The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Nueva York. I have it on great authority that it is the only way.

    And then he strutted proudly into the water; she tried to call him back, Please, come back, but he did not listen.
    His otherworldly advice was too terrible to consider. Exile to the North! To Nueva York, a city so foreign she herself had never had the ovaries to visit. The girl would be lost to her, and La Inca would have failed her great cause: to heal the wounds of the Fall, to bring House Cabral back from the dead. And who knows what might happen to the girl among the yanquis? In her mind the U.S. was nothing more and nothing less than a país overrun by gangsters, putas, and no-accounts. Its cities swarmed with machines and industry, as thick with sinvergüencería as Santo Domingo was with heat, a cuco shod in iron, exhaling fumes, with the glittering promise of coin deep in the cold lightless shaft of its eyes. How La Inca wrestled with herself those long nights! But which side was Jacob and which side was the Angel? After all, who was to say that the Trujillos would remain in power much longer? Already the necromantic power of El Jefe was waning and in its place could be felt something like a wind. Rumors flew as thick as ciguas, rumors that the Cubans were preparing to invade, that the Marines had been spotted on the horizon. Who could know what tomorrow would bring? Why send her beloved girl away? Why be hasty ?
    La Inca found herself in practically the same predicament Beli’s father had found himself in sixteen years earlier, back when the House of Cabral had first come up against the might of the Trujillos. Trying to decide whether to act or to stay still.

    Unable to choose, she prayed for further guidance—another three days without food. Who knows how it might have turned out had not the Elvises come calling? Our Benefactor might have gone out exactly like Mother Abigail. But thankfully the Elvises surprised her as she was sweeping the front of the house. Is your name Myotís Toribio? Their pompadours like the backs of beetles. African muscles encased in pale summer suits, and underneath their jackets the hard, oiled holsters of their firearms did creak.
    We want to speak to your daughter, Elvis One growled.
    Right now, Elvis Two added.
    Por supuesto, she said and when she emerged from the house holding a machete the Elvises retreated to their car, laughing.
    Elvis One: We’ll be back, vieja.
    Elvis Two: Believe us.
    Who was that? Beli asked from her bed, her hands clutching at her nonexistent stomach.
    No one, La Inca said, putting the machete next to the bed.
    The next night, “no one” shot a peephole clean through the front door of the house.
    The next couple of nights she and the girl slept under the bed, and a little bit later in the week she told the girl: No matter what happens I want you to remember: your father was a doctor, a doctor . And your mother was a nurse.
    And finally the words: You should leave.
    I want to leave. I hate this place.
    The girl by this time could hobble to the latrine under her own power. She was much changed. During the day she would sit by the window in silence, very much like La Inca after her husband drowned. She did not smile, she did not laugh, she talked to no one, not even her friend Dorca. A dark veil had closed over her, like nata over café.
    You don’t understand, hija. You have to leave the country . They’ll kill you if you don’t.
    Beli laughed.
    Oh, Beli; not so rashly, not so rashly: What did you know about states or diasporas? What did you know about Nueba Yol or unheated “old law” tenements or children whose self-hate short-circuited their minds? What did you know, madame, about immigration ? Don’t laugh, mi negrita, for your world is about to be changed. Utterly. Yes: a terrible beauty is etc., etc. Take it from me. You laugh because you’ve been ransacked to the limit of your soul, because your lover betrayed you almost unto death, because your first son was neverborn. You laugh because you have no front teeth and you’ve sworn never to smile again.
    I wish I could say different but I’ve got it right here on tape. La Inca told you you had to leave the country and you laughed.
    End of story.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC
     
    S he would remember little of the final months beyond her anguish and her despair (and her desire to see the Gangster dead). She was in the grips of the Darkness, passed through her days like a shade passes through life. She did not move