Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
I can’t believe I’m bringing a white man home.
Half, estupida .
“Breathe,” Quintin whispers as I stare at him, my eyes wide. He’s the one who needs to breathe. We’ve never had a gringo for Thanksgiving. What if he doesn’t like the food? Has this man ever eaten gizzards before? Pasteles? I didn’t think this through.
Surely he has but the idea of him turning his nose up at Puerto Rican food the way some kids used to growing up has me anxious.
My palms are sweaty, and the only thing keeping me from bursting into tears is that my makeup would be ruined, and my titi will have plenty to say about how I let myself go .
“You have no idea what you’re in for. That’s why you’re trying to tell me to breathe. I should be telling you to breathe,” I mutter, trying and failing to rein in my nerves. Am I trying to run him off and make sure my family thinks I’m a harlot who got pregnant?
It sure seems that way.
In my nervousness, my Puerto Rican accent thickens, as if being close to my family has me sinking back into a cadence I worked hard at softening.
“I look forward to it,” he says around a grin, holding a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and a pan of flan, at my request, in the other. If I’m bringing home a white man, I want to give him as many cultural points as I possibly can.
I can just hear my papi now.
Pero un blanquito, mija?
Yes. A half-white man with Puerto Rican family members he apparently doesn’t know.
I turn to face the door, and when I go to ring the doorbell, the door swings open instead.
Immediately, I’m faced with a wall of bodies, as if my entire family gathered around the front door to witness the miracle of me finally bringing a man home.
Step right up—the perpetually single Daniela has finally found a man!
“Your mother got a little impatient,” I hear Papi say from somewhere behind the bodies. They all wear eager grins, and I only have a moment to look before I zero in on my mother.
“ Bendición. Happy Thanksgiving, Mami ,” I tell her as I press a kiss to her cheek, inhaling the scent of White Diamonds she wears on what she deems special occasions. I don’t miss her lack of eye contact as she stares at the only man I’ve ever brought home, and I wait for her reaction.
I turn to translate to Quintin, but Mami starts in on him first.
“So, you’re the one who got my Dani pregnant?” Her question in her thick Spanish accent has me pressing my lips together to keep from coming to his defense.
Because if I don’t scare Quintin away, of course my mother will.
How the hell can he answer without lying? I don’t want him to lie, but… fuck .
“We’re having a baby, yes.” He doesn’t skip a beat as he lifts the flowers, handing them to her. “These are for the grandmother-to-be.”
I catch the way her eyes crinkle in the corners at the thought, and she brings the flowers to her chest as she continues to appraise him. Still, even with her softness at the thought of a grandchild, she twists her lips.
“And what is that?” she asks, glancing at the pan with an edge to her tone. No one brings food to her Thanksgiving. Mami spends all night the night before preparing and all-day cooking, and she considers it an honor.
“This is Quintin. He’s an amazing chef. I requested his flan, and I can’t wait to see what you think,” I gush, walking forward so she can take a hint and let us inside the goddamn house. My sensitive nipples feel like they’re about to tear my bra, blouse, and coat to shreds.
There are murmurs of Spanish, and my titi looks Quintin up and down out of the side of her eyes, no doubt judging the entire situation. Meanwhile, she’s on her third husband.
As I trudge forward, I feel Quintin slip his now-empty hand in mine, and I wish I’d wiped my sweaty palms. When I glance back at him, he shoots me a small smile before he follows suit.
Voices are jumbling together as someone reaches for my coat, and I feel a hand on my belly.
Instinctively, I jerk back until I notice it’s my little cousin.
“Will I have a boy cousin or a girl cousin?” she asks, and everyone stops talking, looking at me expectantly for an answer. The room suddenly feels hot, and everything is happening all at once. It isn’t like we rehearsed anything. Now, I feel like we should’ve.
Fuck.
“Uh—” My eyes meet my accomplice’s, and his easygoing smile does nothing to soothe my nerves.
Help , I try to shoot the word from my eyes to his brain.
His save is effortless.
“We want it to be a surprise,” Quintin provides. He sets his hand on my stomach, and I let myself lean against him, smiling when he presses a kiss against my hair.
It isn’t the first time he’s had his hand on my stomach, but it’s the first time he’s caressed it, running his thumb absentmindedly like his baby is growing inside me.
