And the note meant more than what it said: I really thought their anger at me applying behind their backs would dissipate once they saw me preparing to go, once the reality of their youngest daughter leaving home set in. I kept waiting for either of them to say they were proud of me. My teachers had said it, but in an automatic way and always using the plural: We’re so proud of you. That phrase, in the overanimated voice of an assistant principal, had boomed over the PA system during fifth period AP English one day in April after the main office got word that I’d been admitted to Rawlings: Teachers and students, he’d said, pardon the interruption, but we’re proud to announce that we’ve just learned senior Lizet Ramirez has become the first student in Hialeah Lakes history to be accepted to Rawlings University. We’re so proud of you, Lizet, and we hope other students follow your example and start taking school seriously. As if all you had to do to get into Rawlings was take school seriously. As if calling it Rawlings University over College was somehow a needed upgrade. The administration was so overwhelmed by what I’d done that they couldn’t help gushing via loudspeaker to almost five thousand completely uninterested people: I thought that pride had to infect my parents eventually. But when my dad said goodbye to me months later in front of my mom’s building, he hadn’t said it. When my mom, who’d insisted no one could come with her to the airport to see me off, pressed her thumb to my cheek to smear away something that wasn’t even there, she hadn’t said it. In phone calls, at the end of recorded messages, no one said it. And now, right there in my hands, I had written proof—I could see it between the small print, the words in their crammed blocks building to what I’d been waiting for one of them to say: I’m proud of you.
I pulled the money out, then folded the envelope into a tiny square and shoved it in my pocket, and, to make facing Leidy again even possible, I told myself I would not see my dad again, especially since he’d think it was just to get more cash. And what was the point, when I’d already proven at breakfast that I lacked the guts to confront him about the house? I took leaping steps down the hall to try to cover the fact that I’d been gone for a few beats more than I should’ve, only to find Leidy not wondering what took me so long, but with her back to me as she stood by the dresser. She was holding the bills with both hands by their corners, rubbing them against each other and then pausing to watch them, as if waiting for a message. She rested her wrists on the edge of the already-open top drawer; she must’ve pulled it open slowly so I wouldn’t hear from the kitchen. She took one hand off the money and pressed it to the stack of her underwear in the drawer, pushed them to the side; she pressed the same hand to the stack of bras and swept them over, too. She laid the two almost-crisp-again bills, one at a time, at the very back of the drawer, then slid the bras and the underwear back into place, everything right where it belonged.
Fifty dollars once seemed to me like a lot of money, and it still did as I stood there in the doorway, watching my sister slowly close that drawer before she turned and saw me and pretended to be messing with the stack of diapers piled on the dresser. But I knew that in a couple weeks I’d be gone again and it wouldn’t be enough: there was no way his present to us could cover all the things we needed. And because Papi hadn’t written anything to Leidy, because she only had those two pieces of paper now tucked behind and under the thinnest things she owned, he’d given her even less than he’d given me.
She squared the stack of diapers and placed the box of wipes next to it, then said in the most bored voice she could find, So did Papi say what he was doing for Noche Buena?
—He didn’t, I said. But I don’t care so I didn’t ask.
I slipped my shoes from my feet and lined them up outside our bedroom door against the wall. Down the hallway and through Mami’s half-closed door, clothes—shed like snakeskins—dotted the floor in complete-looking outfits, pairs of shoes in their centers, each outfit apparently created in its entirety but then declared wrong for whatever she’d be doing.
—We should start getting ready soon, I said to Leidy’s back. I looked down at the scuffed fronts of my flats and said to them, Why is Mom even over there today?
When Leidy didn’t answer, I said, You want to shower first? I can watch Dante.
She spun around and said, You know, I almost wish it was Omar you’d seen?
She snatched the used grocery bag holding the dirty wipes from the knob on her nightstand.
—God no, that would be worse, I said. And for sure he wouldn’t give us money.
We laughed, but too hard; we were both pretending. She knotted the bag’s handles to seal in the smell, then rehung it on the knob.
—I’m surprised he doesn’t run away, I said.
—Huh?
I came all the way into the room and pointed at Dante, who was still on the bed and gazing at his mom, his belly button peeking out over his new diaper. I sat down by him and traced my finger around the tiny hole. He didn’t so much laugh as he did scream, a piercing noise like a parrot’s shriek filling the whole apartment. It disappeared so suddenly when I flinched away that Leidy and I cracked up in the emptiness ringing after it.
—Yeah, that’s a thing he does sometimes, she giggled. Watch this.
She sat on the bed and leaned over, pulled his shirt higher and blew hard—really hard—on his stomach, the farting sounds quickly drowned out by the same scream-laugh.
—You are so freaky sometimes, she singsonged to him as she sat up and smushed his face between her hands, the pads of her fingers on his cheeks.
I laughed more and said, Why does he do that?
—I have no idea, she said. It’s just what he does.
Together, up until Mami came home glowing with the news of everything going into Ariel’s first Noche Buena in Miami, we hovered over Dante and tickled the bottoms of his feet, the skin behind his knees, the palms of his hands before he could shut them to keep out our fingers. He did it almost every time, in response to almost every spot we tried—the parrot shriek taking over his throat as he tried to roll away from us. We did it for too long, covering up our private thoughts with Dante’s noise, our normal-sounding laughter rushing in every time to fill the silence that took over the instant we pulled our hands from him.