Chapter 14

Even though I braced myself for less than pleasant accommodations, even I didn’t expect to be bunking with my eighteen-year-old brother for two months. We’d had our own rooms since birth and those bedroom doors were a necessity. The Ruízes weren’t a “naked family”—one of those families where the mom walks around in her bra and the dad in his boxers, and the kids wear nothing but towels to get from the shower to their bedrooms. That wasn’t us.

We wore robes over our pajamas, even in the summer. We would never open the bathroom door while someone was in the shower, despite the two opaque curtains. We didn’t go into a bedroom without knocking.We had boundaries.

But now, it seemed I was expected to not only sleep in a cement room without air-conditioning on a twin bed with a rock-hard mattress and a moldy-scented sheet, but I was also expected to sleep right across from my brother’s similar sub-par twin bed. I was going to have to change my clothes in front of him, every day. I was going to have to smell his rank breath and boy odor while I slept. I was going to have to let my laundry touch his. And our only bathroom was shared with the entire household—seven people, including us. I might as well have been camping.

Not that I had time to focus on this much.As soon as Lilly showed us to our room and we plunked our carry-ons onto our beds (the mattresses made a sound similar to wood when hit with the luggage), we were called back into the family room for dinner. I was exhausted and wanted to nap (or tap my heels and be transported back to Spring Mills), but I reluctantly followed my brother toward the scent of food.

“Hola.” Vince smiled and waved his hand in a giant semicircle. “Me llamo Vince.”

The entire crowd of strangers chuckled slightly. I merely flicked my hand in their direction.

“Uh, they want you to sit at the table. To eat,” Lilly explained, pointing to a long wood table covered with dishes of food from one end to the other.

I looked at Vince and he shrugged with ease. It came so naturally to him—the ability to adapt to any situation or, even better, make it more enjoyable. He could have fun at a funeral, if it were socially acceptable. At that moment, as he pulled out a chair, relaxed in his seat and shouted “Let’s eat,” I actually wanted to be him.

Everyone followed his lead and rushed to the food. There clearly wasn’t enough room for each person to sit, but it seemed to have been predetermined who would get a chair. The one next to Vince was glaringly left vacant, waiting for me. I stared past it and out the front window and saw Alonzo standing behind the trunk of his car, with another man, yanking on my suitcase. He had a foot on the bumper to brace himself as he pulled, and I felt mildly guilty for causing such a problem. I would have gone out to help if I thought I could do some good, but I was lucky I was even able to wheel it through the airport. Unless they wanted me to do pirouettes around the vehicle, I didn’t think I’d be much use.

“Aren’t you gonna eat anything?” asked Lilly, as she heaped some rice on her plate.

I looked at the spread and didn’t recognize a single edible item aside from the yellow rice with meat that my grandmother used to make, though I had never eaten it before. I wasn’t big on rice that wasn’t white. Not Spanish rice, not Chinese fried rice, not even whole grain rice. And now, that same rice I’d snubbed hundreds of times before was looking like the most appealing food on the table.

“Mariana, sit down and eat,” Vince said, widening his eyes for emphasis.

I could tell he knew what I was thinking. I came out of the womb a picky eater. My mom still told stories of me refusing to drink a bottle as a baby. She was so concerned that I was allergic to the formula that she rushed me to the hospital for emergency tests. According to the physicians, I had no physical reaction to the formula at all. I apparently just didn’t want to drink it. And when I got to solid food, my mother ended up pureeing her own peas, carrots and apples because I spit out anything that came in a jar. I, of course, don’t remember any of this, but it sure sounded like something I would do.

I pulled out a chair that clearly didn’t match the one Vince was sitting on. Mine was light maple and had a blue-patterned cushion and a low back, and his was a dark mahogany wood with a white cushion and a high back. I realized all the chairs were different and wondered if it was an intentional design element, or if they just couldn’t afford a set of matching chairs. I sat down and glared at my empty yellow plate.

“Just eat something. It’s good,” he whispered, covering his mouth so Lilly wouldn’t overhear.

“What is all this?” I asked, staring at the heaping piles of food.

“This is like grandma’s rice, only it has sausage and chicken,” he explained, pointing to a large mound on his dish before moving on to the rest. “This is some sort of fried fish, but be careful, it has bones. I think that’s ham.These are fried bananas. You’ll like these. They’re sweet. This is some sort of soup with meat in it.”

“Asopao,” Lilly corrected. “It’s chicken with mashed plantains. It’s huge here.”

I forced a smile before turning back to my brother with wide-eyed concern. I hated anything mashed. In all my life I hadn’t eaten even a teaspoon of garlic mashed potatoes or sweet potato puff. I also refused to eat any meat still attached to a bone—I felt like a cavewoman picking up and gnawing hunks of flesh. I didn’t even eat ribs or chicken wings back home. So that ruled out the assorted pig parts and fish. Fish bones were the worst—small, sneaky and deadly. I always felt like it was the fish’s way of getting back at us for the hook in its mouth. It was only fair.

I surveyed my options and decided on a small pile of Spanish rice with a tiny bit of yellow-colored chicken and a large mound of fried bananas.Vince was right, the bananas were my favorite thing on the table.

“Do not make a face while you’re eating,” Vince whispered sternly.

He sounded like Dad, though I would never tell him that. It would only make him angry.

I pushed my food around the plate, spreading it out in the hopes of making it look like I ate more than I did.

“You don’t like it?” Lilly asked suddenly from across the table.

I looked up from my plate and caught her staring at my uneaten meal.

“No, no. It’s great.” Dozens of eyes snapped toward me, including my Aunt Carmen’s. “Really, it’s good.”

I smiled for effect and took another bite of my bananas. Thankfully, the crowd was satisfied and looked away.

“Well, you’re not eating much,” Lilly stated.

She seemed a bit offended, and I wondered if she helped cook the meal. The last thing I wanted was to make the one person who actually spoke English dislike me, or worse, think that I was rude. I had never been accused of being rude in my life.

“No, it’s all great. I’m just not that hungry. From the plane and all. I’m exhausted.”

It was only a half lie. I really was tired. And I was also willing to ignore the rumbling in my belly if it meant I didn’t have to consume any more strange foods.

“You know, I think I’m gonna go to bed. That’s okay, right?” I asked Lilly.

She looked back at me with one eyebrow raised. “Um, it’s like eight-thirty. But if you want to go to bed, go for it. I won’t stop you.”

I took that as a green light and stood up from the table. My Aunt Carmen’s head swiveled toward me the minute I rose and her eyes instantly landed on my mostly untouched plate.

“Um, gracias. Gracias. Fue muy buena,” I stated, before quickly turning away.

I darted to my room and shut the door without glancing back. I was alone.

I peeled back my stale sheet, pulled down the dirty white shade covering the lone window (apparently, plastic shades were considered a window treatment in Puerto Rico), and fell on the hard mattress. Tears immediately spilled from my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was crying because I was homesick, lonely or just drained. I guessed it was a combination of all three.

I stayed in bed, quietly sobbing for almost an hour. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried like that, but it almost felt good, like it needed to come out. Eventually I got up and changed into a pair of gray cotton shorts and an old Eagles T shirt that smelled like home. I collapsed into the bed and by the time I drifted off to sleep, I could hear everyone had moved onto the outside porch. From the echoes of clanking bottles, it sounded like a party.Vince and Lilly were laughing.