The second time—here, folks, is where the miracles begin—she sat at his table and chatted him up. A girl was rapping to him. I was little, he said defensively. And, besides, that was before the war changed me.
You were a boy. She had lines around her eyes and seemed, to Oscar at least, mad open, mad worldly, and had the sort of intense zipper gravity that hot middle-aged women exude effortlessly. The next time he ran into her, in front of her house he had watched for her , she screamed, Oscar, querido! She followed his gaze and said with a smile, Paulo Coelho saved my life. She gave him a beer, had a double Scotch, then for the next six hours regaled him with tales from her life. It was Holy shit!
As much relationship as she could handle. Her Jedi mind tricks did not, however, work on Oscar. When it came to girls, the brother had a mind like a four-hundred-year-old yogi. He latched on and stayed latched. He was head over heels. Of course not! He was in love.
The next day at one, Oscar pulled on a clean chacabana and strolled over to her house. Well, he sort of trotted. A red Jeep was parked outside, nose to nose with her Pathfinder. And felt like a stooge. Of course she had boyfriends. His optimism, that swollen red giant, collapsed down to a bone-crushing point of gloom.
Where were you? I thought maybe you fell in the tub or something. She smiled and gave her ass a little shiver. I was making the patria strong, mi amor. He had caught her in front of the TV, doing aerobics in a pair of sweatpants and what might have been described as a halter top.
It was hard for him not to stare at her body. Come in! I know what niggers are going to say. Not believable. Should I go down to the Feria and pick me up a more representative model? Would this be better? She dressed young, too, but she was a solid thirty-six, a perfect age for anybody but a puta.
I was so beautiful in those days, she said wistfully. How lovesick he became! He began to go over to her house nearly every day, even when he knew she was working, just in case she was sick or decided to quit the profession so she could marry him. The gates of his heart had swung open and he felt light on his feet, he felt weightless, he felt lithe. His moms steady gave him shit, told him that not even God loves a puta.
The palomo is finally a man. When did it happen? What was the date? She told him about her two sons, Sterling and Perfecto, who lived with their grandparents in Puerto Rico, who she saw only on holidays.
He wanted to ask her not to talk about any of these dudes, but she would only have laughed. Maybe we should get married, he said once, not joking, and she said, I make a terrible wife. Early on, he hit on a great scheme: he called Clives, the evangelical taxista his family always used, who would swing by—no sweat—and lead him home. When he drove, she always put her head in his lap and talked to him, sometimes in Italian, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes sweet, sometimes not, and having her mouth so close to his nuts was finer than your best yesterday.
Oh, they got close, all right, but we have to ask the hard questions: Did they ever kiss in her Pathfinder? Did he ever put his hands up her super-short skirt? Did she ever push up against him and say his name in a throaty whisper?
Did they ever fuck? Of course not. Miracles go only so far. He watched her for the signs that would tell him she loved him. He began to suspect that it might not happen this summer, but already he had plans to come back for Thanksgiving and then for Christmas. When he told her, she looked at him strangely and said only his name, Oscar, a little sadly. She liked him, it was obvious. It seemed to Oscar that he was one of her few real friends. Travel light, was all she ever said about the house when he suggested buying her a lamp or something, and he suspected that she would have said the same thing about having more friends.
One day, he found three discarded condom foils on the floor and asked, Are you having trouble with incubuses? She smiled. Poor Oscar. Just have him meet me, Oscar said. I make all boyfriends feel better about themselves. A jealous Third World cop ex-boyfriend? Any other nigger would have pulled a Scooby-Doo double take—Eeuoooorr? I think somebody shot our house last night. He shook his head. Fucking Dominicans. Probably hosed the whole neighborhood down. They were going to the Duarte that day.
These were the D. We understand. If you could please step out of the truck. Wait a minute, he said as they pulled out, where the hell are you taking me? Gorilla Grodd gave him one cold glance and that was all it took to quiet his ass down. This is fucked up, he said under his breath.
A skinny forty-something-year-old jabao standing near his spotless red Jeep, dressed nice in slacks and a crisply pressed white button-down, his shoes bright as scarabs. He had the Eyes of Lee Van Cleef! I was sworn in in the city of Buffalo, in the State of New York. Motherfucker even had First World teeth. Oscar was lucky; if he had looked like my pana Pedro, the Dominican Superman, he probably would have got shot right there.
Grundy and Grodd, who squeezed him back into the bug and drove out to the cane fields between Santo Domingo and Villa Mella. Oscar was too scared to speak. He was a shook daddy. He was going to die.
Watched Santo Domingo race past and felt impossibly alone. Thought about his mother and his sister and started crying. At the cane fields, Messrs. Grodd and Grundy pulled Oscar out of the car, walked him into the cane, and then with their pistol butts proceeded to give him the beating to end all beatings. Yessir, nothing like getting smashed in the face with those patented Pachmayr Presentation Grips.
It was like one of those nightmare 8 A. Man, Gorilla Grodd said, this kid is making me sweat. Toward the end, Oscar found himself thinking about his old dead abuela, who used to scratch his back and fry him yaniqueques; she was sitting in her rocking chair and when she saw him she snarled, What did I tell you about those putas?
Are you alive? Clives whispered. Oscar said, Blub, blub. This is a big one, one of the braceros joked. The only thing Oscar said the whole ride back was her name. Broken nose, broken zygomatic arch, crushed seventh cranial nerve, three of his front teeth snapped off at the gum, concussion, alive.
That was the end of it. She put it in the simplest of terms. You stupid, worthless, no-good son of a whore are going home. No, he said, through demolished lips. I love her, he whispered, and his mother said, Shut up, you! Just shut up! My God! So this is what it feels like to get your ass kicked. Abelard was a respected surgeon in the Dominican Republic. He ran a clinic with his wife, Socorro, with whom he had two daughters. His eldest daughter, Jacquelyn, possessed great beauty.
Trujillo had a reputation for raping young women, and Abelard worried that he would do the same to Jacquelyn. Abelard was arrested for an alleged joke that slandered Trujillo, and his arrest proved disastrous for the family. Socorro, who was pregnant with their third child at the time of the arrest, gave birth to another daughter and then committed suicide.
The older two daughters both died under mysterious circumstances. The youngest daughter, Beli, was passed to distant relatives who sold her into slavery. La Inca eventually tracked Beli down and adopted her. Oscar graduated from Rutgers and started teaching at his old high school.
Over the next three years, his life grew increasingly formulaic and depressing. We guess there's a lot going on in this here title. Second, he combines English and Spanish language influences, which he does throughout the novel. See, some of Oscar's classmates think he looks like the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. But because their first language is Spanish, they pronounce "Wilde" as "Wao.
The rest of the title divulges quite a bit about the book's themes. We wish we came up with these insights on our own, but we'll have to credit John Lingam's essay in The Quarterly Conversation. Lingam cuts to the quick of Diaz's use of Spanish and English in the title:.
And in the end, what does Oscar teach Yunior, and the other characters if anything? Related Books and Guides. James Baldwin. Toni Morrison. Song of Solomon. A Lesson Before Dying. Ernest J. Another Country. White Teeth. Revolutionary Road. Richard Yates. Swing Time. Lauren Groff. Sometimes a Great Notion. The Hotel New Hampshire. The World According to Garp. John Banville. The Bluest Eye. A Brief History of Seven Killings. Marlon James.
John Williams. The Thing Around Your Neck. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. God Help the Child.
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