Literature Essay on gender and sexuality representations in selected Juiot Diaz's and Sandra Cisneros' short stories
tile attempts to reconcile their dual roles as men (in the
eyes of their families) and as mere boys (in the eyes of
the outside world). . . . There's a lot of artistry in this
book, and where there is art, there is always hope." -A u stin Am erican- S t ate sman
"Remarkable . . . His style is succinct and unadorned,
yet the effect is lush and vivid, and after a few lines you
are there with him, Iiving in his documentary, his nar-
ration running through your head almost like your
own thoughts. . . . Vignettes . . . observed with depth
and tenderness but most of all with a simple honesty
that rings as clear and true as a wind chime." -Tbe Dallas Morning Nez.ps
"Mesmerrztngly honest, heart-breaking and full of
promise . . . Tales of life among the excluded classes of
the diaspora, they tread fearlessly where lesser writers
gush and politiciz€-which is exacdy their political and , aesthetic power." -Si Magorirrb
"Remarkable. " - Entertainment'W e e kly JUNO T
"The talent is strong and individual. . . .Diaz's language
is careful and astringent . . . powerful and revelatory." -Houston Cbronicle
"A powerful writer.Diaz makes no apologies." -Albuquerque Journal
L*'u + J+*"7fr /
wl |- l ' [;J'LI
StMe Nordt '
a DIA
"Ysrael" and "Fiesta, L980" first appeared in Story magazine. 'Drown" and "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl,
'Whitegirl, or Halfie" 6rst appeared n The
New Yorker "Boyfriend" first appeared in Time Out Neut York. "Edison, New Jersey" first appeared in The Paris Reuieut.
This is a work of fiction, Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Riverhead Books Published by The Berkley Publishing Group A division of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014
Copyright @ 7995 by Junot D(az Book design by Junie Lee Cover design by Lisa Amoroso Front cover photograph @ by Ken Schles Photograph of rhe author @ by Marion Ettlinger
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Riverhead hardcover edition: August 1995 First Riverhead rrade paperback edition: July 1997 Riverhead trade paperback edition ISBN: 7-57322-506-8
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World l7ide IJ0eb sire address is & hap://www penguinputnam.com
The Library of Congiess has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows: D(az, Junot
Drown{unotDiaz. P . c m .
ISBN 1-57322-041,-8 1. Doririnican Republic-Social life and customs-Fiction.
New Jersey-Social life and customs-Fiction. 3. Dominican Americans-New Jersey-Fiction. I. Title. P S 3 5 5 4 . t 2 5 9 D 7 5 1 9 9 6 8 1 3 ' . 5 4 - d c 2 0 9 6 - 1 8 3 5 2 C I P
Printed in the United States of America
1 0 9 8
Pere ni ned.re, Vi.rtudes D{az
b
1 '
I lived, without a father for the first nine years of
my life. He was in the States, working, and the only
way I knew him was through the photographs my
moms kept in a plastic sandwich bag under her bed.
Since our zinc roof leaked, almost everfthing we owned
was water-stained: our clothes, Mami's Bible, her
makeup, whatever food we had, Abuelo's tools, our
cheap wooden furniture. It was only because of that
plastic bag that any pictures of my father survived.
\flhen I thought of Papi I thought of one shot specif-
ically. Taken days before the U.S. invasion: 1965.I
wasn't even alive then; Mami had been pregnant with
my first never-born brother and Abuelo could still see
well enough to hold a job. You know the sort of pho-
tograph I'm talking about. Scalloped edges, mostly
brown in color. On the back my moms's cramped
handwriting-the date, his name, even the street, one
A g u a n t a n d o 5 9
I 7 0 D R O W B
over from our house. He was dressed in his Guardia
uniform, his tan caP at an angle on his shaved head, an
unlit constiruci6n sque ezedbetween his lips. His dark
unsmiling eyes were mY own.
I did not think of him often. He had left for Nueva
york when I was four but since I couldn't remember a
single momenr with him I excused him from all nine
years of my life. On the days I had to imagine him-
not often, since Mami didn't much speak of him any-
more-he was the soldier in the photo. He was a cloud
of cigar smoke, the traces of which could still be found
on the uniforms he'd left behind. He was pieces of my
friends' fathers, of the domino players on the corner,
pieces of Mami and Abuelo. I didn't know him at all' I
didn't know that he'd abandoned us. That this waiting
for him was all a sham.
we lived south of the cementerio Nacional in a wood-
frame house with three rooms. \fle were poor. The only
way we could have been poorer was ro have lived in the
campo or to have been Haitian immigrants, and Mami
regularly offered these ro us as brutal consolation.
