This Is How You Lose Her

  We wake up bright and early for the buffet, get served by cheerful women in Aunt Jemima costumes. I shit you not: these sisters even have to wear hankies on their heads. Magda is scratching out a couple of cards to her family. I want to talk about the day before, but when I bring it up she puts down her pen. Jams on her shades.

  I feel like you’re pressuring me.

  How am I pressuring you? I ask.

  I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.

  Time to yourself, I say. What does that mean?

  Like maybe once a day, you do one thing, I do another.

  Like when? Now?

  It doesn’t have to be now. She looks exasperated. Why don’t we just go down to the beach?

  As we walk over to the courtesy golf cart, I say, I feel like you rejected my whole country, Magda.

  Don’t be ridiculous. She drops one hand in my lap. I just wanted to relax. What’s wrong with that?

  The sun is blazing and the blue of the ocean is an overload on the brain. Casa de Campo has got beaches the way the rest of the Island has got problems. These, though, have no merengue, no little kids, nobody trying to sell you chicharrones, and there’s a massive melanin deficit in evidence. Every fifty feet there’s at least one Eurofuck beached out on a towel like some scary pale monster that the sea’s vomited up. They look like philosophy professors, like budget Foucaults, and too many of them are in the company of a dark-assed Dominican girl. I mean it, these girls can’t be no more than sixteen, look puro ingenio to me. You can tell by their inability to communicate that these two didn’t meet back in their Left Bank days.

  Magda’s rocking a dope Ochun-colored bikini that her girls helped her pick out so she could torture me, and I’m in these old ruined trunks that say “Sandy Hook Forever!” I’ll admit it, with Magda half naked in public I’m feeling vulnerable and uneasy. I put my hand on her knee. I just wish you’d say you love me.

  Yunior, please.

  Can you say you like me a lot?

  Can you leave me alone? You’re such a pestilence.

  I let the sun stake me out to the sand. It’s disheartening, me and Magda together. We don’t look like a couple. When she smiles niggers ask her for her hand in marriage; when I smile folks check their wallets. Magda’s been a star the whole time we’ve been here. You know how it is when you’re on the Island and your girl’s an octoroon. Brothers go apeshit. On buses, the machos were like, Tú sí eres bella, muchacha. Every time I dip into the water for a swim, some Mediterranean Messenger of Love starts rapping to her. Of course, I’m not polite. Why don’t you beat it, pancho? We’re on our honeymoon here. There’s this one squid who’s mad persistent, even sits down near us so he can impress her with the hair around his nipples, and instead of ignoring him she starts a conversation and it turns out he’s Dominican, too, from Quisqueya Heights, an assistant DA who loves his people. Better I’m their prosecutor, he says. At least I understand them. I’m thinking he sounds like the sort of nigger who in the old days used to lead bwana to the rest of us. After three minutes of him, I can’t take it no more, and say, Magda, stop talking to that asshole.

  The assistant DA startles. I know you ain’t talking to me, he says.

  Actually, I say, I am.

  This is unbelievable. Magda gets to her feet and walks stiff-legged toward the water. She’s got a half-moon of sand stuck to her butt. A total fucking heartbreak.

  Homeboy’s saying something else to me, but I’m not listening. I already know what she’ll say when she sits back down. Time for you to do your thing and me to do mine.

  —

  THAT NIGHT I LOITER around the pool and the local bar, Club Cacique, Magda nowhere to be found. I meet a dominicana from West New York. Fly, of course. Trigueña, with the most outrageous perm this side of Dyckman. Lucy is her name. She’s hanging out with three of her teenage girl cousins. When she removes her robe to dive into the pool, I see a spiderweb of scars across her stomach.

  I also meet these two rich older dudes drinking cognac at the bar. Introduce themselves as the Vice-President and Bárbaro, his bodyguard. I must have the footprint of fresh disaster on my face. They listen to my troubles like they’re a couple of capos and I’m talking murder. They commiserate. It’s a thousand degrees out and the mosquitoes hum like they’re about to inherit the earth, but both these cats are wearing expensive suits, and Bárbaro is even sporting a purple ascot. Once a soldier tried to saw open his neck and now he covers the scar. I’m a modest man, he says.

  I go off to phone the room. No Magda. I check with reception. No messages. I return to the bar and smile.

  The Vice-President is a young brother, in his late thirties, and pretty cool for a chupabarrio. He advises me to find another woman. Make her bella and negra. I think, Cassandra.

  The Vice-President waves his hand and shots of Barceló appear so fast you’d think it’s science fiction.

  Jealousy is the best way to jump-start a relationship, the Vice-President says. I learned that when I was a student at Syracuse. Dance with another woman, dance merengue with her, and see if your jeva’s not roused to action.

  You mean roused to violence.

  She hit you?

  When I first told her. She smacked me right across the chops.

  Pero, hermano, why’d you tell her? Bárbaro wants to know. Why didn’t you just deny it?

  Compadre, she received a letter. It had evidence.

