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By Root 2046 0

her own expectations. She didn’t take to Beli at first, thought her competition, but eventually would treat Beli more or less with courtesy: She was the first woman our girl met who read the paper. (Herson’s biblio-mania would remind her always of Lillian. How’s the world keeping? Beli asked her. Jodido, was always her answer.) And Indian Benny, a quiet, meticulous waiter who had the sad airs of a man long accustomed to the spectacular demolition of dreams. Rumor at the restaurant had it that Indian Benny was married to a huge, lusty azuana who regularly put him on the street so that she could bunk some new sweetmeat. The only time Indian Benny was known to smile was when he beat José at dominoes — the two were consummate tile slingers and of course bitter rivals. He too would fight in the revolution, for the home team, and it was said that throughout that Summer of Our National Liberation Indian Benny never stopped smiling; even after a Marine sniper cavitated his brains over his entire command he didn’t stop. And what about the cook, Marco Antonio, a one-legged, no-ear grotesque straight out of Gormenghast? (His explanation for his appearance: I had an accident.) His bag was an almost fanatical distrust of cibaeños, whose regional pride, he was convinced, masked imperial ambitions on a Haitian level. They want to seize the Republic. I’m telling you, cristiano, they want to start their own country!

The whole day she dealt with hombres of all stripes and it was here Beli perfected her rough-spun salt-of-the-earth bonhomie. As you might imagine, everybody was in love with her. (Including her coworkers. But José had warned them off: Touch her and I’ll pull your guts out your culo. You must be joking, Marco Antonio said in his own defense. I couldn’t climb that mountain even with two legs.) The customers’ attention was exhilarating and she in turn gave the boys something that most men can never get enough of — ribbing, solicitous mothering from an attractive woman. Still plenty of niggers in Baní, old customers, who remember her with great fondness.

La Inca of course was anguished by Beli’s Fall, from princesa to mesera — what is happening to the world? At home the two rarely spoke anymore; La Inca tried to talk, but Beli wouldn’t listen, and for her part La Inca filled that silence with prayer, trying to summon a miracle that would transform Beli back into a dutiful daughter. As fate would have it, once Beli had slipped her grasp not even God had enough caracaracol to bring her back. Every now and then La Inca would appear at the restaurant. She’d sit alone, erect as a lectern, all in black, and between sips of tea would watch the girl with a mournful intensity. Perhaps she hoped to shame Beli into returning to Operation Restore House of Cabral, but Beli went about her work with her customary zeal. It must have dismayed La Inca to see how drastically her ‘daughter’ was changing, for Beli, the girl who never used to speak in public, who could be still as Noh, displayed at Palacio Peking a raconteur’s gift for palaver that delighted a great many of the all-male clientele. Those of you who have stood at the corner of 142nd and Broadway can guess what it was she spoke: the blunt, irreverent cant of the pueblo that gives all dominicanos cultos nightmares on their 400-thread-count sheets and that La Inca had assumed had perished along with Beli’s first life in Outer Azua, but here it was so alive, it was like it had never left: Oye, parigüayo, y que pasó con esa esposa tuya? Gordo, no me digas que tú todavía tienes hambre?

Eventually there came a moment when she’d pause at La Inca’s table: Do you want anything else?

Only that you would return to school, mi’ja.

Sorry. Beli picked up her taza and wiped the table in one perfunctory motion. We stopped serving pendejada last week.

And then La Inca paid her quarter and was gone and a great weight lifted off Beli, proof that she’d done the right thing.

In those eighteen months she learned a great deal about herself. She learned that despite all her dreams to be the most beautiful