At least you're not in the campo. You'd t't 'o'kP
then. \We didn't eat rocks but we didn't eat meat or beans,
either. Almost everyrhing on our plates was boiled:
boiled yuca,boiled platano, boiled guineo, maybe with
a piece of cheese or a shred of bacalao. on the best days
the cheese and the platanos were fried. \(hen me and
Rafa caught our annual case of worms it was only by skimping on our dinners that Mami could afford to purchase the verminox. I can't remember how many times I crouched over our latrin€, ffir teeth clenched, watching long gray parasites slide out from becween my legs.
At Mauricio Baez, our school, the kids didn't bother us too much, even though we couldn't afford the uni- forms or proper mascoras, The uniforms Mami courd do nothing about but with rhe mascotas she impro- vised, sewing together sheets of loose paper she had col- lected from her friends. \fe each had one pencil and if we lost that pencil, like I did once, we had ro sray home from school until Mami could borrow another one for us. our profesor had us share school books with some of the other kids and these kids wouldn't look ar us, tried to hold their breath when we were close to them.
Mami worked ar Embajador Chocolate, putring in ten-' rwelve-hour shifts for almost no mon ey atall. She woke up every morning at seven and I gor up with her because I could never sleep late, and while she drew the water out of our steel drum I brought the soap from the kitchen. There vrere always leaves and spiders in the water but Mami could draw a clean bucket better than anyone. she was a dny woman and in the water closet she looked even smaller, her skin dark and her hair sur- prisingly straight and across her sromach and back the scars from the rocket attack she'd survived in 1955. None of the scars showed when she wore clothes,
A g u a n t e n d , o 7 L
I 7 2 D R O W U
though if you embraced her you'd feel them hard under
your wrist, against the soft part of your palm'
Abuelo was supposed to watch us while Mami was
at work but usually he was visiting with his friends or
out with his trap. A few years back, when the rat prob-
lem in the barrio had gotten out of hand (Those
malditos were running off with kids, Abuelo told me),
he had built himself a trap. A destroyer. He never
charged anyone for using it, something Mami would
have done; his only commission was that he be the one
ro arm the steel bar. I've seen this thing chop off fin-
gers, he explained to the borrowers but in truth he just
liked having something to do, a job of some kind. In our
house al0ne Abuelo had killed a dozen rats and in one
house on Tunti, forty of these motherfuckers were
killed during a two-night massacre. He spent both
nights vrith the Tunti people, resetting the trap and
burning the blood and when he came back he was grin-
ning and tired, his white hair everywhere, and my
morher had said, You look like you've been out gefting
A S S .
vithout Abuelo around, me and Rafa did anything
we wanted. Mostly Rafa hung out with his friend, "rr& I played with our neighbor vilfredo. Sometimes I
climbed rrees. There wasn't a tree in the barrio I
couldn't climb and on some days I spent entire after-
noons in our ffees, watching the barrio in motion and
when Abuelo was around (and awake) he talked to me
about the good old days, when a man could still make
a living from his finca, when the united States wasn,r something folks planned on.
Mami came home after sunset, just when the day,s worth of drinking was shrting ro rurn some of the neighbors wild. our barrio was not the safest of praces and Mami usually asked one of her co-workers ro ac_ company her home. These men were young, and some of them were unmarried. Mami let them wark her but she never invited them into the house. She barred the door with her arm while she said good-bye, just ro show them that nobody was getting in. Mami might have been skinny, a bad ,hirg on the Island, but she was smarr and funny and rhat's hard ro find anywhere. Men were drawn to her. From my perch I,d watched more than one of these porfirio Rubirosas sa/r See you to_ morrow' and then park his ass across the street jusr to see if she was playing hard ro ger. Mami never knew these men were (here and after about fifteen minutes of staring expectantly at the front of our house even the loneliest of these furanos put their hats on anci went home.
