He tacked on the sweetie to sound like the uncle we were supposed to think he was now, but it didn’t work: he was only eight years older than Leidy, and cute enough that we’d wondered aloud to each other, while chewing mustard-slathered Vienna sausages at their wedding reception a couple years earlier, what the hell he saw in Zoila. Leidy’s theory was that she let him put it in her butt. I hear guys love that, she’d said, her mouth full. After trying to think of any other reason—maybe he needed citizenship, maybe she was dying and secretly rich, maybe he thought she was fun and beautiful and was going to age well—I’d tossed back another sausage and agreed with her.
Zoila held my mom out at arm’s length, zipping her scrunched, liner-shellacked eyes around my mom’s face, clearly wanting to ask about something—probably about my dad. She would say, Where is that motherfucker? Where is that cocksucker tonight? But she was not so drunk to bring this up right away. It was coming, though; whatever was making the gossip-fueled questions hover over her mouth now would find its way out before the food hit the table. She kept looking over our shoulders, as if waiting for one more from our gang to come through the door. I wanted to tell her the way I’d told Leidy: I’m the one who’s seen him. It would likely be a more welcome topic of conversation than what classes I’d taken or what snow felt like. Zoila handed Dante back to Leidy, effectively obscuring Tony’s view of my sister’s chest, and he wandered away to wash the sangria stains from his hands.
When we got to the backyard, about half the family was there and already in various states of inebriation, and my heart filled with a sort-of-happiness at the fact that the scene looked like it did every year.
—?Llegaron las ni?as! someone yelled, and everyone turned to us, the girls. Some people held up their drinks in recognition of our arrival but stayed put, knowing we’d eventually take a lap around the yard to greet everyone. My mom, although still a Ramirez in name, was the only one from her branch of the Rodriguez clan—her brother, our real uncle, went every year to his wife’s sort-of-religious family’s Noche Buena party, which was alcohol-free and therefore tamer than ours. He’d managed to convince his wife to come to our family’s party only once: it ended badly, with one of the other uncles siphoning all the gas out of their car and using it to start a fire in the driveway “to help Santa find the party.” They hadn’t been back since.
One of my cousins, Neyda, who was my age but in her senior year of high school, came over, kissed us each on the cheek, and then, without even making small talk, asked Leidy if she could hold Dante. Except she didn’t know his name: she asked if she could hold him just before asking what she should call him.
—I love babies, Neyda said in a voice that made her sound like one. Maybe when I finish school, me and my best friend, we’re thinking of opening like a daycare?
—Cool, I said. My smile felt too wide.
—Just don’t put him on the ground or anything. He’s not crawling super good yet, Leidy said as she handed him off. Neyda’s eyes popped at him, and he swung his hand at her face, as if trying to smack her.
Leidy turned her head from us and said, Where’s that sangria?
I followed Leidy across the uneven cement patio, through the haze of smoke surrounding the aboveground pit where the pig roasted, and stood next to her at the folding table propping up the family booze. She slid two plastic cups off the stack by the punch bowl and served each of us too much; she was careful to leave the ice in the bowl lest it take up any precious room in our cups. Poison or no poison, I suddenly felt like celebrating the first normal feeling I’d had since being home: Noche Buena, me looking like nothing more than the echo of my bored sister, both of us ready to watch the yearly show play out, neither of us important enough to be at its center. Her son was a nameless baby floating around the party, our dad a worry we left back in our room. She jutted her chin out at me and said, Cheers, but didn’t push her cup toward mine. As she sipped and scanned the backyard, she held the cup in both hands, looking like the girls at Rawlings parties, like how I must’ve looked against a wall with my own plastic cup. I took a big gulp of sangria, and Leidy said, Okay then! She seemed to be standing up straighter now that she didn’t have Dante in her arms, and her long earrings—the only part of her outfit she hadn’t swapped out for something else while we got ready—brushed her shoulders, tangling and untangling themselves in the chunks of her hair. She dropped one hand from the cup and let it dangle at her side and said, What?
—Nothing, I said, my eye twitching at the drink’s aftertaste.
—Zoila is freaking crazy, right? She looks old!
We both took another sip, trying to hide how tough it was to swallow.
—Tony was looking at your tits, I said.
She almost spit out the sip she’d just taken and said, I know, right? He’s so gross.
—Nice ponytail, I said into my cup.
—Shut up, she laughed. She slugged my shoulder.