And so now, as I navigated the city’s asphalt grid toward my old house, I fantasized that it would happen: that a parrot or an iguana would drop out of a tree and trudge over to me, talk in Spanish about my destiny and tell me what to do. Or maybe some palm fronds from the trees lining the street would reach down and cradle me, then ferry me to an old spirit woman who’d call me by some ancient name and inscribe the answers to my problems on the back of a tiger/dragon/shark. Better yet, maybe she would become my temporary mom, since Ariel was borrowing mine. I had high hopes for my old house as metaphor, my old house as fantastical plot element to be taken literally, my old house as lens via which I could examine the narrative of our familial strife. I was ready for what I’d been taught about myself, about what it meant to be like me, to kick in.
But when I got there, the squat palm trees that had lived in a clump in our front yard had been cut down. I looked down the avenue, thinking I must be at the wrong place, but of course I wasn’t: Leidy had tried to warn me about this at Thanksgiving. The bars on the windows and door weren’t white anymore but had been painted black, which somehow made them less noticeable. The fence around the house—that was gone, replaced by a stronger-looking low wall that seemed not so much a gate but more a bunch of cinder blocks stacked in a row along the sidewalk. There wasn’t a carport anymore either, and the mango tree that had always dropped its fruit on that carport had been ripped out, a concrete slab covering the patch of grass in which it had grown. The sun bounced off these new cement surfaces, making the house look like it was burning. The stucco exterior was still painted bright green, but with the sun pounding on it like that—with no grass to absorb the glare—it seemed more like the irritating yellow of a glow stick swirling in a club’s darkness. There wasn’t a parrot or a fucking iguana for miles.
I pulled off the street, the nose of the car inching past the cement wall. It felt like an accident, is the only way I can think to say it, like a bad copy of my house, or like a voice I was supposed to recognize but couldn’t place. I was of course alone in the car, but I said, Oh my god, look what they did! What should we do? to the empty passenger seat. My hands trembled on the steering wheel; out of nowhere I felt like I had to pee. I wanted to pretend I wasn’t alone. I tried one more time: Help me know what to do.
The yard stood solid and still. No part of that concrete was going to speak to me. If I indulged this sorry excuse for magic and kept talking to imaginary people about imaginary choices, I worried I’d never go back to my mom’s apartment, or to the freezing dorm room a thousand miles away, or to anywhere I didn’t belong. I couldn’t let my imagination give me other options; it was too painful to admit they weren’t real. I shifted my eyes to the dashboard, refusing to look into the house’s windows or at the front door, and watched my hand as it forced the car into reverse.
*
Once I’d parked in the lot behind my mom’s building, I rested my head on the steering wheel before turning off the car. I’d wanted to see the house and be calmed by it, feel somehow like it was still mine, not realizing that the mere act of observing it in that way, like a particle under a microscope, meant it had changed. I shifted in my seat just like my dad had at the restaurant, lifting a hip to pull the envelopes out of my back pocket. They weren’t there. They weren’t there! I almost yelped with happiness—the spirit of my old house had taken them, relieved me of their burden; the TA was right and this is more than a metaphor!—until my hand slid toward the other pocket, almost as an afterthought, undoing the magic.
19
LEIDY NOTICED THE ENVELOPES IMMEDIATELY, said, What are those? as she tried to tug them from my grip seconds after I found her in our room, changing Dante on the bed.
—No wait! I said, pulling them away and holding them behind my back. I have to tell you something.
Her smile twisted off her face, and she went back to her wad of dirty baby wipes.
—Those you and Omar’s divorce papers?
She snorted as she crossed Dante’s legs at the ankles and lifted them with one hand, folded the dirty wipe in half with the other. She shoved the wipe, the crap smudge a shadow under its still-unused side, under his butt and pulled it toward her. More crap smeared its surface as she brought the wipe out from between an otherwise clean-looking pair of butt cheeks.
—I didn’t see Omar. I went to see Dad.
She dropped Dante’s legs, but they still stood up on their own for a second before curling back toward him. His face, along with his mother’s, was now set on me.
—Papi? she said, like that wasn’t who I meant. What?
—Don’t tell Mom, I said.
She dashed behind me, dirty wipe in hand, and closed our bedroom door.
—Are you kidding me? I’m not telling her shit. I freaking value my life.
I flicked my thumb toward the door and said, She’s still here?
I’d made enough noise coming up the vault of the building’s stairwell, then through the apartment’s door, then tossing the clump of my mom’s keys into the ceramic plate on top of the TV to draw people into the living room if they were home. Leidy had yelled, In here, and through my mom’s open bedroom door, the mountain of sheets topping her unmade bed didn’t look tall enough to be her.