![]() ![]() ![]() She tries her best not to look back at her mother lying on the ground wailing, but her conscience forces her to stop and go back to help. The frail, bewigged Mami lunges for Lola, who breaks free and runs away, exhilarated with the sensation of flight and liberation. When the two meet at the agreed-upon time and place, Lola realizes that a trap has been set as her mother, aunt, and drug-addicted uncle appear to apprehend her and return her to Paterson. She swears Oscar to secrecy, but soon regrets trusting her nerdy, obedient brother. In November, Lola calls home for the first time, and when Oscar answers, she swears him to silence and asks that he steal money from their mother’s hiding place and bring it to her in Wildwood, at least an hour away. She unceremoniously loses her virginity to Aldo in the cramped, squalid apartment reeking of kitty litter and endures both men’s drunken insults for a couple of months, forcing herself to believe that it was true love. She arrives to discover that Aldo lives with his bigoted, miserly father, an elderly World War II vet who seems to hate Aldo as much as Lola despises her mother. After a couple of days, peace is restored between them, but Lola has recognized the opportunity to fulfill her lifelong daydream of running away from home. Lola’s callous reaction causes a messy brawl to erupt at the dinner table, with Oscar pleading for the two to stop fighting. Around this same time, Mami breaks the news to Lola and Oscar that her cancer has returned. She stops just short of having sex with him, but decides she is in love with him and takes him seriously when he invites her to stay with him in Wildwood, on the Southern New Jersey shore. When she is 14, she develops a mad crush on the dull, 19-year-old Aldo whom she meets at a New York nightclub. Lola feels guilty too, and suppresses her conscience by acting out with impulsive behavior. Lola’s rebellion against her dying mother’s violent tyranny causes gossip among her neighbors and shame for her extended family who consider her coldhearted and ungrateful of Mami's toil and sacrifice. Their confrontations keep her overweight, docile, younger brother Oscar in his room afraid to come out. For the next year, Lola’s relationship with her mother is as bad as it has ever been. Lola changes, too, and recalls that moment in the bathroom with her mother as when her life truly begins. Lola’s lifelong gift for premonition is well known in her family, and, as predicted, within months, Mami has both breasts removed and loses her hair. ![]() Lola is terrified, but Mami goads her into feeling for the lump, gently guiding Lola’s hand until she finds it and is overcome with the sudden sense that everything in her life is about to change. “Wildwood” opens with a flashback to when teenage narrator Lola is 12 and called into the bathroom by her fearsome, towering mother, Belicia Deleon, to help verify the presence of a tumor in Mami's massive breast. "Wildwood." The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. The following version of this story was used to create this study guide: Diaz, Junot. ![]()
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