Running

by Natalia Sylvester

  The sound of the breeze and birds chirping is like a song I’ve memorized by now, and then Papi smiles and begins talking about how beautiful it is out there. It’s green everywhere. Saw palmetto leaves jut out of the water in clumps so dense, it looks like we’re surrounded by land instead of water. Every once in a while, a soft-shell turtle pokes its head out and stirs the surface, but then it’s quickly calm again, like a hiccup.

  My father’s voice doesn’t boom like when he’s trying to speak to a whole crowd.

  These moments are everything, hijita.

  The video stops and the screen goes black. I’d stopped shooting because he’d seemed nervous all of a sudden, which was so unlike him, it made me nervous. I remember thinking he was going to tell me he and Mami were getting a divorce. They’d spent so much time away from each other lately.

  “I’ve been working really hard this year, Mari. Trying to see what the next step is for me, for our family. There are some things in this world . . . they’re bigger than us, you know? That’s why I love bringing you here.” He went quiet and looked out at the horizon.

  “It’s our special place,” I finally said.

  “It really is.” He put his arm around me; the movement made the boat rock gently, like a cradle. “I know I haven’t always been a perfect father, but I’m trying. In my own way, I’m trying to make this world a better place for you and Ricky.”

  We took a deep breath in unison. The air smelled like a fish tank, like dampness stuck in the back of your throat.

  “I’ve decided to run for president, Mari. Your mother and I have been exploring the possibilities, and it looks like I have a chance of winning. But I need to know you’re okay with this. That we’ll have each other’s backs.”

  “What? Wow.” I’d known this day was coming, but my parents always talked about it like some far-off future. I’d be an adult and Ricky would be in college, with our entire childhoods and adolescences behind us.

  Papi smiled and hugged me so tight, I pushed away the small part of me that was afraid. The wind picked up, drying my eyes until they burned and filled with tears. I let the tears fall on his shirt so he would only see me smile when I finally pulled away.

  “I’m really happy for you,” I said.

  “For us,” he corrected me. “Hijita, everything I do is for us.”

  We went back to scanning the mangroves for alligators, and every once in a while we’d see one, its tail slivering by so quietly, it barely disturbed the water. We counted thirty-four turtles and sixty-seven white ibises, and even spotted two of their nests. The baby ibises had brownish feathers and sleepy-looking eyes, and Papi started naming each one after me, my brother, and my cousins.

  “You’re that one,” he said, pointing at the biggest of the little ones, standing at the very edge. It had more patches of white than brown, and it looked the most like its parent, which was covered entirely in plumes the color of clouds. “Esos otros, they all look a little lost,” he said. “But I have faith that that one will find her way.”

  seven

  Papi has already left for the rally by the time I wake up in the morning. That’s an upside of his busy schedule; if we’re ever mad at each other, we get to skip the tense breakfasts and the good morning kisses on the cheek that make me feel like a fish being reeled in.

  Mami texts me from downstairs to make sure I’m up. Normally, I consider sleeping in and missing the occasional school day a perk of the campaign, but today I resent it. I don’t know how many days I have left at school with Vivi. How many more lunches watching the cafeteria marquee scroll happy birthday messages to students, painfully slowly, and seeing who can guess their names with the fewest letters?

  Ven a mi cuarto, Mami texts. She wants me to get ready in her room because she has today’s outfit in her closet waiting for me. I picked it out from a pile of clothes she bought weeks ago. It’s a navy dress with white, swirly accents around the neckline and a matching patent leather belt around the waist. It’s kind of old-fashioned, but in a cute way that reminds me of something Lucille Ball would wear in I Love Lucy. Mami likes the dress because the designer is American and the colors look patriotic. It’s one of those Target special edition brands where they team up with a really chic label to make less expensive clothes.

  “That way we won’t be seen as elitist,” she says as we get dressed. “They notice everything, you know.”

