Fiction

I first met Andrea when I was eleven, back when Dad was still alive and we first got rich. Dad and I were Nicaraguan, with curly black hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin. Andrea, on the other hand, was pure WASP. She was clearly a natural brunette who’d dyed her straight, bobbed hair a dirty blonde. She owned a “Live, Laugh, Love” pillow. Had a book club that read mostly romcoms. Watched Oprah and Ellen.

Of course, Andrea wasn’t an ordinary Midwestern WASP who lived in a blue McMansion in Ohio and owned a Subaru. She shopped at Whole Foods and had a favorite brand of wine. She went summering in the Hamptons. Went to Yale for Philosophy. Owned a beach house. She was also a decade Dad’s junior and they only really got together for the money and the sex.

“Her name is Andrea too. Isn’t that fun?” Dad said.

But a WASP named Andrea was different than a Nicaraguan named Andrea. For WASPs, Andrea signaled wealth. Class. It was an old-fashioned name, an East Coast, old money name. When a Nicaraguan was named Andrea, her name was plain. Ugly. Hard to pronounce. We didn’t share the same name, even if we seemed to on the surface. Andrea understood this far better than my father. She smiled and her nose curled. She called me a pretty girl, gifted me a Chanel handbag, then went out golfing in a country club with my father.

Andrea likely hoped that I’d be dumped with my mother after she and Dad got married, but unfortunately for her, Mom died from cancer. It was the reason she and Dad were divorced in the first place. Two years later, Dad died in a jetski accident after downing two Jack Daniels and a Molly. And we were suddenly alone with each other. Andrea never wanted children, but she wasn’t actively cruel. She wasn’t that kind of evil stepmother. We didn’t know what to do with each other. We didn’t like each other, but we didn’t know each other well enough to hate each other either.

At the funeral, Andrea wore a black wide-rimmed hat and a black sundress. I dressed simply in a black hoodie and black slats. We were the only ones at the funeral. My mother’s family hadn’t forgiven Dad for leaving her. My father’s family hadn’t forgiven him for not sharing his lottery money. An FBI agent attended the funeral, mostly because they were investigating Andrea, assuming she did it. It offended her.

“I’ve done a lot of horrid shit in my life—bribery, tax fraud,” she said as Dad’s casket was lowered into the ground. “But I didn’t kill him. I’m not going to say I loved him. I didn’t. But I didn’t murder him for money either. I wasn’t even there. How could I have done it?”

“It could have been a hit job,” I said.

A week later, Andrea’s stepbrother got arrested. Apparently, they had been having an affair before Andrea got with my father. Very Cruel Intentions. Andrea was pissed. Her and her family’s face was plastered all over CNN. SNL made a skit about the affair. Andrea hardly went out for half a year. Her stepbrother was acquitted on all charges except one for money laundering. I’m not sure if it was corruption or if he was actually innocent. After all, Dad was really hammered during the accident. But at the same time, it wasn’t not suspicious.

I asked Andrea about it and she admitted I’d never know for sure.

“We’re so privileged—my family and I—that we can’t even comprehend just how privileged we are. I’m not sure if my stepbrother even knows if he’s innocent or not. We’re innocent because we’re filthy rich. We’re also guilty because we’re filthy rich.”

“Do I have that same superpower by association?” I asked.

Andrea shook her head. “If you have to ask, it means you don’t have it.”

I got paler as I got older. My hair grew oily and wavy. My eyes were still dark, but I still looked white. Or at least, I looked whiter. I was White Hispanic because I was rich. And spoke Spanish with an American accent. And knew all the lyrics to Sweet Caroline. In Latino culture, such simple aesthetics were all that was needed for Whiteness.

But, of course, even though I was White, it was a different sort of White from Andrea, an off-white. I was a white girl ordered off of Wish—a cheap imitation. A tacky knock-off Gucci handbag. I was still White, but somehow not White enough, not for America at least. I was White in the sense that I put down White in the census. White in the sense I could smile at resource officers while walking through my high school hallways. White in the sense I was considered the prettiest of all my cousins all because I was the palest.

But I was not White in the sense that I got lumped under “person of color” just because I was Hispanic. I wasn’t White in the sense that someone read my surname and assumed I’d be browner. I wasn’t White in the sense that I had to explain my identity to people—my heritage, my first language, my skin color. Andrea never had to explain herself. People took one look at her and already knew what she was, and her name only confirmed it. Andrea got to be just White, while I was White with an asterisk attached.

With Andrea’s help, I was able to get into Yale. I listed myself as a legacy thanks to her  and one of my extracurriculars was working at a company founded by one of her wine club friends. It was pure privilege. But I didn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t feel good either though. I didn’t feel. When I announced my acceptance on Instagram, a white kid from my high school claimed it was just affirmative action that got me in.

