The PEN,O Henry Prize Stories 2011 Part 7

"The dream?"

"No, what the dream stands for."

"Which is?" Maud is not sure whether Peter is being serious.

"The terror of the infinite.

"Interestingly, the ancient Greeks did not include zero or infinity in their mathematics," Peter continues, displaying his fondness for the arcane. "Their word for infinity was also their word for mess."

Captain Halvorsen is right. The next morning they see icebergs. The sea is filled with them. Icebergs of all shapes and sizes. Some are as tall as six-story buildings, others remind Maud of modern sculptures and are tinged with blue-a brilliant aquamarine blue. It is also snowing.

Despite the snow, Peter spends the morning on deck with his camera, taking pictures. When Maud joins him, he says, "Have you ever seen anything like those icebergs? Have you ever seen a blue like that?"

"Are you warm enough?" Maud asks. A part of her-a part she dislikes-resents seeing Peter so happy and excited about the icebergs, and she feels excluded. At the same time, she also envies his ability to be so genuinely absorbed and enchanted by nature-at home, Peter is always pointing out large, beautiful trees to her. His appreciation seems pure and unmotivated and Maud wishes she could share it but she is too self-conscious. Too self-referential, she decides. She cannot look at the stars without wis.h.i.+ng for a falling one, or gaze at the sea without thinking "drown."

Each time the Caledonia Star runs into a large ice floe, there is a loud thumping noise, but since the s.h.i.+p's hull is made of steel, there is no need for concern. Many of the ice floes have penguins and seals on them. When the s.h.i.+p goes by, the penguins, alarmed, dive off like bullets; the seals, indifferent, do not move. Often, blood, looking like paint splashed on a canvas, stains the ice around the seals-the remains of their kill. In addition to fur seals, Maud is told, there are crabeater seals, Ross seals, leopard seals, elephant seals, and the Weddell seals.

"A marine mammal exhales before he dives," Michael is saying over the public-address speaker in Maud and Peter's cabin, "and oxygen is stored in his blood, not in his lungs."

This time, Maud and Peter are making love on one of the bunks.

"Shall I turn him off?" Maud starts to move away.

"No. Stay put." Peter has an erection.

"Seals collapse their lungs when they dive. Their heart rate drops and their arteries constrict. In fact, everything is shut down-"

Maud half listens.

"Except for the brain, the adrenal, and the placenta-that is, of course, if the seal is pregnant-"

Afterward, still lying pressed together on the little bunk, Maud frees her arm, which has gone to sleep, from under Peter and, as if to make up for her movement which breaks the postcoital spell, she kisses Peter lightly. Also, in spite of herself, she asks, "So what are you going to do with all the photographs you took of icebergs?"

Peter does not answer Maud right away. He s.h.i.+fts his body away from her a little before he says in his British-inflected, nasal voice, "Why enlarge them, naturally."

Instead of going ash.o.r.e again in the Zodiac with the others, Maud decides to remain on board. Except for the woman in the wheelchair, who appears to be asleep (her eyes are closed and she breathes heavily), Maud is alone in the saloon, and from where she is sitting reading or trying to read her book, she can watch the pa.s.sengers, dressed in their red parkas, disembark at Port Lockroy, the British station. She watches as they spread out and start to climb the snow-covered hill behind the station. Some of the pa.s.sengers have brought along ski poles and Maud tries to pick out which red parka belongs to Peter and which belongs to Janet, but the figures are too far away. She thinks again about the woman who tried to hide and again she wonders why. Was the woman suicidal? But freezing to death, Maud also thinks, may not be such a bad way to die. How did the Emily d.i.c.kinson poem go? "As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow-/ First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go-." In spite of herself, Maud s.h.i.+vers. Then she makes herself open her book. When next she looks up, all the figures in their red parkas have disappeared.

"You didn't miss anything," Peter tells Maud when he returns from the station. Nevertheless, he looks animated. "There was a museum that was kind of creepy-an old sled and some frying pans-but Janet bought some postcards."

