The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

compare him to his ordinary contemporaries are mistaken. He belongs to … the category of those born to a special destiny.
     
    La Nación
     

    O f course I tried once more. It was even stupider than the first time. Fourteen months and Abuela announced that it was time for me to return to Paterson, to my mother, I couldn’t believe what she was saying. It felt like the deepest of treacheries to me. I wouldn’t feel that again until I broke with you.
    But I don’t want to go! I protested. I want to stay here!
    But she wouldn’t listen. She held her hands in the air like there was nothing she could do. It’s what your mother wants and it’s what I want and it’s what’s right.
    But what about me!
    I’m sorry, hija.
    That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.
    I wasn’t mature. I quit the team. I stopped going to classes and speaking to all my girlfriends, even Rosío. I told Max that we were through and he looked at me like I’d just shot him between the eyes. He tried to stop me from walking away but I screamed at him, like my mother screams, and he dropped his hand like it was dead. I thought I was doing him a favor. Not wanting to hurt him any more than was necessary.
    I ended up being really stupid those last weeks. I guess I wanted to disappear more than anything and so I was trying to make it so. I fooled around with someone else, that’s how messed up I was. He was the father of one of my classmates. Always after me, even when his daughter was around, so I called him. One thing you can count on in Santo Domingo. Not the lights, not the law.
    Sex.
    That never goes away.
    I didn’t bother with the romance. I let him take me to a love motel on our first “date.” He was one of those vain politicos, a peledista, had his own big air-conditioned jípeta. When I pulled my pants down you never saw anybody so happy.
    Until I asked him for two thousand dollars. American, I emphasized.
    It’s like Abuela says: Every snake always thinks it’s biting into a rat until the day it bites into a mongoose.
    That was my big puta moment. I knew he had the money, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked, and it’s not like I was robbing from him. I think we did it like nine times in total, so in my opinion he got a lot more than he gave. Afterward I sat in the motel and drank rum while he snorted from these little bags of coke. He wasn’t much of a talker, which was good. He was always pretty ashamed of himself after we fucked and that made me feel great. Complained that this was the money for his daughter’s school. Blahblahblah. Steal it from the state, I told him with a smile. I kissed him when he dropped me off at the house only so that I could feel him shrink from me.
    I didn’t talk to La Inca much those last weeks but she never stopped talking to me. I want you to do well at school. I want you to visit me when you can. I want you to remember where you come from. She prepared everything for my departure. I was too angry to think about her, how sad she would be when I was gone. I was the last person to share her life since my mother. She started closing up the house like she was the one who was leaving.
    What? I said. You coming with me?
    No, hija. I’m going to my campo for a while.
    But you hate the campo!
    I have to go there, she explained wearily. If only for a little while.
    And then Oscar called, out of the blue. Trying to make up now that I was due back. So you’re coming home.
    Don’t count on it, I said.
    Don’t do anything precipitous.
    Don’t do anything precipitous. I laughed. Do you ever hear yourself, Oscar?
    He sighed. All the time.
    Every morning I would wake up and make sure the money was still under my bed. Two thousand dollars in those days could have taken you anywhere, and of course I was thinking Japan or Goa, which one of the girls at school had told me about. Another island but very beautiful, she assured us. Nothing like Santo Domingo.

    And then, finally, she came. She never did anything quiet, my mother. She pulled up in a big black town car, not a normal taxi, and all the kids in the barrio gathered around to see what the show was about. My mother pretending not to notice the crowd. The driver of course was trying to pick her up. She looked thin and worn out and I couldn’t believe the taxista.
    Leave her