Read Online The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Junot Díaz
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I’d been swearing that one day I would just disappear.
And one day I did.
I ran off, dique, because of a boy.
What can I really tell you about him? He was like all boys: beautiful and callow, and like an insect he couldn’t sit still. Un blanquito with long hairy legs I met one night at Limelight.
His name was Aldo.
He was nineteen and lived down at the Jersey Shore with his seventy-four-year-old father. In the back of his Oldsmobile on University I pulled my leather skirt up and my fishnet stockings down and the smell of me was everywhere. That was our first date. The spring of my sophomore year we wrote and called each other at least once a day. I even drove down with Karen to visit him in Wildwood (she had a license, I didn’t). He lived and worked near the boardwalk, one of three guys who operated the bumper cars, the only one without tattoos. You should stay, he told me that night while Karen walked ahead of us on the beach. Where would I live? I asked and he smiled. With me. Don’t lie, I said, but he looked out at the surf. I want you to come, he said seriously.
He asked me three times. I counted, I know.
That summer my brother announced that he was going to dedicate his life to designing role-playing games and my mother was trying to keep a second job, for the first time since her operation. It wasn’t working out. She was coming home exhausted, and since I wasn’t helping, nothing around the house was getting done. Some weekends my tía Rubelka would help out with the cooking and cleaning and would lecture us both but she had her own family to watch after so most of the time we were on our own. Come, he said on the phone. And then in August Karen left for Slippery Rock. She had graduated from high school a year early. If I don’t see Paterson again it will be too soon, she said before she left. That was the September I cut school six times in my first two weeks. I just couldn’t do school anymore. Something inside wouldn’t let me. It didn’t help that I was reading The Fountainhead and had decided that I was Dominique and Aldo was Roark. I’m sure I could have stayed that way forever, too scared to jump, but finally what we’d all been waiting for happened. My mother announced at dinner, quietly: I want you both to listen to me: the doctor is running more tests on me.
Oscar looked like he was going to cry. He put his head down. And my reaction? I looked at her and said: Could you please pass the salt?
These days I don’t blame her for smacking me across my face, but right then it was all I needed. We jumped on each other and the table fell and the sancocho spilled all over the floor and Oscar just stood in the corner bellowing, Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Hija de tu maldita madre, she shrieked. And I said: This time I hope you die from it.
For a couple of days the house was a war zone, and then on Friday she let me out of my room and I was allowed to sit next to her on the sofa and watch novelas with her. She was waiting for her blood work to come back but you would never have known her life was in the balance. She watched the TV like it was the only thing that mattered, and whenever one of the characters did something underhanded she would start waving her arms. Someone has to stop her! Can’t they see what that puta is up to?
I hate you, I said very quietly, but she didn’t hear. Go get me some water, she said. Put an ice cube in it.
That was the last thing I did for her. The next morning I was on the bus bound for the Shore. One bag, two hundred dollars in tips, tío Rudolfo’s old knife. I was so scared. I couldn’t stop shaking. The whole ride down I was expecting the sky to split open and my mother to reach down and shake me. But it didn’t happen. Nobody but the man across the aisle noticed me. You’re really beautiful, he said. Like a girl I once knew.
I didn’t write them a note. That’s how much I hated them. Her.
That night while we lay in Aldo’s sweltering
And one day I did.
I ran off, dique, because of a boy.
What can I really tell you about him? He was like all boys: beautiful and callow, and like an insect he couldn’t sit still. Un blanquito with long hairy legs I met one night at Limelight.
His name was Aldo.
He was nineteen and lived down at the Jersey Shore with his seventy-four-year-old father. In the back of his Oldsmobile on University I pulled my leather skirt up and my fishnet stockings down and the smell of me was everywhere. That was our first date. The spring of my sophomore year we wrote and called each other at least once a day. I even drove down with Karen to visit him in Wildwood (she had a license, I didn’t). He lived and worked near the boardwalk, one of three guys who operated the bumper cars, the only one without tattoos. You should stay, he told me that night while Karen walked ahead of us on the beach. Where would I live? I asked and he smiled. With me. Don’t lie, I said, but he looked out at the surf. I want you to come, he said seriously.
He asked me three times. I counted, I know.
That summer my brother announced that he was going to dedicate his life to designing role-playing games and my mother was trying to keep a second job, for the first time since her operation. It wasn’t working out. She was coming home exhausted, and since I wasn’t helping, nothing around the house was getting done. Some weekends my tía Rubelka would help out with the cooking and cleaning and would lecture us both but she had her own family to watch after so most of the time we were on our own. Come, he said on the phone. And then in August Karen left for Slippery Rock. She had graduated from high school a year early. If I don’t see Paterson again it will be too soon, she said before she left. That was the September I cut school six times in my first two weeks. I just couldn’t do school anymore. Something inside wouldn’t let me. It didn’t help that I was reading The Fountainhead and had decided that I was Dominique and Aldo was Roark. I’m sure I could have stayed that way forever, too scared to jump, but finally what we’d all been waiting for happened. My mother announced at dinner, quietly: I want you both to listen to me: the doctor is running more tests on me.
Oscar looked like he was going to cry. He put his head down. And my reaction? I looked at her and said: Could you please pass the salt?
These days I don’t blame her for smacking me across my face, but right then it was all I needed. We jumped on each other and the table fell and the sancocho spilled all over the floor and Oscar just stood in the corner bellowing, Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Hija de tu maldita madre, she shrieked. And I said: This time I hope you die from it.
For a couple of days the house was a war zone, and then on Friday she let me out of my room and I was allowed to sit next to her on the sofa and watch novelas with her. She was waiting for her blood work to come back but you would never have known her life was in the balance. She watched the TV like it was the only thing that mattered, and whenever one of the characters did something underhanded she would start waving her arms. Someone has to stop her! Can’t they see what that puta is up to?
I hate you, I said very quietly, but she didn’t hear. Go get me some water, she said. Put an ice cube in it.
That was the last thing I did for her. The next morning I was on the bus bound for the Shore. One bag, two hundred dollars in tips, tío Rudolfo’s old knife. I was so scared. I couldn’t stop shaking. The whole ride down I was expecting the sky to split open and my mother to reach down and shake me. But it didn’t happen. Nobody but the man across the aisle noticed me. You’re really beautiful, he said. Like a girl I once knew.
I didn’t write them a note. That’s how much I hated them. Her.
That night while we lay in Aldo’s sweltering
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