Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The - Junot Diaz [12]
What happened?
La Inca shook her head. She was looking at her favorite picture of his mother on her first day at private school, one of those typical serious DR shots. What always happens. Un maldito hombre.
He wrote two books that summer about a young man fighting mutants at the end of the world (neither of them survive). Took crazy amounts of field notes too, names of things he intended to later adapt for science-fictional and fantastic purposes. (Heard about the family curse for like the thousandth time but strangely enough didn’t think it worth incorporating into his fiction — I mean, shit, what Latino family doesn’t think it’s cursed?) When it was time for him and his sister to return to Paterson he was almost sad. Almost. His abuela placed her hand on his head in blessing. Cuidate mucho, mi hijo. Know that in this world there’s somebody who will always love you.
At JFK, almost not being recognized by his uncle. Great, his tío said, looking askance at his complexion, now you look Haitian.
After his return he hung out with Miggs and Al, saw movies with them, talked Los Brothers Hernandez, Frank Miller, and Alan Moore with them but overall they never regained the friendship they had before Santo Domingo. Oscar listened to their messages on the machine and resisted the urge to run over to their places. Didn’t see them but once, twice a week. Focused on his writing. Those were some fucking lonely weeks when all he had were his games, his books, and his words. So now I have a hermit for a son, his mother complained bitterly. At night, unable to sleep, he watched a lot of bad TV, became obsessed with two movies in particular: Zardoz (which he’d seen with his uncle before they put him away for the second time) and Virus (the Japanese end-of-the-world movie with the hot chick from Romeo and Juliet). Virus especially he could not watch to the end without crying, the Japanese hero arriving at the South Pole base, having walked from Washington, D.C., down the whole spine of the Andes, for the woman of his dreams. I’ve been working on my fifth novel, he told the boys when they asked about his absences. It’s amazing.
See? What did I tell you? Mr. Collegeboy.
In the old days when his so-called friends would hurt him or drag his trust through the mud he always crawled voluntarily back into the abuse, out of fear and loneliness, something he’d always hated himself for, but not this time. If there existed in his high school years anyone moment he took pride in it was clearly this one. Even told his sister about it during her next visit. She said, Way to go, O! He’d finally showed some backbone, hence some pride, and although it hurt, it also felt mother-fucking good.
OSCAR COMES CLOSE
In October, after all his college applications were in (Fairleigh Dickinson, Montclair, Rutgers, Drew, Glassboro State, William Paterson; he also sent an app to NYU, a one-in-a-million shot, and they rejected him so fast he was amazed the shit hadn’t come back Pony Express) and winter was settling its pale miserable ass across northern New Jersey, Oscar fell in love with a girl in his SAT prep class. The class was being conducted in one of those ‘Learning Centers’ not far from where he lived, less than a mile, so he’d been walking, a healthy way to lose weight, he thought. He hadn’t been expecting to meet anyone, but then he’d seen the beauty in the back row and felt his senses fly out of him. Her name was Ana Obregon, a pretty, loudmouthed gordita who read Henry Miller while she should have been learning to wrestle logic problems. On about their fifth class he noticed her reading Sexus and she noticed him noticing, and, leaning over, she showed him a passage and he got an erection like a motherfucker.
You must think I’m weird, right? she said during the break. You ain’t weird, he said. Believe me — I’m the top expert in the state.
Ana was a talker, had beautiful Caribbean-girl eyes, pure anthracite, and was the sort of heavy that almost every Island nigger dug, a body that you just knew would look good in and