:

.1

.-r

-i:.:{r:rf

":

Junot Diaz, extract from The Brief Wondrous

Life of Oscar Wao (New York: Riverhead Books,
2007), 1-21.

rTl
I h.y ,"y it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the
enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tinos, uttercd just as

one world perished and nother began; that

it

reas a demon

drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was

cracked open in the Sntilles . Fu ameritnt, or more colloquially, firlsi-gen elally acurse or a doom of some kind; qpecically

the Crrse andtheDoorqofthe NewWorld.Also called the fuku

of the Admiral because the Admial was both its mi'ife nd

one of its gret PuroPean,-yictims; despite "discovering" the New
-miserable
and sphilitic, hearing
Wdrld the Admiat die
(dique) divine voices. trn Santo Domingo, the Land He Loved
Best (what Oscarrat the end,riould call the Ground Zeto of rhe
NewWodd), the Admiral" *ty nme has become qfnonymous

with both kinds of firls,little and large; to say his name aloud or
even to hea it is to invite calamity on the heads ofpu and yours'
.Nt *"tt , vrat i nme or Provenane' it is believed that
the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fuln on
.the world, and we're all been in the shit ever since' Santo

22

MICHAI MOHAMMED AHMAD

THE HOUSE OF ADAM

23

Whenever I'm upstairs, staring over the balcony, I can see into our

Uncle Ibrahim ate it. I watch Zena from the living room. She's very

neighbour Timothy's house. He lives alone with four dogs. My parents

skinny and reminds me of a daisy with thin litde arms and legs sticking

and uncles explain to me that Timothy is a poofta, which means he has

out like stems until you reach her disproportionate$ large yellow head.

with men, but sometimes they say he is a poofta because he has sex
with his dogs. Uncle Osama tells us he can see into Timothy's living

She's six and

room from his bedroom window. He says het seen him watching poofta
porno films. I hea there are heaps of pooftas in this neighbourhood.

slides a spoon of the mix across a sheet

hands it to her. This is what I take to school for lunch everyday. I go to

Down the road from where we live is the suburb called Newtown. Uncle

Alexandria Public School. There are only nine migrant kids in the whole

Ali tells me that the people over there are all pooftas. They dont wear

school, and six of them are from our family: my brother Bilal who tells

any underpants.

the white kids his name is Bill, my sister Yocheved who says her name is

sex

The House of Adam belongs to everyone. We go upstairs and they

wont turn seven until I ve turned eight early next year.

'Can you put zatar

in it?' Zena

Cind my sister Lulu who

to my mother. Mum
of Lebanese bread, rolls it and

says quietly

says her name is

pronounced'Looloo', and my

come downstairs. We dont knock on doors and we dorit say'excuse me'.

cousins Zeinab artd Zena, who say their names are Suzanne and Susie.

No one has a special seat or private drawer. We share the bacard and
the garage and our rooms and our clothes and our toys and our food.

My name is Bani, after my grandfather, but i tell the white kids my name

We share our pillows and we share our sheets. We would probably share

is Benny. Our Lebanese rolls with zatar or Nutella inside confuse the
white kids. They ask things like, lA,re they spring rolls?' with an accent

our toothbrushes but we dont have any. We just use soap on our frngers.

that sounds like they are speaking from the back of their noses. I always
say yes because there's

A day in The House of Adam is a day in my blood

forever. My cousin Zena comes

- it

with me
downstairs to get a sandwich from my
stays

no difference to them.

Today is Sunday and there's no one downstairs except my mum

in

the kitchen and my sisters in our bedroom. Bilal, Yocheved, Lulu and

mum. It's usually the other way around, my mum sends me upstairs to
get a sandwich from her mum. I hate when this happens. Zena's mum

but it becomes everyone's at night. Our cousins Eve and Lulu sleep in

always takes a bite out of it before she gives it to me. I take the sandwich

our bedroom too. Najwa has custody over them, but they stay with us

downstairs and hide it in the garage, The next day it vanishes so I fi.gure

on Uncle lbrahim's days. They're both a few years older than us and

Ihave to negotiate who gets to play in our bedroom during the day,

Michael Mohammed Ahmad, extract from The Tribe (Sydney: Giramondo Publishing, 2014), pp. 22-35.

THE HOUSE O ADAM

MICH.EL MOHAMMD AHMAD

tell us about kissing and sex and make us watch

Beve Hills 90210.

it, but I love that stuff Our bedroom might be small, but
no matter how many people we squeeze in, it never feels like its too
I never admit

when I'm on my own. I hate it when doors are closed.

the bathroom door open when I have to go or when I'm

much. I get scared

I even leave

untl the sun rises and on

fifty!' The Vietnamese guy said bach 'One-eighty too much, I give you

prayer and

one-sixty!' So my dad said, 'No worries brother, for you anything!' Then
it turned out the guy only had one-forty in his wallet anyway' My dad still

sleep over we stay up talking

gives me

are alone my dad reads us a

the Qur'an to keep me safe.

I dont know where tJncle Ali is today but he usually goes out on

mukets

Tayta also loves going to the markets. My dad doesnt let her unpack

on Sunday. They call him Thunder Thight. My dad is at the

any of the stock or help set up the market stall because he says that's a
job for the men. What Tyta does is sit out in the sun in front of the fruit

with

Taa and Bilal. He sells second-hand goods, mostly old

big old pots and hand tools. Sometimes he even gets blow-up

man and watch the knives all day. I've gone to the markets a couple of
times with Dad and watched Tayta sell the knives. She doesnt speak

airbeds, but they usually have holes in t}tem. He sells new

as well. He says it makes life easier because you dont get as

much English but she knows all the prices and can hold her own when
she meets hagglers. Someone will say, 'How much?'and she'll sa'Fiftyl

clothes and
cookers,

shoes, but he gets other things

toq like outdoor chairs,

gas

boats and
products

gave it to him.'He could have gone as cheap as one-twentyi Bilal said'

He plays for the funior Rabbitohs and sometimes he

the weekends.
h games

each time with a new story about how Dad made the greatest sale ever.

