Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

all this special treatment, like literally you step on US ground and you have legal status. It’s just so—”

“Wet foot, dry foot policy? That’s going to end any day now.”

“Mom, that’s not even the point. Don’t you think it’s your responsibility to give a shit about other people?”

Her mother glares at her. “And what, exactly, do you think I’m doing right now?” she says. “Giving a shit about you.”

As a child, Jeanette used to ask her about Cuba. Her father had a whole repertoire about winding colonial streets, about the most beautiful beaches in the entire world, about the magic of sitting on the Malecón watching the waves crash. He talked about his parents, his siblings, his whole past. He drew a mythology so enchanting, Jeanette hadn’t understood why her mother never said a word and would almost snap if she asked about her past. Jeanette had never even spoken to her maternal grandmother in Cuba. And even as a child, Jeanette understood that another narrative she couldn’t access had shaped her life. She didn’t have the vocabulary to say, I want to know who I am, so I need to know who you’ve been.

Her mother sweeps crumbs off the table into her hand. “Really, you should wipe this table every time you use it,” she says.

“I do. Are you ever going to let me talk to my grandmother? Because lately I’ve been thinking—”

Her mother raises her hands and shakes her head. A look Jeanette has grown accustomed to. “Call the cops. That’s what they’re there for. To figure this stuff out. To help.”

“I’m just—I’m waiting to see if someone comes for Ana.”

“The cops will say you kidnapped her. For all you know, there is a missing child report.”

“Someone has to come for her. Her mother wouldn’t just abandon her. She’ll call the babysitter. The babysitter will say she dropped her off. Someone will come for her. I’ve been watching out the window. I put a note on her door. I will know when they come.”

“Jeanette. This is not a game. You’re on probation. You really want to mess everything up again?”

Her mother. Pearls, slacks, wrinkle cream, a box of blank thank-you notes. Always put together. Always carrying a whiff of her own success and composure like a cardigan at the shoulders. You look at her and just know: here is a woman with answers. So often Jeanette has wondered how she came from such a woman. So often she’s felt both gratitude and embarrassment on her behalf. Jeanette: always a woman on the verge of cracking. You look at Jeanette and think: here is a woman with stories.

Not that Jeanette’s mother doesn’t know loss herself. But it’s a different kind of loss. Her mother lives among the Cuban elite, the First Wave, the people who lost homes and businesses and riches and ran from communism at the start of the revolution. Jeanette assumes she’s like them. She can only assume. She has started writing letters to her cousin Maydelis in Cuba and new little threads have emerged: that her mother lost her father young, that her grandmother hasn’t heard from her mother since she left so long ago; that she’s tried but Jeanette’s mother wants nothing to do with her, because of “politics,” her cousin says. Maydelis has a relative with internet access at work and she called Jeanette, asked for her email. They are around the same age and had spoken on the phone periodically growing up. But online they struck an easy friendship, and she’d sparked Jeanette’s curiosity, a desire to someday go to Cuba and meet this family she’d never known.

Jeanette suspects a deeper loss, too, one her mother won’t express. Her mother laughs with abandon sometimes before catching herself, before recasting her face with dignity, poise. Jeanette suspects a different side of her mother, a smooth easiness unworn by the hard edge of new worlds, lapping at the shore of the life she abandoned. Jeanette has seen this loss in photos Maydelis has sent, photos browned with age, her mother’s youthful gaze like time will never stop, like the future is an abstraction, a given. And Jeanette has wondered whether loss unspoken becomes an inherited trait.

“What are you going to tell him when he visits on Monday?” her mother says.

“My probation officer?”

Jeanette’s mother smiles but her cheekbones stay in place, her skin pulls. She cups the espresso in her hands.

“Someone will come for her before then,” Jeanette says. She can hear Ana giggle at the TV in the living room.

“And if they don’t? It’ll be the same for the girl. Whether the PO takes her Monday or the cops take her now. The only difference will be whether you get in trouble.”

After her mother leaves, Jeanette and Ana walk to the park. Jeanette tapes another note to Ana’s door with her phone number in case someone shows up while they are out. Hand in hand they stroll to the tiny playground: two swings, slide, seesaw, water fountain, one bench. No other children are there, so Jeanette joins Ana at the other end of the seesaw.

All day the girl’s been asking questions. About her mother, where she is, when she can go home. Jeanette didn’t tell her mother she’d made up a lie, that she’d said Ana’s mother phoned and asked her to keep Ana for a while. Why? Ana wanted to know. Why not? Jeanette had answered. Each time Jeanette lifts her weight a little, the seesaw sends Ana floating down. Each time she sits, Jeanette hits the ground with a thud.

At night they eat take-out pizza straight out of the box, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room. Jeanette browses titles under Netflix’s children’s category. Ana wants to see none of them. Ana wants to see a “grown-up movie.”

“Your mom lets you see grown-up movies?”

“It depends.”

“Did you both always live here?”

“You mean next door?”

“Yeah. Or, like, in this country.”

“No.”

“Where did you live before?”

“El Salvador.”

“When did you come here?”

“I came here twice.