Junot Diaz - This Is How You Lose Her

You done? Elvis asks.

I’m done.

A white grandma screams at you at a traffic light and you close your eyes until she goes away.

Find yourself another girl, Elvis advises. He’s holding his daughter lightly. Clavo saca clavo.

Nothing sacas nothing, you reply. No one will ever be like her.

OK. But find yourself a girl anyway.

His daughter was born that February. If she had been a boy Elvis was going to name him Iraq, his wife told you.

I’m sure he was kidding.

She looked out to where he was working on his truck. I don’t think so.

He puts his daughter in your arms. Find yourself a good Dominican girl, he says.

You hold the baby uncertainly. Your ex never wanted kids but toward the end she made you get a sperm test, just in case she decided last minute to change her mind. You put your lips against the baby’s stomach and blow. Do they even exist?

You had one, didn’t you?

That you did.

—

YOU CLEAN UP your act. You cut it out with all the old sucias, even the long-term Iranian girl you’d boned the entire time you were with the fiancée. You want to turn over a new leaf. Takes you a bit — after all, old sluts are the hardest habit to ditch — but you finally break clear and when you do you feel lighter. I should have done this years ago, you declare, and your girl Arlenny, who never ever messed with you (Thank God, she mutters) rolls her eyes. You wait, what, a week for the bad energy to dissipate and then you start dating. Like a normal person, you tell Elvis. Without any lies. Elvis says nothing, only smiles.

At first it’s OK: you get numbers but nothing you would take home to the fam. But after the early rush, it all dries up. It ain’t just a dry spell; it’s fucking Arrakeen. You’re out all the time but no one seems to be biting. Not even the chicks who swear they love Latin guys , and one girl, when you tell her you are Dominican, actually says, Hell no and runs full-tilt toward the door. Seriously? you say. You begin to wonder if there is some secret mark on your forehead. If some of these bitches know .

Be patient, Elvis urges. He’s working for this ghetto-ass landlord and starts taking you with him on collection day. It turns out you’re awesome backup. Deadbeats catch one peep of your dismal grill and cough up their debts with a quickness.

One month, two month, three month and then some hope. Her name is Noemi, Dominican from Baní—in Massachusetts it seems all the domos are from Baní—and you meet at Sofia’s in the last months before it closes, fucking up the Latino community of New England forever. She ain’t half your ex but she ain’t bad either. She’s a nurse, and when Elvis complains about his back, she starts listing all the shit it might be. She’s a big girl and got skin like you wouldn’t believe and best of all she doesn’t privar at all; actually seems nice . She smiles often and whenever she’s nervous she says, Tell me something. Minuses: she’s always working and she has a four-year-old named Justin. She shows you pictures; kid looks like he’ll be dropping an album if she’s not careful. She had him with a banilejo who had four other kids with four other women. And you thought this guy was a good idea for what reason? you say. I was stupid, she admits. Where did you meet him? Same place I met you, she says. Out.

Normally that would be a no-go, but Noemi is not only nice, she’s also kinda fly. One of those hot moms and you’re excited for the first time in over a year. Even standing next to her while a hostess looks for menus gives you an erection.

Sunday is her one day off — the Five-Baby Father watches Justin that day, or better said, he and his new girlfriend watch Justin that day. You and Noemi fall into a little pattern: on Saturday you take her out to dinner — she doesn’t eat anything remotely adventurous, so it’s always Italian — and then she stays the night.

How sweet was that toto? Elvis asks after the first sleepover.

Not sweet at all, because Noemi doesn’t give it to you! Three Saturdays in a row she sleeps over, and three Saturdays in a row nada. A little kissing, a little feeling up, but nothing beyond that. She brings her own pillow, one of those expensive foam ones, and her own toothbrush, and she takes it all with her Sunday morning. Kisses you at the door as she leaves; it all feels too chaste to you, too lacking in promise.

No toto? Elvis looks a little shocked.

No toto, you confirm. What am I, in sixth grade?

You know you should be patient. You know she’s just testing your ass. She’s probably had a lot of bad experiences with the hit-and-run types. Case in point — Justin’s dad. But it galls you that she gave it up to some thug with no job, no education, no nothing, but she’s making you jump through hoops of fire. In fact, it infuriates you.

Are we going to see each other? she asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you.

It depends, you say.

On what? She is instantly guarded and that adds to your irritation. Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom?

On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon.

Oh classiness. You know as soon as you say it that you just buried yourself.

Noemi is silent. Then she says: Let me get off this phone before I say something you won’t like.

This is your last chance, but instead of begging for mercy you bark: Fine .

Within an hour she has deleted you from Facebook. You send one exploratory text to her but it is never answered.

Years later you will see her in Dudley Square but she will pretend not to recognize you, and you won’t force the issue.

Nicely done, Elvis says. Bravo.

You two are watching his daughter knock around the playground near Columbia Terrace. He tries to be reassuring. She had a kid. That probably wasn’t for you.

Probably not.

Even these little breakups suck because they send you right back to thinking about the ex. Right back into the depression. This time you spend six months wallowing in it before you come back to the world.

After you pull yourself back together you tell Elvis: I think I need a break from the bitches.

What are you going to do?

Focus on me for a while.

That’s a good idea, says his wife. Besides it only happens when you’re not looking for it.

That’s what everybody claims. Easier to say that than This shit sucks.

This shit sucks, Elvis says. Does that help?

Not really.

On the walk home a Jeep roars past; the driver calls you a fucking towelhead. One of the ex-sucias publishes a poem about you online. It’s called “El Puto.”

You take your break. You try to get back to your work, to your writing. You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco and one about a bachatero — all of them suck pipe. You get serious about classes and for your health you take up running. You used to run in the old days and you figure you need something to keep you out of your head. You must have needed it bad, because once you get into the swing of it you start running four five six times a week. It’s your new addiction. You run in the morning and you run late at night when there’s no one on the paths next to the Charles. You run so hard that your heart feels like it’s going to seize. When winter rolls in, there’s a part of you that fears you’ll fold — Boston winters are on some terrorism shit — but you need the activity more than anything so you keep at it even as the trees are stripped of their foliage and the paths empty out and the frost reaches into your bones. Soon it’s only you and a couple of other lunatics. Your body changes, of course. You lose all that drinking and smoking chub and your legs look like they belong to someone else. Every time you think about the ex, every time the loneliness rears up in you like a seething, burning continent, you tie on your shoes and hit the paths and that helps; it really does.