siblings and my cousins. On nights

I snuggle up to my

that my cousins

my siblings and I

my father goes to is called The Grand Ba7'aar, and it's in Liverpool. Biial
is only eight, one year older than me, but he goes to be with my dad.
He always talks about taking over the family busine,ss. Bilal comes home
Like once he told us about this Vietnamese guy that walked up to the stall
and screamed out, '|ibreel, how much for the boat?' My father said, 'One-

taking a shower.

nights when

25

the best

'No, too much, I give you forty!' Shdll sa 'Forty-five, last

price!'and already she starts packing the knife up before the guy has
even agreed to buy it. The knives are supposed to be for hunters and

pocket

fishermen but most of the people Tayta sells them to are teenage boys

but he pays a lot more for them and doesrit make much
prot so he prefers to sell the second-hand stuff first. My dad also has
many returns,

collection of knives on sale. They're mostly kitchen knives and

knives but he's also got these big hunting knives with names

The Protector and The Hunter. All three of them are

as heavy as bricks, and theyre each longer than my arm. The market

like The Rambo,

Th.y'll

say,

who worry about the size of their dicks

that's what Uncle

Ali

says'

I'm not actually allowed to use the word 'diclC at home. If my siblings or

26

MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD

swear,

THE HOUSE OF AAM

Mum forces chilli powder into our mouths. Dad always threatens

27

that he'll do this to us too, but het usually tired from work and just hits

the difference. I am never sure if he is telling the truth, but it's always
enough to get me back into the living room.

us with his belt instead. The best barrier to put between my father and

My Uncle Ibrahim is not home today either, b,t it doesnt really feel

hit is our grandmother. We scamper up behind

her and she swings her giant arms at him, pushing him away until he

like he lives with us anyway. He comes and goes, sometimes dropping

his daughters off and then popping back up three days later to return
them to their mother. My parents tell me that Uncle Ibrahim is addicted

us when we're being

backs off. He has to listen to his mum just like we have to listen to him.
We hide behind Tayta for other reasons too; when it's cold I squeeze up
against her on the couch to warm up. She's soft and her body feels like

hot jelly. The best showers are from her hands. Most nights she lines up
my siblings, cousins and me in the bathroom and washes us one by one.

in the tub on

milk crate wearing

to ice. I never believe them because no one in the family ever uses
ice for anlthing. One time a mur who had a gun came to our house
looking for him. He was white-skinned, with a goatee and bald head.
He said, 'I made this gun myself and I know it worksi Apparently Uncle

muu-muu and I sit between

Ibrahim owed him money. My dad was infuriated with him after that.

her legs, the water rushing down over my thick hair. Her wooden hands

He told him to leave and never come back, but eventually Uncle lbrahim

always give me a thorough scrub. It's the safest and cleanest I feel.

did come back. No matter how bad the situation is, my father

She sits

hate going to the markets. You always have to wake up at 4arrt

just to get there before it opens. The only thing I like about going are
the chicken burgers and Tayta always reminds Dad to bring one home

always

forgives him and so does Tayta. Now whenever lbrahim is over he's got a
new girlfriend with him. Tayta forbids Uncle Ibrahim from taking her in

for me before they leave. He doesnt like to but if I get the belt the night

through the house so he uses the back roller shutter. Sometimes I watch
him kiss his girlfriends through the keyhole of the kitchen door that

before he usually feels guilty about it the next day and goes out of his

leads out to the pink garage where he sleeps. The girlfriends are always

way to make

it up to me. My father

has shown me lots of times how

much he loves me. On days when I am upset with him I lie on my bed
and wait for him to come. He will walk in, crawl up into the sheets and

taller than him, and always taller than everyone else in The House of
Adam except for maybe Uncle Ali. They wear black high heels and

whisper into my ear, 'You know I love you the most. That's why I always

tight black miniskirts and tight tops that are thin from the shoulders
and tied up around the back, exposing flesh that my sisters are taught

buy you books.' He actually means magazines, but neither of us knows

never to expose because a woman's body is sacred. Ibrahims women are

2E

MICHEL MOHAMMD AHMAD

T}IE HOUSE OF .DAM

white, except for this one time when she was black, and
taped to their bones like they are skeletons dipped in skin,
when looking at them thtough the keyhole. I stare through

white, always

they'd woken him. My dad and Uncle Ibrahim went up and tried to hold

their flesh is

him back. I stood on the stairwell and watched. Uncle Osama threw a
kick at Aunty Nada that landed square on her prdnant b.lly. I always
wonder how much worse it would have been if Dad and Uncle lbrah

especially
that hole

at the bones down the women's necks and backs to where my

Unde lbrahirn's
against
a

white

hands wrap around their waists. His hands are white

of

werent holding him, lessening the blow. Uncle Osama is luclry Zahra
didnt come out mentally disabled - but sometimes I think mae she

- when
it terries me to

did. She looks normal, but she's three and still doesnt speak. When she
wants something she points. Uncle Osama and Nada say that theye

the skin of a black woman and they are black against the skin

woman. It makes me look at the colour of my own hands

Im looking at the colour of my unclet hands

and

that I am not white, or even worse, not the opposite of white,

to at let be able to say what I am. When you're black, even though it's
realise

not

her in the hope that shdll realise she wont get anything
unless she asks for it, but it hasnt worked.

been

good as being white, at least you know you're black.

that our family was there to pick her up from the

tluee daughters. Zeinab is the eldest; she's seven, and,Zahra is still a

bab only three. I always hear Uncle Osama and Aunty Nada talking

how they're trylng to have one more child. I think that's stupid.
I always hear them fighting as well, Uncle Osama has a very bad temper

of all the ways to make fun of someone, in Islam making fun of the
nose is the most sinfrl. I try not to look at her nose when I'm talking to

Aunty Nada provokes him by telling his brothers and sisters that
he's a weak, shrivelled-up man. Once, when she was pregnant with
and

Osama took a nap.

