—No, she’s down at Ariel’s house. Leidy scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head at this. But still, she said.
She sat back next to a naked-from-the-waist-down Dante. He reached for his toes and made faint grunting noises as he opened and closed his fists, missing his feet with each flail. Leidy’s mouth was open a little, the tip of her tongue perched just behind her bottom teeth, the hand not holding the wipe now gripping her opposite shoulder.
I said, Are you mad?
She blurted out, No! Then said, I mean, I don’t know. Just tell me what happened. Where’s he living now?
I almost let out a gust of Oh-thank-god. She didn’t know where he lived—she hadn’t known all these weeks and been keeping it from me. I felt like a turd for ever thinking otherwise, for assuming that, like me, Leidy could be a terrible person.
—We met at Latin American.
—The one by the old house?
—Yeah, I said.
—So he doesn’t want us to know where he’s staying. Freaking asshole.
—Have you ever asked him? I said, accidentally sounding a lot like Weasel, so I said, Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.
She tossed the wipe in a plastic bag hanging from a knob on her nightstand and then waved that hand at me, saying, No, it’s fine. She grabbed Dante’s legs and spun him ninety degrees on the bed, then pulled the clean diaper by her pillow to him, unfolding it and sliding it under his legs. You’re right, she said, shrugging. It’s not like I ever asked him. Did you?
If all I did was answer this specific question, it wouldn’t be a lie. She was not asking if I’d been to his apartment, how I’d found that apartment. This kind of logic—this tendency to reason away a question so that I kept certain facts only for myself, making me feel special over her, as if I didn’t have enough to make me feel that way: that’s what made me a terrible person. No, I said.
—So we both suck. What else is new?
She pulled the sticky tabs of Dante’s diaper so tight around his belly that I thought it must be uncomfortable for him, he had to feel too cinched in, but he smiled at her and flapped his arms. I held the envelopes out in front of me.
—He gave me these, I said. Christmas presents.
I added to this explanation what I knew to be true, what I’d understood as hovering between Papi’s words from the way he’d talked about all those different jobsites.
—He said he didn’t have time to get actual presents. He’d planned on it, but just ran out of time. His hours are crazy. He’s working on schools again. He’s really sorry.
She held out her hand.
—Sure he is, she said.
I gave her one of the blank ones and the one marked Dante.
—This other one’s for him, I said.
She held the two of them in front of her face. She sucked in air—sharp—through her nose, held it in as if a doctor were about to give her a shot.
She said, This one says Dante on it.
—I know, I said.
—He got something for Dante, she said.
She turned the envelope over, still unable to open it, still somehow not believing it: our dad acting in this small way like an abuelo; our father doing something that in her book counted as sweet. She fingered the seal, tugging at the taped-down corner, then shook her head and shuffled the envelopes so that the other was on top. She turned the unnamed one over in her hands, too, ran her fingers over its wrinkles, its beat-up looking seal. Then she stopped and pulled her face away from it. She handed it back to me.
—This one says your name on it.
—No it doesn’t, I said.
But as she passed the envelope back to me, I saw it—faint and small and in pencil, trapped under a slice of clear tape, in the blocky caps he always used—the letters scribbled on the back along the angle of the tattered seal: LIZET.
I turned the one I still held over and saw the word LEIDY scribbled in the same faint handwriting, also in pencil. He’d written these out at a different time than the one he’d done for Dante. Dante had been an afterthought.
—If he gave you more money than me I’m gonna be pissed, she said.
She snatched her envelope from my hand and tore it open. For a quick second, it was almost the sound of wrapping paper being shredded by small hands, but it was over too soon.
I opened my envelope slowly, peeling the tape from a corner instead of ripping through it, to keep my name intact. A fifty-dollar bill, crisp from the bank, sat in there. And on the inside triangle of the seal’s flap, more words, more of my father’s block letters.
—Fifty bucks, Leidy said, the money between her fingers, another perfect bill. You?
—Same, I said.
She tossed the envelope on the bed and I leaned toward it. I stuck a finger inside to see if there was any writing. There wasn’t.
—What, you don’t believe me? she said.
She’d already folded the money.
—No, I said. It’s just … it’s weird. What about Dante’s?
She ripped open his envelope and pulled out another fifty.