The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Díaz

  The Gangster still had a lot on his mind. He was worried about the fate of the Trujillato, worried that the Cubans were preparing to invade. They shoot people like me in the show trials. I’ll be the first person Che looks for.

  I’m thinking of going to Nueva York.

  She had wanted him to say, No, don’t go, or at least to say he would be joining her. But he told her instead about one of his trips to Nueba Yol, a job for the Jefe and how the crab at some Cuban restaurant had made him sick. He did not mention his wife, of course, and she did not ask. It would have broken her.

  Later, when he started coming, she tried to hold on to him, but he wrenched free and came on the dark ruined plain of her back.

  Like chalk on a blackboard, the Gangster joked.

  She was still thinking about him eighteen days later at the airport. You don’t have to go, La Inca said suddenly, just before the girl stepped into the line. Too late.

  I want to.

  Her whole life she had tried to be happy, but Santo Domingo…FUCKING SANTO DOMINGO had foiled her at every turn. I never want to see it again.

  Don’t talk that way.

  I never want to see it again.

  She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

  Don’t leave like this. Toma, for the trip. Dulce de coco.

  On the line to passport control she would throw it away but for now she held the jar.

  Remember me. La Inca kissed and embraced her. Remember who you are. You are the third and final daughter of the Family Cabral. You are the daughter of a doctor and a nurse.

  Last sight of La Inca: waving at her with all her might, crying.

  More questions at passport control, and with a last contemptuous flurry of stamps, she was let through. And then the boarding and the preflight chitchat from the natty dude on her right, four rings on his hand—Where are you going? Never-never land, she snapped—and finally the plane, throbbing with engine song, tears itself from the surface of the earth and Beli, not known for her piety, closed her eyes and begged the Lord to protect her.

  Poor Beli. Almost until the last she half believed that the Gangster was going to appear and save her. I’m sorry, mi negrita, I’m so sorry, I should never have let you go. (She was still big on dreams of rescue.) She had looked for him everywhere: on the ride to the airport, in the faces of the officials checking passports, even when the plane was boarding, and, finally, for an irrational moment, she thought he would emerge from the cockpit, in a clean-pressed captain’s uniform—I tricked you, didn’t I? But the Gangster never appeared again in the flesh, only in her dreams. On the plane there were other First Wavers. Many waters waiting to become a river. Here she is, closer now to the mother we will need her to be if we want Oscar and Lola to be born.

  She is sixteen and her skin is the darkness before the black, the plum of the day’s last light, her breasts like sunsets trapped beneath her skin, but for all her youth and beauty she has a sour distrusting expression that only dissolves under the weight of immense pleasure. Her dreams are spare, lack the propulsion of a mission, her ambition is without traction. Her fiercest hope? That she will find a man. What she doesn’t yet know: the cold, the backbreaking drudgery of the factorías, the loneliness of Diaspora, that she will never again live in Santo Domingo, her own heart. What else she doesn’t know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.

  She awakened just as in her dreams some ciegos were boarding a bus, begging for money, a dream from her Lost Days. The guapo in the seat next to her tapped her elbow.

  Sñorita, this is not something you’ll want to miss. I’ve already seen it, she snapped. And then, calming herself, she peered out the window. It was night and the lights of Nueva York were everywhere.

  FOUR

  Sentimental Education

  1988-1992

  It started with me. The year before Oscar fell, I suffered some nuttiness of my own; I got jumped as I was walking home from the Roxy. By this mess of New Brunswick townies. A bunch of fucking morenos. Two a.m., and I was on Joyce Kilmer for no good reason. Alone and on foot. Why? Because I was hard, thought I’d have no problem walking through the thicket of young guns I saw on the corner. Big mistake. Remember the smile on this one dude’s face the rest of my fucking life. Only second to his high school ring, which plowed a nice furrow into my cheek (still got the scar). Wish I could say I went down swinging but these cats just laid me out. If it hadn’t been for some Samaritan driving by the motherfuckers probably would have killed me. The old guy wanted to take me to Robert Wood Johnson, but I didn’t have no medical, and besides, ever since my brother had died of leukemia I hadn’t been hot on doctors, so of course I was like: No no no. For having just gotten my ass kicked I actually felt pretty good. Until the next day, when I felt like I had died. So dizzy couldn’t stand up without puking. My guts feeling like they’d been taken out of me, beaten with mallets, and then reattached with paper clips. It was pretty bad, and of all the friends I had—all my great wonderful friends—only Lola came fucking through. Heard about the beat down from my boy Melvin and shot over ASAP. Never so happy to see someone my whole life. Lola, with her big innocent teeth. Lola, who actually cried when she saw the state I was in.