For about ten minutes we heard him screaming and shouting because

Uncle Osama

and says she stepped offthe plane like she was carrying bags of pig fat
on her shoulders. Nada has a nose like a dolphin's and it consumes her
entire face. I always want to make fun of it, but my dad tells me that

about

plag while Uncle

aort,

took one look at her and ran for it.' Ma-bi-di-y-hall he yelled - 'I dorft
want her!' She is bigger than he is, taller and heavier. My dad laughs

home on Sunday is her dad, Uncle Osama. Zena is the second of his

Zahra, she and the two girls were

oring

Myuncle and aunt were forced to be together. Theyhad never met

before Nada was brought in from Lebanon to marry him. On the day

is so painfrrl that I have to stop assembling the Lego

and look away from my hands. I stare back at my cousin Zena. She's
still standing next to my mum with her sandwich. The only man that
The thought

is

29

her, because I can sin just by thinking bad thoughts, and I concentrate

on her feet instead. I think bad thoughts about these too, but I score
fewer sins. She only ever wears sandals and her big toenails are yellow all

re
30

MICI{AEL MOHAMMED AHMAD

THE HOUSE OF ADAM

over and sharp at the tip. I think to myself that

Mae back in Lebanon the real Nada

mae

she

isnt the real

starts sucking me in. So far

Iie

3l

put together the legs and the body of my

was making her way to the

Power Ranger. I count twelve pieces of Lego left and start piecing the

airport and this glpsy killed her and took her place. For me the proof

arms tget}rer. I should have just enough to complgte it. Once I'm done

i shared this information with my siste

I'll set up a small fort in the yard for my Power Ranger to fight frorn.
I,.nr. Zena atching me but I ignore her.'Can I play?' she asks,

Nada.

is in those toenails, but once

Yocheved, and she easiiy pulled my theory apart. 'Why would a gypsy

bother killing someone just to live with us?' she said.

'No,' I reply. 'Our parents always say that I have to marry you when

Zena walks into the living room with her sandwich and sits on the

floor next to me. I have the television on but I'm not watching. Our TV

I'm older, but I m not gonna do thatl

I complete the frrst arm and start assembling the second, Zena

is old, a big wooden box on four wooden legs. Once I asked my dad

frowns at me. I can hear her small crooked teeth grinding on the stale

if we could buy a new one and he replied, 'When I was a kid I went to

Lebanese bread and zatar that she holds

school barefoot!'

marry you eitherl she says, and then she turns. I look up at her as she

I'm playing with my Lego on the carpet. About

in her hand. 'I dont want to

year ago my mum

slowly walks back towards the kitchen. Then I look back at my Lego and

and Nada bought two boxes of Lego for us kids. I dorlt trust Zena

notice that I dont have enough pieces to make the head. I look around

because when I go upstairs I always notice that they have more pieces

on the peacock floor. I quickly

than me so I suspect that theyie been stealing them from my box.

I cant stand those three little brats. Our parents always say that when

to check if I've miscalculated. I know I havent. There are no more pieces

two pieces of the arm onto the body

to build the head and I know I had enough because I ve made this same

I'll marry Zena, but

at Zena. She is still taking her time, casually

making her way outside through the back door of the kitchen. 'Hey!'

Today I'm building a Power Ranger out of my Lego and sliding the

I shout and run at her. I catch up to her on the third step up to the

we're older my brother Bilal wilt marry Zeinab and

I know I have

lot of time to talk them out of it.

pieces across the carpet. The carpet is old, very smooth and coloured

like

a peacock's feathers. There are

swirls that look like black and brown

model before. I stare

tp

second level of the house. 'Stop. Where's my Lego?'

'I dont knowi she whispers. I can tell

she's scared.

I'm

few inches

eyes surrounded by waves of purples and blues. On days when I'm

taller than she is and I look down at her big head and thin little body.

bored I just sit and stare at it. After a while it becomes lfe a vortex and

The sunlight shines on her hair and now I see why our mums say it's

MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD

32

blonde. It's

THE HOUSE OF ADAM

like she's growing up out of the dirt between my feet. Id think

of my Power Ranger breaks offand I have to reattach it. The beds are old

and low to the ground. There's almost no light. I turn and stare at the
see my sisters'feet slip off{re bed and walk out

I'm sick of her and her sisters taking my Lego. She's

wearing a pink T-shirt with a smiley face on it and baggy little jeans.
She loola up at mq her eyes wide open and her bottom lip sitting over
her top lip, and blinks slowly like her eyelashes are windscreen wipers.
Iput my hand down into her pocket. She doesnt seem to mind that
she was

cute but

floor of the doorway. I

of the room. The door closes behind them. I wonder how long I canrbe
here on my own with the door closed before I freak out. Then I hear my

Uncle Osama's voice. He's shouting at my mum. 'Way-nu? he screams

like a goat gasping for air.
'Who?' I hear my mum ask. 'Who?'

myhand is in her pants. I pull out the piece of Lego. Our eyes meet but
she

doesnt say anything to me and I dont say anything to her. I sense

that she's

about to turn aound and just

as

'Your kalb of a son! Where is he?'

her face flinches I make a fist

'What do you want? What's wrong?'

right hand and punch her in the nose. It lands flat and makes a
small thud sound. It wasrlt that hard and I know its not going to make
her bleed, but it probably hurt. After the punch she stares at me for a
with my

second

longer and then her face crinkles

as she screams. She

33

'He fucken hit my daughter!>

I hear his footsteps make thei way toward my room. My heart

begins to pound. The bedroom door smashes open and I see his feet

drops her

sandwich,

storm in. He's wearing old leather boots that my dad gave him. I can

be very tired and hungry. My dad will

in a bad mood because it's hot today and it's like a desert
out in Liverpool. I run to my Power Ranger and quickly clip on the last

possible. My

turns around and runs up the stairs.

I walk back into the kitchen, My mum is preparing dinner. When

my dad and

sense

Tayta get home they'll

'Stop shoutingi she says. 'He's just a kid.'

'Where is he? Im gonna kill the little shitl'

probably be

piece

'There's no one here to fight you,' my mum responds, 'Ma-fi hada

to make the head. Then I run with it to my room. I get inside the

bedroom as the

murmurs start upstairs, My

sisters both

turn and look

yaakhuni-akll

at me. They're lying on the bed, belly-down with their heads up. 'Quick,

get

him looking around and I try to keep my breath as quiet as

mum feet, wrapped in leather sandals, walk up to his.

