Make Your Home Among Strangers

“Awe-some, awe-some! What other stupid words you picking up at that school?”

Leidy is mocking Lizet as they talk in their shared bedroom in Mami’s apartment. Lizet has just sincerely said the word “awesome,” and Leidy makes fun of her, calling it a white girl word. The conversation is a nod to the beginning of Lizet’s assimilation into Rawlings culture. 

“I didn't want to say that what she thought of as the law was probably very much open for debate [...] more complicated than my mom wanted to admit.”

Mami is talking about the Ariel Hernandez case at dinner just before Lizet leaves to return to Rawlings. Lizet is skeptical of Mami’s insistence that Ariel will not be deported, wondering if Mami totally understands the laws that she claims to know by heart. Lizet is aware of her own sense of superiority in this knowledge, though she doesn’t realize that it makes Mami feel inferior. 

“When everyone around you thinks they already know what your life is like, it’s easier to play into that idea.”

Lizet is reflecting on why she lied about Omar to the white girls on her floor here, including her roommate Jillian. Lizet knows that the girls want to believe Omar is abusive and controlling, their idea of the quintessential Hispanic man. Though he is none of these things, Lizet plays into it because it is easier than explaining a more nuanced truth. 

“I watched the movie two more times, looking for clues to the jokes, for the setups—the warnings I’d missed.”

Lizet comes back to school earlier than everyone else after Thanksgiving, and watches Monty Python in Jillian’s bed. She doesn’t understand the jokes that Jillian and the other girls seem to love, so she watches again and again, trying to get it. She desperately wants to fit in, to understand them. 

“Don’t get ghetto Liz.”

Jillian says this to Lizet as they get into an argument about Ariel Hernandez. Lizet knows it is troubling and racist, but chooses to chalk it up to ignorance. Jillian often treats Lizet this way, as if Lizet doesn’t understand how to argue like a “civilized” person.

“Why did I feel like I’d tricked Rawlings into letting me in at all? How could I make this feeling go away?”

Lizet reflects on the feeling of being an imposter after her hearing with the probation committee at Rawlings. She wonders how she could ever succeed at Rawlings, with the lack of knowledge that she came into school with. She doesn’t entirely understand, at this point, the way her background influences her sense of self in these spaces. 

“Not one conversation about money existed for me outside the financial aid office […] that’s how little anyone at Rawlings seemed to think about how much anything cost.”

At an ice rink, Lizet talks to Ethan about funding and financial aid just before the end of fall semester. Ethan is the first person to acknowledge financial hardship in Lizet’s life at Rawlings. She feels connected to him by their shared class status and the hardship it brings. 

“I saw her as a tacky-looking woman, as the Cuban lady the girls on my floor would’ve seen, alone in an airport.”

Mami picks Lizet up from the airport wearing a gold jumpsuit, and Lizet is unable to see her without wondering at her tacky clothes. Lizet is startled by the realization that she can’t see her own mother without the lens of the girls at Rawlings; this alienates her from her mother, and scares her. 

“It was the first time anyone had asked me this in the three days I’d been home […] it wasn’t that they didn’t want to hear; it’s that they didn’t even know to ask.” 

Lizet has a phone conversation with her father over Christmas, and is shocked when he asks her how school went. Nobody else has asked her, in part, she realizes, because they didn’t know they should. They are so alienated from Lizet’s experience at Rawlings that they don’t even know how to talk to her about it. 

“I’d done this hundreds of times before, but I was suddenly aware of my performance of making café con leche, of trying to pass for what I thought I already was.”

While Lizet waits for her father at a diner in Hialeah, she order café con leche to calm herself and fit in. She realizes, as she is making the café, that she has never before felt like she was performing this act in order to look more Cuban. She is appalled by her own desire to prove her identity. 

“And now, right there in my hands, I had written proof […] I’d been waiting for one of them to say: I’m proud of you.”

Lizet receives a letter from her father inside an envelope with Christmas money. In the note, he tells her that he believes she deserves more money than Leidy, because she is in school. His note is the first time anyone in her family has acknowledged that Lizet is working hard, and that they are proud of her.

