The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

himself in his car and wouldn’t say anything to any of us.
    The whole thing was driving me crazy, and then one night I came home from being out with Max. He had taken me for a walk along the Malecón—he never had money for anything else—and we had watched the bats zigzagging over the palms and an old ship head into the distance. He talked quietly about moving to the U.S. while I stretched my hamstrings. My abuela was waiting for me at the living room table. Even though she still wears black to mourn the husband she lost when she was young she’s one of the most handsome women I’ve ever known. We have the same jagged lightning-bolt part and the first time I saw her at the airport I didn’t want to admit it but I knew that things were going to be OK between us. She stood like she was her own best thing and when she saw me she said, Hija, I have waited for you since the day you left. And then she hugged me and kissed me and said, I’m your abuela, but you can call me La Inca.
    Standing over her that night, her part like a crack in her hair, I felt a surge of tenderness. I put my arms around her and that was when I noticed that she was looking at photos. Old photos, the kind I’d never seen in my house. Photos of my mother when she was young and of other people. I picked one up. Mami was standing in front of a Chinese restaurant. Even with the apron on she looked potent, like someone who was going to be someone.
    She was very guapa, I said casually.
    Abuela snorted. Guapa soy yo. Your mother was a diosa. But so cabeza dura. When she was your age we never got along.
    I didn’t know that, I said.
    She was cabeza dura and I was … exigente. But it all turned out for the best, she sighed. We have you and your brother and that’s more than anyone could have hoped for, given what came before. She plucked out one photo. This is your mother’s father, she offered me the photo. He was my cousin, and—
    She was about to say something else and then she stopped.
    And that’s when it hit with the force of a hurricane. The feeling . I stood straight up, the way my mother always wanted me to stand up. My abuela was sitting there, forlorn, trying to cobble together the right words and I could not move or breathe. I felt like I always did at the last seconds of a race, when I was sure that I was going to explode. She was about to say something and I was waiting for whatever she was going to tell me. I was waiting to begin.

THREE
     

The Three Heartbreaks of Belicia Cabral 1955–1962
     
     

LOOK AT THE PRINCESS
     
    B efore there was an American Story, before Paterson spread before Oscar and Lola like a dream, or the trumpets from the Island of our eviction had even sounded, there was their mother, Hypatía Belicia Cabral:
    a girl so tall your leg bones ached just looking at her
    so dark it was as if the Creatrix had, in her making, blinked
    who, like her yet-to-be-born daughter, would come to exhibit a particularly Jersey malaise—the inextinguishable longing for elsewheres.

UNDER THE SEA
     
    S he lived in those days in Baní. Not the frenzied Baní of right now, supported by an endless supply of Do Yos who’ve laid claim to most of Boston, Providence, New Hampshire. This was the lovely Baní of times past, beautiful and respectful. A city famed for its resistance to blackness, and it was here, alas, that the darkest character in our story resided. On one of the main streets near the central plaza. In a house that no longer stands. It was here that Beli lived with her mother-aunt, if not exactly content, then certainly in a state of relative tranquillity. From 1951 on, “hija” and “madre” running their famous bakery near the Plaza Central and keeping their fading, airless house in tip-top shape. (Before 1951, our orphaned girl had lived with another foster family, monstrous people if the rumors are to be believed, a dark period of her life neither she nor her madre ever referenced. Their very own página en blanco.)
    These were the Beautiful Days. When La Inca would recount for Beli her family’s illustrious history while they pounded and wrung dough with bare hands (Your father! Your mother! Your sisters! Your house!) or when the only talk between them was the voices on Carlos Moya’s radio and the sound of the butter being applied to Beli’s ruined back. Days of mangoes, days of bread. There are not many surviving photos from that period but it’s not hard to imagine them—arrayed in front of