Andrea and I celebrated with dinner at Olive Garden, just because I liked the breadsticks. She donned a polo shirt and a short tweed skirt, meanwhile I just wore sweatpants and loafers. The waiter thought we were girlfriends rather than mother and daughter. We didn’t correct him because it was Valetine’s Day and there was a special on pasta. I pointed out that we didn’t need the special to afford the food, that there wasn’t a point in pinching pennies. Andrea said it wasn’t about the money.

Andrea ordered a glass of Merlot. I got a coke can. Andrea took a few sips of her drink then smiled toothily. “Y’know, your dad never told me he had a kid when we married.”

I took a bite of a breadstick. “He thought you’d just deal with it, like my mother would have. Like my aunts would have. Like all Latina women, really.”

“I almost divorced him when I found out. He knew I didn’t want kids.”

“Yet you stayed,“ I said.

Andrea shrugged. “It would have looked bad if I’d gotten divorced,” she explained. “We just—we don’t do that lightly, not after so few years of marriage. No, we poison our husband’s dinner instead, play the role of grieving widow, then move on quietly.”

“Good thing for you he died so quickly then.”

Andrea looked at her plate. “I’m… I’m sorry he died so suddenly on you.”

I shrugged. “My mother always told me that men—fathers especially—were optional. A nice bonus.”

“What about your mom, then?”

My mother had been a dentist, with a pretty Spanish-revival villa in Coral Gables. She attended protests for Nicaraguan democracy. Read books on Aristotelian philosophy and feminist thought by Simone De Beauvoir. Owned a Volvo. Married a moron. She untangled my hair each morning, pulling out knots like they were weeds. Though she understood English, she only ever spoke Spanish with me. She never had carbs in her home, not even bread, because they’d rot my teeth. She wanted me to know basic life skills, but never had the patience to show me how to use the washing machine or crack an egg without shrieking. Her red acrylic nails pinched my ears when I fucked something up. Her lipstick stayed smeared on my brow when she kissed me goodnight.

“What about her?” I asked. “She’s dead. Not much to say there.”

My mother had bottle blonde hair—like Andrea. Fell asleep crying while watching the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice—like Andrea. Wore corny wine mom blouses—like Andrea. Had milky white skin and soft beach curls—like Andrea. But Andrea and my mother were worlds apart, and not just because the latter grew up doing homework on a tin can roof in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. They could have been twins in every form, but Andrea still would have had more. Andrea would always be the woman my mother was left for. Because America decided that Andrea mattered and my mother didn’t. And what America decided, the world decided. Because Andrea was a WASP. And I still didn’t understand what that meant even as I understood completely.

“Well, don’t you miss her?” Andrea asked.

“I…” I blinked. Andrea looked so serene then. Calm though inquisitive. I’d never seen my mother look so calm, even on quiet days spent simply sitting by my side, listening to me babble on about everything and nothing in broken Spanish. No Latina I’d ever met, white or not, looked as calm as Andrea did then.

“I wish my mother could have lived like you,” I said.

“Yeah,” Andrea said. “I get that.”

The server came then with a slice of chocolate cheese cake decorated with strawberry slices. Part of the Valentine’s Day special. “By the way, you both make a really cute couple,” he said. “Can I take your picture?”

Andrea smiled. “Of course.”

Andrea scooted closer to me, forced my head to rest against her shoulder, then placed a hand at my waist. I almost rolled my eyes, but strained a smile. Andrea tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then did the same to me. She picked up her glass of wine and smiled.

“Say cheese,” the waiter said.

The server snapped several pictures, then handed back Andrea’s phone. When he was gone, she cackled at the photos taken. “You like I took you hostage.”

I groaned. “Don’t do that again. That was so weird.”

Andrea scoffed. “Oh lighten up. Take a bite of cake.”

She took a spoon, scooped out a bite.

“Open up, daughter dearest. Here comes the airplane.”

Reluctantly, I took the bite. Andrea laughed even harder.

“Now you look like my bitchy teenage daughter,” she said.

Sighing, I planted my elbows on the table, shoveling another bite of cake into my mouth. “Why’d you let me stick around, anyway?” I asked. “You said yourself you didn’t want kids.”

Andrea went silent, planted her palms on her knees. Her eyes went everywhere around the table. Everywhere except at me. Eventually, she simply shrugged while staring up at the ceiling.

“Well, uh, you didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go.”

She looked nothing like my mother with her jittery expressions and tweed blazers. Looked nothing like me with her piercing blue eyes and perfect pearly white teeth. When the bill came, her signature looked like more like calligraphy than handwriting. Not a wrinkle dotted her face, not one scar that revealed her true age, whatever it actually was. We went home that evening and watched Pride & Prejudice at Andrea’s insistence. She fell asleep on my shoulder—like a schoolgirl. A sister. A stranger. A pretty white girl hardly older than I was.

A stepmother.