Drown

The narrator opens the story by stating that that his mother told him that someone named Beto is home. Although his mother waited for a response, the narrator merely continued to watch TV. He recalls that Beto used to come over and rouse both he and his mother from their respective rooms with “a voice that crackled and made you think of uncles or grandfathers” (91). The narrator says that Beto is a pato (English: homosexual) now, and implies that they are no longer friends because of it. He waits until his mother is sleeping to leave the house and look for Beto.

The narrator recalls that during the summer before Beto left for college, the two young men would get into trouble around the neighborhood: stealing, breaking windows, and urinating on people’s steps. He recalls that Beto was delirious about leaving their decrepit neighborhood, which he hated everything about, especially the town dump. Beto told the narrator that he didn’t know how the narrator could stand living there, and that he would just find any job and leave, if he were the narrator. The narrator would just respond with a vague “yeah”—he had one year of school left and, unlike Beto, and had no promises or prospects outside of his current life.

The narrator continues to recall the last summer that he spent with Beto. They would spend days at the mall or playing stickball while waiting for it to be night. He recalls the oppressive heat and how families would assemble in living rooms around televisions, the blue glow of the screens washing against the brick. He states, “From my family apartment you could smell the pear trees that had been planted years ago, four to a court, probably to save us all from asphyxiation” (92). As soon as night would fall, he and Beto would join all of the local young people in jumping the gate of the community center pool and swimming. There, they would jump from diving boards and horse around in the deep end. Around midnight, neighborhood abuelas (English: grandmothers) would yell at all the kids to go home.

Back in the present day, the narrator passes by Beto’s darkened apartment and puts his ear to the door. All he hears is the buzz of the air conditioner. He intimates that he hasn’t decided whether he will speak to Beto. He muses that he could leave now, and two years of not speaking to him could turn into three.

From four blocks away, the narrator can hear the racket coming from the swimming pool. He wonders if he was ever that loud. Nothing much has changed since his days at the pool and he instinctually feels that Beto will be there. He walks over and hops the fence, feeling stupid when he lands sprawled-out on the grass. He self-consciously observes that he is among one of the oldest people there, then strips off his shirt and dives into the water. Many of the youth at the pool are the younger siblings of the people he used to go to school with: “Two of them swim past, black and Latino, and they see [him], recognizing the guy who sells them their shitty dope” (93). He intimates that the crackheads have their own dealer named Lucero, referring to the narrator of “Aguantado.”

The narrator relishes the water and the graceful swimming abilities he has retained. He observes that everything above the water is loud and bright, while everything below is muted. The cops could show up at any time, scattering the crowd with searchlights, and kids would begin running and cursing at them.

When the narrator tires he moves to the shallow end, and sits near the sign that runs the pool during the day. It reads: “No Horseplay, No Running, No Defecating, No Urinating, No Expectorating”; at the bottom, someone has added “No Whites. No Fat Chiks” (93-94). He recalls that Beto asked him what the word “expectorating” meant. When the narrator refused to tell him where he learned the word, Beto became annoyed. The narrator remembers that Beto was always annoyed when the narrator knew something Beto didn’t. The narrator then recalls that Beto held him under the water when he refused to say where he learned the word. Beto was wearing a cross and cutoff jeans, and was stronger than the narrator. Even then, though, the narrator did not tell him where he learned the word—Beto thought the narrator couldn’t read.

The narrator then shifts to telling us about his home life. He and his mother live alone. She pays for the rent and groceries, while he pays for the phone bill, and, occasionally, the cable bill. She moves about the house like a ghost and is so quiet that the narrator is sometimes startled to find her in the apartment: “She has discovered the secret to silence: pouring café without a splash, walking between rooms as if gliding on a cushion of felt, crying without a sound” (94).

When he comes home from the pool, his mother is still awake. They watch the Spanish-language news together, because it has “drama for her, violence for [him]” (95). The story is about a seven-year-old who has survived a seven-story fall. The narrator’s mother asks him if he has found Beto. He lies, telling her that he didn’t look for him. She responds that that’s too bad, and tells the narrator that Beto was telling her that he might be starting at a school for business. The narrator dismisses the comment, then intimates that she has never understood why the two young men have stopped talking. She tells the narrator that Beto asked what the narrator was up to. She says that she told Beto that the narrator was fine. The narrator says that she should have told him that he left town. His mother says that the narrator should be more like herself and his father: she was angry at his father, but the two of them are still on speaking terms. The narrator repeatedly tries to silence her by saying that he is watching television.