\7e could never get Mami to do anything after work, even cook dinner, if she didn'r first sit awhile in her rocking chair. She didn'r wanr to hear nothing about our problems,. the scratches we'd put into o.ri krr..r, who said what. She'd sit on the backpatio with her eyes closed and let the bugs bite mountains onto her arms and legs. Sometimes I crimbed the guanibana tree and when she'd open her eyes
"rrd ""t"h me smiling down
ti:
A g u a n t a n d o 7 ,
7 4 D R O W g
on her, she'd close them again and I would drop rwigs
onto her until she laughed'
2 '
\rhen times were real flojo, when the last colored bill
flew out Mami's Purse' she packed us off to our rela-
tives. She'd use wilfredo's father's phone and make the
calls early in the morning' Lying next to Rafa' I'd lis-
ten to her soft unhurried requests and Pray for the day
that our relatives would tell her to vete pa'l carajo but
that never happened in Santo Domingo'
usually Rafa stayed with our tios in ocoa and I
went to tfa Miranda's in Boca chica. Sometimes we
both wenr to ocoa. Neither Boca chica nor ocoa were
far but I never wanted to go and it normally took hours
of cajoling before I agreed to climb on the autobus.
How long? I asked Mami truculentlY'
Not long, she promised me, examining the scabs on
the back of my shaved head. A week. Two at the most.
How many daYs is that?
Ten, twenty.
You'l1 be fine, Rafa told me, spitting into the g"t$''
How do You know? You a brujo?
Yeah, he said, smiling, that's me'
He didn't mind going anywhere; he was at that age
when all he wanted was ro be away from the family,
meeting people he had not grown uP with'
Everybody needs a vacarion, Abuelo explained h"p_ pily. Enjoy yourself. you'll be down by th. warer. And just think about all the food you,ll eat.
I never wanted to be away from the family. Intu_ itively, I knew how easily distances courd harden and become permanent. on the ride to Boca chica I was ar- ways too depressed to notice the ocean, the young boys fishing and selling cocos by the side of the road, the surf exploding inro the air like a cloud of shredded silver.
Tia Miranda had a nice block house, with a shingled roof and a tiled floor that her cats had trouble negoti- ating. she had a ser of matching furnirure and a televi- sion and faucets that worked. All her neighbors were administrators and hombres de negocios and you had to walk three blocks to find any sorr of colmado. It was that sort of neighborhood. The ocean was never far away and most of the time I was down by the beach playing with the local kids, turning black in the sun.
Tia wasn't really related to Mami; she was my ma_ drina, which was why she took me and my brother in every no'w and then. No money, though. She never loaned money to anyone, even to her drunkard of an ex-husband, and Mami must have known because she never asked. Tfa was about fifty and rail-thin and couldn't put anything in her hair to make it forget it- self; her perms never lasted more than a week before the enthusiasm of her kink returned. she had two kids of her own, Yennifer and Bienvenido, but she didn't dote
A g u a n t a n d . o 7 5
7 6 D R O W F
on them the way she doted on me. Her lips were always
on me and during meals she watched me like she was
waiting for the poison to take effect.
I bet this isn't something you've eaten lately, she'd
say.
I'd shake my head and Yennifer, who was eighteen
and bleached her hair, would say, Leave him alone,
Mam6.
Tia also had a penchant for uttering cryptic one-
liners about my father, usually aft'er she'd downed a
couple of shots of Brugal.
He took, too mucb.
If onty your motber could batte noticed his true na'
ture earlier.
He sbould see bow be bas left You. The weeks couldn't Pass quickly enough. At night I
went down by the water to be alone but that wasn't
possible. Not with the tourists making ipes out of
themselves, and with the tigueres waiting to rob them.
Las Tres Marias, I pointed out to myself in the sky'
They were the only stars I knew.
But then one day I'd walk into the house from swim-
ming and Mami and Rafa would be in the living *om,
holding glasses of sweet lemon-milk.
You're back, I'd say, trying to hide the excitement
in my voice.
I hope he behaved himself, Mami would be saying
to Tia. Her hair would be cut, her nails painted; she'd
3::o1 the same red dress she wore on every one ofner outrngs.
Rafa smiling, slapping me on the shoulder, dar*er than I'd last seen him. How ya doing, yunior? you miss me or what?
I'd sit nexr to him and he,d put his arm around me and we'd listen toTiatelling Mami how welr I behaved and all the different thing, i,d earen.
, .
