Drown

by Junot Díaz

  What in the world can I do? What does this woman want from me? I’ve been sending her money. Does she want me to starve up here?

  You and I know what you have to do. That’s all I can say, otherwise I’d be wasting my breath.

  Papi was lost. He would take long perilous night walks home from his jobs, sometimes arriving with his knuckles scuffed and his clothes disheveled. His and Nilda’s child was born in the spring, a son, also named Ramón, cause for fiesta but there was no celebration among his friends. Too many of them knew. Nilda could sense that something was wrong, that a part of him was detained elsewhere but each time she brought it up Papi told her it was nothing, always nothing.

  With a regularity that proved instructional, Jo-Jo had Papi drive him to Kennedy to meet one or the other of the relatives Jo-Jo had sponsored to come to the States to make it big. Despite his prosperity, Jo-Jo could not drive and did not own a car. Papi would borrow Nilda’s Chevy station wagon and would fight the traffic for an hour to reach the airport. Depending on the season, Jo-Jo would bring either a number of coats or a cooler of beverages taken from his shelves—a rare treat since Jo-Jo’s cardinal rule was that one should never prey on one’s own stock. At the terminal, Papi would stand back, his hands pressed in his pockets, his beret plugged on tight, while Jo-Jo surged forward to greet his familia. Papi’s English was good now, his clothes better. Jo-Jo would enter a berserk frenzy when his relatives stumbled through the arrival gate, dazed and grinning, bearing cardboard boxes and canvas bags. There would be crying and abrazos. Jo-Jo would introduce Ramón as a brother and Ramón would be dragged into the circle of crying people. It was a simple matter for Ramón to rearrange the faces of the arrivals and see his wife and his children there.

  He began again to send money to his familia on the Island. Nilda noticed that he began to borrow from her for his tobacco and to play the lotteries. Why do you need my money? she complained. Isn’t that the reason you’re working? We have a baby to look after. There are bills to pay.

  One of my children died, he said. I have to pay for the wake and the funeral. So leave me alone.

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  He put his hands over his face but when he removed them she was still staring skeptically.

  Which one? she demanded. His hand swung clumsily. She fell down and neither of them said a word.

  Papi landed a union job with Reynolds Aluminum in West New York that paid triple what he was making at the radiator shop. It was nearly a two-hour commute, followed by a day of tendon-ripping labor, but he was willing—the money and the benefits were exceptional. It was the first time he had moved outside the umbra of his fellow immigrants. The racism was pronounced. The two fights he had were reported to the bosses and they put him on probation. He worked through that period, got a raise and the highest performance rating in his department and the shittiest schedule in the entire fábrica. The whites were always dumping their bad shifts on him and on his friend Chuito. Guess what, they’d say, clapping them on the back. I need a little time with my kids this week. I know you wouldn’t mind taking this or that day for me.

  No, my friend, Papi would say. I wouldn’t mind. Once Chuito complained to the bosses and was written up for detracting from the familial spirit of the department. Both men knew better than to speak up again.

  On a normal day Papi was too exhausted to visit with Jo-Jo. He’d enjoy his dinner and then settle down to watch Tom and Jerry, who delighted him with their violence. Nilda, watch this, he’d scream and she’d dutifully appear, needles in mouth, baby in her arms. Papi would laugh so loud that Milagros upstairs would join in without even seeing what had occurred. Oh, that’s wonderful, he’d say. Would you look at that! They’re killing each other!

  One day, he skipped his dinner and a night in front of the TV to drive south with Chuito into New Jersey to a small town outside of Perth Amboy. Chuito’s Gremlin pulled into a neighborhood under construction. Huge craters had been gouged in the earth and towering ziggurats of tan bricks stood ready to be organized into buildings. New pipes were being laid by the mile and the air was tart with the smell of chemicals. It was a cool night. The men wandered around the pits and the sleeping trucks.

  I have a friend who is doing the hiring for this place, Chuito said.