  The Vice-President smiles fantastically and I can see why he’s a vice-president. Later, when I get home, I’ll tell my mother about this whole mess, and she’ll tell me what this brother was the vice-president of.

  They only hit you, he says, when they care.

  Amen, Bárbaro murmurs. Amen.

  —

  ALL OF MAGDA’S FRIENDS SAY I cheated because I was Dominican, that all us Dominican men are dogs and can’t be trusted. I doubt that I can speak for all Dominican men but I doubt they can either. From my perspective it wasn’t genetics; there were reasons. Causalities.

  The truth is there ain’t no relationship in the world that doesn’t hit turbulence. Mine and Magda’s certainly did.

  I was living in Brooklyn and she was with her folks in Jersey. We talked every day on the phone and on weekends we saw each other. Usually I went in. We were real Jersey, too: malls, the parents, movies, a lot of TV. After a year of us together, this was where we were at. Our relationship wasn’t the sun, the moon, and the stars, but it wasn’t bullshit, either. Especially not on Saturday mornings, over at my apartment, when she made us coffee campo-style, straining it through the sock thing. Told her parents the night before she was staying over at Claribel’s; they must have known where she was, but they never said shit. I’d sleep late and she’d read, scratching my back in slow arcs, and when I was ready to get up I would start kissing her until she would say, God, Yunior, you’re making me wet.

  I wasn’t unhappy and wasn’t actively pursuing ass like some niggers. Sure, I checked out other females, even danced with them when I went out, but I wasn’t keeping numbers or nothing.

  Still, it’s not like seeing somebody once a week doesn’t cool shit out, because it does. Nothing you’d really notice until some new chick arrives at your job with a big butt and a smart mouth and she’s like on you almost immediately, touching your pectorals, moaning about some moreno she’s dating who’s always treating her like shit, saying, Black guys don’t understand Spanish girls.

  Cassandra. She organized the football pool and did crossword puzzles while she talked on the phone, and had a thing for denim skirts. We got into a habit of going to lunch and having the same conversation. I advised her to drop the moreno, she advised me to find a girlfriend who could fuck. First week of knowing her, I made the mistake of telling her
that sex with Magda had never been top-notch.

  God, I feel sorry for you, Cassandra said. At least Rupert gives me some Grade A dick.

  The first night we did it—and it was good, too, she wasn’t false advertising—I felt so lousy that I couldn’t sleep, even though she was one of those sisters whose body fits next to you perfect. I was like, She knows, so I called Magda right from the bed and asked her if she was OK.

  You sound strange, she said.

  I remember Cassandra pressing the hot cleft of her pussy against my leg and me saying, I just miss you.

  —

  ANOTHER PERFECT SUNNY CARIBBEAN DAY, and the only thing Magda has said is Give me the lotion. Tonight the resort is throwing a party. All guests are invited. Attire’s semiformal, but I don’t have the clothes or the energy to dress up. Magda, though, has both. She pulls on these super-tight gold lamé pants and a matching halter that shows off her belly ring. Her hair is shiny and as dark as night and I can remember the first time I kissed those curls, asking her, Where are the stars? And she said, They’re a little lower, papi.

  We both end up in front of the mirror. I’m in slacks and a wrinkled chacabana. She’s applying her lipstick; I’ve always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

  We look good, she says.

  It’s true. My optimism is starting to come back. I’m thinking, This is the night for reconciliation. I put my arms around her, but she drops her bomb without blinking a fucking eye: tonight, she says, she needs space.

  My arms drop.

  I knew you’d be pissed, she says.

  You’re a real bitch, you know that.

  I didn’t want to come here. You made me.

  If you didn’t want to come, why didn’t you have the fucking guts to say so?

  And on and on and on, until finally I just say, Fuck this, and head out. I feel unmoored and don’t have a clue of what comes next. This is the endgame, and instead of pulling out all the stops, instead of pongándome más chivo que un chivo, I’m feeling sorry for myself, como un parigüayo sin suerte. I’m thinking over and over, I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a bad guy.

  Club Cacique is jammed. I’m looking for that girl Lucy. I find the Vice-President and Bárbaro instead. At the quiet end of the bar, they’re drinking cognac and arguing about whether there are fifty-six Dominicans in the major leagues or fifty-seven. They clear out a space for me and clap me on the shoulder.

  This place is killing me, I say.

  How dramatic. The Vice-President reaches into his suit for his keys. He’s wearing those Italian leather shoes that look like braided slippers. Are you inclined to ride with us?

  Sure, I say. Why the fuck not?

  I wish to show you the birthplace of our nation.

  Before we leave I check out the crowd. Lucy has arrived. She’s alone at the edge of the bar in a fly black dress. Smiles excitedly, lifts her arm, and I can see the dark stubbled spot in her armpit. She’s got sweat patches over her outfit and mosquito bites on her beautiful arms. I think, I should stay, but my legs carry me right out of the club.

  We pile in a diplomat’s black BMW. I’m in the backseat with Bárbaro; the Vice-President’s up front driving. We leave Casa de Campo behind and the frenzy of La Romana, and soon everything starts smelling of processed cane. The roads are dark—I’m talking no fucking lights—and in our beams the bugs swarm like a biblical plague. We’re passing the cognac around. I’m with a vice-president, I figure what the fuck.

