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"Cursed people, after all, tend not to drag themselves out of canefields...If these serendipities signify anything, say these heads, it is that our Beli was blessed" (Diaz 152).

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When Beli meets the Gangster for the first time, "he grabbed her arm, hard, and said 'Where are you going, morena?'" (Diaz 115).

She was initially offended, but couldn't stop thinking about him after that. Goes back to find him again. He asks "'You came looking for me, didn't you?' 'Yes,' she said, and only then did she know" (Diaz 118).

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"pure uncut unadultered love, the Holy Grail that would so bedevil her children throughout their lives" (Diaz 127).

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La Inca's Bible group, had performed a miracle, and all that remained was the healing... The Hand of God is upon her" (Diaz 153).

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Beli's attachment to men in particular

When talking about Jack Pujols:

"Pujols, it seemed, had promised Belicia that they would be married as soon as they'd both finished high school, and Beli had believed him, hook, line, and sinker" (Diaz 101).

When talking about the gangster: "She had wanted him to say, No, don't go, or at least to say he would be joining her" (Diaz 162).

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"He promised her that once the trouble with communists were over he would take her to Miami and to Havana. I'll buy you house in both places just so you an know how much I love you!" (Diaz 126).

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"The next time the Gangster appeared she had dolled herself up lovely, a brand-new dress, crushed jasmine in her underwear, got her hair done, and even plucked her eyebrows into twin hyphens of alarm." (Diaz 136).

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Alluding to blood sacrifice of innocents?

"It's Trujillo. Gunned down, she whispered, the night Beli had been kidnapped"

"Through the numinous power of prayer La Inca saved the girl's life, laid an A-plus zafa on the Cabral family fuku (but at what cost to herself?)" (Diaz 154, 155).

There is a connection between the death of the Cabral baby by Trujillos, and the death of their leader. Prayer as well represents another kind of power, and perhaps life

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Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who's been abandoned by family, husband, children, and fortune believes in God" (Díaz 88).

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Without reciprocation, like Oscar. "Beli often had dreams Jack returned" (Diaz 109).

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"A man whose own house you yourself have never visited is promising to buy you a house? And you believe him? Oh, hija" (Diaz 129).

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" So astonishing were her descriptions that Dorca often said, I would like to go to school with you one day. Beli snorted. You must be crazy! You're too stupid!" (Diaz 86)

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"the Gangster adored [Beli] and that adoration was one of the greatest gifts anybody had ever given her. It felt unbelievably good to Beli, shook her to her core" (35).

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"Our girl learned that even to a chooch like Jack Pujols she was true" (Diaz 109).

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"Beli's naievte" (Díaz 126).

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"what greeted her was not cane but the open world of life"(Diaz 150).

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"I don't need a job. He's going to buy me a house" (Diaz 129).

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"Everybody mistook her for a bailarina cubana from one of the shows and couldn’t believe that she was dominicana like them" (Diaz 114).
No longer feels awkward, and getting the attention she wants

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"There are still many, on and off the Island, who offer Beli's near-fatal beating as irrefutable proof that the House Cabral was indeed a victim of a high-level fukú, the local version of House Atreus" (Díaz 152).

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"I'm free."

"I want to be like you, she told the Gangster days later when they were eating crabs she had cooked in an achiote sauce" (Diaz 134).

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"And it was on one of those nights, while she cradled his head and brushed away his tears, that she realized with a start that she loved this Gangster" (Diaz 125).

All it takes is a small amount of sensitivity for Beli to be swayed by the Gangster.

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"Like her yet to be born daughter, would come to exhibit a particularly Jersey malaise-the indistinguishable longing for elsewheres" (Diaz 77).

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"Beli had longed, hungered, for a chance to be in love and to be loved back" (Diaz 126). She is finally getting attention that she wants so it's easy to see that she going to get burned by this gangster.

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"her promised future--her promised children" (Díaz 150).

Beli is time and again referring back to her dream of being married and having kids, and the promise of her children is what drives her forward and keeps her alive