Drown

This story is told through a series of numbered vignettes.

1.

The narrator, a nine-year-old boy named Yunior, and his older, twelve-year-old brother named Rafa are in the Dominican Republic for the summer. They are close to the colmado (corner market) running an errand, when Rafa tilts his head, looks out toward Barabacoa and says that they should pay a person named Ysrael a visit.

2.

Yunior intimates that his mother sends he and Rafa to the campo (Dominican countryside) every summer, because she does not have time nor energy to look after her two sons during the summertime, as she works full time at a chocolate factory. He specifies that, during the summers, he and Rafa live with their tíos (uncles and aunts) in a small wooden house just outside the town of Ocoa.

Yunior states that the campo is full of natural beauty, but that it pales in comparison to their neighborhood in Santo Domingo, as the boys lack activities, television, and electricity. This leaves the boys ill-tempered and restless. Rafa also states that he is going to go wild—dance for four or five days straight and chinga (have sex with) many girls—once they get back home to New Jersey. Yunior states that their Tío Miguel gives the boys chores that they finish easily, and that they then spend the rest of their days drumming up activities such as catching jaivas (crabs), seeking out girls who never show up, setting up traps for jurones (mongooses) which never work, and toughening up roosters with pails of cold water.

Yunior intimates that he is not as bothered by summers spent in the campos as Rafa is, and that unlike his brother, the summers would stay in his memory. He recounts that Rafa runs with a rough crowd back in the capital of Santo Domingo, where they normally live, and rarely speaks to him unless it is to tell him to be quiet or to tease Yunior for his African features, such as his complexion, his hair, and his large lips. Yunior specifies that Rafa tauntsYunior in front of his friends, saying that he got those features from a Haitian bloodline (even calling him “Señor Haitian”), and that their mother found Yunior on the Dominican Republic/Haiti border and adopted him because she felt sorry for him. Yunior intimates that he and his brother are constantly fighting while at home in Santo Domingo, but that in the campo they are friends.

Rafa then recounts that during the summer in which this story takes place, Rafa would spend entire afternoons fooling around with girls, and that Rafa would beg to come along, which would be met with harsh words and a punch in the shoulder if he persisted. Rafa would then tell him about all of his sexual exploits at night while they lay in bed listening to rats on the zinc roof. Yunior remembers his brother as handsome and much of his words about these sexual encounters as incomprehensible, although he listened intently in case the conversations might become useful in the future.

3.

Yunior reveals that Ysrael is a child who lives on the other side of Ocoa, and who is infamous across the town and the countryside on its outskirts. A pig ate half of Ysrael’s face off when he was a child, and “skinned it like an orange” (7). He recounts that the invocation of Ysrael’s name is comparable to the invocation of folk monsters such as el Cuco (a bogeyman-like monster who steals disobedient children) or la Vieja Calusa (a mythological figure that literally translates to “the old Calusa woman”).

Yunior recounts the first time he saw Ysrael: an airplane that dropped flyers promoting wrestlers had just done a drop over the town of Ocoa, and Rafa saw Ysrael, wearing a mask, stooping over a bundle of flyers in an alley. At the time, Yunior asked Ysrael what he was doing, to which Ysrael responded “What do you think I’m doing” (7). Once other boys caught sight of Ysrael, he took off running. The boys taunted Ysrael, even in his absence, specifying that he had a cousin who lived in the vicinity, whom they also disliked.

When Yunior later told this story to Rafa, Rafa asked if Yunior got to see under Ysrael’s mask. When Yunior answered no, Rafa asserts, “That’s something we got to check out” (8). Yunior recounts that in the midst of his conversation with his brother, he heard his uncle, in the front yard, talking with his friends about his plans to bring his prized fighting rooster to Santo Domingo in order to earn more money from larger bets. Rafa wonders aloud how much of Ysrael’s face is still there. Yunior reveals that the boy still has his eyes. Rafa then speculates about the facial features that Ysrael must be missing, and Yunior intimates that there are widespread rumors about both the appearance of Ysrael’s face, and its fearsome effect on anyone who catches a glimpse of it. Yunior ends the conversation by saying “Ya” (English: that’s enough).