"Ah, lovely Janet," Maud says.

"What do you mean by that?" Peter asks.

"What do you suppose I mean?"

"For G.o.d's sake, Maud, why must you always be suspicious of me? Why do you always attribute some underhanded motive to everything I do?" Peter turns and limps out of the saloon, leaving Maud.

The woman in the wheelchair has woken up; she gives a little embarra.s.sed cough.

The first time, twenty or so years ago, Maud accused Peter of having an affair, the discussion had turned violent-Maud threw a plate of food at Peter and Peter picked up a gla.s.s full of wine and flung it across the table at Maud, shouting, "I can't live like this!" Then he left home for three days. When finally he returned, he did not say where he had been and Maud did not ask. Nor did they ever again discuss either the fight or the affair. What Maud remembers vividly is her panic. During the time Peter was gone, she could hardly breathe, let alone eat, and she could not sleep. She was a.s.sailed by all kinds of conflicting emotions, but the dominant one was fear: the fear that she had driven Peter to some action she would regret and the fear that she would never see him again.

When the Caledonia Star crosses the Antarctic Circle, all the pa.s.sengers crowd onto the bridge to look. The sky is a cloudless blue and the sea calm, but the horizon is a wall of icebergs. Maud recognizes the handsome French first officer up in the crow's nest, dressed in a bright yellow slicker and waterproof pants. He is reporting back to Captain Halvorsen on the bridge by walkie-talkie. The s.h.i.+p's chief officer is tracing the s.h.i.+p's course on a sea chart with a compa.s.s and a protractor; on the radar screen, the larger tabular icebergs show up as small luminous points.

Below, on deck, Peter is looking through his binoculars.

"What do you see?" Maud asks, but she cannot hear his answer.

By then, Maud is able to recognize most of the pa.s.sengers on board the s.h.i.+p, and she knows many of them by name. One flight below their cabin, she has discovered the gym and she exercises regularly on the treadmill. She has also become more tolerant-even of Barbara, the golfer-and has made a few friends. One is the woman in the wheelchair.

"She's from Philadelphia and she's already identified five different species of albatross," Maud tells Peter, "the gray-headed albatross, the sooty albatross, the wandering-"

"What's wrong with her?" Peter wants to know. "Why is she in a wheelchair?"

Maud shrugs. "I didn't ask."

After dinner one night, a film is shown in the saloon. The film is old and grainy and tells the true story of the perilous voyage of a s.h.i.+p named the Peking. Sailing around Cape Horn, the Peking encounters a terrible storm-the mast breaks, waves crash on deck-and, to make matters worse, the captain of the Peking has brought his dog, a vicious little terrier, on board. The terrier is seen jumping up and biting the sailors who have as yet not been swept overboard. The dog provides a kind of gruesome comic relief and makes everyone laugh, including Maud and Peter.

When the film ends, Janet tells Maud, "I once had a dog who looked just like that. His name was Pepe."

"I love dogs," Maud, expansive, answers her.

Peter moves to sit next to Janet and starts to describe a cruise he once took in the Mediterranean as a college student. "I was on deck one night after dinner-we were docked in Cannes-and my wallet, which was in my back pocket, must have fallen overboard-"

Maud has heard the story a thousand times and does not listen. Instead she strikes up a conversation with the woman in the wheelchair. "Have you always loved birds?" Maud asks.

"You can't imagine! The most extraordinary piece of luck," Peter is telling Janet as he leans in closer to her. "A fisherman caught my wallet in his net. The wallet had over a thousand dollars in cash in it-I was planning to buy a car in England, an MG-"

Looking over, Maud sees that Janet has stopped paying attention to what Peter is saying. She is looking past him toward the door of the saloon and Maud follows her gaze. She sees the handsome French first officer standing there; she sees him signal to Janet.

"Excuse me," Janet says, getting up and leaving the saloon.

"Pinned up on the wall of the Cannes police station was every last dollar-" Peter's voice trails off.

Maud looks away. She is fairly used to seeing Peter flirt, but she is not used to seeing him defeated.

