Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

When the doctor confirmed La Inca’s worst fears Beli let out a cheer. (Young lady, this is not a game, the doctor barked.) She was simultaneously scared shitless and out of her mind with happiness. She couldn’t sleep for the wonder of it and, after the revelation, became strangely respectful and pliant. (So now you’re happy? My God, girl, are you a fool!) For Beli: This was it. The magic she’d been waiting for. She placed her hand on her flat stomach and heard the wedding bells loud and clear, saw in her mind’s eye the house that had been promised, that she had dreamed about.

Please don’t tell anyone, La Inca begged, but of course she whispered it to her friend Dorea, who put it out on the street. Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can’t exist without one. The bochinche spread through their sector of Baní like wildfire.

The next time the Gangster appeared she had dolled herself up lovely, a brand-new dress, crushed jasmine in her underwear, got her hair done, and even plucked her eyebrows into twin hyphens of alarm. He needed a shave and a haircut, and the hairs curling out of his ears were starting to look like a particularly profitable crop. You smell good enough to eat, he growled, kissing the tender glide of her neck.

Guess what, she said coyly.

He looked up. What?

In her memory he never told her to get rid of it. But later, when she was freezing in basement apartments in the Bronx and working her fingers to the bone, she reflected that he had told her exactly that. But like lovergirls everywhere, she had heard only what she wanted to hear.

I hope it’s a son, she said.

I do too, half believing it.

They were lying in bed in a love motel. Above them spun a fan, its blades pursued by a half-dozen flies.

What will his middle name be? she wondered excitedly. It has to be something serious, because he’s going to be a doctor, like mi papa. Before he could reply, she said: We’ll call him Abelard.

He scowled. What kind of maricón name is that? If the baby’s a boy we’ll call him Manuel. That was my grandfather’s name.

I thought you didn’t know who your family was. He pulled from her touch. No me jodas. Wounded, she reached down to hold her stomach.

The Gangster had told Beli many things in the course of their relationship, but there was one important item he’d failed to reveal. That he was married.

I’m sure you all guessed that. I mean, he was dominicano , after all. But I bet you never would have imagined whom he was married to.

A Trujillo.

It’s true. The Gangster’s wife was—drumroll, please— Trujillo’s fucking sister! Did you really think some street punk from Samaná was going to reach the upper echelons of the Trujillato on hard work alone? Negro, please—this ain’t a fucking comic book!

Yes, Trujillo’s sister; the one known affectionately as La Fea. They met while the Gangster was carousing in Cuba; she was a bitter tacaña seventeen years his senior. They did a lot of work together in the butt business and before you knew it she had taken a shine to his irresistible joie de vivre. He encouraged it—knew a fantastic opportunity when he saw one—and before the year was out they were cutting the cake and placing the first piece on El Jefe’s plate. There are those alive who claim that La Fea had actually been a pro herself in the time before the rise of her brother, but that seems to be more calumny than anything, like saying that Balaguer fathered a dozen illegitimate children and then used the pueblo’s money to hush it up—wait, that’s true, but probably not the other—shit, who can keep track of what’s true and what’s false in a country as baká as ours—what is known is that the time before her brother’s rise had made her una mujer bien fuerte y bien cruel; she was no pendeja and ate girls like Beli like they were pan de agua—if this was Dickens she’d have to run a brothel—but wait, she did run brothels! Well, maybe Dickens would have her run an orphanage. But she was one of those characters only a kleptocracy could have conceived: had hundreds of thousands in the bank and not one yuen of pity in her soul; she cheated everyone she did business with, including her brother, and had already driven two respectable businessmen to early graves by fleecing them to their last mota. She sat in her immense house in La Capital like a shelob in her web, all day handling accounts and ordering around subordinates, and on certain weekend nights she would host tertulias where her ‘friends’ would gather to endure hours of poetry declaimed by her preposterously tone-deaf son (from her first marriage; she and the Gangster didn’t have any children). Well, one fine day in May a servant appeared at her door.

Leave it, she said, a pencil in her mouth.

An inhalation. Dona, there’s news.

There’s always news. Leave it.

An exhale. News about your husband.

Two days later Beli was wandering about the parque central in a restless fog. Her hair had seen better days. She was out in the world because she couldn’t stand to be at home with La Inca and now that she didn’t have a job she didn’t have a sanctuary into which to retreat. She was deep in thought, one hand on her belly, the other on her pounding head. She was thinking about the argument she and the Gangster had gotten into earlier in the week. He’d been in one of his foul moods and bellowed, suddenly, that he didn’t want to bring a baby into so terrible a world and she had barked that the world wasn’t so terrible in Miami and then he had said, grabbing her by the throat, If you’re in such a rush to go to Miami, swim. He hadn’t tried to contact her since and she was wandering around in the hopes of spotting him. As if he hung around Baní. Her feet were swollen, her head was sending its surplus ache down her neck, and now two huge men with matching pompadours were grabbing her by the arms and propelling her to the center of the parque, where a well-dressed old lady sat on a bench underneath a decrepit jacaranda. White gloves and a coil of pearls about her neck. Scrutinizing Beli with unflinching iguana eyes.

Do you know who I am?

I don’t know who in carajo—

Soy Trujillo. I’m also Dionisio’s wife. It has reached my ears that you’ve been telling people that you’re going to marry him and that you’re having his child. Well, I’m here to inform you, mi monita, that you will be doing neither. These two very large and capable officers are going to take you to a doctor, and after he’s cleaned out that toto podrido of yours there won’t be any baby left to talk about. And then it will be in your best interest that I never see your black cara de culo again because if I do I’ll feed you to my dogs myself. But enough talk. It’s time for your appointment. Say good-bye now, I don’t want you to be late.

Beli might have felt as though the crone had thrown boiling oil on her but she still had the ovaries to spit, Cómeme el culo, you ugly disgusting vieja.

Let’s go, Elvis One said, twisting her arm behind her back and, with the help of his partner, dragging her across the park to where a car sat baleful in the sun.

Déjame, she screamed, and when she looked up she saw that there was one more cop sitting in the car, and when he turned toward her she saw that he didn’t have a face . All the strength fell right out of her.

That’s right, tranquila now, the larger one said.