The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

revered by his female family members—and that endless monsoon-rain of praise and indulgence had quickened in him the bamboo of entitlement. He had the physical swagger of a boy twice his size and an unbearable loudmouthed cockiness that he drove into people like a metal spur. In the future he would throw his lot in with the Demon Balaguer 9 and end up ambassador to Panama as his reward, but for the moment he was the school’s Apollo, its Mithra. The teachers, the staff, the girls, the boys, all threw petals of adoration beneath his finely arched feet: he was proof positive that God—the Great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy!—does not love his children equally.
    And how did Beli interact with this insane object of attraction? In a way that is fitting of her bullheaded directness: she would march down the hallway, books pressed to her pubescent chest, staring down at her feet, and, pretending not to see him, would smash into his hallowed vessel.

    Caramb—, he spluttered, wheeling about, and then he’d see it was Belicia, a girl, now stooping over to recover her books, and he bent over too (he was, if nothing, a caballero), his anger diffusing, becoming confusion, irritation. Caramba, Cabral, what are you, a bat? Watch. Where. You’re. Going .
    He had a single worry line creasing his high forehead (his “part,” as it became known) and eyes of the deepest cerulean. The Eyes of Atlantis. (Once Beli had overheard him bragging to one of his many female admirers: Oh, these ol’ things? I inherited them from my German abuela.)
    Come on, Cabral, what’s your difficulty?
    It’s your fault! she swore, meant in more ways than one.
    Maybe she’d see better, one of his lieutenants cracked, if it was dark out.
    It might as well have been dark out. For all intents and purposes she was invisible to him.
    And would have stayed invisible too if the summer of sophomore year she’d not hit the biochemical jackpot, not experienced a Summer of Her Secondary Sex Characteristics, not been transformed utterly ( a terrible beauty has been born ). Where before Beli had been a gangly ibis of a girl, pretty in a typical sort of way, by summer’s end she’d become un mujerón total, acquiring that body of hers, that body that made her famous in Baní. Her dead parents’ genes on some Roman Polanski shit; like the older sister she had never met, Beli was transformed almost overnight into an underage stunner, and if Trujillo had not been on his last erections he probably would have gunned for her like he’d been rumored to have gunned for her poor dead sister. For the record, that summer our girl caught a cuerpazo so berserk that only a pornographer or a comic-book artist could have designed it with a clear conscience. Every neighborhood has its tetúa, but Beli could have put them all to shame, she was La Tetúa Suprema: her tetas were globes so implausibly titanic they made generous souls pity their bearer and drove every straight male in their vicinity to reevaluate his sorry life. She had the Breasts of Luba (35DDD). And what about that supersonic culo that could tear words right out of niggers’ mouths, pull windows from out their motherfucking frames? A culo que jalaba más que una junta de buey. Dios mío! Even your humble Watcher, reviewing her old pictures, is struck by what a fucking babe she was. 10
    Ande el diablo! La Inca exclaimed. Hija, what in the world are you eating !
    If Beli had been a normal girl, being the neighborhood’s most prominent tetúa might have pushed her into shyness, might even have depressed the shit out of her. And at first Beli had both these reactions, and also the feeling that gets delivered to you by the bucket for free during adolescence: Shame. Sharam. Vergüenza . She no longer wanted to bathe with La Inca, a huge change to their morning routine. Well, I guess you’re grown enough to wash yourself, La Inca said lightly. But you could tell she was hurt. In the close darkness of their washcloset, Beli circled disconsolately around her Novi Orbis, avoiding her hypersensitive nipples at all costs. Now every time she had to head outside, Beli felt like she was stepping into a Danger Room filled with men’s laser eyes and women’s razor whispers. The blasts of car horns enough to make her fall over herself. She was furious at the world for this newly acquired burden, and furious at herself.
    For the first month, that is. Gradually Beli began to see beyond the