'Where is he?' Osama shouts.

'There's no one here. Go bak upstairs, there's no men here, there's

out!' I say.

no one to fightl

I slide under the bed. As I shuffle right into the back corner the am

r
34

MICHAEL MOHAMMED AHMAD

THE HOUSE OF A.DAM

my room and I hear him shout as he makes his way

back through the living room, the kitchen and into the yard. 'Call your
Osama leaves

hers. Theylooked like a ba's hands to me, no wrinkles, no blisters, no

scabs, no calluses, no cuts, nothing from anywhere. Ta said in Aabic,

Mum. 'Call him. f[ fight your husband. Go call

husbandl he shouts at

Ah, Iknow these handsl Then

she pointed out hes that Ihad never

in Arabi'c they are the numbers eighty-orr
on the left and eighteen on the right, and they are ninety-nine in total
- the ninety-nine names of Allah. So many times I had climbed on her

your husband!'
The House

seen before. She said that

of Adam shakes at the pitch of Uncle Osama's voice and

I hear it roar across the corridors and through the days of my childhood.
The voice

rumbles against the womb of his pregnant wife, showing no

back and watched her fend off my father, so many times I sat between
her legs and let her bathe me, but this was the closest I had ever been

limits. The day that he screamed at Tayta I looked into her eyes and got
a glimpse of where
sand ran

I came from. Her pupils became hourglasses, and

from them one grain at

to her, staring straight into her pupils, where the point gets so fine it
turns white. I looked into those hourglasses and discovered more than
just a few grains of sand - inside there was a desert. I was only seven

time, and then like she had stopped

time itself, the sand ceased to fall and she corld look straight into my

me that all of this came out of her, and that not even her

soul to remind

when this happened but it always feels like right now. I sa .Tayta, tell
me what I am made from?' She smiles her toothless smile and her skin
,you
glows golden, and she says in the language of my

ovm children were greater than what created them. Her golden skin
changed colour

right in front of

the inside and was

very moment

me, like her blood had

making its way

- while

to the surface.

turned blue from

I told her that

day,

ancestors,

that

she moved prayer beads and recited words from

- that I used to watch Uncle Ibrahim through the keyhole

at night. She asked what I would see, and I told her his hands, hands

that looked like my father's and hands that looked like mine. I told her

ashamed

of Ibrahim's hands

because

of where they'd been, and

of mine because they had been nowhere, because they were

neither black nor white, because they were made of nothing. She took
my hands, my helpless

brittle

hands, and held my palms out on top

are

made from your grandfather, oh Bani, and your grandfathe he was

made of stonel

the Qur'an

I was ashamed

35

of

THE BRrEF \ONDROUS LtFE qlf OSCAR

\'AO

it was dear he
nd it had an undtrstanding' that them two was tght.Itwas believed, even in educated circles, that anyone who plotted 4ginst
Trujillo would incur a ful<ti most powerfirl, down to the sevservant or its master, i agent or i principal' but

Domingo might be fuki's Kilometer Zero,its port of entry, but

we are all of us its children, whether we know

it or not.

enth generation and beyond.

But the fuLu aint just ancient history a ghost story from the past
with no pover to scare. In my parents' day the firkti was real as
knew someone who'd been eaten by a fuk, just like everybody
knew somebodywho worked up in the Palacio. It was in the air,
say,

nate him always got done' why those dudes who

though, like all the most important things on the

it

good;

it

ing Kennedy? He was the one who green-lighted the assassination of Trujillo n rg6t, who ordered the CIA to deliver
arms to the Island. Bad move, caP'n. For what Kennedy's inlslligence experts failed to tell him was wbat every single Dominican, from the richest jabao in Mao to the oorest guey in
El Buey, from the oldest anciano sanmacorisano to the litdest
canjito in San Francisco, knew: that whoever killed Trujillo,

even had a h'peman of sorts, a high

priest, you could say. Our then dicttor-for-life Rafael Lenidas

Trujillo Molina.'No one knows whetherTiujillo was the Curse's

r. For those oflou who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history
Tiujillo, one of the twentieth century's most infamous dictetors, nled the Dominican Rublic between r93o and 196r with an implacable rutbless brutality. A portl

sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore pladorm shoes, and had a
fondness for Napoleon-era hberdasheryTrujillo (also known as EUefe' the Failed
Catde Thief, and Fucldace) came to control nearly every aspect of the DR's political, cultural, social, and economic life through a potent (and familiar) mixure of
violence, intimidation, massacre, ape, co-optation, and terror; treated the country
like it was a plantation and he was the master. At fst glance, he was just your prototlpical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways tht few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our
Sauron, our Arawn, our Dadaeid, ou Once and Future Dictator' a personaje so
oudandish, so perverse, so dreadfil tht not even a sci-6 witer could have made his
ass up. Famous for changing.ALLTHE NAMES ofAIITHE LANDMARKS
in the Dominican Republic to hooor himself @ico Duarte became Pico Tiujillo,
and Sento Domingo de Guzmn, the fist nd oldest city in the New World, be-

came Ciudad Trujillo); for making ill monopolies out of wery slice of the national
patrimony (which quickly made him one of the wealthiest men on the planet); for
buitding one of the larst militaries in the hemisphere (dude had bomber wings,
for fuck's sake); for fucking every hot girl in sight, even the wives of his subordinates, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of women; for orpecting, no,
insisting ot absolute vneration from his pueblo (tgllingl the national slogan was

tnally did

buck him down all died so horrically. And what bout fuck-

Island, not something folks really talked about. But in those elder
days, fuk had

even thought a bad thing

aboutTrujillo,fara.hurricane would sweeP your family out to

sea,Jtult,a boulder would fall out of a clear s and squash you,
fu, the shrimp you ate today was th cramp that killed you
tomorrov. Which explains why everyone who tried to ssassi-

shit, something your everyday person could believe in. Everybody

you could

Ifyou

their family would suffer f* so dreadfirl it would make the

"
one that attached itself to the Admiral jojote in comparison.

..

ii,.

