Nowadays, it was all over the Spanish-language news: the ICE raids, the young people in graduation caps handcuffed to congressional desks, saying this is my home, let me stay. Red-faced men on TV shows snarling alien, snarling jobs, snarling it’s about time we take back our country. Our country. Take back. She didn’t agree with some of the other Cubans her age who said things like we’re not like them, we belong here, we’re political refugees. Carmen had lost a parent, her father. And she knew that rip, that tear, that hollow feeling like a tooth pulled, forever something off, forever a space. Jeanette thought her so old-fashioned, so backward in her opinions. But no, she was fair. She wanted families together. Shouldn’t that count for something?

“I’m going to Cuba in three weeks,” Lila Not-Ana said.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Carmen said.

If she could go back in time, maybe she would have helped the girl, Ana, though she had no idea how. But police. She’d thought police. She wondered where that girl could be now. Hopefully, here. Hopefully, home. Some of those same Cubans said, these new Cubans, coming now, they get here and turn right back around and go back to Cuba, and they want the government to give them everything, they are not like us. They also said immigrants from other countries weren’t like them. Like us. As if she were like anyone. She was more fair-minded, she thought, she didn’t even mind the New Cubans, Jeanette didn’t understand.

“My mom says you won’t go to Cuba. That you won’t even talk to your own mother because of politics,” Not-Ana said. “And she doesn’t think it’s very nice and she says family is what’s most important and she says thank God we know how important family is and how we all need to be together and she…”

Carmen stared, astounded. Had Jeanette blurted her business this way as a little girl? She couldn’t imagine it. Did she do that now?

“Well, tell your mom—”

“Lila!” Jeanette carried a pile of plates balanced on her forearm into the kitchen as if she were an actual waitress. “Pero how big you are.”

“You’re not big,” Lila said with a shrug. She fake-curtsied and walked off, giant bow on her red velvet dress bouncing up and down.

“I don’t like her,” Carmen said, taking the plates from Jeanette.

“She’s literally a child, Mom.”

“Some children talk too much. You never talked so much.”

“Oookay, Mom,” Jeanette said. “Anyways, I think me and Mario should go.” She held the dishwasher open.

“What? We haven’t even had dessert yet. Vivian made pumpkin pie, Mercedes brought a flan.”