Puzzle Pieces Coming Together

As we wrap up our discussion on Junot Diaz’s Drown, I find it interesting how Diaz (slash possibly Yunior) is able to confuse our consciouses by painting us a broken up picture. Throughout the novel, we have become immersed in Yunior and his family’s life, following them from when they were together in the Dominican Republic, to when the father left them, to when they were in America. These stories all revolve around the situation of the father heading off to America, leaving his family behind in Santo Domingo until he can bring them over, and then a snippet of their lives in the States. As readers, we’ve been given multiple sides to the situation, having the last piece of the puzzle handed to us in the last story, “Negocios”. This final story is really what creates this shroud of confusing where there was once clarity. Initially, I believed Papi to be a very disgraceful character. He left his family alone to basically fend for themselves in the Dominican Republic while he went off to try and make a life for himself in America, promising that once he had a sturdy foot in the door, he would bring his family over to the States to live with him. In the story, “Aguantando”, we get the side of Mami, who is drowning trying to keep her family afloat while Papi is away overseas. She works long hours at a chocolate factory all year around, having to send her two boys off to their grandparent’s house over the summer because she doesn’t have the time to watch over them. One of the only things that keeps her moving forward is idea, the promise, that her husband will return and bring them to the promise land. That her struggles aren’t in vain, and that she will live a much happier, well provided for life in a couple of years. Yunior, having very little to no memory of his father, remembers thinking that, “this waiting for him was all a sham” (70). Seeing his mother suffer, while assume that his father was making a new life for himself in the States, really shed some bad light on Papi, both for Yunior and for us and readers.

Jump forward a few years, when Papi retrieves the family and brings them to America where they can spend a life together. Everything is okay now, right? No. On the surface, they look like any normal, happy family. But, on the inside, there is a lot of tension surfacing between Mami and Papi. All the family members know that Papi is cheating on Mami. (Assumably Mami knows too, for it isn’t the first time it has happened). It’s no longer a matter of if, but rather, when this family will fall apart. Later on, after reading “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, we learn that the father does leave Mami, Rafa, and Yunior, assumably for this other woman who he’s been seeing on the side. We can also see how this sort of change has affected the family, as Yunior seems to have conflicting personalities of both his mother and father mixed into him, battling inside as he tries to contemplate his masculinity while also trying to treat a girl right. As stated in one of my earlier blog posts, it would be interesting to see which one of his personalities will win over, if any does. (And as stated before, I suppose that question is somewhat answered in Diaz’s novel, This is How You Lose Her).

But, after finishing the final story in Drown, we have been given the final piece to the pizzle. So far, we were given Rafa’s and Mami’s perspectives, all filtered through the eyes and narration of Yunior, but now we have Papi’s view of the situation, again, also filtered through Yunior’s eyes and narration. (This means that we are being given Yunior’s perspective throughout the novel in almost every story). Before reading “Negocios”, my thoughts on Papi weren’t very positive. I believed he was a sleazy, lying man who didn’t appreciate what his wife went through trying to keep his own children alive while he was kicking it in America. But, after reading “Negocios” I find myself sympathising with Papi, not to the point where I agree with all of his actions, but I understand him a little better. While in America, Papi, Ramon, started at the bottom of the food chain. Even with balancing two jobs, he still wasn’t able to pay rent some of the time. Initially, he didn’t have any connections and therefore had to fend for himself in the world. His english wasn’t very good, so he couldn’t communicate with people very well. All in all, his situation was very rough and he had to work his ass off in order to just get a single step up from dirt bottom.

He then tries to find someone. He attempts to make a business deal by paying for a man to find him a woman whom he can marry and then having someone to lean on, assumably financially. When this idea falls through, he meets Nilda. Although I don’t think all of his and Nilda’s relationship was entirely business motivated, in the end, I think that’s how Ramon say it as. He saw it as negocios, just business. He needed someone to help him pay the rent, or in her case, pay the whole damn thing. This allowed him to be able to save up his money, potentially for a ticket to bring his family over and also a place of his own to stay. She also helped him with his english, so he could then make more connections which could later on help him get a better job. Little did she know, even though she was just trying to be a loving wife, she helped him become able to provide for himself and his family later on in life. At the end of their relationship, Ramon realizes that he wants his family with him in America, and so he gradually moves his stuff out of Nilda’s place and into a place of his own. This kind of move leaves me conflicted because, even though he is doing this so he can bring his family to come live with him in America, a goal he has had since the beginning, he is hurting Nilda in the process, a woman who has helped Ramon when he was down and nursed him to his health, literally and figuratively.

So, even with knowing how things will pan out in the end, I still find myself able to understand what Papi did in America, and almost able to accept it. He did what he had to do to get by and bring his family to come live with him. Yes, it doesn’t work out in the end anyways, for he finds a new girl to cheat with, even when Mami is with him in America. But, he works very hard to get his feet on the ground and find a stable job, a task that he found was not easy, especially while he was on his own. Normally, I wouldn’t condone a man cheating on a his wife (and vice versa), but with Yunior as the narrator, I am able to understand how things can lead to one another, and how desperate times call for desperate measures. Yunior’s narrator of this whole situation is a very understanding one in it of itself. He presents all the facts in a somewhat unbiased nature, allowing the narrator to form his/her own opinions. He embraces the fact that you can’t know someone fully until you have the facts from both sides. By knowing both sides of the story, we can see that both Mami and Papi struggled through this situation. Also, personally, I believe that their relationship was doomed before Papi traveled to America. After he cheated the first time, Mami never learned to trust/love him the same way as before. In her mind, he wasn’t the same man who offered her a whole pack of cigarettes years before. He had basically moved on from the marriage long before he found Nilda or his new girl and he was just in it for the money that Mami’s father had. It’s sad situation, but one can understand the actions of both party members. But, with Yunior’s narrator, we get an unbiased, understanding view and are able to see how one thing can led to another in this family, and know why things turned out the way they did. Tying back to the title, Drown, this could be how each character was finally able to get some fresh air at the surface. While together, both Mami and Papi were drowning each other, trying to fix something that was past the stage of broken. After separating, they are both able to get breaths of fresh air. Even if this leaves Mami in a state of poverty in the States where she has to live off of governmental support, she is free and doesn’t have to wait on Papi any more.