A few minutes later, Peter says, "I'm tired, I'm going to bed."

Maud would like to say something that might be of comfort to him but cannot think what that might be. She merely nods.

When Maud wakes up during the night to go to the bathroom (or head as she knows she is supposed to call it), she sees that Peter is not in his bed. The sheets and blankets are half lying on the floor as if Peter had thrown them off in a rush.

"Peter," Maud calls out in the dark.

Turning on the light, Maud goes to the bathroom, then pulls her jeans over her nightgown, grabs her parka, a hat, and gloves.

The s.h.i.+p's corridor is dimly lit and empty. As Maud half runs toward the stairs, her steps echo eerily. All the cabin doors are shut and, briefly, she imagines the occupants sleeping peacefully inside. The s.h.i.+p's motor hums smoothly, there is an occasional thud of the hull hitting an ice floe. Her heart banging in her chest, Maud runs up to the saloon. The saloon, too, is dimly lit and empty. In the dining room, the chairs are stacked, the floor ready for cleaning. From there, she opens a door and goes out on deck. The cold air momentarily takes her breath away but the sky is unnaturally light. The s.h.i.+p's huge searchlights move back and forth over the sea, restlessly illuminating here an ice floe, there an iceberg. Inside the bridge house, Captain Halvorsen, holding a mug of coffee, stands next to the pilot at the wheel. The handsome first officer briefly glances up from the radar screen as Maud comes in.

"My husband-" she says.

"Is he ill?" Captain Halvorsen asks, without taking his eyes from the horizon. "Has something happened?"

"I'm looking for him," Maud answers, intimidated.

His face expressionless, the first officer continues to study the radar screen.

Every few seconds the pilot at the wheel shouts out numbers, coordinates, compa.s.s points. He, too, pays Maud no attention.

Directly in front of the s.h.i.+p's bow, a tabular iceberg that is taller and longer than the Caledonia Star appears yellowish green in the spotlight. In the bridge house all the attention is fixed on getting safely past it and not on anything that Maud says or does. For a moment longer, Maud stands motionless, not daring to speak or breathe, and watches the boat's slow, safe progress past the iceberg.

"Where were you?" Peter asks when Maud opens the cabin door and switches on the light. He is in bed, the sheet and blanket neatly tucked in around him.

"Where were you?" Despite the enormous relief she feels on seeing him, Maud is angry.

Peter tells her he went up on deck for a few minutes and they must have missed each other. At night, he says, the icebergs look even more amazing. "All that uninhabitable empty s.p.a.ce. So pure, so absolute." Peter sounds euphoric, then, as if suddenly remembering something important, he says, "Maud, it's four-thirty in the morning."

Maud does not feel tired, nor does she feel any desire to sleep. Back in bed, she has switched off the light when Peter calls over to her, in his slightly inflected British voice, "Sweet dreams, darling."

Maud says nothing.

Jennine Capo Crucet.

How to Leave Hialeah.

It is impossible to leave without an excuse-something must push you out, at least at first. You won't go otherwise; you are happy, the weather is bright, and you have a car. It has a sunroof (which you call a moonroof-you're so quirky) and a thunderous m.u.f.fler. After fifteen years of trial and error, you have finally arranged your bedroom furniture in a way that you and your father can agree on. You have a locker you can reach at Miami High. With so much going right, it is only when you're driven out like a fly waved through a window that you'll be outside long enough to realize that, barring the occasional hurricane, you won't die.

