“Nena, sometimes you have to choose a side.”
twenty-four
My father has never been good at accepting rejection or failure. It’s just not who he is. He doesn’t let up even when things are going well. Back when he ran the smaller campaigns from our apartment, when the staff used to stay up late at night sending out emails for donations, I’d always hear him say, We can go for a little more. He’d dictate to them what to write. Something about the campaign not meeting their fundraising goal, about the next few hours being crucial, about needing everyone to chip in even four dollars more.
I know because I’d hear Papi whispering to Mami. One more time, he’d say. We won’t know if we don’t try. Maybe it was like a game to him, the rush of a gamble.
Everyone admired this about him. The guy has no quit in him, they used to say.
I guess it’s true. Since I’ve broken my news blackout by searching for my father’s Senate voting record, I decide to check how things are looking for them on the trail. I take my laptop to the family room, where Vivi is filling Zoey in on the situation with her parents, how her dad put the house up for sale without even telling them.
“Can he do that? Without your mom signing something?”
“The house has always been in his name. My mom just always trusted him.”
Zoey gasps. Her parents don’t even share the same last name because her mom kept hers.
I half listen to them, half read articles about Papi. It’s crunch time now that only ten days are left until the primary election. Up until yesterday, his lead in Florida was up by a few digits in the polls, but now it’s within the margin of error. The margin of terror, Joe always calls it, because it means, for all we know, he could be losing. People are saying that Ruiz’s campaign has been all over the place, constantly in crisis mode with one thing after another. The Bubble Boy comment. Me running away the night of the Home Invasion interview. The drone pictures. They’re saying if it wasn’t for me caught sunbathing in our backyard, he might not have bounced back at all. People thought his decision to take me and Ricky off the campaign trail showed character. It made him look like a real family guy.
But now this new report about the water contamination is trending. I refresh his Twitter page—still no statement. I don’t dare text him, Joe, or Mami.
Family first and families first, is what he apparently said during a speech in the Florida panhandle last night. It was the sound bite of the day until his silence on the aquifer became the big story. Now the news networks link to clips of footage from last night on Twitter. He’s standing on a platform in a grassy field with Mami purposely in-frame behind him. His hair is parted to the right as usual, and he has one hand on the mike, the other pointing at the audience. The headline across the screen reads: RUIZ EMPHASIZES FAMILY TO FLORIDA VOTERS, NO STATEMENT YET ON WATER CONTAMINATION. Joe must be having a mild heart attack.
When Abuelo gets back from the grocery store, we help him bring four cases of bottled water into the kitchen. He leaves a fifth in the trunk to take home with him.
“See? It’s just like preparing for a hurricane,” he says.
Except you can’t change the course of a hurricane.
No one says anything while he makes us sandwiches for a late lunch. We stay outside on the patio because a breeze has come in off the canal.
He checks his watch as we chew quietly. “They’ll be home in three hours.”
Abuelo knows that whatever happened while Jackie was here meant something. He has always had a good sense about storms coming. Actual storms. He’s the first one to board up his windows with wooden planks when a tropical depression so much as forms in the Atlantic. While no one else takes it seriously until the local weather says it’s at least a category 2, Abuelo has already bought a week’s supply of canned food, water, batteries, and powdered milk for our house and his. He believes in being prepared for everything, so now he finally sits down with us on the patio and asks, “What do you plan to tell your father when he gets home?”
Vivi pushes herself just a few inches off her chair and pulls her legs in off the ground to sit cross-legged. “What do you think he’ll say?”
Before I can answer, Ricky rushes over like he’s afraid he’ll miss something.
“Nobody called you,” I say.
“I already texted dad that you had friends over to talk about him.”
“You did what?!”
“Oh, Ricky,” Vivi says. “What’d you do that for?”
“What? They wanted to know how we were doing.”
That explains why they haven’t texted me. I know Ricky probably meant well, but sometimes I wish he’d stop working so hard to please my parents.
“They shouldn’t have given you that phone. You’re too little.”
“You got yours when you were my age.”
“That was different. I didn’t also have an iPad and a PlayStation and a TV in my room.”
Ricky has no idea how good he has it. He thinks poor people only exist on television, the same way that white Christmases and huge brownstone houses are only things we see in movies. To him, there is no reality outside of our home and definitely not outside of Miami. I used to think it was sweet that he was so sheltered, but the world’s going to hit him hard some day. One time, I heard him ask Gloria who cleans her house. She said she did.
“Nobody else does it for you?”
“No, papito. But it’s okay because mine isn’t even a quarter the size of this one.”
Ricky practically got whiplash from the shock, and Gloria and I laughed.
Lately, though, it’s not so funny.
“Can you take us to Sunset?” I ask Abuelo. I’m not in the mood to shop, but I need a distraction and we only have a couple of hours before Vivi’s mom picks her up. Maybe the three of us can get our nails done.
Vivi and Zoey perk up.
He pretends to think about it. “I have to run more errands. I’ll drop you off while I go.” Ricky starts to get excited until Abuelo adds, “Tú vienes conmigo. I need your help getting more groceries at the other Publix.”
Abuelo is the absolute best.