.Dios y Trujillo"; for running the country like it was Marine boot camp; for strping friends and allies oftheir positions and properties for no reason at alt and for
his almost srzTrnatral zbilte.s.
o"tsta"dirrg accomplishments indude: the ry37 genocide against the Haitin
and Haitian-ominicn communit one of the longest, inost damaging U'S'-

ifwe Latin tlpes are skillftl

at anything it's toierating U.S.-bcked diCtators, so yorr know this 1as a har.doi.iory the chilenos and the argentinos are still appealing); the creation
""rrr"d
of the st modern Heptocracy (Trujillo was Mobutt before Mobutu was
Mobutu); the sltematic bribing of American sentors; an4 last but not s the
foging of the'Dominicaa peoples into a moern sate (did what his Maine
tr"io"t , during the Occupation, were unable to do).

backed dictatoships in theWesternllemisphere (and

{t.

I
TH BRrEF .['ONDRO('S LIFE of OSCAR WAO

You want a final conclusive answer to the Warren Commis-

'?1

\Mho killedJFK? Let rne, your humble Watc"her,

reveal once and for all the God's HonestTruth: It wasrlt the mob
or LBJ or the ghost of Marilyn F'ucking Monroe. It wasn't aliens

sion's question,

or the KGB or a lone gunman. It wasr/t the Hunt Brothers of

Texas or Lee Harvey or the Tiilateral Commission' It was
Tiujillo; it was the fulni. Where n coazn do you tink the so-

froml' Hbw about Vietnam?

Why do you think the greatest Po\/er in the world lost its first
vi'ar to a Third World country like Vietnam? I mean, Negro,
please. k might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up

.f

tigg*

by degrees,like with the Admiral or the U.S. in paddies

of Saigon. Sometimes it's slow and sometimes it's

fast. It's doom-ish in that way, makes it harder to put a finger
outside

on, to brace yourself against. But be assured: like Darkseid's

6 matter how many turns

and digressions this shit might take, it always-and I mean
Omega Effect, like Morgoth's bane,3

always-gets its man.

called Curse of the Kennedn comes

its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched

i[eg"l invasion of

the Dominican Republic (April 28, ry65). (Santo Domingo was

Iraq before Iraq was lraq.) A smashing military success for the
U.S., and many of the same units and intellence teams that took

part in the "democratization" of Santo Domingo were immedib,

ate shipped off to Saigon. What do you think these soldiers,

technicians, and spooks canied with them, in their rucks, in their
suitcases, in their shirt pockets, on the hair inside their nostrils,
caked up around their shoes? Just a litde

gift from my people

to America, a small repayment for an unjust war. That's right,

folls. F,uld.

importantto rememberful doesrlt alwal's

strike like lightning. Sometimes it works patiently, drowning a

Whicl

is whyiq's

night thatJohn Kennedy'Jr.,

Bessette and he sister Lauren went dow:t in thgir Piper Saratogar

in
John-Johrit father's favorite domestic, Povidencia Pardes, dominicana, was
Martha's vineyard cooking up forJohn-John his favorite dish: chicharrn de pollo.
But fuk Iua)s eats 6st and it eats alone.

and

Caro

believe

believed she'd been denied happiness because she'd laughed

at a rival's funeral. Fuku. My paternal abuelo believes that dias-

pora vas Trujillo's payback

to the peblo that betrayed him.

Fuku.

It's perfectly fiue ifyou dont believdin these "superstitions."

In fact, itt better than fin*itt

perfect. Because no matter

what you believe, fuk believes in you.

am tbe Elder King: Melkor, first and mightiest of all the Valar, who was before
the world and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is
in it bends slowly and surely to mywill, But upon all whom you love my thought
shall weigh as doud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and
despair. Wherwer they go, evil shall aise. Whenever they spealq thei words shall
bring ill counsel. Whatsoever they do shall tum against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death."
3.

z. Here's one for you conspiracy-minded fools: on the

in what many have described as the Great

American Doom is not really the point. You live as long as I
did in the heart of fuk countryr you hear these kinds of tales
all the time. Everybody in Santo Domingo has a fuk story
knocking aound in their family. I have a turelve-daughter uncle in the Cibao who believed that hg'd been cursed by *
old lover never to have male children. Fulfli. I have a ta who
Whether

-r$i,

THE BRIEF .l'ONDROUS LtE,

oJa

OSCAR WAO

I was finishing this boo I

there was only one way to prevent disaster from coiling aound

posted the threadfuk othe DR forum, just out of curiosity.

you, only one surefire counterspell that would keep you and your

These days I'm nerdy like that. The talkback blew the fuck up.

f"*ily

You should see how many responses I've gotten. Theyjust keep

(followed usually by

couple weeks ago, while

coming in. And not just from Domos.The Puertorocks want to

talk about fufus, and the Haitians have some shit just like it.

There ae azilhon of these fuk stories. Even my mother, who

almost never talls about Santo Domingo, has started sharing
hers

with me.
As

Im

sure

youe guessed by now,I have a fulai story too.

I wish I could say it was the best of the

lot-fulni

number

one-

but I cant. Mine aint the scariest, the clearest, the most painfi.rl,
or the most beauti-firl.

It just happens to be the one that's got its fingers around my

throat.

I'm not entirely sure Oscar would have liked this designation.
Fuk story. He was a.hardcore sci-fi and fantasy man, believed

that that was the kind of story ve were all living in. He'd ask:
What more sci-fi than the Santo Domingo? What more fantasy
than the Antilles?

But now that I know how it all turns out,I have to ask, in

turn:What more fuku?

One final final note, Toto, before Kansas goes bye-bye: traditionally in Santo Domingo anime you mentioned or overheard
the Admiral's name or anytime fuk reared its many heads

safe.

Not

surprisingly,
a

it

was. a word.

simple word

vigorous crossing of index fingers).

Zafa.

