The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

things did, and only then did La Inca convoke a special session on our girl’s future. First La Inca gave Beli tongue-lashing number five hundred million and five, excoriating her poor judgment, her poor morals, her poor everything, and only when those preliminaries were good and settled did La Inca lay down the law: You are returning to school. Not to El Redentor but somewhere nearly as good. Padre Billini.
    And Beli, her eyes still swollen from Jack-loss, laughed. I’m not going back to school. Not ever.
    Had she forgotten the suffering that she had endured in her Lost Years in the pursuit of education? The costs? The terrible scars on her back? ( The Burning .) Perhaps she had, perhaps the prerogatives of this New Age had rendered the vows of the Old irrelevant. However, during those tumultuous post-expulsion weeks, while she’d been writhing in her bed over the loss of her “husband,” our girl had been rocked by instances of stupendous turbidity. A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli’s first adult oath, one that would follow her into adulthood, to the States and beyond. I will not serve. Never again would she follow any lead other than her own. Not the rector’s, not the nuns’, not La Inca’s, not her poor dead parents’. Only me, she whispered. Me.
    This oath did much to rally her. Not long after the back-to-school showdown, Beli put on one of La Inca’s dresses (was literally bursting in it) and caught a ride down to the parque central. This was not a huge trip. But, still, for a girl like Beli it was a precursor of things to come.
    When she returned to the house in the late afternoon she announced: I have a job! La Inca snorted. I guess the cabarets are always hiring.
    It was not a cabaret. Beli might have been a puta major in the cosmology of her neighbors but a cuero she was not. No: she had landed a job as a waitress at a restaurant on the parque. The owner, a stout well-dressed Chinese by the name of Juan Then, had not exactly needed anyone; in fact he didn’t know if he needed himself. Business terrible, he lamented. Too much politics. Politics bad for everything but politicians.
    No excess money. And already many impossible employees.
    But Beli was not willing to be rejected. There’s a lot I can do. And pinched her shoulder blades, to emphasize her “assets.”
    Which for a man any less righteous would have been an open invitation but Juan simply sighed: No obligated be without shame. We try you up. Probationary period. Can’t promises build. Political conditions give promises no hospitality.
    What’s my salary?
    Salary! No salary! You a waitress, you tips.
    How much are they?
    Once again the glumness. It is without certainty.
    I don’t understand.
    His brother José’s bloodshot eyes glanced up from the sports section. What my brother is saying is that it all depends.
    And here’s La Inca shaking her head: A waitress. But, hija, you’re a baker’s daughter, you don’t know the first thing about waitressing!
    La Inca assumed that because Beli had of late not shown any enthusiasm for the bakery or school or for cleaning she’d devolved into a zángana. But she’d forgotten that our girl had been a criada in her first life; for half her years she’d know nothing but work. La Inca predicted that Beli would call it quits within a couple of months, but Beli never did. On the job our girl, in fact, showed her quality: she was never late, never malingered, worked her sizable ass off. Heck, she liked the job. It was not exactly President of the Republic, but for a fourteen-year-old who wanted out of the house, it paid, and kept her in the world while she waited for—for her Glorious Future to materialize.
    Eighteen months she worked at the Palacio Peking. (Originally called El Tesoro de ———, in honor of the Admiral’s true but never-reached destination, but the Brothers Then had changed it when they learned that the Admiral’s name was a fukú! Chinese no like curses, Juan had said.) She would always say she came of age in the restaurant, and in some ways she did. She learned to beat men at dominoes and proved herself so responsible that the Brothers Then could leave her in charge of the cook and the other waitstaff while they slipped out to fish and visit their thick-legged girlfriends. In later years Beli would lament that she had ever lost touch with her “chinos.” They