"La Inca of course was anguished by Beli's Fall, from princesa to mesera—what is happening to the world? At home the two rarely spoke anymore; La Inca tried to talk, but Beli wouldn't listen, and for her part La Inca filled that silence with prayer, trying to summon a miracle that would transform Beli back into a dutiful daughter. As fate would have it, once Beli had slipped her grasp not even God had enough caracaracol to bring her back. Every now and then La Inca would appear at the restaurant. She'd sit alone, erect as a lectern, in all black, and between sips of tea would watch the girl with a mournful intensity. Perhaps she hoped to shame Beli into returning to Operation Restore House of Cabral, but Beli went about her work with her customary zeal. It must have dismayed La Inca to see how drastically her "daughter" was changing, for Beli, the girl who never used to speak in public, who could be still as Noh, displayed at Palacio Peking a raconteur's gift for palaver that delighted a great many of the all-male clientele. Those of you who have stood at the corner of 142nd and Broadway can guess what it was she spoke: the blunt, irreverent cant of the pueblo that gives all dominicanos cultos nightmares on their 400-thread-count sheets and that La Inca had assumed had perished along with Beli's first life in Outer Azua, but here it was so alive, it was like it had never left: Oye, parigüayo, y qué pasó con tuya? Gordo, no me digas que tú todavía tienes hambre?" (108)