The year Papi came for us, the year I was nine, we ex_ pected nothing. There were no signs ro speak of. Do_ minican chocorate was not especially in demand that season and the puerto Rican owners laid off the ma_jority of the employees for a couple of months. Good for the owners' un desastre for us. After that, Mami was around the house at the time. unlike Rafa, who hid his shit well, I was always in trouble. From Or".hi;;-;;; vilfredo to chasing somebody's chickens unt' they passed out from exhaustion. Mami wasn,t a hitter; she preferred having me kneel on pebbles with my face against a wall' on the afrernoon that the retter arrived, she caught me trying to stab our mango rree with Abuelo's machete. Back to the corner. Abuelo was sup_ posed to make sure r served my ten minutes but he was too busy whittling to bother. He let me up aftexthree minutes and I hid in the bedroom until he said, OK, in
A g u a n t e n d o T 7
7 8 D R O W E
a voice that Mami could hear. Then I went to the
smokehouse, rubbing my knees, and Mami looked up
from peeling platanos.
You better learn, muchacho, or you'll be kneeling
the rest of your life.
I watched the rain that had been falling all day. No,
I won't, I told her.
You talking back to me?
She whacked me on the nalgas and I ran outside to
look for Wilfredo. I found him under the eaves of his
house, the wind throwing pieces of rain onto his dark-
dark face. \(e shook hands elaborately. I called him
Muhammad Ali and he called me Sinbad; these were
our Northamerican names. Ve were both in shorts; a
disintegrating pair of sandals clung to his toes.
\fhat you got? I asked him.
Boats, he said, holding up the paper wedges his fa-
ther had folded for us. This one's mine. '
What does the winner get?
A gold trophy, about this big.
OK, cabr6n, I'm in. Don't let go before me.
OK, he said; stepping to the other side of the gutter.
We had a clear run down to the street corner. $o cars
were parked on our side, except for a drowned
Monarch and there was plenty of room between its
tires and the curb for us to navigate through.
We completed five runs before I noticed that some-
body had parked their battered motorcycle in front of
my house.
Vho's thar? \Tilfredo asked me, dropping his soggy boat into the water again.
I don't know, I said. Go find out. I was already on my way. The mororcycle driver
came out before I could reach our front door. He mounted quiclily and was gone in a cloud of exhaust.
Mami and Abuelo were on rhe back pario, conver_ sating. Abuelo was angry and his cane-currer's hands were clenched. I hadn't seen Abuelo bravo in a long time, nor since his produce truck had been stolen by two of his old employees.
Go outside, Mami told me. Vho was that?
Did I tell you something? \(as that somebody we know? Outside, Mami said, her voice a murder abour ro
happen.
Vhat's wrong? \Wilfredo asked me when I rejoined him. His nose was srarring to run.
I don't know, I said. \ilhen Rafa showed himself an hour larer, swagger_
ing in from a game of pool, I'd already tried to speak to Mami and Abuelo like five times. The last time, Mami had landed a slap on my neck and vilfredo told me that he could see the imprinrs of her fingers on my skin. I told it all to Rafa.
That doesn't sound good. He threw out his gumer- ing cigarette. You wait here. He went around the back
A g u a n t a n d o 7 9
8 0 D R O W N
and I heard his voice and then Mami's. No yelling, rro
argument.
Come on, he said, She wants us to wait in our room.
vhv? That's what she said. You want me to tell her no?
Not while she's mad.
Exactly.
I slapped \Wilfredo's hand and walked in the front
door with Rafa. \7hat's going on?
She got a letter from Papi.
Really? Is there money?
N o .
Vhat does it say?
How should I know?
FIe sat down on his side of the bed and produced a
pack of cigarettes. I watched him go through the elab-
orate ritual of lighting up-the flip of the thin cigarrillo
into his lips and then the spark, a single practiced snap
of the thumb.
Where'd you get that lighter?
Mi novia gave it to me.
Tell her to give me oRe.
Here. He tossed it to me. You cang[ave it if you
s h u t u p .
Y e a h ?
See. He reached to take it. You already lost it.
I shut my mouth and he settled back down on the
b e d .