  Construction?

  No. When this neighborhood goes up they’ll need superintendents to watch over things. Keep the hot water running, stop a leaking faucet, put new tile in the bathroom. For that you get a salary and free rent. That’s the kind of job worth having. The towns nearby are quiet, lots of good gringos. Listen Ramón, I can get you a job here if you like. It would be a good place to move. Out of the city, safety. I’ll put your name at the top of the list and when this place is done you’ll have a nice easy job.

  This sounds better than a dream.

  Forget dreams. This is real, compadre.

  The two men inspected the site for about an hour and then headed back toward Brooklyn. Papi was silent. A plan was forming. Here was the place to move his familia if it came from the Island. Quiet and close to his job. Most important, the neighborhood would not know him or the wife he had in the States. When he reached home that night he said nothing to Nilda about where he had been. He didn’t care that she was suspicious and that she yelled at him about his muddy shoes.

  Papi continued to send money home and in Jo-Jo’s lockbox he was saving a tidy sum for plane tickets. And then one morning, when the sun had taken hold of the entire house and the sky seemed too thin and blue to hold a cloud, Nilda said, I want to go to the Island this year.

  Are you serious?

  I want to see my viejos.

  What about the baby?

  He’s never gone, has he?

  No.

  Then he should see his patria. I think it’s important.

  I agree, he said. He tapped a pen on the wrinkled place mat. This sounds like you’re serious.

  I think I am.

  Maybe I’ll go with you.

  If you say so. She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing. And she didn’t stop doubting him either, until he was on the plane next to her, rifling anxiously through the catalogs, the vomit bag and the safety instructions.

  He was in Santo Domingo for five days. He stayed at Nilda’s familia’s house on the western edge of the city. It was painted bright orange with an outhouse slumped nearby and a pig pushing around in a pen. Homero and Josefa, tíos of Nilda, drove home with them from the airport in a cab and gave them the “bedroom.” The couple slept in the other room, the “living room.”

  Are you going to see them? Nilda asked that first night. They were both listening to their stomachs struggling to digest the heaping meal of yuca and hígado they had eaten. Outside, the roosters were pestering each other.

  Maybe, he said. If I get the time.

  I know that’s the only reason you’re here.

  What’s wrong with a man seeing his familia? If you had to see your first husband for some reason, I’d let you, wouldn’t I?

  Does she know about me?

  Of course she knows about you. Not like it matters now. She’s out of the picture completely.

  She didn’t answer him. He listened to his heart beating, and began to sense its slick contours.

  On the plane, he’d been confident. He’d talked to the vieja near the aisle, telling her how excited he was. It is always good to return home, she said tremulously. I come back anytime I can, which isn’t so much anymore. Things aren’t good.

  Seeing the country he’d been born in, seeing his people in charge of everything, he was unprepared for it. The air whooshed out of his lungs. For nearly four years he’d not spoken his Spanish loudly in front of the Northamericans and now he was hearing it bellowed and flung from every mouth.

  His pores opened, dousing him as he hadn’t been doused in years. An awful heat was on the city and the red dust dried out his throat and clogged his nose. The poverty—the unwashed
children pointing sullenly at his new shoes, the familias slouching in hovels—was familiar and stifling.

  He felt like a tourist, riding a guagua to Boca Chica and having his and Nilda’s photograph taken in front of the Alcázar de Colón. He was obliged to eat two or three times a day at various friends of Nilda’s familia; he was, after all, the new successful husband from the North. He watched Josefa pluck a chicken, the wet plumage caking her hands and plastering the floor, and remembered the many times he’d done the same, up in Santiago, his first home, where he no longer belonged.

