—I don’t really think – I just –
But I couldn’t speak. I wanted her to give me the kind of attention she gave so easily to Caridaylis, someone she barely knew, a girl she wanted so much to count as her friend. I wanted us home, not at that rally. I wanted Ariel gone.
The closest I could get to that was to say, I’m sorry. I just wish none of this were happening.
I let myself cry. She watched me. Mami, I said, I just –
—I know, she said. She let her tears crest and glide down her face. She wiped mine with her thumb and said, Ay, Lizet, none of this should be happening.
I hiccupped more tears, and she stepped closer and put her head on my shoulder, the way she had the night before, when I’d left with Omar for the club.
—We shouldn’t have to be fighting for this, she said. It shouldn’t be so hard. I don’t know, I don’t know.
I put my hand on her back but regretted it right away. I didn’t know if I should move it or hold it there. Myra came over and encircled us with her arms, shushing and saying, It’s okay, it’s fine. We don’t know anything yet. Save it for Tuesday, huh? Everything’s gonna be fine. Just look.
She tucked her hand under my mom’s chin and pointed her face toward Ariel, now off the girl’s back and scampering around the front yard, the Santa hat—abandoned on the grass by his uncle’s feet—replaced by a teal Florida Marlins batting helmet. When he reached the porch steps, he crawled over the door of some four-wheeled contraption: a Christmas present, the uncle said, from a local congressional representative. It looked like a beach buggy, complete with a fake roll cage and fake lights and everything, but was powered by him—by his feet, which stuck out of the thing’s plastic shell at the bottom. He steered it around the yard, growling out driving noises as he trampled every single blade of grass.
*
The camera crews and reporters hovering at the fringes of Leidy’s and Omar’s warnings eventually materialized when Ariel’s uncle stood on the highest porch step and gave a formal statement concerning the motion for Ariel’s asylum made before Christmas. He said they had every reason to be very optimistic, that they looked forward to Tuesday. The reporters asked a few questions. Cameras clicked with each calm, measured answer. Mami waved, yelled Amen when other people did, but I witnessed none of the craziness Omar and Leidy had described, though Mami did seem sensitive, and people did step on my feet. I read my mom’s admiration of Caridaylis—or as I saw it, her admiration of the attention people paid Caridaylis because of Ariel—as displaced jealousy. She’d never put it that way, but that’s what I felt—jealous—at how lovingly she looked at that girl. Mostly I was disappointed in Leidy and Omar for not recognizing what was really going on with Mami: she was becoming her own person finally, trying to learn who that even was via a newfound passion. So maybe she’d retrofitted the circumstances of her life to fit in to her new surroundings. So what? I of all people couldn’t fault my mom for having the wherewithal to adapt her behavior, for being a creature thrust into a new environment and doing perhaps exactly what it took to survive there. I admit this was a flimsy conclusion given the small sample size, given my now-obvious observation bias. But it’s easy to stand on the fringes and mistake your distance for authority.
24
OF COURSE THERE WAS ANOTHER RALLY on Tuesday in anticipation of the court’s decision, and of course I went, convinced that going was really just a form of supporting my mom. We were up front, having gotten there early to meet Myra and the others near Ariel’s fence. A crowd hundreds wide and ringed with camera crews formed around us, and at the promised time late that afternoon, Ariel’s uncle came out, Caridaylis at his side. Ariel was nowhere to be seen—not in the shadow of the house’s screen door, not in any window. Caridaylis looked as if she’d been up all night, her eyes puffy and strained underneath new makeup. The lines around the uncle’s mouth seemed more pronounced. He had his arm around her shoulders, Caridaylis small enough to be a child herself, fitting snug against his side like a purse.