The most reliable (and admittedly the least empowering) way to excuse yourself from Hialeah is to date Michael Cardenas Junior. He lives two houses away from you and is very handsome and smart enough to feed himself and take you on dates. Your mother will love him because he plans to marry you in three years when you turn eighteen. He is nineteen. He also goes to Miami High, where he is very popular because he plays football and makes fun of reading. You are not so cool: you have a few friends, but all their last names start with the same letter as yours because, since first grade, your teachers have used the alphabet to a.s.sign your seats. Your friends have parents just like yours, and your moms are always hoping another mother comes along as a chaperone when you all go to the movies on Sat.u.r.day nights because then they can compare their husbands' demands-put my socks on for me before I get out of bed, I hate cold floors, or you have to make me my lunch because only your sandwiches taste good to me-and laugh at how much they are like babies. Michael does not like your friends, but this is normal and to be expected since your friends occasionally use polysyllabic words. Michael will repeatedly try to have s.e.x with you because you are a virgin and somewhat Catholic and he knows if you sleep together, you'll feel too guilty to ever leave him. s.e.x will be tempting because your best friend Carla is dating Michael's best friend Frankie, and Michael will swear on his father's grave that they're doing it. But you must hold out-you must push him off when he surprises you on your eight-month anniversary with a room at the Executive Inn by the airport and he has sprung for an entire five hours-because only then will he break up with you. This must happen, because even though you will get back together and break up two more times, it is during those broken-up weeks that you do things like research out-of-state colleges and sign up for community college cla.s.ses at night to distract you from how p.i.s.sed you are. This has the side effect of boosting your GPA.

During these same break-up weeks, Michael will use his fake ID to buy beer and hang out with Frankie, who, at the advice of an ex-girlfriend he slept with twice who's now living in Tallaha.s.see, has applied to Florida State. They will talk about college girls, who they heard have s.e.x with you without crying for two hours afterward. Michael, because he is not in your backyard playing catch with your little brother while your mother encourages you to swoon from the kitchen window, has time to fill out an application on a whim. And lo and behold, because it is October, and because FSU has rolling admissions and various guarantees of acceptance for Florida residents who can sign their names, he is suddenly college bound.

When you get back together and he tells you he's leaving at the end of June (his admission being conditional, requiring a summer term before his freshman year), tell your mom about his impending departure, how you will miss him so much, how you wish you could make him stay just a year longer so you could go to college at the same time. A week later, sit through your mother's vague s.e.x talk, which your father has forced her to give you. She may rent The Miracle of Life; she may not. Either way, do not let on that you know more than she does thanks to public school and health cla.s.s.

-I was a virgin until my wedding night, she says.

Believe her. Ask if your dad was a virgin, too. Know exactly what she means when she says, Sort of. Try not to picture your father as a teenager, on top of some girl doing what you and Carla call a Temporary p.e.n.i.s Occupation. a.s.sure yourself that TPOs are not s.e.x, not really, because TPOs happen mostly by accident, without you wanting them to, and without any actual movement on your part. Do not ask about b.u.t.t s.e.x, even though Michael has presented this as an option to let you keep your semivirginity. Your mother will mention it briefly on her own, saying, For that men have prost.i.tutes. Her words are enough to convince you never to try it.

Allow Michael to end things after attempting a long-distance relations.h.i.+p for three months. The distance has not been hard: you inherited his friends from last year who were juniors with you, and he drives down to Hialeah every weekend to see you and his mother and Frankie. Still, you're stubborn about the s.e.x thing, and still, you can't think of your b.u.t.t as anything other than an out-hole. Michael has no choice but to admit you're unreasonable and dump you.

Cry because you're genuinely hurt-you love him, you do- and because you did not apply early decision to any colleges because you hadn't yet decided if you should follow him to FSU. When the misery melts to fury, send off the already-complete applications you'd torn from the glossy brochures stashed under your mattress and begin formulating arguments that will convince your parents to let you move far away from the city where every relative you have that's not in Cuba has lived since flying or floating into Miami; you will sell your car, you will eat cat food to save money, you are their American Dream. Get their blessing to go to the one school that accepts you by promising to come back and live down the street from them forever. Be sure to cross your fingers behind your back while making this promise, otherwise you risk being struck by lightning.

Once away at school, refuse to admit you are homesick. Pretend you are happy in your tiny dorm room with your roommate from Long Island. She has a Jeep Cherokee and you need groceries, and you have never seen snow and are nervous about walking a mile to the grocery store and back. Ask the RA what time the dorm closes for the night and try to play it off as a joke when she starts laughing. Do not tell anyone your father never finished high school. Admit to no one that you left Hialeah in large part to p.i.s.s off a boy whose last name you will not remember in ten years.