  She was the one who took care of my sorry ass. Cooked, cleaned, picked up my class work, got me medicine, even made sure that I showered. In other words, sewed my balls back on, and not any woman can do that for a guy. Believe you me. I could barely stand, my head hurt so bad, but she would wash my back and that was what I remember most about that mess. Her hand on that sponge and that sponge on me. Even though I had a girlfriend, it was Lola who spent those nights with me. Combing her hair out—once, twice, thrice—before folding her long self into bed. No more night-walking, OK, Kung Fu?

  At college you’re not supposed to care about anything—you’re just supposed to fuck around—but believe it or not, I cared about Lola. She was a girl it was easy to care about. Lola like the fucking opposite of the girls I usually macked on: bitch was almost six feet tall and no tetas at all and darker than your darkest grandma. Like two girls in one: the skinniest upperbody married to a pair of Cadillac hips and an ill donkey. One of those overachiever chicks who run all the organizations in college and wear suits to meetings. Was the president of her sorority, the head of S.A.L.S.A. and co-chair of Take Back the Night. Spoke perfect stuck-up Spanish.

  Known each other since pre-fresh weekend, but it wasn’t until sophomore year when her mother got sick again that we had our fling. Drive me home, Yunior, was her opening line, and a week later it jumped of. I remember she was wearing a pair of Douglass sweats and a Tribe T–shirt. Took off the ring her boy had given her and then kissed me. Dark eyes never leaving mine.

  You have great lips, she said.

  How do you forget a girl like that?

  Only three fucking nights before she got all guilty about the boyfriend and put an end to it. And when Lola puts an end to something, she puts an end to it hard. Even those nights after I got jumped she wouldn’t let me steal on her ass for nothing. So you can sleep in my bed but you can’t sleep with me?

  Yo soy prieta, Yuni, she said, pero no soy bruta.

  Knew exactly what kind of sucio I was. Two days after we broke up saw me hitting on one of her line-sisters and turned her long back to me.

  Point is: when her brother lapsed into that killer depression at the end of sophomore year—drank two bottles of 151 because some girl dissed him—almost fucking killing himself and his sick mother in the process, who do you think stepped up?

  Me.

  Surprised the shit out of Lola when I said I’d live with him the next year. Keep an eye on the fucking dork for you. After the suicide drama nobody in Demarest wanted to room with homeboy, was going to have to s
pend junior year by himself; no Lola, either, because she was slotted to go abroad to Spain for that year, her big fucking dream finally come true and she was worried shitless about him. Knocked Lola for a loop when I said I’d do it, but it almost killed her dead when I actually did it. Move in with him. In fucking Demarest. Home of all the weirdo’s and losers and freaks and fem-bots. Me, a guy who could bench 340 pounds, who used to call Demarest Homo Hall like it was nothing. Who never met a little white artist freak he didn’t want to smack around. Put in my application for the writing section and by the beginning of September, there we were, me and Oscar. Together.

  I liked to play it up as complete philanthropy, but that’s not exactly true. Sure I wanted to help Lola out, watch out for her crazy-ass brother (knew he was the only thing she really loved in this world), but I was also taking care of my own damn self. That year I’d pulled what was probably the lowest number in the history of the housing lottery. Was officially the last name on the waiting list, which meant my chances for university housing were zilch to none, which meant that my brokeness was either going to have to live at home or on the street, which meant that Demarest, for all its freakery, and Oscar, for all his unhappiness, didn’t seem like so bad an option.