  He’s talking—about his time in upstate New York—but so is Bárbaro. The bodyguard’s suit’s rumpled and his hand shakes as he smokes his cigarettes. Some fucking bodyguard. He’s telling me about his childhood in San Juan, near the border of Haiti. Liborio’s country. I wanted to be an engineer, he tells me. I wanted to build schools and hospitals for the pueblo. I’m not really listening to him; I’m thinking about Magda, how I’ll probably never taste her chocha again.

  And then we’re out of the car, stumbling up a slope, through bushes and guineo and bamboo, and the mosquitoes are chewing us up like we’re the special of the day. Bárbaro’s got a huge flashlight, a darkness obliterator. The Vice-President’s cursing, trampling through the underbrush, saying, It’s around here somewhere. This is what I get for being in office so long. It’s only then I notice that Bárbaro’s holding a huge fucking machine gun and his hand ain’t shaking no more. He isn’t watching me or the Vice-President—he’s listening. I’m not scared, but this is getting a little too freaky for me.

  What kind of gun is that? I ask, by way of conversation.

  A P-90.

  What the fuck is that?

  Something old made new.

  Great, I’m thinking, a philosopher.

  It’s here, the Vice-President calls out.

  I creep over and see that he’s standing over a hole in the ground. The earth is red. Bauxite. And the hole is blacker than any of us.

  This is the Cave of the Jagua, the Vice-President announces in a deep, respectful voice. The birthplace of the Taínos.

  I raise my eyebrow. I thought they were South American.

  We’re speaking mythically here.

  Bárbaro points the light down the hole but that doesn’t improve anything.

  Would you like to see inside? the Vice-President asks me.

  I must have said yes, because Bárbaro gives me the flashlight and the two of them grab me by my ankles and lower me into the hole. All my coins fly out of my pockets. Bendiciones. I don’t see much, just some odd colors on the eroded walls, and the Vice-President’s calling down, Isn’t it beautiful?

  This is the perfect place for insight, for a person to become somebody better. The Vice-President probably saw his future self hanging in this darkness, bulldozing the poor out of their shanties, and Bárbaro, too—buying a concrete house for his mother, showing her how to work the air-conditioner—but, me, all I can manage is a memory of the first time me and Magda talked. Back at Rutgers. We were waiting for an E bus together on George Street and she was wearing purple. All sorts of purple.

  And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.

  I cry, and when they pull me up the Vice-President says, indignantly, God, you don’t have to be a pussy about it.

  —

  THAT MUST HAVE been some serious Island voodoo: the ending I saw in the cave came true. The next day we went back to the United States. Five months later I got a letter from my ex-baby. I was dating someone new, but Magda’s handwriting still blasted every molecule of air out of my lungs.

  It turned out she was also going out with somebody else. A very nice guy she’d met. Dominican, like me. Except he loves me, she wrote.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to finish by showing you what kind of fool I was.

  When I returned to the bungalow that night, Magda was waiting up for me. Was packed, looked like she’d been bawling.

  I’m going home tomorrow, she said.

  I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

  NILDA WAS MY BROTHER’S GIRLFRIEND.

  This is how all these stories begin.

  She was Dominican, from here, and had super-long hair, like those Pentecostal girls, and a chest you wouldn’t believe—I’m talking world-class. Rafa would sneak her down into our basement bedroom after our mother went to bed and do her to whatever was on the radio right then. The two of them had to let me stay, because if my mother heard me upstairs on the couch everybody’s ass would have been fried. And since I wasn’t about to spend my night out in the bushes this is how it was.

  Rafa didn’t make no noise, just a low something that resembled breathing. Nilda was the one. She seemed to be trying to hold back from crying the whole time
. It was crazy hearing her like that. The Nilda I’d grown up with was one of the quietest girls you’d ever meet. She let her hair wall away her face and read The New Mutants, and the only time she looked straight at anything was when she looked out a window.

  But that was before she’d gotten that chest, before that slash of black hair had gone from something to pull on the bus to something to stroke in the dark. The new Nilda wore stretch pants and Iron Maiden shirts; she had already run away from her mother’s and ended up at a group home; she’d already slept with Toño and Nestor and Little Anthony from Parkwood, older guys. She crashed over at our apartment a lot because she hated her moms, who was the neighborhood borracha. In the morning she slipped out before my mother woke up and found her. Waited for heads at the bus stop, fronted like she’d come from her own place, same clothes as the day before and greasy hair so everybody thought her a skank. Waited for my brother and didn’t talk to anybody and nobody talked to her, because she’d always been one of those quiet, semi-retarded girls who you couldn’t talk to without being dragged into a whirlpool of dumb stories. If Rafa decided that he wasn’t going to school then she’d wait near our apartment until my mother left for work. Sometimes Rafa let her in right away. Sometimes he slept late and she’d wait across the street, building letters out of pebbles until she saw him crossing the living room.