“But you told her no. And you held your shit together. You should be super proud. I am. My Mari is ready to take on the world,” she says in a cutesy voice. Vivi is only six months older than me, but she loves to joke that I’m like the little sister she never had.
“Not helping, Vi. I swear, at one point I thought I might cry from embarrassment. I barely held it together.”
“Did you or did you not not have any bodily fluids leave your body during your interaction?”
I giggle. Vivi can make anything sound sexual. “Maybe a little sweat.”
“Doesn’t count. Nobody saw or smelled it.”
“Gross, Vi!”
“Oh my god, don’t be so squeamish! I’m just saying, it felt good, right? Not letting her intimidate you?”
She has a point. Still, it doesn’t solve my Jackie problem. Just because I turned down being interviewed doesn’t mean she won’t write about me, or about Papi again. I take my feet out of the water and let the breeze and the sun dry them off. “I should’ve asked about her story more.” Until the Bubble Boy fiasco, Papi had never showed up on Jackie’s radar. She’s usually tackling bigger political issues, and not just online either. The first week of school, she almost got expelled for setting up a giant mirror in front of the school entrance. She had painted “We are all complicit” across the glass, and then she’d written things like racism, police brutality, femicide, xenophobia, Trump, homophobia, and climate change over and over until you couldn’t see your reflection without seeing the words first. It was actually kind of cool until the wind picked up and shattered it to pieces. I guess Jackie didn’t take into account that it was still hurricane season.
Principal Avila said she could’ve killed someone. I wouldn’t go that far, but there definitely could’ve been real blood instead of the cheap red acrylic paint she probably stole from the art lab. Literally everyone and their mothers were talking about it, calling for her to be expelled. Even Papi heard about it, to the point that he felt the need to text me several times to stay away from her. The PTA complained that the school can’t allow student protests if they endanger student safety. By lunch, Jackie had posted a picture of the shattered mirror online with a super-long caption explaining that its destruction symbolized how we all must work to dismantle oppression. And then Jackie wrote a piece in the school paper about First Amendment rights and then that went viral because one of the editors at Teen Vogue retweeted it, and it became this huge weeklong drama that ended with Jackie getting three days of in-school suspension but also permission to create her own student activist group that’d be recognized as an official school club so long as a teacher volunteered to advise it.
So yeah, that’s how I first learned about Jackie Velez. When she sets her mind to something, she’s pretty much unstoppable. Which was fine until she set her mind on me.
six
My father’s campaign slogan is Rebuilding America. Before he officially announced his candidacy, my mother spent months trying to come up with it. She’s written all his other campaign slogans, so it only made sense, but then my father insisted on hiring an ad agency.
Sometimes he’d run their ideas by us. I was studying for midterms when he popped his head into my room and said, “Integrity First, what do you think?” and before I could answer, he shook his head and said, “It doesn’t say anything about my plans. We need to be less vague.”
Mami was the one who suggested Rebuilding America after he turned down countless others and spent thousands. The agency took the idea and ran with it. They created a logo with the America much bigger than the Rebuilding, so it looks like one word is propping up the other.
He showed it to me and my brother one night when he was actually home for dinner. “What do you think?”
“Cool! It looks like Legos,” Ricky said.
“It’s very nice, but no work at the table,” Mami said.
“Of course. And you know, it’s just a rough concept,” Papi said. “But the agency did a great job.” Then he kissed my mother on the forehead. “What would I do without you?”
“No tengo idea,” Mami said, which is how she always responds when he asks.
I like the slogan because it feels true to our roots.
It reminds me of my great-grandfather, who died before my grandparents left Cuba, but who built the house my mother’s father was born in with his own hands. When Abuelo arrived in Miami, he worked in construction for years until his back gave out. Then he went to trade school and became an electrician.
He took pride in the kind of work that makes our country run, Papi always says.
I first heard these stories in Papi’s early speeches, but I know the details no one else does. That Abuelo’s electrician’s toolkit, a thick canvas bag made up of tightly packed compartments, used to be navy blue. It’s now faded and sits by his television, the color of the sky. It’s the size of a shoebox and heavier than a gallon of milk. I know every bank, strip mall, car dealership, and home Abuelo helped build in Miami, because he always points them out to me as we drive past.
According to Papi, Rebuilding America is both a vision and a plan. It’s literal and figurative.
It’s about erecting buildings and bridges, roads and homes, and knowing that what makes them stand strong is the American spirit.
I know that Abuelo’s back has never stopped hurting him, even though he won’t admit it. After Abuela died five years ago, he asked me to help him plant avocado trees in their garden in her memory. He took the seed from the last meal they shared, and with a couple of toothpicks he submerged half of it in water until it sprouted. Months later he dug a hole and planted it. Now there are three trees, each grown from the seed of the other. Abuelo speaks about them like they are a family: abuela, mamá, hija.
Rebuilding starts at home, at the dinner table, with the whole family.
