Make Your Home Among Strangers

The rally for Ariel Hernandez continues outside the window of the apartment in Little Havana. Lizet reflects on the strangeness of the heat in winter, and recalls a memory of her first moment in snow, wearing flip-flops, startled by how it made her hands and feet burn. She asks Leidy about Roly, and about their father. Leidy says she has talked a few times to their Papi, but Mami always hangs up the phone when she figures out who it is. Lizet asks to go by their old house, but Leidy says the new owners have paved over the grass and filled the lot with SUVs—it isn’t something Lizet will want to see.

Lizet tries to talk to her sister about her troubles at school, but before she can, Leidy points wildly at the TV: Mami is speaking into a microphone about Ariel Hernandez. Leidy grabs Dante and prepares to go find their mother, while Lizet continues listening. “Our mom kept talking. Her voice was too deep—it sounded like a stranger’s” (49). Lizet and Leidy rush out the door into the streets.