H.y, Sinbad, S/ilfredo said-, his head appearing inour window. .$flhat,s going on? My father wrote us a letter! Rafa rapped me on the side of my head. This is afam-ily affair, yunior. Don,r blab ir all over rhe place.S/ilfredo smiled. I ain,t going ro tell anybody. of course you're nor, R;fa said. Br..ur. if you doI'll chop your fucking head off. I rried to wait it out. Ourthan a secdon or the house #Til.ril,,1li,;'J
off with planrrs of wood. In one corner Mami kept analtar with candres and acigar in a stone mortar and aglass of warer and rwo toy ioldiers we courd not touchever and above the bed hung our mosquito netting,poised to drop on us like a r,.i. I lay back and listened
::#. rain brushing back .r,d fo.th ,.ro* o,, r zinc
Mami served dinner, watched as we ate it, and thenordered us back into our room. r'd never seen her soblank-faced' so stiff, and when I tried to hug her shepushed me away' Back to bed, she said. Back to listen-ing to the rain. I must have frll.r, asleep because whenI woke up Rafa was rooking ar me pensivery and it wasdark outside and noboat .ir. i" the house was awake.I read the lerer, l. :.ld
me quietly. He was sittingcross-legged on the bed, hi, ,ib, Iaddering his chest inshadows. papi says he,s .r_i;;. Reallv ?
A g u a n t a n d . o g l
8 z D R O W N
Don't believe it.
whv? It ain't the first time he's made that promise, Yunior.
Oh, I said.
Outside Sefrora Tejada started singing to herself,
badly.
Rafa?
Yeah ?
I didn't know you could read.
I was nine and couldn't even write my own name.
Yeah, he said quietly. Something I picked rp. Now
go to bed.
4 .
Rafa was right. It wasn't the first time. Two years after
he left, Papi wrote her saying he was coming for us and
like an innocent Mami believed him. After being alone
for two years she was ready to believe anything. She
showed everybody his letter and even spoke to him on
the phone. He.wasn't an easy man to reach but on this
occasion she got through and he reassured her that yes,
he was coming. His word was his Wd.
He even spoke
to us, something that Rafa vaguely remembers, a lot of
crap about how much he loved us and that we should
take care of Mami.
She prepared a party, even lined up to have a goat
there for the slaughtering. She bought me and Rafa new
clothes and when he didn't show she sent everybody
home' sold the goat back to its owner and chen armostlost her mind. I remember the heaviness of that monrh,rhicker than armost anyrhing. vhen Abuelo tried toreach our father at rhe phone numbers he'd refr noneof the men who'd rived with him knew anything aboutwhere he had gone. It didn't herp matters rhar me and Rafa kept asking
her when we were leaving for the Shres, *h.rri.pi wascoming' I am tord that I wanted to see his picture ar-mosr eyery day' It's hard for me ro imagine myserf thisw"f t crazy about papi. \'hen ,h. ,.frrJ.d ,o ,ho* _.rhe photos I threw myself about lik. I *;;;; ;r.. AndI screamed' Even as a boy my voice carried farther thana man's, turned heads on the street. First Mami trjed slapping me quiet but that did lit_tle. Then she locked -;; .,iy ,oo_ where rny brother
told me to cool it but I shook my head and screamed louder' I was inconsorable. I learned ro rear my clothes because this was the one thing I had whose destruction hurt my mother. She took rilLy shirts from my room,left me only with shorts which were hard to damage with_bare fingers. I pulled a nail from our waii andpunched a dozen holes in each pair, until Rafa cuffed me and said, Enough, you linle puro.
Mami spent a lot of time out of the house, ar work or down by the Malecdn, where she could warch thewaves shred themselves against the rocks, ;;;;. menoffered cigarettes rhat she smok.d quietry. I don,t knowhow long this went on. Months, maybe three. Then.
A g u a n t e n d o g ,
8 4 D R O W F
one morning in early spring, when the amapolas were
flushed with their flame leaves, I woke up and found
Abuelo alone in the house.
She's gone, he said. So cry all you want, malcriado.
I learned later from Rafa that she was in Ocoa with
our tios.
Mami's time away was never discussed, then or now. \When she returned to us, five weeks later, she was thin-
ner and darker and her hands were heavy with calluses.
She looked younger, like the girl who had arrived in
Santo Domingo fifteen years before, burning to be mar-
ried. Her friends came and sat and talked 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.
She didn't treat me badly on her return but we were
no longer as close; she did not call me her Prieto or
bring me chocolates from herwork. That seemed to suit
her fine. And I was young enough to grow out of her
rejection. I still had baseball and my brother. I still had
trees to climb and lizards to tear apart.
Sts 5 .
