Drown

This story is told in a series of numbered vignettes.

1.

Yunior tells us that he lived without a father for the first nine years of his life. His father was in the United States working. Therefore, the only way he knew him was through the photographs that his mother kept in a plastic sandwich bag under her bed. Because the zinc roof of his childhood home leaked, almost all of the possessions of his family were water-stained.

During this time in his life, when Yunior thought of his father, he would think of a particular photograph of him, which was taken ten days before the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. When the photograph was taken, Yunior was not yet alive, his mother (referred to as “Mami”) was pregnant with a child she would later miscarry, and Yunior’s grandfather could still see well enough to hold a job. The photograph has scalloped edges and is sepia-toned. His mother had written several things on the back of it: the date, his name, the street name. His father was dressed in “his Guardia uniform, his tan cap at an angle on his shaved head, an unlit Constitución squeezed between his lips. His dark unsmiling eyes were [Yunior’s] own” (70).

Yunior says that he did not think of his father often. Yunior had been four years old when his father had left for New York, but since he couldn’t remember anything about him, he excused him from the entirety of his life. Even his mother stopped talking about him, eventually. However, when he did think of his father, he thought of him as the soldier in the photograph. He thought of him as a composite of things associated with him: a cloud of cigar smoke, “pieces of his friends’ fathers, of the domino players on the corner, pieces of Mami and Abuelo [English: grandfather]” (70). At the time, he had been told the lie that they were waiting for his father to come back, although he had actually abandoned the family.

Yunior and his family lived in a wood-frame house with three rooms, south of the Cementerio Nacional. They were poor: the only way they could be poorer, according to Yunior, is if they lived in the campo (English: Dominican countryside), or if they were Haitian immigrants. They regularly did not have beans or meat in their diet, and everything on their plates was always boiled. When he or his older brother, Rafa, caught their annual case of worms, their mother would have to dip into their food budget to buy them Verminox.

At Mauricio Baez, the school that Yunior and Rafa attended, the kids didn’t bother them very much, even though they couldn’t afford the uniforms or proper mascotas (English: mascots). Their mother would therefore improvise mascotas for them by sewing together sheets of loose paper. He and Rafa each had one pencil, and if they lost it, they would stay home until their mother could borrow another one for them. The teachers would have other students share their books with the two brothers. The other students would do so without looking at them, and while holding their breaths.

Yunior tells us that Mami worked at the chocolate factory, putting in ten- to twelve-hour shifts for hardly any money. She woke up every day at seven, and Yunior would get up with her. She was very good at drawing a clean bucket for bathing. She was a tiny woman with dark and surprisingly straight hair, and had scars across her stomach and back from the rocket attack that she had survived in 1965. The scars did not show while she was wearing clothes, but could be felt through them when she was embraced.

Abuelo was supposed to watch the two boys while Mami was at work, but he was usually visiting with friends or taking care of other peoples’ rat problems with a trap that he built himself. He did not charge a commission for use of the trap, which Mami would have done. Instead, he insisted on arming the steel bar himself, because he claimed to have seen it take off fingers. However, Yunior believes that he insisted on arming the steel bar himself because he liked to have something to do with his time.

Without much adult supervision, Yunior and Rafa mostly did anything that they wanted. Rafa would hang out with his friends and Yunior would play with their neighbor Wilfredo. Yunior also became an expert tree-climber and would watch the barrio from the trees. When Abuelo was around and awake, he would talk to Yunior about the “good old days, when a man could still make a living from his finca [English: estate], when the United States wasn’t something folks planned on” (72-73).

Mami would come home after sunset, “just when the day’s worth of drinking was starting to turn some of the neighbors wild” (73). Because their barrio was not the safest, she would usually ask a male coworker to walk her home. Yunior observes that although she was skinny, which was seen as undesirable, she was smart and funny, which would make her sought-after anywhere. However, she would always bar the men from entering her home, and although some would park across the street to see if she was just playing hard to get, eventually every man would leave. Nobody could get her to do anything after work—including cooking dinner or listening to the grievances or recollection of adventures from her sons—until she had sat for a while in her rocking chair. Sometimes Yunior would climb the guanábana tree so that she would catch him smiling down at her when she opened her eyes. He would then throw twigs on her until she laughed.

2.

When times were very tough, Mami would send to two boys to relatives. She’d use the neighbor’s phone to call them, and Yunior would listen, secretly hoping that they would not allow Mami to send them over. However, they were always allowed. Usually, Rafa would go to Ocoa to be with aunts and uncles, and Yunior would go to tía Miranda’s in Boca Chica. Sometimes, they’d both go to Ocoa. Neither Ocoa nor Boca Chica were far, but, unlike Rafa, Yunior never wanted to go. It would normally take hours to convince Yunior to get on the bus.