  I can’t tell if she means voters or the press. I picture the cameras getting close enough to zoom in on a tag that’s hanging out of the back of my dress, and just in case, I check one more time to make sure it’s not.

  Ricky wears the same suit he always does and changes up his clip-on tie, which is the most effort he ever has to put into his clothing. To me, he looks just like Little Ricky in those episodes where he plays the drums with his father. Mami parts his hair down the side and pats him on each hip, a silent gesture that means he’s done. He sinks into the love seat in my parents’ room and starts watching something on the iPad. I wait for Mami to tell him to sit up straight or he’ll wrinkle his suit, but no one ever gets on his case about how he looks. Instead, Mami’s eyes are fixated on my eyebrows. She moves her head side to side like a confused cat, then tells me to look a little to the left.

  “I think they might be uneven,” she says, grabbing a pair of tweezers. I tell her I just did my eyebrows days ago, but she holds my forehead and starts plucking.

  “Ow!” It’s like getting hit in the face with a bunch of ice cubes. My eyes begin to water immediately, and I try to rub them but she pushes my hands away.

  “Just these two little ones right . . . here.”

  “Mami, they’re fine.” She never cared about my eyebrows before all of this. Now she’s always looking at me like I’m a project that needs to be fixed.

  “Maybe just a tiny bit of foundation. And mascara. What do you think?” The excitement in her voice reminds me of how she used to talk about my quinceañera, like turning fifteen meant I’d become a whole new person. I wonder how long Mami’s been wanting to make me over. It’s not that I don’t wear makeup; I just would never wear this much. “They’ll want to do your full makeup on Friday for the network interview. We might as well do a test run.”

  “They’re going to make me look fake, aren’t they?”

  “You know, most girls your age love wearing makeup. It makes you look older.”

  “Not older, Mami. Just old.”

  “Ay, Mari. That’s not nice.”

  I take a deep breath. “Can’t I just sit in the background, like at the rally this afternoon?”

  “I don’t understand you sometimes. Why are you obsessed with hiding from the world?” She yanks a hair above my left eyebrow from the root.

  I hiss in pain, but stay still. “I’m not. I’m just . . . it never bothered you ever?”

  She leans back, tweezers still in hand, and looks right into my eyes. “What never bothered me?”

  “Everyone watching you. Judging you.” I close my eyes. Mami applies shadow on my lids in tiny, fast circles. “And it’s not like we’re the ones doing anything. It makes me feel like a prop. Like we’re just a couple of trophies for him to display.”

  Her brush strokes become harsher, somewhere between tickling and pain. “We’re not props, Mariana. We’re supporting him. There’s a difference.”

  “What if I get sick to my stomach? And you still haven’t given me one good reason why they can’t skip going into my room. It’s my room.”

  She snaps the eyeshadow case shut and places her hand on my shoulder. “First of all, your father and I have faith in you. Just remember there’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s all in your head.”

  I’ve never understood why people say this last bit like it’s helpful. Of course it’s all in my head. Along with my entire consciousness and sense of reality.

  “Second of all, the home tour . . . people just want to see that we’re a normal American family, Mari. Just like any other. Mírame.�
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  “Do they not think we’re normal? So we have to prove it to them?”

  “It’s an election. It’s not always going to be fair, okay?”

  That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard my mother say. Literally nothing makes sense unless she means the opposite.

  “Pero, Mami—”

  Her fingertips land cold and soft against my chin. “What did I tell you last time?”

  I don’t answer. I look down and pick at the lint on my dress. When I first became obsessed with I Love Lucy, it was because Ricky Ricardo was Cuban. I liked to think he was like my father, but that only lasted a couple of seasons. Ricky Ricardo wanted Lucy out of the spotlight, while Papi kept putting us into it. I was more like Lucy, really, with no choice in the matter either way.

  “Mírame,” she says again, until I have no choice but to meet her eyes. “It’s not just Papi running for president. It’s all of us. Sometimes I don’t like parts of it either, but we promised we’d support him.”

