meant something to me. All of them did. I went there: my dad kept it because I went there. He’d shown it to this man he’d known for only a few months but had never told his brother or my cousins that I left the state to go there. Rafael banged around the kitchen, searching the cabinets for a cafetera. I couldn’t imagine either man making their own Cuban coffee, not when so many places in Hialeah brewed it all day long and for so cheap, not when my mom had made it for my dad every single morning for as long as I could remember. I pushed the viewbook away; I didn’t need to look at it any more.
—Look, I shouted as I stood up and moved to the door. I was trying hard to hold off on crying until the car ride home. I said, Can you just not tell my dad I was here? Please?
He rushed into the room, a fork in his hand—another thing I didn’t understand.
—Mamita, he said, you know I can no be doing that.
I didn’t want to respond, feeling the crack in my voice before I could hear it, but I said, I’ll come back tomorrow.
He shook his head, scratched the back of his neck with the fork. He knew I was lying.
—Ma?ana es Noche Buena, he said.
His shoulders drooped as he looked toward the bedroom doors, still open to the plain, empty beds, and it was clear he knew a lot more about my life than I knew about his, and that he felt sorry for me, for my father. I didn’t recognize either bedspread, couldn’t tell which room belonged to which man.
—Tell him, just, that I called. That I’ll come by tomorrow, I said.
Rafael lunged forward to the trunk. He went to tear a corner from the viewbook, then thought better of it and tugged a page from a magazine instead. He pulled a chewed-on pen from his back pocket and scribbled something on it, then handed the page to me.
—The telephone number here, he said. I think you no have it.
He took several steps to reach me by the door, then pressed the paper into my hand. I shut my fist around it and nodded, my other hand pushing against the bars. I ran down the burning concrete walkway, the heat somehow rising through my sandals, the car feeling like home base in a game I’d never played before.
17
MY MOTHER SAT ACROSS FROM me and Leidy at the table as we picked at some bagged salad—a light late dinner in preparation for the next day and the onslaught of food that came with Noche Buena. They asked me what I’d done all day while they were each at work, but I only mentioned the branch library, where I’d stopped to check my e-mail and calm down after running from Rafael. I stayed there—dodging homeless people and a librarian with a plastic name badge slumping from her shirt’s breast pocket that read Hello, I am LIBRARIAN—until it was time to get Dante at daycare, my mom having made me “volunteer” for that job (along with picking up Leidy at the salon an hour later) so she could go straight from work to Ariel’s house, where she too was “volunteering,” though neither Leidy nor I knew what that really entailed.
—They have so much planned for this Noche Buena, Mami told us, a wad of lettuce in her cheek. They’ve had a lechón picked out since right after Thanksgiving. I heard Cari say that to the newspeople.
My mom talked about Ariel’s pseudo-mom, Caridaylis, like she knew her, which she sort of did. They’d met a few times, and my mother watched live as Cari gave interviews, Mami’s face occasionally showing up in the background of the newscasts she’d force Leidy to later watch with her. Leidy bitched about this to me the night before, whispering about it in our room while Dante slept in his crib. She thinks they’re friends, Leidy had scoffed, and when I asked, Well are they, she’d rolled her body away from me to face the wall and said, Why do I try to tell you anything?
Dante smashed his hand into a hill of white rice, leftovers from the Chinese takeout Leidy had ordered during her lunch break at work.
—You guys realize it’s the last Noche Buena of the century? I said.
My mom slapped her hands on the table. Dante jumped once in his baby seat, then swatted his hand, scattering most of the rice on the linoleum square demarcating the space under the table as kitchen rather than living room.
—That’s right, Mami said. She shoved a chunk of dressing-saturated lettuce in her mouth and said, I hadn’t even thought of that.
—Ugh, don’t say it that way, Leidy said. That makes it sound scary.
When I’d logged on to change my mailing address back to the apartment—a new e-mail from the registrar’s office warned that final grades would be mailed out after Christmas but before the new year—there’d been yet another warning on the Rawlings Web site preparing us for possible doom.
—It is kind of scary, I said. Isn’t it?