It

to be more popular in the old days, bigger, so to

speak, in Macondo than in McOndo.Therc epeople, though,
like my to Miguel in the Bronx who still zafa everything. Het
old-school like that. If the Yanks commit an error in the late
innings it's zafq if somebody brings shells in from the beach it's
zafz tf you serye a man parcha it'szzfa.Twenty-four-hovr zafa
in the hope that the bad luck will not have had time to cohere.
Even now as I write these words I wonder if this book aint a
zafa of sorts. Myvery own counterspell.
used

GhettoNerd at the
End of the World
797 4-1987

THE GOLDEN

O-

AGE

hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody's

about-he wasnt no home-run hitter or z fly

bachatero, not a playboy with a million hors on his jock
And except for one period ear in his life, dude never had
much luckwith the females (how ztery un-Dominican of him).
always going on

He was seven then.

In those blessed days of his youth, Oscar was something of

a Casanova. One of those preschool loverboys who was always
trylng to kiss the girls, alwal's coming up behind them during a
merengue. and giving them the pelvic pump, the fst nigger to
learn the perrito and the one who danced it any chance he got.
Because in those days he was (still) a unormal" Dominican boy
in a "typical" Dominican family, his nascent pimp-liness
ues encouraged by blood and friends alike. During partiesand there were many many parties in those long-ago seventies
days, before Washington Heights was Washington Heights,
raised

THE BRrEF \/ONDROUS LtFE /f OSCAR \'AO

before the Bergenline became a streight shot

of Spanish for

hundred blocks-some drunk relative inevitably

pushed Oscar onto some litde girl and then everyone would
howl as boy and girl approximated the hip-motism of the
almost

You should have seen him, his mother sighed in her Last
Days. He las our little Porfuio Rubiros.+

All the other boys his age avoided the girls like theywere

Not at all!) In the DR during

summer visits to his family digs in Bn he was the worst, would

in front of Nena Inca's house and call out to Passing

women-T eres guapa!T eres guapa!-until a Seventh-day
Adventist complained to his grandmother and she shut down
the hit parade lickety-split. Muchacho del diablo!This is not a

bad case of CaptainTrips. Not Oscar.The little guyloved him-

cabaret!

self the females, had "girlfriends" galore. (He was a stout kid,

was a.Golden Age for Oscar, one that reached its

apotheosis in the fall of his seventh year, when he had two litde
girlfriends at the same time, his first and only mnage trois'

heading straight to fat, but his mother kept him nice in haircuts

and clothes, and before the proportions of his head changed

he'd had these love flashing eyes and these cute-ass cheels,
visible in all his pictures.) The

girls-his

sister Lola's friends, his

Mari Coln, a thirtysomething postal employee who wore red on her lips and

mother's friends, even thei neighbor,

In the forties end flfties, Porfirio Rubirosa----or Rubi, as he was known in the
papers-was the third-most-famous Dominican in the world (first came the
i'ailed Cattle Thief, and then the Cob Woman herself, Mra Montez). A tall,
debonair prettyboy whose "enormous phallus created havoc in Europe and North
America,; RuLioi was the quintessential jet-setting car-racing polo-obsessed
playboy, the Trujillatob "happy side" (for he was indeed one of Tiujillo's bestLn*n minions). A part-time former model and dashing man-about-town,
Rubiosa famous maried Tujilto's daughter Flor de Oro in 1932, 9d evgn
though they were divorced ve years leter' in the Year of the Haitian Genocide,
homboy *an"g"d to remain in EUefe's good graces throughout the regime's long

4.

and clearly attention-deprived?

stand

adults.

-fl'

walked like she had a bell for an ass'-:all purportedly fell for
him. Ese muchacho est bueno! (Did it hurt that he was earnest

run. Uiike his o<-brother-in-law Ramts (to whom he was &eguendy connected)'
Rubirosa seerned incapable of carrying out meny murders; in 1935 he uveled to
Newyork to deliver EiJefet death sentence against the er<ile leader Angel Morales
but fled before the botched assassination could take place. Rubi was the original
Dominican Player, fucked all sorts ofwomen-Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke (who
happened to b the richest vvoman in the world), ttre French acress Dnielle
Drri"ua zn Zsa Zsa Gsbot-to neme but a few. Like his pal Ramfs, Porfuio
died in a car crash, in 1965, his nr"elve-cylinder Ferrari skidding offa road in the
Bois de Boulogne. (Hard to overstat the role cars play in our narrative.)

It truly

With Maritza Chacn and Olga PolancoMaritzawas Lola's friend. Long-haired and prissy and so
preffy she could have played young DejahThoris' Olga, on the
other hand, vas no friend of the family. She lived in the house
at the end of the block that his mother complained about
because it was filled with puertoricans who were always hanging
out on their porch drinking beer. (Whal, th"y couldnt have
done that in Cuamol Oscar's mom asked crossly.) O had like
ninety cousins, ali who seemed to be named Hector or Luis or
Wanda. And since her mother vas una maldita borracha (to
quote Oscart mom), Olga smelled on some days of ass,which is
why the kids took to calling her Mrs. Peabody.
l\Irs. Peabody or not, Osca liked ho.r quiet she vas' how
she let him throw her to the ground and wresde with her, the
interest she showed

inlis

star Tre.dolls. Maritza was just plain

beautifi,rl, no need for motivation there, always around too, and

was just a stroke of pure genius that convinced

it

him to kick it to

.sl

THE BRIEF \/ONDROUS LIFE of OSCAR \[/AO

At fist he pretended that it was his numberone hero, Shazam, who wanted to date them. But after they
agreed he dropped all pretense. It wasr/t Shazam-it was Oscar.
Those 'were more innocent days, so their relationship

If he'd been a different ner he might have considered the

galletaz.o.It wasrt't just that he didnt have no kind of father to
show him the masculine ropes, he simply lacked all aggressive
and martial tendencies. (Unlike his sister, who fought boys and

amounted to standing close to each other at the bus stop, some

packs of morena girls who hated her

undercover hand-holding, and twice kissing on the cheels very

hair.) Oscar had like z zero combat rating; even Olga and her

them both at once.

seriousl first Maritza, then

O,

while theywere hidden from

the street by some bushes. (Look at that litde macho, his

thin nose and straightish

toothpick arms could have stomped him silly. Aggression and

intimidation out of the question. So he thought it over. Didnt

to decide. A-fter all, il.frantzawas beautiful and

mother's friends said. Qre hombre.)