On Saturdays, the narrator’s mother asks him to take her to the mall. He obliges, even though neither of them have a car and they have to walk through redneck territory to catch the M15 bus. Before they leave, she has him make sure all the windows are locked, recalling that someone named Lorena once got beaten and locked up after intruders had made their way in through one of her windows. Although the narrator could be making a fortune dealing drugs on a Saturday, he doesn’t begrudge taking his mother to the mall, because it is one of the few occasions for which she will dress up and put on makeup. The narrator recognizes a few of the kids on the bus and prays that none of them try to score drugs from him. His mother watches the traffic and doesn’t say a word.

When they get to the mall the narrator gives his mother fifty dollars, and hates the thought of her picking through sale bins. His mother folds up the bills and they agree to meet back up at three. He recalls that his father used to give her one hundred dollars at the end of every summer for his school clothes, and that she would take nearly a week to spend it, even though it was never much more than a few t-shirts and a couple pairs of jeans.

On his own, the narrator wanders through the stores, staying in sight of the cashiers so that they don’t have reason to follow him. He recalls that he and Beto used to rob stores of hundreds of dollars of merchandise, back when security wasn’t as tight. They perfected their own system by acting casual and lingering—pretending to shop for girlfriends—instead of quick, flighty, and suspicious like the rookie thieves. Beto would even linger and talk to mall security guards with a bag full of stolen loot: “When he finished he smiled, swinging his shopping bag up to hit me”(97). The narrator remembers that he told Beto that he was going to have to stop messing around—he’d be sent to jail. Beto replied that the guards didn’t call the police on shoplifters—they left the discipline up to fathers of the offenders. The narrator expressed fear of his father’s strength, while Beto coolly remarked that his own father had arthritis. 

The narrator recounts that his mother never suspected that he was shoplifting, while his father caught on. His father told him that the authorities would catch him one day, and that he himself would show the authorities everything the narrator had stolen when they did.

The narrator then chronicles the day that he and Beto were caught. They had stolen four issues of Playboy and a large quantity of audiobooks. When a woman stepped in front of them and informed them that she was going to have to check their bags, the narrator walked quickly away from her, as if she were a panhandler. Beto, however, got polite with her right before slamming the bag in her face, knocking her to the ground. Security found them across from the bus stop, hiding under a Jeep Cherokee. They had been too scared to board the bus, thinking that a plainclothes officer would be waiting there to apprehend them. The narrator recounts that when the mall security officer tapped the fender of the Cherokee with a nightstick and told them to come out, slowly, the narrator had begun to cry: “Beto didn’t say a word, his face stretched out and gray, his hand squeezing mine, the bones in our fingers pressing together” (99).

The narrator provides an overview of his current routine. At night, he drinks with two people named Alex and Danny at a dive bar (The Malibou Bar) full of “washouts and the sucias [they] can con into joining [them]” (99). They drink excessively. When it gets too rowdy, the narrator makes his way back home, through the fields that surround the apartments. During these times, he observes the Raritan river and also the defunct dump, which was shut down years ago.

In the morning, he rises early to run, as is his routine. His mother, already dressed for her housecleaning job, wordlessly points to the food she has prepared for him. While running, he regularly avoids the army recruiter who prowls the neighborhood—a white man whose Southern accent causes the locals to laugh. He recalls that this recruiter has tried to draw him into the army with promises of a stable job and a house, car, gun, wife, discipline, and loyalty. The narrator confesses that, although he hides in the bushes when he sees the recruiter’s car, he is getting so unhappy and desperate that he just might take the recruiter’s bait: “[The recruiter] won’t have to show me his Desert Eagle or flash the photos of the skinny Filipino girls sucking dick. He’ll only have to smile and name the places and I’ll listen”(100-101).

When the narrator returns from his morning run, he hears his mother whispering in the kitchen. She sounds hurt and/or nervous. For a moment, he is terrified that Beto is in there with her. Then, he realizes that she’s on the phone with his father. He describes his father as a sad man who calls his mother, begs her for money, and promises her that he will leave the woman he is living with in Florida if she moves down there. The narrator has warned her that his father is lying, but his mother still calls him. After she does, “his words coil inside of her, wrecking her for days” (101). The narrator walks into the apartment and his mother opens the refrigerator in an attempt to drown out her voice. He walks over and hangs up the phone, telling her that that is enough.