Enroll in English cla.s.ses because you want to meet white guys who wear V-neck sweaters and have never played football for fear of concussions. Sit behind them in lecture but decide early on that they're too distracting. You must do very well in your cla.s.ses; e-mails from the school's Office of Diversity have emphasized that you are special, that you may feel like you're not cut out for this, that you should take advantage of the free tutors offered to students like you. You are important to our university community, they say. You are part of our commitment to diversity. Call your mother crying and tell her you don't fit in, and feel surprisingly better when she says, Just come home. Book a five-hundred-dollar flight to Miami for winter break.

Count down the days left until Nochebuena. Minutes after you walk off the plane, call all your old friends and tell them you're back and to get permission from their moms to stay out later than usual. Go to the beach even though it's sixty degrees and the water is freezing and full of Canadians. Laugh as your friends don their back-of-the-closet sweaters on New Year's while you're perfectly fine in a halter top. New England winters have made you tough, you think. You have earned scores of 90 or higher on every final exam. You have had s.e.x with one and a half guys (counting TPOs) and yes, there'd been guilt, but G.o.d did not strike you dead. Ignore Michael's calls on the first of the year, and hide in your bedroom-which has not at all changed-when you see him in his Seminoles hoodie, stomping toward your house. Listen as he demands to talk to you, and your mom lies like you asked her to and says you're not home. Watch the conversation from between the blinds of the window that faces the driveway. Swallow down the wave of nausea when you catch your mother winking at him and tilting her head toward that window. Pack immediately and live out of your suitcase for the one week left in your visit.

Go play pool with Myra, one of your closest alphabetical friends, and say, Oh man, that sucks, when she tells you she's still working as a truck dispatcher for El Dorado Furniture. She will try to ignore you by making fun of your shoes, which you bought near campus, and which you didn't like at first but now appreciate for their comfort. Say, Seriously, chica, that's a high school job-you can't work there forever.

-Shut up with this chica c.r.a.p like you know me, she says.

Then she slams her pool cue down on the green felt and throws the chunk of chalk at you as she charges out. Avoid embarra.s.sment by shaking your head No as she leaves, like you regret sending her to her room with no dinner but she left you no choice. Say to the people at the table next to yours, What the f.u.c.k, huh? One guy will look down at your hippie sandals and ask, How do you know Myra? Be confused, because you and Myra always had the same friends thanks to the alphabet, but you've never in your life seen this guy before that night.

While you drive home in your mom's car, think about what happened at the pool place. Replay the sound of the cue slapping the table in your head, the clinking b.a.l.l.s as they rolled out of its way but didn't hide in the pockets. Decide not to talk to Myra for a while, that inviting her to come visit you up north is, for now, a bad idea. Wipe your face on your sleeve before you go inside your house, and when your mom asks you why you look so upset tell her the truth: you can't believe it-Myra is jealous.

Become an RA yourself your next year so that your parents don't worry as much about money. Attend all orientation workshops and decide, after a s.e.xual hara.s.sment prevention role-playing where Russel, another new RA, asked if t.i.t f.u.c.king counted as rape, that you will only do this for one year. Around Rush Week, hang up the anti-binge-drinking posters the hall director put in your mailbox. On it is a group of eight grinning students; only one of them is white. You look at your residents and are confused: they are all white, except for the girl from Kenya and the girl from California. Do not worry when these two residents start spending hours hanging out in your room-letting them sit on your bed does not const.i.tute s.e.xual hara.s.sment. Laugh with them when they make fun of the poster. Such Diversity in One University! Recommend them to your hall director as potential RA candidates for next year.