Once, while Mami drove us to one of Papi’s weekend rallies, I asked him why he never talks about my abuelos on his side of the family during his campaign speeches, or at all, really. He said that just because he doesn’t talk about his parents doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about them every day. He got quiet and started pinching his thumb like he was trying to make his fingerprint go away. I wondered if this was the end of the conversation, and then his phone rang.
“Trust me,” Mami whispered. We were at a red light, and she caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “What happened to your abuelo and tío abuelo in Fidel’s prisons . . . your Papi’s only heard stories, of course. Your grandmother was pregnant with him when she got here. But even so. It stays with a person. Sometimes the things you don’t remember are the things everyone else tends to forget.”
Maybe he heard us. Maybe he’d kept thinking about his father the whole time he discussed whatever very important topic he was talking about with his staff. When he hung up, Papi started searching for something in the center console. “Some stories you just don’t pass down,” he said, never looking up at me. “It’s not worth the pain, hijita.”
Then he popped a mint and began rehearsing his speech in the car.
Our country has been hurting, and now we must heal together.
* * *
It’s the night before the big Hialeah rally and we haven’t had dinner yet because Papi’s flight home from DC was delayed. He’ll be in town just a few days—for tomorrow’s rally and Friday’s Home Invasion interview—before he heads out on the campaign trail again. Mami wants us to all eat together given we have so little time as a family lately, but Ricky’s hunched over the table with his head on the glass, clutching his stomach.
“I’m suuuper hungry . . .” he says.
“Have a snack. But please, papito, no te quejes. I had my fill of complaints at this afternoon’s meet-and-greet,” Mami says.
“Are people still mad about Papi’s debate comments?” I ask.
“Not as much. Now they’re back to their usual gripes.”
“Like what?”
“Ay, Mari. You know I don�
�t like talking about these things at the table.”
At dinner, at lunch, or any other meal for that matter. I once heard a reporter ask Mami how she balances the duties of motherhood with being a politician’s wife. She said that she keeps the two separate. “We don’t talk politics with our children.”
It never used to bother me, but lately it seems hypocritical. Don’t talk politics with your kids, but make them pose for your campaign pictures. Don’t talk politics with your kids, but have them say they approve your message in sketchy videos that maybe are or maybe aren’t for the PACs. Don’t talk politics with your kids, but expect them to support your policies.
Our food is on plates in the oven waiting to be reheated. Gloria finished eating an hour ago, washed the dishes, and went to her room for the night. The dishes are all piled up and drying on the counter because Gloria never had a dishwasher back home, and though she’s learned how to use ours, she doesn’t like it. She’s never told me why, but she says a person’s habits are a person’s habits, y ya.
The alarm chimes and I hear my father’s footsteps making their way through the living room and into the kitchen. He’s trailed by Joe, who picked him up at the airport. Ricky dashes out of his chair to give my father a hug. He’s at that cute, awkward height where his arms wrap around my father’s butt, but he’s too young to be embarrassed by it.
“Say hello to your father,” Mami whispers. Before I can get up, he’s already standing behind me. He bends over and kisses me so hard I feel his skull dig into my cheekbone.
“I missed you,” he says. “I was starting to wonder if I’d ever be home.” I hate it when he jokes about this, because I sometimes wonder the same thing, except for real.
While we eat, Mami fills him in on how the home improvements are going, and how they finished painting my room today. Joe sits at the end of the table, a few seats away from us, scribbling on a stack of pink and green notecards.
“What are those? Are those for me?” I ask.
“Just some last-minute edits for Friday. You won’t have to memorize anything new,” he says. “It’s all the same talking points, but a little more refined.”
I set my fork on my plate, letting it clank as I sink into my chair.
“What’s wrong?” Mami asks.
“So now I’m not refined enough? This is so ridiculous. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not.”
Papi looks at me, confused. His ears droop down along with his whole face, and then, as if he just figured something out, he smiles. “Hijita, no one’s asking you to be someone you’re not. We’re just helping you to be the best version of yourself.”
“No, you’re asking me to be the version you want. No one ever asked me what I think about the issues. No one ever tried to get my side of the story.”
The second the words are out of my mouth it hits me: no one except Jackie Velez.
“¡Que your side ni que your side!” Papi says, like it’s cute.
I sit up straighter, leaning toward him. “I’m serious. If everyone’s going to be judging me, then at least—”
My father laughs and, immediately, Joe joins him. “Sweetie, if anyone’s being judged here, it’s me.”
Don’t call me sweetie, I want to say. Don’t you dare laugh at me and call me sweetie. But I know by the look on Mami’s face that now’s not the time to talk back to my father. Like it ever is. I take a deep breath and try to keep my voice calm, even though inside I’m shaking. “So then I shouldn’t have to do it. I’m going to the rally tomorrow. I’m going to be standing behind you on stage like always. But this interview. Please . . . please don’t make me do it.”
He doesn’t find this funny anymore. Good, because I’m being serious.
“You’re just nervous. For no reason. How many times have we told you not to be afraid?”
But all I hear is: How many times have we not listened?
He sets aside his plate, stands up, and takes a manila folder out of his briefcase.
