The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - By Junot Diaz Page 0,27

jams and the other day when my abuela locked us out of the house she turned to me in frustration and said, Hija, just kick the door open. That pushed a laugh out of both of us.

So much has changed these last months, in my head, my heart. Rosio has me dressing up like a ‘real Dominican girl’. She’s the one who fixed my hair and who helps me with my makeup, and sometimes when I see myself in mirrors I don’t even know who I am anymore. Not that I’m unhappy or anything. Even if I found a hot-air balloon that would whisk me straight to Uz’s house, I’m not sure I would take it. (I’m still not talking to my traitor brother, though.) The truth is I’m even thinking of staying one more year. Abuela doesn’t want me to ever leave — I’ll miss you, she says so simply it can’t be anything but true, and my mom has told me I can stay if I want to but that I would be welcome at home too. Tía Rubelka tells me she’s hanging tough, my mother, that she’s back to two jobs. They send me a picture of the whole family and Abuela frames it and I can’t look at them without misting up. My mother’s not wearing her fakies in it; she looks so thin I don’t even recognize her.

Just know that I would die for you, she told me the last time we talked. And before I could say anything she hung up.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. It’s about that crazy feeling that started this whole mess, the bruja feeling that comes singing out of my bones, that takes hold of me the way blood seizes cotton. The feeling that tells me that everything in my life is about to change. It’s come back. Just the other day I woke up from all these dreams and it was there, pulsing inside of me. I imagine this is what it feels like to have a child in you. At first I was scared because I thought it was telling me to run away again, but every time I looked around our house, every time I saw my abuela, the feeling got stronger so I knew this was something different. I was dating a boy by then, a sweet morenito by the name of Max Sanchez, whom I had met in Los Mina while visiting Rosio. He’s short but his smile and his snappy dressing make up for a lot. Because I’m from Nueba Yol he talks about how rich he’s going to become and I try to explain to him that I don’t care about that but he looks at me like I’m crazy. I’m going to get a white Mercedes-Benz, he says. Tü veras. But it’s the job he has that I love best, that got me and him started. In Santo Domingo two or three theaters often share the same set of reels for a movie, so when the first theater finishes with the first reel they put it in Max’s hands and he rides his motorcycle like crazy to make it to the second theater and then he drives back, waits, picks up the second reel, and so on. If he’s held up or gets into an accident the first reel will end and there will be no second reel and the people in the audience will throw bottles. So far he’s been blessed, he tells me and kisses his San Miguel medal. Because of me, he brags, one movie becomes three. I’m the man who puts together the pictures. Max’s not from ‘la clase alta,’ as my abuela would describe it, and if any of the stuck-up bitches in school saw us they would just about die, but I’m fond of him. He holds open doors, he calls me his morena; when he’s feeling brave he touches my arm gently and then pulls back.

Anyway, I thought maybe the feeling was about Max and so one day I let him take us to one of the love motels. He was so excited he almost fell off the bed and the first thing he wanted was to look at my ass. I never knew my big ass could be such a star attraction but he kissed it, four, five times, gave me goose bumps with his breath and pronounced it a tesoro. When we were done and he was in the