When you call home to check in (you do this five times a week), ask how everyone is doing. Get used to your mom saying, Fine, fine. Appreciate the lack of detail-you have limited minutes on your phone plan and besides, your family, like you, is young and indestructible. They have floated across oceans and sucker punched sharks with their bare hands. Your father eats three pounds of beef a day and his cholesterol is fine. Each week-night, just before crossing herself and pulling a thin sheet over her pipe-cleaner legs, your ninety-nine-year-old great-grandmother smokes a cigar while sipping a gla.s.s of whiskey and water. No one you love has ever died-just one benefit of the teenage parenthood you've magically avoided despite the family tradition. Death is far off for every Cuban-you use Castro as your example. You know everyone will still be in Hialeah when you decide to come back.

Join the Spanish Club, where you meet actual lisping Spaniards and have a hard time understanding what they say. Date the treasurer, a grad student in Spanish literature named Marco, until he mentions your preference for being on top during s.e.x subconsciously functions as retribution for his people conquering your people. Quit the Spanish Club and check out several Latin American history books from the library to figure out what the h.e.l.l he's talking about. Do not tell your mother you broke things off; she loves Spaniards, and you are twenty and not married and you refuse to settle down.

-We are not sending you so far away to come back with nothing, she says.

At the end of that semester, look at a printout of your transcript and give yourself a high five. (To anyone watching, you're just clapping.) Going home for the summer with this printout still const.i.tutes coming back with nothing despite the good grades, so decide to spend those months working full-time at the campus movie theater, flirting with sunburned patrons.

Come senior year, decide what you need is to get back to your roots. Date a brother in Iota Delta, the campus's Latino fraternity, because one, he has a car, and two, he gives you credibility in the collegiate minority community you forgot to join because you were hiding in the library for the past three years and never saw the flyers. Tell him you've always liked Puerto Ricans (even though every racist joke your father has ever told you involved Puerto Ricans in some way). Visit his house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and meet his third-generation American parents who cannot speak Spanish. Do not look confused when his mother serves meat loaf and mashed potatoes and your boyfriend calls it real home cooking. You have only ever had meat loaf in the school dining hall, and only once. Avoid staring at his mother's multiple chins. Hold your laughter even as she claims that Che Guevara is actually still alive and living in a castle off the coast of Vieques. Scribble physical notes inside your copy of Clarissa (the subject of your senior thesis) detailing all the ridiculous things his mother says while you're there: taking a shower while it rains basically guarantees you'll be hit by lightning; paper cannot actually be recycled; Puerto Ricans invented the fort. Wait until you get back to campus to call your father.

After almost four years away from Hialeah, panic that you're panicking when you think about going back-you had to leave to realize you ever wanted to. You'd thank Michael for the push, but you don't know where he is. You have not spoken to Myra since the blowout by the pool table. You only know she still lives with her parents because her mom and your mom see each other every Thursday while buying groceries at Sedano's. At your Iota brother's suggestion, take a Latino studies cla.s.s with him after reasoning that it will make you remember who you were in high school and get you excited about moving back home.

Start saying things like, What does it really mean to be a minority? How do we construct ident.i.ty? How is the concept of race forced upon us? Say these phrases to your parents when they ask you when they should drive up to move your stuff back to your room. Dismiss your father as a lazy thinker when he answers, What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? Break up with the Iota brother after deciding he and his organization are posers buying into the Ghetto-Fabulous-Jennifer-Lopez-Loving Latino ident.i.ty put forth by the media; you earned an A- in the Latino studies course. After a fancy graduation dinner where your mom used your hot plate to cook arroz imperial-your favorite-tell your family you can't come home, because you need to know what home means before you can go there. Just keep eating when your father throws his fork on the floor and yells, What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? Cross your fingers under the table after you tell them you're going to grad school and your mom says, But, mamita, you made a promise.