  He tried to see his familia but each time he set his mind to it, his resolve scattered like leaves before a hurricane wind. Instead he saw his old friends on the force and drank six bottles of Brugal in three days. Finally, on the fourth day of his visit, he borrowed the nicest clothes he could find and folded two hundred dollars into his pocket. He took a guagua down Sumner Welles, as Calle XXI had been renamed, and cruised into the heart of his old barrio. Colmados on every block and billboards plastering every exposed wall or board. The children chased each other with hunks of cinder block from nearby buildings—a few threw rocks at the guagua, the loud pings jerking the passengers upright. The progress of the guagua was frustratingly slow, each stop seemed spaced four feet from the last. Finally, he disembarked, walking two blocks to the corner of XXI and Tunti. The air must have seemed thin then, and the sun like a fire in his hair, sending trickles of sweat down his face. He must have seen people he knew. Jayson sitting glumly at his colmado, a soldier turned grocer. Chicho, gnawing at a chicken bone, at his feet a row of newly shined shoes. Maybe Papi stopped there and couldn’t go on, maybe he went as far as the house, which hadn’t been painted since his departure. Maybe he even stopped at our house and stood there, waiting for his children out front to recognize him.

  In the end, he never visited us. If Mami heard from her friends that he was in the city, with his other wife, she never told us about it. His absence was a seamless thing to me. And if a strange man approached me during my play and stared down at me and my brother, perhaps asking our names, I don’t remember it now.

  Papi returned home and had trouble resuming his routine. He took a couple of sick days, the first three ever, and spent the time in front of the television and at the bar. Twice he turned down negocios from Jo-Jo. The first ended in utter failure, cost Jo-Jo “the gold in his teeth,” but the other, the FOB clothing store on Smith Street, with the bargain basement buys, the enormous bins of factory seconds and a huge layaway shelf, pulled in the money in bags. Papi had recommended the location to Jo-Jo, having heard about the vacancy from Chuito, who was still living in Perth Amboy. London Terrace Apartments had not yet opened.

  After work Papi and Chuito caroused in the bars on Smith and Elm Streets and every few nights Papi stayed over in Perth Amboy. Nilda had continued to put on weight after the birth of the third Ramón and while Papi favored heavy women, he didn’t favor obesity and wasn’t inclined to go home. Who needs a woman like you? he told her. The couple began to fight on a regular schedule. Locks were changed, doors were broken, slaps were exchanged but weekends and an occasional weekday night were still spent together.

  In the dead of summer, when the potato-scented fumes from the diesel forklifts were choking the warehouses, Papi was helping another man shove a crate into position when he felt a twinge about midway up his spine. Hey asshole, keep pushing, the other man grunted. Pulling his work shirt out of his Dickies, Papi twisted to the right, then to the left and that was it, something snapped. He fell to his knees. The pain was so intense, shooting through him like fireballs from Roman candles, that he vomited on the concrete floor of the warehouse. His co-workers moved him to the lunchroom. For two hours he tried repeatedly to walk and failed. Chuito came down from his division, concerned for his friend but also worried that this un-scheduled break would piss off his boss. How are you? he asked.

  Not so good. You have to get me out of here.

  You know I can’t leave.

  Then call me a cab. Just get me home. Like anyone wounded, he thought home could save him.

  Chuito called him the taxi; none of the other employees took time to help him walk out.

  Nilda put him in bed and had a cousin manage the restaurant. Jesú, he moaned to her. I should’ve slowed down a little. Just a little bit longer and I would’ve been home with you. Do you know that? A couple of hours more.

  She went down to the botánica for a poultice and then down to the bodega for aspirin. Let’s see how well the old magic works, she said, smearing the poultice onto his back.

  For two days he couldn’t move, not even his head. He ate very little, strictly soups she concocted. More than once he fell asleep and woke up to find Nilda out, shopping for medicinal teas, and Milagros over him, a grave owl in her large glasses. Mi hija, he said. I feel like I’m dying.

  You won’t die, she said.

  And what if I do?

  Then Mama will be alone.

  He closed his eyes and prayed that she would be gone and when he opened them, she was and Nilda was coming in through the door with another remedy, steaming on a battered tray.

