Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I do, señora, he reported saying. I do.

Those months he couldn’t sleep, and that’s how he ended up taking his mother’s car out for midnight spins. Every time he pulled out of the house he thought it would be his last. Drove everywhere. Got lost in Camden. Found the neighborhood where I grew up. Drove through New Brunswick just when the clubs were getting out, looking at everybody, his stomach killing him. Even made it down to Wildwood. Looked for the coffee shop where he had saved Lola, but it had closed. Nothing had opened to replace it. One night he picked up a hitchhiker. An immensely pregnant girl. She barely spoke any English. Was a wetback Guatemalan with pits in her cheek. Needed to go to Perth Amboy, and Oscar, our hero, said: No te preócupas. Te traigo.

Qye Dios te bendiga, she said. Still looking ready to jump out of a window if need be. Gave her his number, Just in case, but she never called. He wasn’t surprised.

Drove so long and so far on some nights that he would actually fall asleep at the wheel. One second he was thinking about his characters and the next he’d be drifting, a beautiful intoxicating richness, about to go all the way under and then some last alarm would sound.

Lola. Nothing more exhilarating (he wrote) than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.

Of 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 Rosio. 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 him self after we fucked and that made me feel great. Complained that this was the money for his daughter’s school. Blah blah blah. 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 alone, I said. Don’t you have any shame?

My mother shook her head sadly, looked at La Inca. You didn’t teach her anything. La Inca didn’t blink. I taught her as well as I could. And then the big moment, the one every daughter dreads.

My mother looking me over. I’d never been in better shape, never felt more beautiful and desirable in my life, and what does the bitch say?

Coño, pero tú sí eres fea.

Those fourteen months—gone. Like they’d never happened.

Now that I’m, a mother myself I realize that she could not have been any different. That’s who she was. Like they say: Plátano maduro no se vuelve verde. Even at the end she refused to show me anything close to love. She cried not for me or for herself but only for Oscar. Mi pobre, hijo, she sobbed. Mi pobre, hijo. You always think with your parents that at least at the very end something will change, something will get better. Not for us.

I probably would have run. I would have waited until we got back to the States, waited like paja de arroz, burning slow, slow, until they dropped their guard and then one morning I would have disappeared. Like my father disappeared on my mother and was never seen again. Disappeared like everything disappears. Without a trace. I would have lived far away. I would have been happy, I’m sure of it, and I would never have had any children. I would let myself grow dark in the sun, no more hiding from it, let my hair indulge in all its kinks, and she would have passed me on the street and never recognized me. That was the dream I had. But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

And that’s what I guess these stories are all about.

Yes, no doubt about it: I would have run. La Inca or not, I would have run. But then Max died. I hadn’t seen him at all. Not since the day of our breakup.