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Authors: Jennine Capó Crucet
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remote, its thud against the carpet the last sound I heard as I ran out the front door.
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7
LEIDY DIDNâT SEEM TO HEAR my almost-confession about Rawlings, never asked, What were you saying? Not even when she caught up with me on the sprint to Arielâs house, me wearing a broken pair of my momâs flip-flops that she left by the mailboxes downstairs, her in a red tube top and cutoffs and strappy sandals, earrings still in, her nameplate now dangling from her neckâ camera ready , she called the look. Dante spent the run trying to rip the nameplate free from the gold chain.
The cameras had moved on to someone else by the time we got there, though Leidy did manage to standâas seductively as is possible when one is holding an eight-month-oldâbehind the man they were then interviewing. My mom was on the sidewalk, watching the new interview, and when I asked her what the hell was going on, she shushed me hard and crossed her arms over her chest, then rose up on her toes to see better.
That night, as we sat to eat dinner in the area we called the dining room but which was really just a table and three chairs set off by a square of linoleum a few feet from the couch, my mom was too franticâtoo happyâtalking about being interviewed, about the people sheâd met, and I didnât want to spoil that for her with news of my Rawlings hearing, not after what Leidy had told me that morning. Mami was in such good spirits that sheâd cooked bistec palomillaâmy favorite, with tons of extra onions, the meat pounded so thin that before sheâd fried it you could see light through the sinewy slabâand I knew from the meal that sheâd forgiven me for my stupid plan to come home without telling her. I lowered my face over my plate and let the steam and the smell of almost-burnt onions fill my whole head and displace the foreign college-world termsâ plagiarism , academic integrity , student code of conduct âas well as the word those would boil down to were I to try and explain things to them: cheating . For most of dinner, I was grateful for the distraction of the Ariel conversation. My mom smiled at how slowly I chewed, not knowing that I was just trying to keep my mouth busy.
âWhat everybodyâs saying is that he made it here, right? Mami said. So thatâs it, he can stay, thatâs the law. If youâre Cuban and you make it to dry land, when you ask for asylum, you get it. Done. Everybody knows that.
She worked a chunk of the thin steak between her molars. I didnât want to say that what she thought of as the law was probably very much open for debate; he hadnât made it to the U.S. unassistedâheâd been picked up at sea and brought inâso the wet foot/dry foot element, which already seemed like a tricky way to distinguish which Cubans got sent back and which got to stay and eventually apply for political asylum, was more complicated than my mom wanted to admit. Plus, Ariel Hernandez wasnât just a minor; he was a little kid. How could my momâwho was friends with so many people whoâd been brought by their parents from Cubaâthink that someone so young would get to decide in which country heâd grow up? I cut another sliver of meat, speared a perfect loop of onion for the same bite, chewed and chewed.
âYou know the coast guard? She pointed her fork at me, then Leidy, then said, They almost didnât believe the fisherman that called them. They thought Ariel was a doll when they saw him, he was sitting so still on the raft. They almost left him there.
She told us that pretty much everyone she metâher vecinos, she called them now, neighbors she hadnât talked to until that dayâwas somehow related to Arielâs relatives here or to Ariel himself. She would not be surprised, she said, if we were somehow related to him, too.
I asked what I thought was a simple, obvious question: What about
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7
LEIDY DIDNâT SEEM TO HEAR my almost-confession about Rawlings, never asked, What were you saying? Not even when she caught up with me on the sprint to Arielâs house, me wearing a broken pair of my momâs flip-flops that she left by the mailboxes downstairs, her in a red tube top and cutoffs and strappy sandals, earrings still in, her nameplate now dangling from her neckâ camera ready , she called the look. Dante spent the run trying to rip the nameplate free from the gold chain.
The cameras had moved on to someone else by the time we got there, though Leidy did manage to standâas seductively as is possible when one is holding an eight-month-oldâbehind the man they were then interviewing. My mom was on the sidewalk, watching the new interview, and when I asked her what the hell was going on, she shushed me hard and crossed her arms over her chest, then rose up on her toes to see better.
That night, as we sat to eat dinner in the area we called the dining room but which was really just a table and three chairs set off by a square of linoleum a few feet from the couch, my mom was too franticâtoo happyâtalking about being interviewed, about the people sheâd met, and I didnât want to spoil that for her with news of my Rawlings hearing, not after what Leidy had told me that morning. Mami was in such good spirits that sheâd cooked bistec palomillaâmy favorite, with tons of extra onions, the meat pounded so thin that before sheâd fried it you could see light through the sinewy slabâand I knew from the meal that sheâd forgiven me for my stupid plan to come home without telling her. I lowered my face over my plate and let the steam and the smell of almost-burnt onions fill my whole head and displace the foreign college-world termsâ plagiarism , academic integrity , student code of conduct âas well as the word those would boil down to were I to try and explain things to them: cheating . For most of dinner, I was grateful for the distraction of the Ariel conversation. My mom smiled at how slowly I chewed, not knowing that I was just trying to keep my mouth busy.
âWhat everybodyâs saying is that he made it here, right? Mami said. So thatâs it, he can stay, thatâs the law. If youâre Cuban and you make it to dry land, when you ask for asylum, you get it. Done. Everybody knows that.
She worked a chunk of the thin steak between her molars. I didnât want to say that what she thought of as the law was probably very much open for debate; he hadnât made it to the U.S. unassistedâheâd been picked up at sea and brought inâso the wet foot/dry foot element, which already seemed like a tricky way to distinguish which Cubans got sent back and which got to stay and eventually apply for political asylum, was more complicated than my mom wanted to admit. Plus, Ariel Hernandez wasnât just a minor; he was a little kid. How could my momâwho was friends with so many people whoâd been brought by their parents from Cubaâthink that someone so young would get to decide in which country heâd grow up? I cut another sliver of meat, speared a perfect loop of onion for the same bite, chewed and chewed.
âYou know the coast guard? She pointed her fork at me, then Leidy, then said, They almost didnât believe the fisherman that called them. They thought Ariel was a doll when they saw him, he was sitting so still on the raft. They almost left him there.
She told us that pretty much everyone she metâher vecinos, she called them now, neighbors she hadnât talked to until that dayâwas somehow related to Arielâs relatives here or to Ariel himself. She would not be surprised, she said, if we were somehow related to him, too.
I asked what I thought was a simple, obvious question: What about
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