Yunior would ask his mother about exactly how much time he’d be away, while Rafa would tease him lightly and casually: Rafa was at the age in which he wanted to be away from home, meeting strangers. Abuelo would frame the trip as a vacation and encourage Yunior to enjoy himself and the opportunity to be near the water and eat good food. Yunior, however, did not want to leave the family and sensed the ways in which “distances could harden and become permanent” (75). He was therefore always too depressed to notice the ocean in Boca Chica.

Tía Miranda was not a blood relation. Rather, she was Yunior’s godmother. She lived in a more affluent neighborhood in a nice block house with a shingled roof and tiled floors. She was about fifty and very thin, with stubbornly kinky hair. She had two children of her own: Yennifer and Bienvenido. However, she didn’t dote on them the way she doted on Yunior. She would kiss Yunior a lot and watch him intently while he was eating. She was also prone to cryptic one-liners about his father, including “He took too much,” “If only your mother could have noticed his true nature earlier,” and “He should see how he’s left you” (76).

The weeks would drag on during these trips, and Yunior would go out by the water at nighttime to try to be alone, although that never worked out: there’d always be tourists “making apes out of themselves” while the tígueres (English: thugs/dudes) waited to rob them (76). He would find the only constellation he knew: Las Tres Marías (English: The Three Marys). Then, one day Mami and Rafa would be there in the living room when he got back, holding glasses of sweet lemon milk. Mami would have a fresh haircut and painted nails, and would be wearing the same red dress she wore for any outing. Rafa, with a dark tan, would slap Yunior on the back while smiling, then put his arm around him as Tía would tell Mami how well Yunior behaved and all the different things he’d eaten.

3.

Yunior tells us that the year Papi came for them—the year Yunior was nine—the family expected nothing. There were no signs. The demand for Dominican chocolate was not high that year, so the Puerto Rican owners laid off the majority of employees for a few months. Mami was consequently always in the house. Unlike Rafa, who was good at hiding his rule-breaking, Yunior was perpetually getting caught doing naughty things, such as punching Wilfredo, chasing somebody else’s chickens until they fainted, or trying to stab the family’s mango tree with a machete. As punishment, his mother preferred having him kneel in pebbles with his face against the wall, instead of hitting him. Abuelo was supposed to watch him for ten minutes, but was often too busy whittling. He’d let Yunior cheat and trick Mami into thinking he had served his full sentence. She’d tell him, “You better learn, muchacho, or you’ll be kneeling for the rest of your life” (78). When he’d answer by saying no, he wouldn’t, she’d ask him if he was talking back, and then whack him on the buttocks. Then he’d run out to meet up with Wilfredo. Wilfredo would call Yunior Sinbad and Yunior would call Wilfredo Muhammad Ali—these were their “Northamerican names” (78).

On the day that his father shows up, Yunior and Wilfredo are racing paper boats in the street. Yunior is so preoccupied that he doesn’t immediately notice that someone has parked their battered motorcycle in front of his house. When he comes home to investigate, the motorcycle driver is out of the house and gone before Yunior can reach the front door. Mami and Abuelo are engaged in conversation on the back patio, and Abuelo is angrier than Yunior has seen him in a long time. Mami, in a dangerous voice, sternly tells Yunior to go back outside. By the time Rafa comes home an hour later, swaggering in from a game of pool, Yunior has tried to speak to Mami and Abuelo five times. Mami has slapped Yunior hard enough on the back of the neck to leave a welt. Rafa puts out his cigarette and goes to investigate.

The two boys are then instructed to wait in their room. Rafa reveals that Papi has sent a letter, although he does not know its contents. Yunior watches Rafa enact a complicated ritual while lighting up a cigarette, and asks him where he got his lighter. Rafa tells him that his girlfriend gave it to him. Wilfredo comes to the window to ask about what’s happened. When Yunior tells him that his father has sent a letter, Rafa chastises him, telling him not to blab the family’s business. When Wilfredo assures Rafa that he won’t blab, Rafa agrees and tells him that he will beat him up if he does. Yunior tells us that the “room” he shared with Rafa was just a section of the house that Abuelo had partitioned off with planks of wood.

Later, Mami serves dinner, watches the two boys as they eat, and sends them back to their room. Yunior has never seen her so blank-faced or stiff, and she even pushes him away when he tries to hug her. She hurries them back to bed. Later, after he has fallen asleep, Yunior is awakened by Rafa, who says that he read the letter. Rafa tells Yunior that Papi said that he is coming. He also tells Yunior not to believe it, as it isn’t the first time he’s made that promise. Yunior then tells Rafa the he didn’t know that Rafa could read.

4.