Move to what you learn is nicknamed the Great White North. Tell yourself, this is America! This is the heartland! Appreciate how everyone is so nice, but claim Hialeah fiercely since it's all people ask you about anyway. They've never seen hair so curly, so dark. You have never felt more Cuban in your life, mainly because for the first time, you are consistently being identified as Mexican or something. This thrills you until the beginning-of-semester party for your grad program: you are the only person in attendance who is not white, and you're the only one under five foot seven. You stand alone by an unlit floor lamp, holding a gla.s.s of cheap red wine. You wish that Iota brother were around to protect you; he was very big; people were scared he would eat them; he had PURO LATINO tattooed across his shoulders in Olde English lettering. Chug the wine and decide that everyone in the world is a poser except maybe your parents. You think, What does that even mean-poser? Don't admit that you are somewhat drunk. Have another gla.s.s of wine and slip Spanish words into your sentences to see if anyone asks you about them. Consider yourself very charming and the most attractive female in your year, by far-you are exotic. Let one of the third-year students drive you home after he says he doesn't think you're okay to take a bus. Tell him, What, puta, you think I never rode no bus in Miami? s.h.i.+t, I grew up on the bus. Do not tell him it was a private bus your parents paid twenty dollars a week for you to ride, along with other neighborhood kids, because they thought the public school bus was too dangerous-they had actually grown up on the buses you're now claiming. Your dad told you stories about bus fights, so you feel you can wing it as the third-year clicks your seat belt on for you and says, That's fascinating-what does puta mean?

Spend the rest of that summer and early fall marveling at the lightning storms that you're sure are the only flashy thing about the Midwest. Take three months to figure out that the wailing sounds you sometimes hear in the air are not in your head-they are tornado sirens.

As the days grow shorter, sneak into tanning salons to maintain what you call your natural color. Justify this to yourself as healthy. You need more vitamin D than these Viking people, you have no choice. Relax when the fake sun actually does make you brown, rather than the Play-Doh orange beaming off your students-you have genuine African roots! You knew it all along! Do not think about how, just like all the other salon patrons, you reek of drying paint and burned hair every time you emerge from that ultraviolet casket.

Date the third-year because he finds you fascinating and asks you all sorts of questions about growing up in el barrio, and you like to talk anyway. More important, he has a car, and you need groceries, and this city is much colder than your college home-you don't plan on walking anywhere. And you are lonely. Once the weather turns brutal and your heating bill hits triple digits, start sleeping with him for warmth. When he confesses that the growth you'd felt between his legs is actually a third t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, you'll both be silent for several seconds, then he will growl, It doesn't actually function. He will grimace and grind his very square teeth as if you'd just called him Tri-b.a.l.l.s, even though you only said it in your head. When he turns away from you on the bed and covers his moon-white legs, think that you could love this gloomy, deformed person; maybe he has always felt the loneliness sitting on you since you left home, except for him, it's because of an extra-heavy nut sack. Lean toward him and tell him you don't care-say it softly, of course-say that you would have liked some warning, but that otherwise it's just another fact about him. Do not use the word exotic to describe his special s.c.r.o.t.u.m. You've learned since moving here that that word is used to push people into some separate, freakish category.

Break up with him when, after a department happy hour, you learn from another third-year that he's recently changed his dissertation topic to something concerning the Cuban American community in Miami. He did this a month ago-Didn't he tell you? On the walk to the car, accuse him of using you for research purposes.

-Maybe I did, he says, But that isn't why I dated you, it was a bonus.

Tell him that being Cuban is no more a bonus than, say, a third nut. Turn on your heel and walk home in single-digit weather while he follows you in his car and yelps from the lowered window, Can't we talk about this? Call your mother after cursing him out in front of your apartment building for half an hour while he just stood there, observing.

-Oh please, she says, her voice far away, Like anyone would want to read about Hialeah.

Do not yell at your mother for missing the point.

Change advisers several times until you find the one who does not refer to you as the Mexican one and does not ask you how your research applies to regular communities. Sit in biweekly off-campus meetings with your fellow Latinas, each of them made paler by the Great White North's conquest over their once-stubborn pigment. They face the same issues in their departments-the problem, you're learning, is system-wide. Write strongly worded joint letters to be sent at the end of the term. Think, Is this really happening? I am part of this group? Look at the dark greenish circles hanging under their eyes, the curly frizz poking out from their pulled-back hair and think, Why did I think I had a choice?