  “Like what parts?”

  “What parts what, Mari?”

  “What parts don’t you like?”

  “That’s not important. The point is, you’ll be fine. You’ll be great. They’ll have one or two questions for you, máximo.”

  “See? Why do you do that? It is important. Why are we just automatically supposed to agree with everything he says? No one ever asked what I thought about the issues. They just had Joe hand me a card with lines on it.”

  “What has gotten into you? We agreed we’d do this as a family. Did we or didn’t we?”

  But agreed implies I could’ve disagreed. I don’t know how to explain it to her, or why, but that never felt like an option to me. Not even a little bit. I let out a sigh, tired of arguing in circles. “You used to be on my side.”

  “What did you say?”

  I know I mumbled, but I also know she heard me. She leans into the mirror to wipe any runny eyeliner from her lashes.

  But it’s true. She used to listen better. She used to speak up more. Before my father’s last press conference, Mami suggested keeping me and Ricky off camera. Papi wouldn’t hear of it. “These beautiful, intelligent children of mine? How are you going to keep a proud father from showing the country what great kids he’s raised?”

  “Co-raised,” Mami said.

  Now she just looks at me like I’ve grown horns out of my head. “What’s gotten into you lately? Te lo juro, sometimes I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  I look in the mirror, at all the crappy makeup Mami’s making me wear.

  Same, I want to say.

  Same.

  eight

  Before the Bubble Boy fiasco, all you’d ever hear on the news was that my father was the party favorite. That he was exactly what they needed in order to push the reset button. Joe is convinced the public will come back around again. This morning, someone leaked a cell phone video of another candidate flirting with a thirteen-year-old girl at a gas station, and now Joe is practically giddy as we wait for Papi’s rally to begin.

  “It’s not about the other guys being bad candidates, though. It’s about your father being a great one,” he says. Then he lists all the reasons Papi is so likable, as if his own daughter wouldn’t already know. It’s always the same spiel too—the party sends it out in a mass email so their spokespeople always hit the same talking points.

  Anthony Ruiz is a young, fresh face. A Hispanic whose family epitomizes the American dream, but he’s not wishy-washy on immigration. He’s a self-made man who knows what it means to work hard for every cent he ever earned, not a billionaire out of touch with middle America. He hasn’t been in DC long enough for it to go to his head, but he has enough government experience to lead with competence. Being from Miami and growing up among so many different cultures makes my father worldly but not elitist. Best of all, everyone sees a bit of themselves in him: every race, religion, gender, class.

  “He has a way of making none of those things matter,” Joe says. “He doesn’t care about identity. He only sees people. I mean, just look at this diverse crowd. Beautiful!”

  We’re standing at the foot of the steps to the stage, minutes after the rally was scheduled to start, and Ricky and I have the luck of being the only people still around to hear Joe give his usual pre-rally pep talk. Everyone else is cordoned off in a grassy area near my dad’s RV. I start to feel myself get pre-stage sweaty, my skin dewy like the moments before it rains. I look over and catch Papi shaking hands with his donors. Harrison Irving hasn’t arrived yet. That explains why we haven’t started.

  “If none of that stuff matters, how come almost all his donors are rich white guys?” I say.

  Ricky laughs. “Dad’s a rich white guy. Is that bad?”

  I shake my head and turn his shoulders so we’re facing the audience again. Ricky, like my father, has pale skin that momentarily turns paper-white and then pink if you push down on it with your thumb. It’s like the opposite of a bruise. But Cuban white isn’t the same as white people white. Ricky’s too young to remember Papi’s earlier campaigns, when people used to say things like, “I’m voting for that young Spanish fellow,” or “He speaks such good English. No accent or nothing.” Once, a white woman at a rally told us that if it wasn’t for his last name, she wouldn’t have known Papi was Hispanic, and regardless, she didn’t really think of him that way. I was eight, the same age Ricky is now. I asked Mami if our heritage was a bad thing, if it was something we should hide. She said no, but that some people aren’t comfortable talking about race or ethnicity, so they try to pretend these things don’t exist. She pointed out how our skin’s darker than Papi’s and Ricky’s, but it’s also much lighter than a lot of Cubans who are Black or indigenous. None of this makes us any less or any better than anyone, she said, real emphatically so I wouldn’t ever forget. But I wonder when Mami slathers Ricky’s face with sunblock (like she’ll probably do any minute now) if it’s really so his cheeks won’t burn, or if it’s so his features won’t “get too dark,” like she says ours get when we’ve spent a lot of time in the sun.

