Every summer Santo Domingo slaps the Diaspora engine into reverse, yanks back as many of its expelled children as it can; airports choke with the overdressed; necks and luggage carousels groan under the accumulated weight of that year's cadenas and paquetes [chains and packages], and pilots fear for their planes—overburdened beyond belief—and for themselves; restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters, malecones [piers], beaches, resorts, hotels, moteles [motels], extra rooms, barrios, colonias [colonies], campos [fields], ingenios [mills] swarm with quisqueyanos [someone from Quisqueya] from the world over. Like someone had sounded a general reverse evacuation order: Back home, everyone! Back home! (2.6.2.4)

And there were pictures of Oscar's mom and dad. Young. Taken in the two years of their relationship.

You loved him, [Oscar] said to her.

[Beli] laughed. Don't talk about what you know nothing about. (2.6.1.14-2.6.1.16)

So, after Lola flew back to the States (Take good care of yourself, Mister) and the terror and joy of his return had subsided, after he settled down in Abuela's [grandmother's] house, the house that Diaspora had built, and tried to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his summer now that Lola was gone, after his fantasy of an Island girlfriend seemed like a distant joke – Who the f*** had he been kidding? He couldn't dance, he didn't have loot, he didn't dress, he wasn't confident, he wasn't handsome, he wasn't from Europe, he wasn't f***ing no Island girls – after he spent one week writing and (ironically enough) turned down his male cousins' offer to take him to a whorehouse like fifty times, Oscar fell in love with a semiretired puta [whore]. (2.6.5.2)