The next day, Rafa does a chore and is careful not to step on a pile of cacao beans that their aunt has set out to dry. He goes into the smokehouse, and emerges from it with a knife and two oranges. He peels both of them and gives one to Yunior. The two boys then set out together. When Rafa does not tell Yunior to return home without him, which he fully expects, Yunior grows increasingly excited. He observes that smoke rises from the fields that have been burned the night before. They arrive at the road that will take them to Ocoa, and Yunior holds two empty bottles of Coca-Cola which the boys had previously hidden in the chicken coop. They then take the bottles to the colmado and ask for a refund for the glass. The proprietor, a man named Chicho, gives them a bit of a hard time before handing over their refund, grousing that what the boys do with the money is none of his concern, and that he is merely a businessman. When Yunior asks if they can use part of the money to buy food or chewing gum, Rafa quickly silences and rebukes him, asserting that they are saving the money for drinks, which Yunior will want later. The two boys then make their way to the nearby bus stop.

Yunior looks at his brother’s face and recognizes its expression immediately: Rafa is scheming. When a bus arrives, Rafa stares at the bottoms of the two women who wait at the bus stop with them, as the women board the bus. He tells the cobrador (English: fare collector) to drive on without them. When Yunior asks why, Rafa tells him that he is waiting for a younger cobrador. Yunior buys a pastelito (English: a food item similar to a tamale) from Chicho.

Rafa flags down another bus and the boys board it. Rafa tells Yunior to get to the back of the bus while he stands with his hands curled up on the top lip of the bus door and directly next to the cobrador, who is only a few years older than Rafa. The cobrador tries unsuccessfully to get Rafa, who wears a defiant expression, to sit down; the driver blasts music and sets off, thereby preventing any further intervention from the cobrador. A man sitting next to Yunior grouses that La chica de la novela, a song that was topping the charts that summer, is still being excessively played.

Yunior sits uncomfortably and notices that the pastelito has left a grease stain on his pants. He hurriedly finishes it, judiciously noticing that Rafa doesn’t watch him while he does so. Rafa is busy essentially doing the cobrador’s job as the cobrador tries to keep up with him. Two people pay Rafa and Rafa hands this money to the cobrador, who busies himself with making change.

The man sitting next to Yunior—whom he observes as having big teeth and muscular arms, and whom sports a clean fedora—tells Yunior that he should be careful with pastelitos. When Yunior says that they are too greasy, the man spits on his fingers and rubs them against the stain, surreptitiously pinching Yunior’s penis through his pants. Yunior then calls him a “low-down pinga-sucking(English: dick-sucking) pato” (English: homosexual, but closer in translation to the slur “faggot”) (12). The man then painfully pinches Yunior’s bicep, which causes him to whimper. After the man tells Yunior to watch his mouth, Yunior gets up and goes to Rafa. As they are getting off the bus, the cobrador tells the two boys they haven’t paid. Rafa insists that they have. The cobrador tries to detain the boys, but Rafa evades him and yells to the driver that he needs to teach the cobrador how to count. The bus driver tells the cobrador to stop fussing over the two boys as the bus leaves.

Yunior then begins to cry. Rafa calls him a pussy, and Yunior apologizes. After Yunior says that he’ll be alright in a minute, Rafa threatens to leave him if he does not stop crying. Rafa makes his way toward a shack from which voices emanate. Inside of it, Yunior observes columns of ants as they extract and tow crumbling marrow from a pile of decaying chicken bones. Yunior intimates that he would have normally headed home—his standard reaction to Rafa’s taunting—if they were not so far (eight or nine miles) away. When Yunior catches up with Rafa, Rafa asks him if he is done crying, and also if he is always going to be a pussy. In response, Yunior keeps his head down and his eyes averted, specifying that he “wouldn’t have raised [his] head if God himself had appeared in the sky and pissed down on [them]” (14). Rafa then tells Yunior that he has to get tougher, stating, “do you think our papi’s crying? Do you think that’s what he’s been doing the last six years?” (14).

Rafa then enlists the aid of three people, who help the boys arrive at a field. He stops when they see Ysrael standing at the center of it, flying a kite. “Here we go”, he says, as Yunior grows embarrassed and wonders what they are about to do (14). “Stay close” and “get ready to run”, Rafa tells him, before handing Yunior his knife and trotting toward the field (14).