  He was able to sit up and call in sick by himself on the fourth day. He told the morning-shift manager that he couldn’t move too well. I think I stay in bed, he said. The manager told him to come in so he could receive a medical furlough. Papi had Milagros find the name of a lawyer in the phone book. He was thinking lawsuit. He had dreams, fantastic dreams of gold rings and a spacious house with caged tropical birds in its rooms, a house awash with sea winds. The woman lawyer he contacted only worked divorces but she gave him the name of her brother.

  Nilda wasn’t optimistic about his plan. Do you think the gringo will part with his money like that? The reason they’re so pale is because they’re terrified of not having any plata. Have you even spoken to the man you were helping? He’s probably going to be a witness for the company so that he won’t lose his job the same way you’re going to lose yours. That maricón will probably get a raise for it, too.

  I’m not an illegal, he said. I’m protected.

  I think it’s better if you let it drop.

  He called Chuito to sound him out. Chuito wasn’t optimistic either. The boss knows what you’re trying to yank. He no like it, compadre. He say you better get back to work or you’re quitted.

  His courage failing, Papi started pricing a consultation with an independent doctor. Very likely, his father’s foot was hopping about in his mind. His father, José Edilio, the loudmouthed ball-breaking vagrant who had never married Papi’s mother but nevertheless had given her nine children, had attempted a similar stunt when he worked in a hotel kitchen in Río Piedras. José had accidentally dropped a tin of stewed tomatoes on his foot. Two small bones broke but instead of seeing a doctor, José kept working, limping around the kitchen. Every day at work, he’d smile at his fellow workers and say, I guess it’s time to take care of that foot. Then he’d smash another can on it, figuring the worse it was, the more money he’d get when he finally showed the bosses. It saddened and shamed Papi to hear of this while he was growing up. The old man was rumored to have wandered the barrio he lived in, trying to find someone who would take a bat to the foot. For the old man that foot was an investment, an heir-loom he cherished and burnished, until half of it had to be amputated because the infection was so bad.

  After another week and with no calls from the lawyers, Papi saw the company doctor. His spine felt as if there were broken glass inside of it but he was given only three weeks of medical leave. Ignoring the instructions on the medication, he swallowed ten pills a day for the pain. He got better. When he returned to the job he could work and that was enough. The bosses were unanimous, however, in voting down Papi’s next raise. They demoted him to the rotating shift he’d been on during the first days of the job.

  Instead of taking his licks, he blamed it on Nilda. Puta, was what he took to calling her. They fought with renewed vigor; the orange elephant
was knocked over and lost a tusk. She kicked him out twice but after probationary weeks at Jo-Jo’s allowed him to return. He saw less of his son, avoiding all of the daily routines that fed and maintained the infant. The third Ramón was a handsome child who roamed the house restlessly, tilted forward and at full speed, as if he were a top that had been sent spinning. Papi was good at playing with the baby, pulling him by his foot across the floor and tickling his sides, but as soon as the third Ramón started to fuss, playtime was over. Nilda, come and tend to this, he’d say.

  The third Ramón resembled Papi’s other sons and on occasion he’d say, Yunior, don’t do that. If Nilda heard these slips she would explode. Maldito, she’d cry, picking up the child and retreating with Milagros into the bedroom. Papi didn’t screw up too often but he was never certain how many times he’d called the third Ramón with the second son Ramón in mind.

  With his back killing him and his life with Nilda headed down the toilet, Papi began more and more to regard his departure as inevitable. His first familia was the logical destination. He began to see them as his saviors, as a regenerative force that could redeem his fortunes. He said as much to Jo-Jo. Now you’re finally talking sense, panín, Jo-Jo said. Chuito’s imminent departure from the warehouse also emboldened Ramón to act. London Terrace Apartments, delayed because of a rumor that it had been built on a chemical dump site, had finally opened.