  “You guys hot?” Joe asks. “You want something to drink?” He gives us an uneasy look and grabs a couple of small water bottles. It hasn’t escaped me that the bigger the campaign gets, the smaller Joe’s responsibilities. To compensate, Ricky and I have become his pet project. Yesterday, Mami told me that Joe would be taking us to school now that she’ll be traveling more. They’re heading to Arizona the day after the dreaded Home Invasion interview, which is now only two sleeps away. Then they’ll hit Illinois, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, so Gloria will be taking care of us after school during the week. On the weekends, Abuelo will be spending the night.

  “Dammit. We’re behind by seven minutes.” Joe raises his voice to no one in particular. “Seven minutes!” He runs off, leaving my brother and me just five steps away from the stage. I imagine climbing them, walking to the very center, alone. Suddenly everything seems to slow down, and I feel far away, like I’m floating out of myself.

  You know how when you’re on a high-rise balcony looking over the glass railing, and you imagine, just for a tiny second, what it would be like to jump? Not because you really want to, but because you’re curious, because there is so much space between you and the ground, it’s practically unreal?

  It’s like that. I picture myself in front of this crowd of very important people, announcing the campaign has been canceled, and we can all go back to our previously programmed existences. It’s like that because it would thrill me. It’s like that because Papi would kill me.

  * * *

  Despite everything, when he gets onstage, it’s true. He’s a star. He starts by making fun of himself and they love him for it.

  “You know, when my family and I launched this campaign, I had all these big dreams about doing the perfect things, saying the perfect things. And then that bubble burst.” The crowd erupts into laughter and I play along, shaking my shoulders as if I’m giggling
. I’m like a nervous kid in a choir, moving my mouth with no sound coming out. Papi waits just the right amount of time for the noise to die down. “So now, I think I’ll just speak from the heart.”

  He thanks everyone for being here and for the warm welcome home. He switches to Spanish to tell a corny joke about the weather and how nobody knows how to prepare for a storm like Hialeahans, with their duct tape, nail guns, tabletops that serve as plywood, and a tin pan full of arroz con mojo heated over a can of Sterno.

  “You know, the essentials.” Everyone laughs again, but no one more loudly than him. It makes his whole body shake; his face brightens and his shoulders bounce toward his ears like those dancing Halloween skeletons. He makes it impossible to stay angry at him. I cover my mouth as I laugh, and then I remember Mami once told me to never be ashamed of my smile, so I lower my hands and clap instead. I let out the same deep breath I always do, the one I hold before all his speeches, the one that escapes me when he begins talking—like I’m surprised that this is who he is.

  Papi walks across the stage, holding the mike close to his chest like it’s always been a part of him. When he says that things will be better soon because he has a plan, it’s hard not to believe him. He makes everyone feel protected. He convinces us he’ll never let us down. Papi’s voice echoes through the loudspeakers and the bass catches in my throat. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think my father was the most powerful man in the world. Maybe soon, he will be.

  nine

  I’d hoped to see Vivi before going into first period English, but only Zoey is at our usual spot in the courtyard. She’s eating a bagel she bought from the band members that sell them every morning, but it’s so windy that her hair keeps getting caught in the cream cheese. It makes me wince; she has beautiful reddish hair that she normally wears in a bun, but today she looks oddly disheveled.