If I still attended those anger management therapy meetings that were court-appointed after I stabbed a guy with a broken bottle in a bar after he tried to cop a feel, the therapist would probably call it fancy words like "Imposter Syndrome."
I still always felt like I didn't quite belong, that no one gave me the respect others got.
But Che had never been like that. He'd always been able to see past whatever misogyny the others around us couldn't. He'd just seen a young person in need of guidance. He'd given it to me. And me, never having had someone who spent any time teaching me anything, ate up the knowledge, but also the attention.
What he got out of the whole thing back then was completely beyond me. I think he just liked sharing what he knew. He was one of those people who got to the mountain top and turned around to help the next person get there as well.
"See, things were getting rough in Miami for people like Che," I explained to his club. "Back then I don't think I even realized how much stress he was under about possible deportation. I mean, going back there was a terrifying thought to someone who didn't have any family there," I said, glancing over at Che, finding a mask down over his face. He'd never liked the topic. Even back then when it had been vital that we talk about it.
"So, you're saying he was worried about ICE."
"They were doing a lot of sweeps. Three guys Che worked with were rounded up. And then Eddie," I said, sighing. "It wasn't looking good."
"You married him, so he could stay," Harmon said, looking at me, eyes almost a little glassy. Pregnancy hormones, most likely.
"Why would you do that?" the man in the hat asked, shaking his head at me. "You were eighteen. You were signing away at least five years of your life to some guy you barely knew."
"I had no plans on getting married by the time I was twenty-four," I said, shrugging. I'd had other plans at the time. "It seemed like a small sacrifice."
"But why?" Huck asked.
"Why not? He'd been good to me. He helped me out when no one else wanted to."
"It's a huge fucking risk to fake that shit," Huck insisted.
It was. To be fair, I'd been a bit naive about the risks at the time. Or maybe just too headstrong to think they could ever impact me.
"I'd done the research on the process," I said, shrugging. "Beginning to end, it was about a year and a half. We'd figured out the questions for the interviews, went over all the information.
How many siblings does your spouse have? Che, none. Me, seven.
Have you met each other's families? Che didn't have any. I was estranged from my mother. Though he had met some of my siblings.
Do you spend a lot of time together? Every night after work.
Do you want to have children? Che, yes, absolutely. Me, probably. Eventually.
"Then we dug a little deeper than that just in case."
I'd devoured all those details, if I were being honest. The little pieces of his life that no one else got to know.
He'd told me how they'd all come here legally at first, on a work and spouse visa. But then his father had met another woman within a few months of landing in Miami, and had run off, never to be seen again. That left his devastated wife working three jobs to try to support them while Che did work whenever he could find it.
Then he'd told me about her sudden death, leaving him devastated and all alone in the world at nineteen, just one year after they made it to America. He thought, at the time, that his visa would still be valid, that he could stay until he was twenty-one, and then apply for a Green Card, try to become a permanent resident since he had nothing to go back to in Cuba.
It had been one of his work buddies about a year later who told him he wasn't here legally anymore, that he was just as at-risk as the rest of them, that he would have to go back, then try to gain entrance by himself, something he knew would never happen since he didn't have the skills that his father had to get to the States.
So, he told me that he'd done the risky thing. He'd stayed. And tried to fly under the radar.
I'd told him about my seven siblings, all of us from five different fathers, about my mother's obsession with finding a daddy for all of us which only ever left her with more kids, more responsibilities, more stress. And each of us with less and less attention, supervision, space, and resources.
We'd been the shoes-two-sizes-too-small kind of poor, wondering if we would have enough food to get through the weekends kind of poor, soup kitchens all summer because we didn't have any school lunches kind of poor.