Once I saw him, live and real to me for the first time, I forgave my mom for never turning around: Ariel, perched high on his uncle’s shoulders and waving—both arms up and bent at the elbows, his hands a blur—wearing a Santa hat and squinting into the sun. Or maybe the pained smile and almost-closed eyes were his reflex against the sudden wall of noise that hit him, that must’ve filled his bird chest to bursting. That first glimpse of Ariel: chubbier in the face than the pictures on all those T-shirts showed him to be, he was an elf, his ears glowing from the sunlight behind him. There was no way I could’ve heard his laugh, but I remember his laughter, the high notes of it spiking out over us. His skin radiated the joy of tans from playing outside, of having a ready line of people to push him on the swing. His uncle’s hands gripped his knees, and it seemed to me this was not to keep him from falling, but to keep him from floating away.
I say all this because I felt in that moment the power he held and wielded by accident. He was more than a cute little boy. I had the very strong desire to carry him myself, to fold him into a little ball that fit in the circle of my arms. Hidden behind the pebbles of his baby-toothed grin, you sensed a loss so profound it made anyone want to hold him, to cradle and rock him and say you were so sorry, over and over again. For so many people there, he was a mirror, some version or idea of yourself, some Baby You, fresh off a boat or a plane and alone but still hopeful that what’s been set into motion around you is just fine. I wanted to lift him to my face, to ask him what it felt like to go outside and see yourself staring back at you from the chests of so many strangers. I say all this because if it wasn’t for me wanting to see my mom’s face more than I wanted to see his, I could’ve stayed in that trance—happy to be among a tribe, each one of us tapping into the love the person beside us radiated toward Ariel—for as long as anyone. I say all this because I recognized then how things could get out of hand.
Someone knocked into me, pushed me forward, then another push, and suddenly I was pressed up against Myra’s back (she’d let my mom, shorter than her, slide in front). Myra wasn’t as easy to jostle as I was, and soon enough my face smashed up against the back of her T-shirt. She held her ground by trying to step backward—right onto my foot. She planted it on the outside of my sneaker, managing to find the one blister I had from walking in heels the night before—I hadn’t even known it was there until water first hit it during that morning’s shower. Now it sent a charge of pain over my foot. It hurt, but I was grateful for Leidy’s advice to wear real shoes. People yelled in Spanish and English, all hoping to say the question that would catch the uncle’s attention: Did you stay up until midnight to greet the new year? What have you heard from the government? Then I heard my mom’s voice, just a few feet in front of me: Where is Caridaylis? How is she?
The government question won out over the others.
—We’ll know more Tuesday, the uncle said as if we were one person, a friendly neighbor talking to another friendly neighbor, nothing at all weird about the mass of us hanging out in front of his house.
—We’re talking to the lawyer all the time, he said.
He shook the boy’s sneaker-clad foot and said, Ariel, you wanted to say something?
—Happy New Year, Ariel said, suddenly shy with his voice.
Many in the crowd said it back. I didn’t: I’d slinked around Myra, favoring my non-blistered foot, to get a clear view of my mom’s face. Mami didn’t say it back, either.
Her mouth threw me off the most—lips bent in a practiced, forced smile showing more bottom teeth than top. She looked like she was holding her face for a photo, stale lines fanning away from her eyes, which ticked back and forth, searching somewhere behind Ariel. I’d expected some glow, one reflecting what Ariel gave off, what I’d seen in him, but she looked used to this moment, content but close to bored. But then, as all around me rose new cheers of welcome, my mom’s face broke open, her mouth cracking the mask-smile and coming back to life with one that reached her ears, tears rimming and glossing over her eyes. She stood on her toes, lifted her chin to see over the crowd. I sometimes forgot that she was still young, still two years away from forty, the flicker of gray that might’ve winked from her hair by then hidden under the dye job and the chunky blond highlights. Leidy was almost a year old by the time Mami was my age; she was weeks away from learning she was pregnant with me. Happy New Year, my mom yelled, and she raised her hand to wave, a strong smooth arm: she looked too young to have daughters as old as us.