  It’s not like he was a complete stranger—I mean, he was the brother of the girl I’d shadow—fucked. Saw him on campus with her those first couple of years, hard to believe he and Lola were related. (Me Apokalips, he cracked, she New Genesis.) Unlike me who would have hidden from a Caliban like that, she loved the dork. Invited him to parties and to her rallies. Holding up signs, handing out flyers. Her fat-ass assistant. To say I’d never in my life met a Dominican like him would be to put it mildly.

  Hail, Dog of God, was how he welcomed me my first day in Demarest.

  Took a week before I figured out what the hell he meant.

  God. Domini. Dog. Canis.

  Hail, Dominicanis.

  I guess I should have fucking known. Dude used to say he was cursed, used to say this a lot, and if I’d really been old-school Dominican I would have (a) listened to the idiot, and then (b) run the other way. My family are sureños, from Azua, and if we sureños from Azua know anything it’s about fucking curses. I mean, Jesus, have you ever seen Azua? My mom wouldn’t even have listened, would have just run. She didn’t fuck with fukú’s or guanguas, no way no how. But I wasn’t as old-school as I am now, just real fucking dumb, assumed keeping an eye on somebody like Oscar wouldn’t be no Herculean chore. I mean, shit, I was a weight lifter, picked up bigger fucking piles than him every damn day.

  You can start the laugh track anytime you want.

  He seemed like the same to me. Still massive—Biggie Smalls minus the smalls—and still lost. Still writing ten, fifteen, twenty pages a day. Still obsessed with his fanboy madness. Do you know what sign fool put up on our dorm door? Speak, friend, and enter. In fucking Elvish! (Please don’t ask me how I knew this. Please.) When I saw that I said: de León, you gotta be kidding. Elvish?

  Actually, he coughed, it’s Sindarin.

  Actually, Melvin said, it’s gay-hay-hay.

  Despite my promises to Lola to watch out, those first couple weeks I didn’t have much to do with him. I mean, what can I say? I was busy. What state school player isn’t? I had my job and the gym and my boys and my novia and of course I had my slutties.

  Out so much that first month that what I saw of O was mostly a big dormant hump crashed out under a sheet. Only thing that kept his nerd ass up late were his role-playing games and his Japanese animation, especially Akira, which I think he must have watched at least a thousand times that year. I can’t tell you how many nights I came home and caught him parked in front of that movie. I’d bark: You watching this shit again? And Oscar would say, almost as if apologizing for his existence: It’s almost over. It’s always almost over, I complained. I didn’t mind it, though. I liked shit like Akira, even if I couldn’t always stay awake for it. I’d lay back on my bed while Kaneda screamed Tetsuo and the next thing I knew Oscar was standing timidly over me, saying, Yunior, the movie is finis and I would sit up, say, Fuck!

  Wasn’t half as bad as I made it out to be later. For all of his nerdiness, dude was a pretty considerate roommate. I never got stupid little notes from him like the last fucknuts I lived with, and he always paid for his half of shit and if I ever came in during one of his Dungeons & Dragons games he’d relocate to the lounge without even having to be asked. Akira I could handle, Queen of the Demonweb Pits I could not.

  Made my little gestures, of course. A meal once a week. Picked up his writings, five books to date, and tried to read some. Wasn’t my cup of tea —Drop the phaser, Arthurus Prime— but even I could tell he had chops. Could write dialogue, crack snappy exposition, keep the narrative moving. Showed him some of my fiction too, all robberies and drug deals and Fuck you, Nando, and BLAU! BLAU! BLAU! He gave me four pages of comments for an eight-page story.

  Did I try to help him with his girl situation? Share some of my playerly wisdom?

