Make Your Home Among Strangers

Lizet decides to find and confront her father using the “most Latina” (145) strategy; going to her Tio Fito’s house and demanding to know her father’s address. When she arrives, her cousins are outside drinking, and Tio Fito is inside, watching a recorded World Series game, completely drunk. Lizet gets the information she needs, but not before pissing off her cousin by questioning his father’s inebriation so early in the morning. As she drives away, Lizet sees her uncle through the window, “making him look like a memory of someone—a ghost I barely recognized” (151).

Lizet’s father is living in an apartment in Hialeah near their old house. Lizet knocks and a stranger, her father’s Dominican roommate Rafael, ushers her inside. Her father isn’t home, but Rafael tells Lizet how proud her father is of her, showing her the pamphlet of Rawlings he keeps in pristine condition to show his friends. Lizet is startled, and becomes overwhelmed; she leaves without waiting for her dad to come home.

Lizet says nothing about going to her father’s apartment to Leidy and Mami that night as they share a light dinner before the feast for Noche Buena.