The theesome only lasted a single beautifil week One day

take him long

after school Matza cornered Oscar behind the swing set and

not. Maritzawas allowed over their house and Olgawas not.

lid down the law, It's either her or met Oscas held Maritza's
hand and talked seriously :rd at great length about his love for

puertorican over here? his mother scoffed. Jams!) His logic

as close to the yes/no math of insects as a nigger could get.

her and reminded her that they had agreed to share,but Maritza

He broke up with Olga the following day on the playground,

Matzaat his side, and how Olga had cried! Shaking like a rag

wasnt having any of it. She had three older sisters, knew every-

Olgawas not; Olga sometimes smelled like pee and Maritza did

(A

thing she needed to know about the possibilities of sharing.

Dont talk to me no more unless you get rid of her! Maritza, with
her chocolate skin and naow eyes, already epressing the Ogun

big! Snots pouring out her nose and everhing!

energy that she would chop at everybodywith for the rest of her

overweight freaks, Oscar could not resist feeling the occasional

life. Oscar went home morose to his pre--Korean-sweatshop-era

flash of guilt when he saw Olga loping across a street or staring

cartoons-to the Herculoids *nd Spa Ghost.What's wrong with

blankly out ner the New York bus stop, couldnt stop himself

you? his mother asked. She was getting ready to go to her second

When Oscar whimpered, Girls, Moms de Len nearly

orploded. T ta llorando por una muchachal She hauled Oscar

from wondering how much his cold-as-balls breakup had

contributed.to her present fucked-upness. (Breaking up with
her, he would remember, hadn't felt like anything; even when
she started crying, he hadnt been moved. He'd said, No be a

to his feet by his

b"by.)

job, the eczema on her hands looking like

a messy meal

that had

set.

ear.

Mami, stop it, his sister cried, stop it!

She threw him to the floor. Dale

then

see

if the little puta respects you.

un

galTetazo, she panted,

in her hand-me-downs and in the shoes thatwere four sizes too

In later years, after he and Olga had both turned into

What ltadhvrt, however, was when i[lIarrtza dumped him.

Monday after he'd fed Olga to the dogs he arrived at the bus
stop with his beloved Planet of the Apes lunch box only to

TE BrrEF rONDiOUS LtE of oScA wAo

17

discorcr beautifl Mai, holding .hands with .butt-ugly

Nelson Prdo. Nelson Pado wlro looked like CheJs kom Land
af the Lostl Nelson Pado ui*ro rns so sttrpid he thought the
moonwas a stain that God had forgotn to clrl. (He'llget to
t.

it

soon, he assured his whole class.) Nelson Pardo who would

the neighborhood B&E elryert before joining the

Marines and losing eight toes in the First Gulf War. At first
Oscr thought it a mistake; the sun was in his eyes, he'd not
st enough the night before. He stood nt t to them and
admired his lunch box, how realistic and diabolicolDt Zalrus
looked. But Maria wouldnt even smile at him! Pretended hc
wasnt there. We should get married, she said to Nelson, and

become

lr

Nelson grinned moronically, tuming up the street to look for

the bus. Oscar had been too hurt to spedr; he sat down on the
curb and felt something overwhel,titg surge uP from his chest,
scared the shit out of him, and before he knew it he was crying;
when his siste6 Lola, walked over and asked him what was the
matter he'd shaken his head. Look at the mariconcito, somebody snickered. Somebody else kicked his beloved lunch box
and scratched it nght ecross General Urkot face. When he got
on the bus, still cnng' the driver, a famous reformed PCP
addict, had said, Christ, dont be afucltng ba-

interest-iri,Genres!--w.hichnobody had said boo about

with being a loser with a

L. Couldn?make iends for the life of,him, too dor
too sh and (if the kids from his oeighborhood arc to be be=
lieved) too a:ei (tnd,a habit of using b words he had memobefore, suddenlybecame qinorrmous

capital

rized only the daybdore). He no longerwent anywhere near the

girls because at best they ignored him, at worst they shieked and

called him gordo asqueroso!

He forgot the perrito, forgot the

pride he felt when the romen in the family had called him hom-

Did not kiss enother gitl fot a long long ama As though
almost everything he had in th" gol department had bumed up

bre.

that one fuckingweek

Not that his "girlfriends" fared much better. It seemed that

whatever bad no-love karma hit Oscar hit them too. By seventh
grade

O had grown huge and scary, a troll gene in hersome-

where, started drinking r5r straight out the botde and was finally

taken out of school because she had a habit of screaming

ND{S! in the middle of homeroom. Ev,en her breasts, when
they finally emerged, were floppy and terrifring. Once on the

bus

had called Oscar a cake eater, znd he'd almost said,

Look who's talking puerca, but he was afraid that she would
him; his cool-index,
low, couldnt
"lt""dy
have survived that kind of a pahzz,would have put him on par
with the handicapped kids and withJoe Locorotundo, who was
rear back and trample

Hoat had the breakup afected Olga? What he

asking was: Hou ltad the breakup afexed Oscar?
It seemed to Osca that from the moment Maitza dumped
him-Shazam!-his life stafted going down the tubes. Over the
really was

nent couple ofyears he grew fatter and fatter. Early adolescence

hit

him especially hard, scrarnbling his face into nothing you could
call cute, qplotching his skin with zits, making hirn self-conscious;

and his

famous for masturbating in public.