Yunior intimates that Rafa is correct to point out that their father has lied before. He recalls the time, two years after his departure, that his father sent a letter claiming that he was coming for them. Mami, ready to believe anything after two years of being alone, had gone all-out in her preparations. She showed everyone his letter and even reached him by phone, through which he confirmed what his letter said. He spoke to his two sons over the phone. Mami prepared a party and even arranged for a goat to be there for fresh slaughter. She bought Yunior and Rafa new clothes. When Papi didn’t show, however, “she sent everybody home, sold the goat back to its owner and then almost lost her mind (82-83). When Abuelo tried to reach Papi by phone, none of the men who’d lived with him knew anything about where he’d gone.

Yunior recalls that it didn’t help the situation that both he and Rafa kept asking their mother when they were leaving for the States. Yunior is told that he asked to see his father’s photograph almost every day, and would throw himself around and scream like he was on fire when his mother refused him. Yunior took to destroying his clothing—the one thing he had whose destruction hurt his mother. Yunior finds it difficult, now, to picture himself so worked up over his father.

After the incident, his mother spent a lot of time out of the house, and then eventually left entirely, spending five weeks in Ocoa with family. Her time away was never discussed—then or now. When she came back, she was thinner and darker, and her hands were covered in calluses. Yunior observes that she looked younger—“like the girl who had arrived in Santo Domingo fifteen years before, burning to be married” (84). Her friends came to visit and “when Papi’s name was mentioned her eyes dimmed and when his name left, the darkness of her ojos returned and she would laugh, a small personal thunder that cleared the air” (84). Yunior recounts that she did not treat him badly upon her return, but the two of them were no longer close: “she did not call [him] her Prieto [English: a word for a dark-skinned person] or bring [him] chocolates from her work…and [he] was young enough to grow out of her rejection. [He] still had baseball and [his] brother. [He] still had trees to climb and lizards to tear apart” (84).

5.

About a week after Papi’s letter came, Yunior watched Mami from the trees as she ironed cheese sandwiches in paper bags for lunch and boiled platanos for dinner. Every time she thought he was going too high in the branches, she’d call him back toward the ground. She seemed like she was mostly returning to normal, but Yunior was careful not to provoke her, as “there was still something volcanic about the way she held herself” (85).

That Saturday, a late hurricane passed close to the Capital and some children had been lost to high waves down by the Malecón. Abuelo shook his head when he heard the news, saying, “You’d think the sea would be sick of us by now” (85).

When Sunday came, Mami gathered the family on the back patio and told them that they were taking a day off. When Yunior tried to fight that idea, Rafa hit him harder than he normally did, and told him to shut up, after which Abuelo grabbed both boys by the arm and threatened them.

Mami dressed up and put her hair up, and even ordered them a cab, instead of crowding them into an autobus. The driver wiped their seats down prior to letting them in. Yunior states that Mami looked beautiful and drew the attention of many men that day. Even though they couldn’t afford it, she paid for them all to see a movie: The Five Deadly Venoms. Yunior intimates that kung-fu movies were the only ones that the theaters played in those days. During the movie, Yunior had sat between Mami and Abuelo, while Rafa joined a group of boys in the back who were smoking and arguing about baseball.

After the movie, Mami buys them flavored ices and they watch crawling salamanders and the enormous waves. A man in a red guayabera cap engages in a lengthy conversation with Mami. Yunior wishes that his cigarette would fall into the water. After he leaves, Rafa expresses that he wanted to give the man a kung-fu punch in the head. Abuelo looks embarrassed. Mami recounts that their father did a better job of flirting with her: he gave her a whole pack of cigarettes to show her “that he was a big man” (87). When Yunior asks if that happened in the part of the city where they stood, Mami turns around and looks out over the traffic before replying: “That part of the city isn’t here anymore” (87).

6.

In this vignette, Yunior imagines what it would be like to reunite with his father. He intimates that Rafa used to think their father would come in the night, like Jesus: “that one morning they’d find him at [their] breakfast table, unshaven and smiling” (87). Rafa predicted that he’d be taller due to North American food, and that he’d surprise Mami on her way back from work by picking her up in a German car. He’d drive her to Malecón and take her to a movie, since that’s how they met.

As for Yunior, he imagines that he would see his father coming home while in his perch among the tree branches. In Yunior’s mind’s eye, his father would have swinging hands and eyes like his own. He’d have “gold on his fingers and cologne on his neck, a silk shirt, good leather shoes” (87). The whole neighborhood would come out to greet him. He’d kiss Mami and Rafa and shake Abuelo’s hand, and then he’d see Yunior behind everyone else. Yunior pictures him asking, “What’s wrong with that one?”, and pictures his mother explaining that Yunior doesn’t know him. Yunior then intimates: “Squatting down so that his pale-yellow dress socks showed, he’d trace the scars on [Yunior’s] arms and on [his] head. Yunior, he’d finally say, his stubbled face in front of [Yunior’s], his thumb tracing a circle on [his] cheek” (88).