I’m so mad my fork shakes in my hand. I let my teeth scrape across the metal as I place a way-too-large bite of rice and pork in my mouth. I know what he’s doing. He thinks if he ignores me long enough I’ll eventually get tired of protesting. That’s what my father says about anyone who criticizes him. In the end, it’s about stamina.
My father takes more than a few seconds to glance over the papers and slaps the folder shut with both hands, as if he’s trying to kill a fly that landed on its pages. “Mija, I have an idea. How about when this is all over, we take a day off, just the two of us, to have fun and just relax?” He tucks my baby hairs behind my ears as he sits down next to me.
“Where?” I ask.
“Your choice. But give me three guesses.”
I take a sip of my water, pretending to ignore him.
“The beach,” he says.
I shake my head.
“Venetian Pool.”
Wrong again.
“The Everglades.”
“Like you didn’t know,” I say.
He laughs so loud I almost do, too, but instead I just raise my eyebrows at him. He’s not off the hook. Yet.
“You sure you’re not part fish, hijita?”
I grin, puckering up my lips like a fish blowing bubbles, just twice. It’s an inside joke we have, since Papi’s the one who taught me how to swim when I was little. We started with me lying over his outstretched arms at the steps of our apartment building’s pool, kicking and splashing, then eventually he taught me to swim in the ocean. To make me laugh anytime I got nervous, Papi would make a fish face. Just like he is doing now, right before he kisses me on the forehead.
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise. For now, we need to focus on the rally tomorrow. I’m going to need all the moral support I can get. You know Harrison will be there, right?”
My face drops and I let out a sigh. Does he even hear himself? Does he even hear me? We’re back at square one again, him only caring about the campaign above all else.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Harrison Irving owns the second-largest construction company in Florida. He never misses my dad’s events if he can help it. We’re supposed to be on our best behavior at all times, but the pressure feels extra whenever Irving’s around.
Rebuilding means American steel, American workers, American grit.
It means putting up a facade of the perfect family even when inside you’re falling apart.
* * *
I don’t say good night, and Papi doesn’t notice because he’s wrapped up in some loud-whispered conversation with Joe. I go to my room—with its beige walls and cheesy posters—and plop down on my bed. The painters didn’t even bother putting it back in its place.
I open my fourth-period notebook to do some homework, but it’s pointless because I won’t even be in class tomorrow. Still, if I don’t do it now, tomorrow I’ll have to do whatever makeup work I missed, and then Friday, I’ll miss class again for the Home Invasion interview, and everything will just keep piling up, all on top of Joe’s ridiculous notecards that I’m supposed to study like there’s a final exam I have to pass, just for Papi to get all the credit. It’s messed up and exhausting.
There’s a light tap at the door and Mami comes inside my room. “¿Qué haces, Mari?” she asks, starting to look over my shoulder. I cover the paper with my arm. So far, all I’ve managed to focus on is drawing flower petals around the holes in my notebook paper, and tiny waves on the first blue line. I can’t help that I doodle when I’m stressed. I stress-doodle.
“Just math stuff,” I say.
“Well, don’t stay up too late.” Mami rubs my back and kisses me on the forehead. “We have a big day tomorrow.” It irks me when she does this, acting all sweet and supportive after I’ve argued with Papi, even though all she did was stay quiet. Saying nothing isn’t the same as taking my side. If anything, it leaves me feeling like she secretly agrees with him.
I wait until she leaves to take out my phone. I th
ink about calling Vivi, but she’s got enough to worry about with her parents splitting up. Feeling resigned, I plop onto my bed and start scrolling through my friends’ posts. It’s not even fun anymore because I’m not supposed to like anything. Before my dad announced his campaign, my mom took my cell and said we needed to set some ground rules for my online presence. Which basically amounted to: I’d have none. No liking posts that could be interpreted as endorsements. No posting pictures that might cause Papi problems down the line. Then—and here’s the worst part—she purged nearly my entire history.
“This isn’t fair. You might as well pretend I don’t even exist. That’d be better than you invading my privacy like this.”
“Sweetie, on the contrary. I’m protecting it.”
“I don’t even post those kinds of things. I’d never.” My voice became a rage-filled whisper.
“Yo lo sé, preciosa. It’s not you. But not everyone gets it. Tú sabes . . . when you’re in politics, people will turn any innocent little thing into some huge horrible thing.”
She deleted so many pictures so fast, I didn’t have a chance to back them up. They were mostly selfies of me or me and my friends, but also a bunch of others: my favorite dishes, books I’ve read, places I’ve been. By the time she finished, my feed was just a bunch of sunsets and flowers. It looked like the kind of thing a bot would put together. You’d never believe there was a real person behind it.
I didn’t talk to Mami for nearly a week after that. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her for making me feel so invisible. For making me feel erased. If she can delete parts of me in an instant—all because of What will people think?—then how is this even my life anymore? How do people I’ve never met get more control over it than me?
I scroll through what little survived in my library. By some miracle she missed my Favorite Videos folder at the very bottom. In it, there’s a video from the last time my father and I took a day off, just the two of us, and went to the Everglades. That trip changed our lives and all I have of it is this forty-three second clip.
Running Page 5
