The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - By Junot Diaz Page 0,28

bathroom washing himself I stood in front of the mirror naked and looked at my culo for the first time. A tesoro, I repeated. A treasure.

Well? Rosio asked at school. And I nodded once, quickly, and she grabbed me and laughed and all the girls I hated turned to look but what could they do? Happiness, when it comes, is stronger than all the jerk girls in Santo Domingo combined.

But I was still confused. Because the feeling, it just kept getting stronger and stronger, wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t give me any peace. I started losing races, which was something I never did.

You ain’t so great, are you, gringa, the girls on the other teams hissed at me and I could only hang my head. Coach Cortes was so unhappy he just locked himself in his car and wouldn’t say anything to any of us.

The whole thing was driving me crazy, and then one night I came home from being out with Max. He had taken me for a walk along the Malecón — he never had money for anything else — and we had watched the bats zigzagging over the palms and an old ship head into the distance. He talked quietly about moving to the U.S. while I stretched my hamstrings. My abuela was waiting for me at the living room table. Even though she still wears black to mourn the husband she lost when she was young she’s one of the most handsome women I’ve ever known. We have the same jagged lightning-bolt part and the first time I saw her at the airport I didn’t want to admit it but I knew that things were going to be OK between us. She stood like she was her own best thing and when she saw me she said, Hija, I have waited for you since the day you left. And then she hugged me and kissed me and said, I’m your abuela, but you can call me La Inca.

Standing over her that night, her part like a crack in her hair, I felt a surge of tenderness. I put my arms around her and that was when I noticed that she was looking at photos. Old photos, the kind I’d never seen in my house. Photos of my mother when she was young and of other people. I picked one up. Mami was standing in front of a Chinese restaurant. Even with the apron on she looked potent, like someone who was going to be someone.

She was very guapa, I said casually. Abuela snorted. Guapa soy yo. Your mother was a diosa.

But so cabeza dura. When she was your age we never got along. I didn’t know that, I said. She was cabeza dura and I was…exigente. But it all turned out for the best, she sighed. We have you and your brother and that’s more than anyone could have hoped for, given what came before. She plucked out one photo. This is your mother’s father, she offered me the photo. He was my cousin, and—

She was about to say something else and then she stopped.

And that’s when it hit with the force of a hurricane. The feeling. I stood straight up, the way my mother always wanted me to stand up. My abuela was sitting there, forlorn, trying to cobble together the right words and I could not move or breathe. I felt like I always did at the last seconds of a race, when I was sure that I was going to explode. She was about to say something and I was waiting for whatever she was going to tell me. I was waiting to begin.

THREE

The Three Heartbreaks of Belicia Cabral

1955-1962

LOOK AT THE PRINCESS

Before there was an American Story, before Paterson spread before Oscar and Lola like a dream, or the trumpets from the Island of our eviction had even sounded, there was their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral:

A girl so tall your leg bones ached just looking at her so dark it was as if the Creatrix had, in her making, blinked who, like her yet-to-be-born daughter, would come to exhibit a particularly Jersey malaise — the inextinguishable longing for elsewheres.

UNDER THE SEA

She lived in those days in Baní. Not the frenzied Baní of right now, supported by an endless supply of DoYos who’ve laid claim to most of Boston, Providence, New Hampshire. This was the lovely Baní of times past, beautiful and respectful. A city famed for its resistance to blackness, and it was