4.

Yunior recounts that the summer before he took part, along with other boys, in taunting, chasing, and teasing Ysrael. Yunior threw a rock at the boy, which arced off of one of his shoulder blades. When one of the boys remarked that Ysrael ran as fast as a mongoose, Yunior observed that he was actually faster than one. After pausing to recover from the pain of the rock, one of the other boys nearly caught him, but Ysrael managed to escape. “Show us your face” and “let us see it just once,” the boys cried at him (15).

5.

Back in the present day, Yunior observes that Ysrael is about a foot bigger than both himself and Rafa, and that he looks like he has been fattened up by the super-grain that local farmers have been giving their stock. He observes that Ysrael’s sandals are stiff leather and his clothes are North American. Rafa tells Ysrael that Yunior isn’t feeling well and asks him if he can direct them to the nearest colmado. Ysrael, in a voice that Yunior describes as “odd and full of spit”, answers that there is a faucet up the road (15). Ysrael’s mask is hand-sewn and Yunior sees that it cannot hide the scar tissue that curls around the boy’s left eye in a “red waxy crescent”, nor the saliva that drips down his neck (15). While Ysrael and Rafa go back and forth about the nearby faucet and whether the water will make the brothers sick, Yunior tries to feign illness and observes that Ysrael is dexterous with the kite, which is an expensive, imported model. He asks Ysrael where he got it, and when Ysrael answers “Nueva York” (New York), Yunior excitedly tells him that their father lives there as well. Rafa frowns and Yunior intimates that the only contact they have with their father is letters and an occasional shirt or pair of jeans at Christmas. Rafa questions Ysrael about his mask and asks him if he’s hot in it. Ysrael answers that he isn’t. He then tells the boys that he won’t take off the mask until he gets better. He also tells them that he is consulting with American doctors about getting his face fixed. Rafa scoffs, telling him that American doctors will kill him faster than the Guardia (the central military force under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961). Rafa also tells Ysrael that he is lying, and that the doctors probably just felt sorry for him.

Ysrael leads to boys to the nearest colmado and back. On the way back, Yunior gives Rafa a Coca-Cola bottle, which they ostensibly bought at the colmado, and engages Ysrael in conversation about wrestling. When Ysrael claims that he’s a great wrestler, Rafa laughs at him, but also does not take up Ysrael’s invitation to wrestle right then and there. Yunior taps Ysrael’s arm and tells him that the planes haven’t dropped any flyers this year. Ysrael explains that it’s too early, and that the drops will start on the first Sunday of August. When Yunior asks him how he knows that, Ysrael states that he’s “from around here”, and his mask twitches (18). Then, in the exact moment that Yunior understands that the twitch means that Ysrael is smiling, Rafa slams the Coca-Cola bottle into Ysrael’s head. The bottle explodes and Yunior says, “Holy fucking shit” (14). Ysrael stumbles and then slams into a fence post as glass falls off his mask and he falls down on his stomach. Rafa kicks Ysrael in the side, which Ysrael seems not to notice as he concentrates on pushing himself up. Rafa commands Yunior to help roll the boy on his back, and they do so. Rafa removes Ysrael’s mask and throws it into the grass. Yunior observes the damage, which looks old, on the boy’s face: his left ear is a nub, his tongue is visible through a hole in his cheek, and he has no lips. Ysrael’s eyes have begun to roll back in his head and cords stick out on his neck. Yunior begs Rafa to go. Rafa turns Ysrael’s face from side to side using only two of his fingers.

6.

The two boys make their way back to the colmado and catch a bus after an hour or two of walking. “Ysrael will be OK”, Yunior says, to which Rafa replies, “Don’t bet on it” (19). Yunior asserts that the doctors will fix the boy, and Rafa says, “They aren’t going to do shit to him” (19). Yunior puts his feet on the seat in front of him and the old lady in it, who wears a baseball cap and has one milky-white eye, looks back at him. Yunior observes that the bus heads for Ocoa, not for their home. Rafa signals for a stop and tells Yunior to get ready to run. Yunior answers with “OK” (20).