The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - By Junot Diaz Page 0,21

promising to break into my cabin and kiss me in front of everyone I believed her, and when on the morning of the trip she announced that I wasn’t going and I said, But you promised, and she said, Muchacha del diablo, I promised you nothing, I didn’t throw my backpack at her or pull out my eyes, and when it was Laura Saenz who ended up kissing Bobby Santos, not me, I didn’t say anything, either. I just lay in my room with stupid Bear-Bear and sang under my breath, imagining where I would run away to when I grew up. To Japan maybe, where I would track down Tomoko, or to Austria, where my singing would inspire a remake of The Sound of Music. All my favorite books from that period were about runaways. Watership Down, The Incredible Journey, My Side of the Mountain, and when Bon Jovi’s ‘Runaway’ came out I imagined it was me they were singing about. No one had any idea. I was the tallest, dorkiest girl in the school, the one who dressed up as Wonder Woman every Halloween, the one who never said a word. People saw me in my glasses and my hand-me-down clothes and could not have imagined what I was capable of. And then when I was twelve I got that feeling, the scary witchy one, and before I knew it my mother was sick and the wildness that had been in me all along, that I tried to tamp down with chores and with homework and with promises that once I reached college I would be able to do whatever I pleased, burst out. I couldn’t help it. I tried to keep it down but it just flooded through all my quiet spaces. It was a message more than a feeling, a message that tolled like a bell: change, change, change.

It didn’t happen overnight. Yes, the wildness was in me, yes it kept my heart beating fast all the long day, yes it danced around me while I walked down the street, yes it let me look boys straight in the face when they stared at me, yes it turned my laugh from a cough into a long wild fever, but I was still scared. How could I not be? I was my mother’s daughter. Her hold on me stronger than love. And then one day I was walking home with Karen Cepeda, who at that time was like my friend. Karen did the goth thing really well; she had spiky Robert Smith hair and wore all black and had the skin color of a ghost. Walking with her in Paterson was like walking with the bearded lady. Everybody would stare and it was the scariest thing, and that was, I guess, why I did it.

We were walking down Main and being stared at by everybody and out of nowhere I said, Karen, I want you to cut my hair. As soon as I said it I knew. The feeling in my blood, the rattle, came over me again. Karen raised her eyebrow: What about your mother? You see, it wasn’t just me, everybody was scared of Belicia de León.

Fuck her, I said.

Karen looked at me like I was being stupid — I never cursed, but that was something else that was about to change. The next day we locked ourselves in her bathroom and downstairs her father and uncles were bellowing at some soccer game. Well, how do you want it? she asked. I looked at the girl in the mirror for a long time. All I knew was that I didn’t want to see her ever again. I put the clippers in Karen’s hand, turned them on, and guided her hand until it was all gone.

So now you’re punk? Karen asked uncertainly.

Yes, I said.

The next day my mother threw the wig at me. You’re going to wear this. You’re going to wear it every day. And if I see you without it on I’m going to kill you!

I didn’t say a word. I held the wig over the burner.

Don’t do it, she swore as the burner clicked. Don’t you dare—

It went up in a flash, like gasoline, like a stupid hope, and if I hadn’t thrown it in the sink it would have taken my hand. The smell was horrible, like all of the chemicals from all the factories in Elizabeth.

That was when she slapped at me, when I struck her hand and she snatched it