  Of course I did. Problem was, when it came to the mujeres my roommate was like no one on the planet. On the one hand, he had the worst case of no-toto-itis I’d ever seen. The last person to even come close was this poor Salvadoran kid I knew in high school who was burned all over his face, couldn’t get no girls ever because he looked like the Phantom of the Opera. Well: Oscar had it worse than him. At least Jeffrey could claim an honest medical condition. What could Oscar claim? That it was Sauron’s fault? Dude weighed 307 pounds, for fuck’s sake! Talked like a Star Trek computer! The real irony was that you never met a kid who wanted a girl so fucking bad. I mean, shit, I thought I was into females, but no one, and I mean no one, was into them the way Oscar was. To him they were the beginning and end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel. Homes had it bad; couldn’t so much as see a cute girl without breaking into shakes. Developed crushes out of nothing—must have had at least two dozen high-level ones that first semester alone. Not that any of these shits ever came to anything. How could they? Oscar’s idea of G was to talk about role-playing games! How fucking crazy is that? (My favorite was the day on the E bus when he informed some hot morena, If you were in my game I would give you an eighteen Charisma!)

  I tried to give advice, I really did. Nothing too complicated. Like, Stop hollering at strange girls on the street, and don’t bring up the Beyonder any more than necessary. Did he listen? Of course not! Trying to talk sense to Oscar about girls was like trying to throw rocks at Unus the Untouchable. Dude was impenetrable. He’d hear me out and then shrug. Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.

  But your yourself sucks!

  It is, lamentably, all I have.

  But my favorite conversation:

  Yunior?

  What?

  Are you awake?

  If it’s about Star Trek

  It’s not about Star Trek…He coughed. I have heard from a reliable source that no Dominican male has ever died a virgin. You who have experience in these matters—do you think this is true?

  I sat up. Dude was peering at me in the dark, dead serious.

  0, it’s against the laws of nature for a dominicano to die without fucking at least once.

  That, he sighed, is what worries me.

  So what happens at the beginning of October? What always happens to playboys like me.

  I got bopped.

  No surprise, given how balls-out I was living. Wasn’t just any bop either. My girl Suriyan found out I was messing with one of hermanas. Players: never never never fuck with a bitch named Awilda. Because when she awildas out on your ass you’ll know pain for real. The Awilda in question dimed me for fuck knows what reason, actually taped one of my calls to her and before you could say Oh shit everybody knew. Homegirl must have played that thing like five hundred times. Second time I’d been caught in two years, a record even for me. Suriyan went absolutely nuts. Attacked me on the E bus. The boys laughing and running, and me pretendin
g like I hadn’t done anything. Suddenly I was in the dorm a lot. Taking a stab at a story or two. Watching some movies with Oscar. This Island Earth. Appleseed. Project A. Casting around for a lifeline.

  What I should have done was check myself into Bootie Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive.

  Out of nowhere, and not in the least influenced by my own shitty state—of course not!—I decided that I was going to fix Oscar’s life. One night while he was moaning on about his sorry existence I said: Do you really want to change it?

  Of course I do, he said, but nothing I’ve tried has been ameliorative. I’ll change your life.

  Really? The look he gave me—still breaks my heart, even after all these years.

  Really. You have to listen to me, though.

  Oscar scrambled to his feet. Placed his hand over his heart.

  I swear an oath of obedience, my lord. When do we start?

  You’ll see.

  The next morning, six a.m., I kicked Oscar’s bed.

  What is it? he cried out.

  Nothing much, I said, throwing his sneakers on his stomach. Just the first day of your life.

  I really must have been in a dangle over Suriyan—which is why I threw myself something serious into Project Oscar. Those first weeks, while I waited for Suriyan to forgive me, I had fatboy like Master Killer in Shaolin Temple. Was on his ass 24⁄7. Got him to swear off the walking up to strange girls with his I-loveyou craziness. (You’re only scaring the poor girls, O.) Got him to start watching his diet and to stop talking crazy negative—I am ill fated, I am going to perish a virgin, I’m lacking in pulchritude —at least while I was around, I did. (Positive thoughts, I stressed, positive thoughts, motherfucker!) Even brought him out with me and the boys. Not anything serious—just out for a drink when it was a crowd of us and his monstro-ness wouldn’t show so much. (The boys hating—What’s next? We start inviting out the homeless?)