room by room. Her madre wanted her to bring back Casa Hatüey, a history house, but Beli’s house was new and crisp, had no history at all attached to it. In her favorite María Montez daydream, a dashing European of the Jeans Pierre Aumont variety (who happened to look exactly like Jack Pujols) would catch sight of her in the bakery and fall madly in love with her and sweep her off to his château in France. 8
(Wake up, girl! You’re going to burn the pan de agua!)
She wasn’t the only girl dreaming like this. This jiringonza was in the air , it was the dreamshit that they fed girls day and night. It’s surprising Beli could think of anything else, what with that heavy rotation of boleros, canciones, and versos spinning in her head, with the Listín Diario ’s society pages spread before her. Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who’s been abandoned by family, husband, children, and fortune believes in God. Belicia was, if it was possible, even more susceptible to the Casanova Wave than many of her peers. Our girl was straight boycrazy . (To be called boycrazy in a country like Santo Domingo is a singular distinction; it means that you can sustain infatuations that would reduce your average northamericana to cinders.) She stared at the young bravos on the bus, secretly kissed the bread of the buenmosos who frequented the bakery, sang to herself all those beautiful Cuban love songs.
(God save your soul, La Inca grumbled, if you think boys are an answer to anything .)
But even the boy situation left a lot to be desired. If she’d been interested in the niggers in the barrio our Beli would have had no problems, these cats would have obliged her romantic spirit by jumping her lickety-split. But alas, La Inca’s hope that the rarified private airs of Colegio El Redentor would have a salutary effect on the girl’s character (like a dozen wet-belt beatings or three months in an unheated convent) had at least in this one aspect borne fruit, for Beli at thirteen only had eyes for the Jack Pujolses of the world. As is usually the case in these situations, the high-class boys she so desired didn’t reciprocate her interest—Beli didn’t have quite enough of anything to snap these Rubirosas out of their rich-girl reveries.
What a life! Each day turning on its axis slower than a year. She endured school, the bakery, La Inca’s suffocating solicitude with a furious jaw. She watched hungrily for visitors from out of town, threw open her arms at the slightest hint of a wind and at night she struggled Jacob-like against the ocean pressing down on her.
KIMOTA !
S o what happened?
A boy happened.
Her First.
NúMERO UNO
J ack Pujols of course: the school’s handsomest (read: whitest) boy, a haughty slender melnibonian of pure European stock whose cheeks looked like they’d been knapped by a master and whose skin was unflawed by scar, mole, blemish, or hair, his small nipples were the pink perfect ovals of sliced salchicha. His father was a colonel in the Trujillato’s beloved air force, a heavy-duty player in Baní (would be instrumental in bombing the capital during the revolution, killing all those helpless civilians, including my poor uncle Venicio), and his mother, a former beauty queen of Venezuelan proportions, now active in the Church, a kisser of cardinal rings and a socorro of orphans. Jack, Eldest Son, Privileged Seed, Hijo Bello, Anointed One, revered by his female family members—and that endless monsoon-rain of praise and indulgence had quickened in him the bamboo of entitlement. He had the physical swagger of a boy twice his size and an unbearable loudmouthed cockiness that he drove into people like a metal spur. In the future he would throw his lot in with the Demon Balaguer 9 and end up ambassador to Panama as his reward, but for the moment he was the school’s Apollo, its Mithra. The teachers, the staff, the girls, the boys, all threw petals of adoration beneath
(Wake up, girl! You’re going to burn the pan de agua!)
She wasn’t the only girl dreaming like this. This jiringonza was in the air , it was the dreamshit that they fed girls day and night. It’s surprising Beli could think of anything else, what with that heavy rotation of boleros, canciones, and versos spinning in her head, with the Listín Diario ’s society pages spread before her. Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who’s been abandoned by family, husband, children, and fortune believes in God. Belicia was, if it was possible, even more susceptible to the Casanova Wave than many of her peers. Our girl was straight boycrazy . (To be called boycrazy in a country like Santo Domingo is a singular distinction; it means that you can sustain infatuations that would reduce your average northamericana to cinders.) She stared at the young bravos on the bus, secretly kissed the bread of the buenmosos who frequented the bakery, sang to herself all those beautiful Cuban love songs.
(God save your soul, La Inca grumbled, if you think boys are an answer to anything .)
But even the boy situation left a lot to be desired. If she’d been interested in the niggers in the barrio our Beli would have had no problems, these cats would have obliged her romantic spirit by jumping her lickety-split. But alas, La Inca’s hope that the rarified private airs of Colegio El Redentor would have a salutary effect on the girl’s character (like a dozen wet-belt beatings or three months in an unheated convent) had at least in this one aspect borne fruit, for Beli at thirteen only had eyes for the Jack Pujolses of the world. As is usually the case in these situations, the high-class boys she so desired didn’t reciprocate her interest—Beli didn’t have quite enough of anything to snap these Rubirosas out of their rich-girl reveries.
What a life! Each day turning on its axis slower than a year. She endured school, the bakery, La Inca’s suffocating solicitude with a furious jaw. She watched hungrily for visitors from out of town, threw open her arms at the slightest hint of a wind and at night she struggled Jacob-like against the ocean pressing down on her.
KIMOTA !
S o what happened?
A boy happened.
Her First.
NúMERO UNO
J ack Pujols of course: the school’s handsomest (read: whitest) boy, a haughty slender melnibonian of pure European stock whose cheeks looked like they’d been knapped by a master and whose skin was unflawed by scar, mole, blemish, or hair, his small nipples were the pink perfect ovals of sliced salchicha. His father was a colonel in the Trujillato’s beloved air force, a heavy-duty player in Baní (would be instrumental in bombing the capital during the revolution, killing all those helpless civilians, including my poor uncle Venicio), and his mother, a former beauty queen of Venezuelan proportions, now active in the Church, a kisser of cardinal rings and a socorro of orphans. Jack, Eldest Son, Privileged Seed, Hijo Bello, Anointed One, revered by his female family members—and that endless monsoon-rain of praise and indulgence had quickened in him the bamboo of entitlement. He had the physical swagger of a boy twice his size and an unbearable loudmouthed cockiness that he drove into people like a metal spur. In the future he would throw his lot in with the Demon Balaguer 9 and end up ambassador to Panama as his reward, but for the moment he was the school’s Apollo, its Mithra. The teachers, the staff, the girls, the boys, all threw petals of adoration beneath
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