The week after the letter came I watched her from my
trees. She ironed cheese sandwiches in paper bags for
our lunch, boiled platanos for our dinner. Our dirty
clothes were pounded clean in the concrete trough on
the side of the outhouse. Every time she thought I wasscrabbling roo high in the branches she called me backto the ground. you ain,t Spiderman, you know, shesaid, rapping rhe top of my h."d with h., krr.kles. Onthe afternoons that v'fr.do', father came over to praydominos and talk poritics, she sat with him and Abueroand laughed at.their campo stories. she seemed morenormal to me but I was careful not ,o Ororroke her.There was still something volcani. ,borr'rlr. *ry rh.held herself.
on satu rday a late hurricane passed close to rhecapital and the next day folks were tarking about howhigh the waves were down by the Malec6n. S";;;; dren had been lost, swep, o,r, to sea and Abuelo shookhis head when hr h.uri the news. you'd rhink the seawould be sick of us by now, he said.
That Sunday Mami gathered us on rhe back pado.\fle're taking a d,ay off,Jh. .rrrrounced. A day for us asa family. \ffe don,t need a day off, I said and Rafa hit meharder than normal. Shut up, OK? I tried ro hit him bacrr but Abuero grabbed us bothby the arm. Don't make me have to crack your headsopen, he said. She dressed and put her hair up and even paid for aconcho insread of crowding us into an autobus. Thedriver acrually wiped ,h. ,."i, down with a towel whilewe waited and I said ro him, It don,t look dirry, and he
A g u e n t a n d o g 5
8 5 D n o w t r
said, Believe me, muchacho, it is. Mami looked beauti-
ful and many of the men she passed wanted to know
where she was heading. \we couldn't afford it but she
paid for a movie anyway. Tbe Five Deadly Venoms'
Kung fu movies were the only ones the theaters played
in those days. I sat berween Mami and Abuelo. Rafa
moved to the back, joining a grouP of boys who were
smoking, and arguing with them about some baseball
player on LiceY.
After the show Mami boughr us flavored ices and
while we are them we watched the salamanders crawl-
ing around on the sea rocks. The waves were tremendous
and some Parts of George \flashington were flooded
and cars were churning through the water slowly'
A man in a red guayabera stopped by us' He lit acig-
arerre and turned to my mother, his collar turned uP by
the wind. So where are You from?
Santiago, she answered.
Rafa snorted.
You must be visiting relatives then'
Yes, she said. MY husband's familY'
He nodded' He was dark-skinned, with light-
colored sPots about his neck and hands' His fingers
trembled slightly as he works*the cigarette to his lips.
I hoped he,d drop his cigarette, iust so I could see what
the ocean would do to it. we had to wait almost a full
minute before he said buenos dias and walked a.way. '\ilhat
a crazy, Abuelo said'
Rafa lifted up his fist. You should have given me the
signal. I would have kung-fu-punched him in the head. Your father came at me betrer than that, Mami said. Abuelo stared down at the back of his hands, at the
long white hairs rhar covered them. He looked embar- rassed.
Your father asked me if I wanted a cigarette and then he gave me the whole pack to show me that he was a big man.
I held on to the rail. Here?
Oh no, she said. She rurned around and looked out over the traffic. That part of the city isir't here anymore.
6 .
Rafa used to think that he'd come in the night, like
Jesus, that one morning we'd find him ar our breakfast table, unshaven and smiling. Too real ro be believed. He'll be taller, Rafa predicted. Northamerican food makes people that way. He'd surprise Mami on her way back from work, pick her up in a German car, Say nothing to the man walking her home. She would not know what to say and neither would he. They'd drive down to the Malec5n and he'd take her ro see a movie, because that's how they met and that's how he'd want to start it again.
I would see him coming from my rrees. A man with swinging hands and eyes like mine. He'd have gold on his fingers, cologne on his neck, a silk shirt, good leather shoes. The whole barrio would come our ro greer him.
A g u a n t e n d , o B 7
8 8 D R O W I [
He'd kiss Mami and Rafa and shake Abuelo's reluctant
hand and then he'd see me behind everyone else.'W'hat's
wrong with that one? he'd ask and Mami would say, He
doesn't know you. Squatting down so that his pale yel-
low dress socks showed, he'd trace the scars on my
arms and on my head. Yunior, he'd finally say, his srub-
bled face in front of mine, his thumb tracing a circle on
my cheek.
&