The narrator again switches to recounting his time with Beto. They would hang out at the bus stop together in the mornings. When the bus would arrive, the narrator would often decide not to go to school, and Beto would promise to see him after school. The narrator, noting that being truant without a car was tricky, would watch a lot of TV at home, go to the mall, or to the library; at the last location, he could watch documentary films for free. He’d come home late in order to avoid being seen by any fellow students on the bus. He’d usually find Beto in his home or at the swings, although sometimes he’d be out visiting his friends in other neighborhoods.

The narrator then shifts to explaining his current evening activities in more detail. Some nights, he, Alex, and Danny drive to New Brunswick. They visit the Melody and the Roxy—two bars—and stare at the college girls who never dance with them. When the bars close, they go to the Franklin Diner and gorge themselves on pancakes. After they smoke a pack of cigarettes, they head home. They drive past what the narrator calls “the fag bar,” which never seems to close. Sometimes, Alex stops the car by the side of the road and beckons to one of the many gay men who stand around the parking lot, drinking and talking. He flashes a plastic pistol at them to scare them.

The narrator then tells us that he and Beto were sexually intimate twice—although in the sentence he does not name it directly. All he says is “Twice…[t]hat’s it,” as a prelude to his recollection (103).

The first time the two were together, they were watching Beto’s father’s pornography together, as was a regular habit, when Beto reached into the narrator’s shorts. The narrator asked Beto what he was doing, but Beto didn’t stop. The narrator had kept his eyes on the television, too scared by what Beto was doing to stop watching. The narrator came very quickly, and left immediately afterward. Beto didn’t say a word to him and continued watching the porn film. The next day, Beto called, and the narrator acted unnerved, although he did not join him at the mall or anywhere else. The narrator’s mother noticed that something was wrong, and when he disrespectfully told her to leave him alone, his father—who was home for a visit—slapped him. The narrator confesses that he spent a lot of time in the basement that day, terrified that he would end up gay. However, because Beto was his best friend and that mattered more than anything to him in those days, he journeyed out to the pool that night. There, he found Beto. They swam and didn’t talk much, and watched a group of boys steal a lone girl’s bikini top and refuse to give it back. She eventually left without it, after which the boys tried it on over their own chests.

Beto and the narrator then went to Beto’s place. His parents worked late, so they were alone: “We sat in front of the television, in our towels, his hands bracing against my abdomen and thighs. I’ll stop if you want, he said and I didn’t respond. After I was done, he laid his head in my lap” (105).

He recalls that Beto would leave for college three weeks after this encounter. The narrator and Beto had already visited the college to which Beto was bound. The narrator remembers the campus as beautiful. He recollects that his high school teachers used to crowd all the students into the teacher’s lounge every time that a space shuttle took off from Florida. They’d tell the students that they were like the rockets—a few of them would make it and become like orbiters, but the majority of them would burn out and go nowhere. The narrator pictures himself in the latter group. He recalls that, following the sexual encounter, he had fallen asleep when the hallway door crashed open and badly spooked both boys. Even though Beto had assured him that it was just the neighbors and laughed, the narrator, who “nearly cut his dick off struggling with his shorts” after the scare, put his clothes on and left in a hurry (106).

Back in the present day, the narrator spends his day dealing drugs near his home. He thinks that he sees Beto in Beto’s father’s Cadillac, but isn’t sure. When he gets home, he cleans his filthy sneakers. His mother has opened all the windows in lieu of turning on the air conditioning. She’s prepared dinner for both of them and bought him two blue t-shirts that were on a two-for-one sale.

They watch a classic movie dubbed into Spanish together. The narrator observes that the actors are unnatural and melodramatic: he can’t imagine any real person acting the way that they do. He then gives his mother the money he has earned from his drug trade. The narrator intimates that the two-hour film breeds friendliness between himself and his mother. Near the end of the film, as the heroes are about to die under a hail of bullets, his mother falls asleep. The narrator watches her eyelids tremble and muses that she is dreaming of Boca Raton and strolling under the jacarandas with his father. He recalls that Beto used to say, “You can’t be anywhere forever”, which is also what Beto said to the narrator on the day that Beto left for college. On that day, Beto gave the narrator a book as a gift. However, the narrator did not read what Beto had written inside of it—he threw the book away right after Beto was gone.

The narrator lets his mother sleep until the end of the movie. When he finally wakes her, she tells him that he better check the windows. He promises her that he will.