* * *
We take US 1 because Abuelo says two-way streets make him feel claustrophobic. I sit in the front while Ricky sits in the back between Vivi and Zoey.
This week, Abuelo is driving a thirty-something-year-old gray Mercedes with an engine that rattles like it’s full of marbles. He changes cars like someone changes outfits, always trading in one vintage vehicle for another. He says it’s like flipping houses but with less money.
This car has leather seats that are so creased, they feel like tissue paper, and the central compartment has an actual car phone that of course doesn’t work. It makes me feel like we’re in a time capsule.
“Did you ever use one of these?” I twirl the phone’s cord around my finger.
“In Cuba when I was a boy, you just got on a horse and yelled.” I never know if he’s telling the truth or exaggerating. All his stories about Cuba make it sound like the most far-off place in the world, even though it’s ninety miles from our shore. In his wallet, Abuelo carries a picture of the house that Bisabuelo built and left them when he died. He and Abuela lived in it for just a year before the revolution began. On the back of the picture there’s the date and address written in Abuela’s perfect cursive. When I was little and learning to read, Abuelo used to show me the picture and quiz me on the address. He wanted me to memorize it. For when we go back, he said. So you can always find your way home.
He hasn’t asked me to recite the address to him in years. Not since Fidel Castro died. We all thought things would change once he was gone, but aside from the parades on Calle Ocho, nothing happened. What do you do when your last hope turns out to make no difference at all?
We wait at a red light behind a bus that is covered in advertising for a local insurance company. The back looks like a comic book. A woman with huge breasts and a tight green dress is tied up to a chair lik
e a hostage. The dress has dollar signs all over it, and her dialogue bubble reads, “Save me! Save me!”
“That’s gross.” I’ve seen the bus so many times, I can’t believe it’s never bothered me before.
“My mom said the same thing. She wrote a letter to the editor of the Herald, saying how it objectifies women’s bodies,” Zoey says.
“She did? I would’ve never thought to do that. That’s really cool of her,” I say.
“Totally,” Vivi adds.
We keep going and pass a billboard with a woman’s flat stomach and the bottoms of her breasts showing. Her skin is pale and smooth. The billboard is for a plastic surgery center, the same one with that annoying jingle you hear on the radio every five minutes. It says: Electrolysis. Liposuction. Two-for-one breast implants.
It’s unsettling. It’s like I’ve seen all these things before, but never really looked close. Now that I see them, I can’t not see them.
“Did you know that the pictures of us tanning actually helped him?” I blurt out.
“What? Who?” Zoey says.
“My dad. After all the crap he gave me. Making me feel guilty, like it was my fault some creep decided to spy on me and Vivi when he was more than happy to have us on television any chance he got—”
“Hijita . . .” Abuelo says, pulling up to the rounded curb at the mall’s entrance. Behind us, a couple of cars are already waiting for us to move forward.
“Those stupid pictures helped his poll numbers spike again. People thought he was some kind of hero because he stood up for his daughter. Isn’t that what a father’s supposed to do? Since when do you get bonus points for doing the bare minimum? He should be the one thanking me. Not calling me a malcriada and saying I looked like a cheap—”
“He said that? Your father actually said that?” The car jerks forward as Abuelo puts it in park. Two long, high-pitched horns go off, and I catch a middle-aged man flipping us off in the rearview mirror. “¡Vete p’al carajo!” Abuelo yells. I’ve never seen him so angry. He usually loses his temper during Marlins games or Miami Heat playoffs, but never at random people on the street. “I’m going to have a talk with your father. As soon as he gets back.”
“It’s okay, Abuelo.” But he’s not even looking at me anymore, just talking at the steering wheel, slapping his hand across it. Zoey and Vivi scoot out of the car as fast as they can, mumbling bye and thanks to Abuelo. He sighs and lowers his voice, rubbing both eyes with one hand.
“I’ve told him a million times. He needs to protect this family. Not just his career. Not just his position. He was supposed to make us proud. Do all the things we couldn’t. ¿Y ahora qué? People are getting sick.”
“I’m sorry, Abuelo. I didn’t mean to upset you.” I place my hand on the car’s door handle but don’t open the door. I don’t want to leave him like this.
He shakes his head. “Escúchame, Mari. You never have to apologize for telling the truth. None of this is your fault.”
Between Jackie, Crissy, Didier, and now Abuelo, it’s the fourth time this week someone has told me that. I nod and tell him I understand. Maybe it’s time I start believing it.
twenty-five
Since we only have about an hour and a half before Abuelo picks us up from the mall, Zoey and I get our nails done while Vivi gets a bikini wax. The salon is not my favorite—it looks like a bomb of cotton candy pink exploded and they tried to class it up with a couple of see-through tables and crystal chandeliers. It’s really that cliché. But it’s cheap and fast, and even though the polish never lasts more than a couple of days, it gives us something to do. While our feet soak, Zoey and I sit in the leather massage chairs and stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows. People walk through the outdoor courtyard with their designer sunglasses, holding shopping bags and cones of gelato.
Zoey and I haven’t been talking much while the women do our nails, but now she leans in close and whispers, “So Vivi really hates her new school.”