And for tonight, I let myself believe this baby is his, that he’s excited and that it is so loved and wanted, that he adores me and we’re going to be a family.
My mother always talks about how I was a pleasant surprise, how God knew she wanted me before she even did. While the sentiment is lovely, I wonder how long it took her to love me. To want me. To be excited for me.
And then guilt hits me, the weight of it staggering. The same supposed blessing now given to me has only been viewed as some sort of curse until recently. Until I thought I lost them. Until I felt them kick.
I try to keep my eye on Quintin as he’s whisked away by my aunts, no doubt for vetting and appraising.
All through their badgering, he finds moments to search for me, eyes scanning the room until his gaze anchors to mine like I’m his north.
His eyes sparkle, and he’s wearing a grin as he’s bombarded with questions.
Kids run around the house, and someone turned on the same old school salsa music that used to wake me up on Sunday mornings, so loudly, I couldn’t hear what they’re saying if I wanted to.
We are a cacophony of chaos and love , and I can see a life where this is my new normal, where Quintin has a standing invite to every family function, my baby in his arms as Mami reminds me to serve him a plate of food.
Before I know it, we’re all seated at my mother’s dining room table, the kids at a smaller plastic table behind us.
She put the leaf in the much-loved table, knots and marks in the wood hidden by the decorative tablecloth, to accommodate for everyone—and since I gave her notice a few days prior, there’s even a chair for my guest.
My papi says grace, and when Quintin whispers “amen” with the rest of my family, I grab his hand under the table, squeezing it in gratitude. The food is passed around, with me explaining what’s in each dish, and he takes a little bit of everything, much to my mother’s delight.
When my tio starts talking to him about being a chef, my older cousin snaps her finger before pointing at Quintin.
“That’s where I know you from,” she yells out, grabbing her phone from her pocket.
My titi , her mother, snatches the phone, a stern expression on her face.
I’ve never loved her as much as I do in this moment, and when my cousin cries out, the adults remind her, colorfully and in our beloved language, no phones at the table .
I mutter the rule to him as he shrugs a little, swallowing his food before leaning in to whisper, “They’re bound to find out someday.”
While he’s speaking about a completely different situation, it applies far too closely to my own. He must catch the way my gaze shifts downward, and he reaches for my chin, forcing me to look at him.
I never realized how uncomfortable it could feel, being so seen. It’s unnerving how much he catches when, in the past, I was a passing glance for most.
“Not that. Never that,” he whispers before pressing a kiss to my cheek. He adjusts so he’s facing his plate again and starts in on the food with a passion I thought he only reserved for me.
He’s so open to the situation, to trying new things and taking on roles I didn’t even think about when I decided to go through with the pregnancy.
The one consistent thing I hear is that while you’re taking care of the baby, someone needs to be taking care of you, and this man…this fine-ass man takes great care of me.
Mami excuses herself, returning with Quintin’s flan, and I hear family members start speaking. They make little remarks, and he takes it all in stride, laughing at their jokes. The dessert is passed around and, one-by-one, everyone tries it. I sit forward, catching their reactions.
The silence is so loud.
Even Mami is quiet as she tries it.
“You sure you’re not Puerto Rican?” Papi asks, and everyone laughs.
“Actually, I did the genetic testing, and it turns out, my mother was. So this feels like finding a part of myself I never got to know,” he says once the laughter dies down.
A few of my family members express excitement, my uncle putting his arm around Quintin’s shoulder. My dad shakes his head with a smile as he looks down at his plate.
I start eating my piece of flan as the conversations pick up again.
“Where is your family?” My mami ’s question garners silence as we wait for Quintin’s response, and I hate myself for not knowing the answer. Has this all been about me this entire time?
“I…uh, I grew up in foster care, actually,” he says after chewing and swallowing his food. “When I turned twenty-one, I tried looking for my parents. My mother passed away when I was around five. My father prefers to ignore my existence so as not to upset his wife and other children.”
My heart stutters over the thought of little Quintin in foster care, not knowing a permanent love, not knowing where he came from, not having a full past.
“You have siblings,” I murmur, reaching for his hand again, this time to comfort him. He looks over at me with a shrug—typical at this point.