And the lovely iVlzntza Chacn? The hypotenuse of our

triangle, how had she faredl Well, before you could say Oh Miglrtl
Isis,Masitzablew up into the flyest guapa in Paterson, one of the
Qeens of New Peru. Since they stayed neighbors, Oscar saw

TBE BRrEF 1ONDROUS LIFE

oJf

r9

OSCAR WAO

her plenty, a ghetto Mary Jane, hai as black and lush as a

thunderhead, probably the only Peruvian girl or the planet with
pelo curlier than his sister's (he hadrt't heard of Afro-Peruvians

THE MORONIC INFERNO

yet, or of a town called Chincha), body fine enough to make old

H.t

men forget their infirmities, and from the sixth grade on dating

was an urban

men two, three times her age. (Maritza might not have been good

schoolwas Don BoscoTech, and since Don BoscoTech

all-bop Catholic school packed to the strakes with a

couple hundred insecure hlperactive adolescents, it was, for a fat
sci-fi-reading nerd Iike Oscar, a source of endless anguish. For

much-not spofts, not school, notwork-but she was good at

men.) Did that mean she had avoided the curse-that she was
happier than Oscar or Olga That was doubtful. From what
Oscar,could see, Maritza was a girl who seemed to delight in
getting rl"pp"d around by her boyfriends. Since it happened
to her all tbe time.If a boy hit me,Lola said cockily, I would bite

reallywhat happened-and ifthere were anylessons to be gleaned

hisce.

from the ordeal ofthose years he never quite figured outwhat they

at

See

Maria: French-kissing on the front stoop of her house,

Oscar,

high schoolwas the equivalent of

being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and out-

ofderand half-wits, an enperience from which he

he should have emerged a better person, but that's not

rages of a mob

supposed

were. He walked into school every day like the fat lone nerdy
he was, and all he could

onto the sidewalk Oscar would watch the French-kissing, the

getting in and out, the pushing, all through his cheerless, sexless

sion, when he would at last be set free

What

else could he do?

His bedroom window

looked out over the front of her house, and so he always peeped
her while he was painting his

D&D

kid

think about was the day of his manumis-

getting in or out of some roughneck's ride, being pushed down

adolescence.

a medieval spectacle,like

Hey, Osca4 are there faggots on

from its unending horror.

Masl-Hey,Kazno,

catch this.

The first time he heard the term moronic inno,he knew oractly
where it was located and who were its inhabitants.

Sophomore year Oscar found himself weighing

miniatures or reading the

in at a

latest Stephen King. The only things that changed in those years

whopping

were the models of the cars, the size of Maria's ass, and the

it had become clear to everybody, especially his family, that

he'd become the neighborhood parigayo.s Had none of the

kind of music volting out the cars'speakers. First freestyle, then

Il1 Will--era hiphop, and, right at the very end, for just a litde

245

6o when he was

depressed, which was often)

and

Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldnt have

while, Hctor Lavoe and the boys.

He said hi to her almost every day, all upbeat and farxh"ppy, and she said hi bac indifferendy, but that was it. He
didnt imagine that she remembered their kissing-but of
course he could not forget.

5.The pejorative parigay,Watchers agree, is a comrption of the English neologism

arty watcher." The word came into cornmon usage during the Fimt American
Occupation of the DR, which ran fromrgr to ;.gz4. (You didnt knowwe were occrpied rwice in the twentieth century? Dont worry, when pu have kids thry wont
know the U.S. occupied Iraq either) During the First Occupation itwas reported that
members of the,{merican Ocorpying Forces would often attend Dominican parties

2r

TH BRIEF \l'ONDROUS LtE of OSCAR \/AO

if his life depended on it. Couldnt play sports for

play wallball and pitch quafters and drive our older brothers'

shit, or dominoes, was beyond uncoordinated, threw a ball like a

from under our Parents' eyes' he

was gorging himself on a steady stream of Lovecraft, Wells,
Burroughs, Howard, Ale:rander, Herbert, Asimov, Bova, and
Heinlein, and even the Old Ones who were aleady beginning
to fade-E. E. "Doco Smith, Stapledon, and the guywho wrote

pulled a gttl

girl. Had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no

rap, no G. And most damning of all no looks. FIe wore his semi-

kink hair in a Puerto Rican afro, rocked enonnous Section 8

glasses-his "anti-pussy devices,' Al and Miggs, his only friends,
called them-*ported an unappealing trce of mustache on his
upper lip and possessed a paur of close-set eyes that made him
look somewhat retarded.The Eyes ofMingus. (A comparison he

cars and sneak dead soldiers

books-moving hungri from book to bool

author to author, age to age. (It was his good fortune that the
libraries of Paterson v/ere so underfunded that they still kept a
all the Doc Savage

made himself one day going through his mother's record collec-

lot of the previous generationt nerdery in circulation.) You

tion; she was the only old-school dominicana he knewwho had

dated a moreno until Oscart father put an end to that particular

couldnt have torn him awayfrom any movie orTV show or cartoon where there were monsters or spaceships or mutants or

chapter of the All-AfricanWorld P"t y.) You have the same eyes

doomsday devices or destinies or magic or evil villains. In these

your abuelo, his Nena Inca had told him on one of his visits to
the DR, which should have been some comfort-who doesnt

pursuits alone Oscar showed the genius his grandmother insisted was part of the family patrimony. Could write in Elvish,

like resembling an ancestorl--except this particular ancestor had

could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate beneen a Slan, a

Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the
Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role-playing game
fanatic. (If only he'd been good t videogames it would have

as

ended his days in prison.

Osca had always been a young'nerd-the kind of kid

who read Tom Swift, who loved comic books and watched
(Jltranan-but by high school his commitment to the Genres
had become absolute. Backwhen the rest of us were learning to

but instead ofining in the fun the Outlanders would simply stand at the edge of
dances and v:atctt.Whidtof course must have seemed like the craziest thing in the
world. Who goes to a party to uateh? Tltereter, the Marines were parigayos---a
word that in contemporaryusa describes anybodywho stands outside andwatches
while other people scoop up the girls. The kid who donl dance, who aint got game,
who lets people down him-he's the parigayo.
If you looked in the Dictionary of Dominican Things, the entry for 4igyo
would include a wood carving of Oscar. It is a nme that would hunt him for the
rest of his life end thatwould led him to another'Watche the one who lamps on
the Blue Side of the Moon.

Atari and an Intellivision he didnt have the reflo<es foi'it) Perhaps if like me he'd
been able to hide his otakuness maybe shit would have been
easier for him, but he couldnt. Dude wore his nerdiness like a
Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldnt have
been a slam dunk but despite owr,ring an

passed for

Normal if he'd wanted to.6

jumped offom no one quite seems to know.
ofbeingAntillean (who more sci-fi than us?) or

6. Where this outsized love ofgenre

It might

have be"n

".oor"qo.oce
ofliving in the DR for the rst couple ofyears of his life and t}ren abrupdywrgr-rchingly relocating to NewJersey-a iingle green card shifting not only worlds (from