“Yeah, she told me. It’s not like it’s a secret.”
“I know. I was just thinking. I’m going to ask my mom if she can move in with us. Just till the end of the year.”
“There’s no way her mom would let her.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . that’s just not how her family does things. Especially not with her grandmother being sick. I know my parents wouldn’t let me.”
“Your parents aren’t exactly typical.”
“Just trust me.” I don’t know how to explain it to Zoey. Vivi once tried to sleep over at my house two nights in a row and her mom gave her a huge guilt trip and told her no. I asked Papi if I could sleep over at Vivi’s instead and he said, “What’s the matter? You don’t want to live with your own family anymore?”
And that was the end of that. Maybe it’s a Cuban thing.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it,” I add, just as Vivi comes out of one of the back rooms. She sits in one of the empty massage chairs while she waits for our mani-pedis to be done, and when it’s time to pay, she pulls our wallets out of our purses so we don’t ruin our nails.
“I’m starving. Let’s grab a smoothie,” Vivi says.
We’re carrying our shoes in a plastic bag and wearing neon green disposable flip-flops that the nail ladies put on our feet before painting our toes. When we walk, we wobble like penguins.
It seems to take us forever to get to the smoothie shop, but when we do, it’s closed. A printout on the glass door reads CLOSED DUE TO WATER ADVISORY. It’s the same for nearly every restaurant in the mall; the only one still open has a limited menu.
“So basically, anything that’s fried is fine and any dish with produce that needs to be washed is out,” Vivi says after looking it over.
We don’t really have time to eat at a restaurant anyways, so we make our way back to the entrance where Abuelo left us, which is right across the street from the Whole Foods and a row of two-story condos with several FOR RENT signs.
“Maybe you can move into one of those,” Zoey says.
“Doubtful. This area’s way too expensive,” Vivi says.
“What? We’re not even, like, twelve blocks away from your old neighborhood.”
Vivi and I sigh in unison. Sometimes Zoey just doesn’t get it.
“We might as well be in another world,” Vivi says. Her house—well, her father’s house, or whoever buys it—has always been one of the smaller, older ones in the area. While everyone around them kept buying property to demolish and rebuild a McMansion, Vivi’s parents stayed put. They turned down all the offers on their house because Vivi’s mom said that no matter how much they sold it for, it wouldn’t be enough for them to buy another house nearby.
She was right. Now they’re living in Miami Beach, which I know sounds glamorous, but it’s not. Her aunt is in one of those older apartments with a window a/c unit and a kitchen smaller than my closet. I wonder how long until a developer pushes them out of there too.
“Let’s just wait over here,” I say, pointing at a bench by the intersection.
Vivi sits in the middle, just like we used to at lunch. Across the street, there’s a huge, empty plot of land cordoned off by wired fencing. It’s a construction site, and the ground’s been dug several stories deep to make space for the foundation of whatever it is they’ll put there. Probably another high-rise condo. I know because Abuelo taught me that the bigger the hole, the taller the building.
This one looks like it could swallow Vivi’s house eight times over.
twenty-six
By the time Mami and Papi get home at night, the mayor has officially issued a boil-water advisory. He says we’re safe to shower, but otherwise, all tap water has to be boiled before we cook with it or even brush our teeth. Abuelo already has two huge pots boiling, and Ricky has started worrying about the water he drank this morning, convinced he’s already poisoned.
“It’s fine. It’s all just precautionary,” Papi says as he brings in all their luggage. H
e and Mami are being followed by a crew of campaign staff and camera people who are shooting new real-time footage for the PACs to use, I guess, or not.
I ask them if we can speak alone.
“Shhh . . . be careful you’re not in the frame,” Mami says. She hasn’t even kissed me hello yet.
“You could ask them to turn it off for two seconds,” I say. The smile on her face vanishes instantly. Papi places his hand on my shoulder and brushes his cheek against mine. That’s how I know he’s still mad at me, because he kisses me without actually kissing me.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Nothing. I just want to talk to you guys.”
“Does this mean you’re ready to apologize now?”
I take a deep breath. “It’s about Harrison Irving.”
That gets his attention. My father looks over his shoulder to make sure the camera guy didn’t hear me. He tells the crew to take a break as he leads me into his bedroom. Mami drags along her carry-on luggage as she follows.
“What’s this about?” she says when we’re alone.
I don’t know how else to say it, so I just blurt it out. “This whole crisis with the water being contaminated.”
“It’s not a crisis,” Papi says.
“But . . . it was your bill, right? The one that let them dump the sewage into the . . . aquifer?”
Papi looks briefly stunned. “What are you getting at, hijita?”
That’s a good question. My mind is both blank and overwhelmed by everything I’ve read and heard today. It was all making so much sense until I tried to say something.
“And Irving. He was all for it, too, wasn’t he? Because it’d help him build more buildings . . . and stuff.”
My father begins going through the mail Gloria must have placed on their dresser. “Where’ve you been getting your talking points, Mari? I thought we taught you better than this.” He gives me a look—his qué coño’s gotten into you look—like he doesn’t even know his own daughter.
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