The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Yunior tells the story of Belicia’s father, Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral, and his downfall at the hands of the Trujillo regime. The Cabrals belong to an old lineage whose status dates back to 1791. Abelard is a prominent surgeon who was trained in the finest schools in Mexico. In addition to his salary, he possesses a lucrative real estate portfolio that includes supermarkets, farms, and factories. Fluent and well-read in multiple languages and disciplines, Abelard is, in Yunior’s words, “a Brain.”

To survive as an intellectual in the time of Trujillo, Abelard continues to hold debates in his parlor, but he prohibits discussions of contemporary politics and invites anyone to join him, even Secret Police members. His private views notwithstanding, Abelard gives off the appearance of a loyal follower of the dictator.

Abelard may have never run afoul of Trujillo if not for the fact that in 1944, his daughter Jacquelyn became a great beauty. Yunior says, “In Trujillo’s DR if you put your cute daughter anywhere near El Jefe, within the week she’d be mamando his ripio like an old pro and there would be nothing you could do about it!” (217). He goes on to call the Dominican Republic under Trujillo “the world’s first culocracy” (217)—“culo” being a vulgar slang term for “butt” similar to “booty.” Starting that year, Abelard stops bringing his daughter to official functions where Trujillo may be present. To make sure he has a valid excuse, Abelard goes so far as to convince a colleague to falsely diagnose his wife as manic so, if asked, he can say Jacquelyn is at home caring for her. The only two people to whom he reveals his duplicity are his mistress Lydia Abenader and his old friend Marcus. Lydia tells him to send Jacquelyn away immediately while Marcus says there is nothing Abelard can do.

One evening, at a presidential event where Trujillo goes down a line shaking every guest’s hand, he stops at Abelard and inquires about his daughters. Despite his terror in the moment, Abelard responds smoothly, saying, “Yes, Jefe, you are correct, I have two daughters. But to tell you the truth, they’re only beautiful if you have a taste for women with mustaches” (222). After a brief pause, Trujillo laughs, and for the moment a crisis is averted.

As 1945 begins, Abelard believes he may be in the clear. In a few months, Jacquelyn will start studying at a top boarding school in France. Then, in February, Abelard receives an invitation sent straight from the palace explicitly requesting Jacquelyn’s appearance at an upcoming presidential event. Jacquelyn’s name is even underlined. Abelard immediately regrets not following Lydia’s advice to send his daughter away much earlier. Now it is too late.

On the day of the event, Abelard convinces himself that the invitation is merely a test of his loyalty and that Jacquelyn will be safe. When he sees his daughter in a beautiful dress minutes before they are set to leave for the party, however, Abelard knows she must stay home. At the event, when he apologizes for Jacquelyn’s absence, Trujillo merely says, “So I see” (233), as a mortified Marcus looks on.

Less than a month later, the Secret Police arrest Abelard for “Slander and gross calumny against the Person of the President” (233). The official source of this charge is a matter of debate, Yunior writes, but the consensus is that it stems from a drunken comment Abelard made a few days after the event in the company of Marcus. Apparently, he joked about bodies in the trunk of his Packard, a car associated with Trujillo’s early reign of terror. While some say Abelard made an explicit reference to Trujillo by using his name, Yunior doubts this is the case. Whatever the exact nature of the comment, however, Yunior is fairly certain Marcus was the informant. Yunior also provides an alternative explanation for Abelard’s arrest: that it had nothing to do with Jacquelyn nor with an offhand insult. Rather, it was because Abelard wrote a book arguing that Trujillo’s evil power originates in the supernatural.

On the way to the police station, the arresting officers assure Abelard that the situation is likely a misunderstanding, but when he starts asking questions at the station, one officer bloodies his nose. He is put into a holding cell along with other prisoners who are told that Abelard is gay and a communist. The other prisoners strip him of his clothes and force him to sleep in the filth of the latrine.

Eight days later, Socorro tracks down Abelard and is permitted to see him. To Socorro, her husband looks destroyed, shuffling around the visiting room with fresh cuts and bruises from a brutal interrogation the night before. A few days later, Socorro discovers she is pregnant with Belicia. Yunior asks, “Zafa or Fukú? You tell me” (242).

A few months later, Abelard is sentenced to 18 years in prison. The family loses all its properties, some of which are meted out to individuals in Abelard’s company when he made the alleged insult against Trujillo. Not long after, Socorro gives birth to Belicia. In a matter of weeks, Socorro steps into moving traffic and is killed instantly by an ammunition truck. Jacquelyn is sent to live with her godparents, and her sister Astrid is sent to live with out-of-town relatives. Two years later, Jacquelyn drowns mysteriously in a pool filled with only two feet of water. Three years after that, Astrid is killed in church by a stray bullet. Abelard dies in 1961 after living his final weeks with brain damage caused by torture. Only days later, Trujillo is assassinated.

As for Belicia, Yunior believes that no one in the family wanted her because she was too sickly and too dark-skinned. A woman named Zoila nurses her back to health, only for Socorro’s distant relatives to snatch her away in the hopes of a cash reward from the Cabrals. With the Cabral fortune decimated, the relatives give Belicia away to individuals Yunior calls “savages” who live in a poor, remote part of Azua. Those individuals then sell Belicia to an even poorer family.

During the period Yunior calls the “Fall” of the Cabrals, La Inca is grieving the recent loss of her husband. Despite learning of Abelard and Socorro’s fates, she is too distraught to come to the family’s rescue. She lives with this shame until 1955 when she hears about a stubborn girl living in Azua who insisted, against her guardians’ wishes, that she attend school. She paid for this disobedience by having hot oil splashed on her back. What’s more, the girl is rumored to be La Inca’s relative. The moment La Inca lays eyes on Belicia, locked in a chicken coop and grievously burned, she knows the girl is Abelard’s presumed-dead daughter.