The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

new tunnels driving down into the bauxite earth, the signs that banned donkey carts from the same tunnels—after he’d gone to Boca Chica and Villa Mella and eaten so much chicharrones he had to throw up on the side of the road—now that , his tío Rudolfo said, is entertainment—after his tío Carlos Moya berated him for having stayed away so long, after his abuela berated him for having stayed away so long, after his cousins berated him for having stayed away so long, after he saw again the unforgettable beauty of the Cibao, after he heard the stories about his mother, after he stopped marveling at the amount of political propaganda plastered up on every spare wall—ladrones, his mother announced, one and all—after the touched-in-the-head tío who’d been tortured during Balaguer’s reign came over and got into a heated political argument with Carlos Moya (after which they both got drunk), after he’d caught his first sunburn in Boca Chica, after he’d swum in the Caribbean, after tío Rudolfo had gotten him blasted on mamajuana de marisco, after he’d seen his first Haitians kicked off a guagua because niggers claimed they “smelled,” after he’d nearly gone nuts over all the bellezas he saw, after he helped his mother install two new air conditioners and crushed his finger so bad he had dark blood under the nail, after all the gifts they’d brought had been properly distributed, after Lola introduced him to the boyfriend she’d dated as a teenager, now a capitaleño as well, after he’d seen the pictures of Lola in her private-school uniform, a tall muchacha with heartbreak eyes, after he’d brought flowers to his abuela’s number-one servant’s grave who had taken care of him when he was little, after he had diarrhea so bad his mouth watered before each detonation, after he’d visited all the rinky-dink museums in the capital with his sister, after he stopped being dismayed that everybody called him gordo (and, worse, gringo), after he’d been overcharged for almost everything he wanted to buy, after La Inca prayed over him nearly every morning, after he caught a cold because his abuela set the air conditioner in his room so high, he decided suddenly and without warning to stay on the Island for the rest of the summer with his mother and his tío. Not to go home with Lola. It was a decision that came to him one night on the Malecón, while staring out over the ocean. What do I have waiting for me in Paterson? he wanted to know. He wasn’t teaching that summer and he had all his notebooks with him. Sounds like a good idea to me, his sister said. You need some time in the patria. Maybe you’ll even find yourself a nice campesina. It felt like the right thing to do. Help clear his head and his heart of the gloom that had filled them these months. His mother was less hot on the idea but La Inca waved her into silence. Hijo, you can stay here all your life. (Though he found it strange that she made him put on a crucifix immediately thereafter.)
    So, after Lola flew back to the States (Take good care of yourself, Mister) and the terror and joy of his return had subsided, after he settled down in Abuela’s house, the house that Diaspora had built, and tried to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his summer now that Lola was gone, after his fantasy of an Island girlfriend seemed like a distant joke—Who the fuck had he been kidding? He couldn’t dance, he didn’t have loot, he didn’t dress, he wasn’t confident, he wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t from Europe, he wasn’t fucking no Island girls—after he spent one week writing and (ironically enough) turned down his male cousins’ offer to take him to a whorehouse like fifty times, Oscar fell in love with a semiretired puta.
    Her name was Ybón Pimentel. Oscar considered her the start of his real life.

LA BEBA
     
    S he lived two houses over and, like the de Leóns, was a newcomer to Mirador Norte. (Oscar’s moms had bought their house with double shifts at her two jobs. Ybón bought hers with double shifts too, but in a window in Amsterdam.) She was one of those golden mulatas that French-speaking Caribbeans call chabines, that my boys call chicas de oro; she had snarled, apocalyptic hair, copper eyes, and was one whiteskinned relative away from jaba.

    At first Oscar thought she was only a visitor, this tiny, slightly paunchy babe who was always high-heeling it out to her Pathfinder. (She didn’t have the Nuevo