“A ring that said, ‘You’re a good investment.’ It felt heavy on my finger.”

Omar proposes to Lizet on the beach where they first made out as high schoolers, and gives her this ring. She puts it on and feels the weight of it metaphorically tying her to Miami. She does not feel the kind of joy she anticipated.

“For so many people there he was a mirror, some version or idea of yourself, some Baby You, fresh off a boat or plane and alone, but still hopeful.”

At the rally for Ariel, Lizet finally sees him for the first time. He looks almost god-like, glowing, and Lizet finds herself overtaken by emotion at the sight of him. She believes this is because he is a symbol of some deep part of herself—the immigrant she almost was. 

“Soy su hija! I’m her daughter!”

At a protest for Ariel that gets out of hand, Lizet loses track of Mami after she drops down on the ground and nearly is trampled. Lizet is pushed aside by other woman, and demands to see her mother, shouting this as proof that she should be allowed to see her. Everyone ignores her. 

“I might as well have been Caridaylis herself, the way people kept asking me what I thought.”

Back on campus, people have heard about Ariel and the legal battle, and keep asking Lizet her opinion. She feels like the only representative for a huge group of people, tokenized by her connection to Miami that no one really understands. No one will let her forget Ariel or her identity. 

“For the past six weeks, I’d worked hard at being less Cuban, at trying to pass as anything but Cuban. I’d refused to be an ambassador, but to get this internship, maybe an ambassador was what I needed to be.”

Talking to Professor Kaufmann about the internship in California, Lizet feels the need to play up her identity, and explain her bad grades from the previous fall. Professor Kaufmann doesn’t really take interest, however, assuming Lizet is talking about a boyfriend, and not Ariel Hernandez.

“No one but him consistently called me Lizet—not Liz, and never El—and thought neither of us said this outright, I took it as some agreement between us to keep each other intact.”

During a study session with Ethan, Lizet reflects on the way they call each by their full names, something that has bothered Lizet during her time at Rawlings. She appreciates that Ethan calls her Lizet, and not Liz or El. She believes, in a sense, that she is seeing her full self when he does this. 

“You’re not Cuban.” 

Papi says this to Lizet when she is home over Easter. She is upset by it, and confused—she is seen as Cuban at school, but not among her own family. This moment reflects Papi’s particular view of what it means to be Cuban, and what it means to be American. 

“… you left once, right? You’re already a sellout, right? So what makes you think you can just come back like nothing? With no consequences?”

An acquaintance that Lizet meets at an Ariel rally just before the deportation calls her a sellout unexpectedly, after she thinks he is flirting with her. Lizet is startled by the aggressive way he judges her, making her feel as if she doesn’t belong in her own community. 

“He looked huge. His terrified wet face shined in my direction.”

In this passage, Lizet describes Ariel as he is being carried away by US officials during the deportation raid. Even here he is portrayed as god-like, larger than life, as he cries and drags a torn blanket behind him. 

“My leaving had allowed for someone new to come in […] the real replacement was right there in my mom’s arms: someone she could be proud of, someone whose decisions she understood and would have made herself had it been her life, a daughter who’d taken on more than anyone thought possible but who’d done it through no fault of her own.”

During the raid, Lizet goes looking for Mami in Ariel’s house. She eventually finds her cradling Caridaylis in her arms, soothing her the way she used to soothe Leidy and Lizet. Lizet is jealous, and realizes that her mother has replaced her with a surrogate daughter she finds easier to love. 

“I could only rise so far above where I’d come from, and only for so long.” 

Back home for the summer, Lizet gives up the idea of an internship in order to care for her damaged family. She wonders at her own capacity to succeed, questioning why she ever imagined she would be good enough for a prestigious internship in a lab in California. She does not believe she can rise above her upbringing. 

“You’re learning something, we’ll see what it is. We’ll see where it takes you, right? It’ll take you somewhere. Look, you’re going some-where already, right?”

Papi says these encouraging words to Lizet as he waits for her plane to leave to take her to the internship in California. He is proud of her, despite his inability to totally understand what she is doing, and why. He encourages Lizet to do something new, which no one else in her family has done.