Drown Read Online Free PDF Page B

your brother gives you any food, I’ll beat him too. Right here in front of everybody. ¿Entiendes?
    I nodded again. I wanted to kill him and he must have sensed it because he gave my head a little shove.
    All the kids watched me come in and sit down in front of the TV.
    What’s wrong with your dad? Leti asked.
    He’s a dick, I said.
    Rafa shook his head. Don’t say that shit in front of people.
    Easy for you to be nice when you’re eating, I said.
    Hey, if I was a pukey little baby, I wouldn’t get no food either.
    I almost said something back but I concentrated on the TV. I wasn’t going to start it. No fucking way. So I watched Bruce Lee beat Chuck Norris into the floor of the Colosseum and tried to pretend that there was no food anywhere in the house. It was Tía who finally saved me. She came into the living room and said, Since you ain’t eating, Yunior, you can at least help me get some ice.
    I didn’t want to, but she mistook my reluctance for something else.
    I already asked your father.
    She held my hand while we walked; Tía didn’t have any kids but I could tell she wanted them. She was the sort of relative who always remembered your birthday but who you only went to visit because you had to. We didn’t get past the first-floor landing before she opened her pocketbook and handed me the first of three pastelitos she had smuggled out of the apartment.
    Go ahead, she said. And as soon as you get inside make sure you brush your teeth.
    Thanks a lot, Tía, I said.
    Those pastelitos didn’t stand a chance.
    She sat next to me on the stairs and smoked her cigarette. All the way down on the first floor and we could still hear the music and the adults and the television. Tía looked a ton like Mami; the two of them were both short and light-skinned. Tía smiled a lot and that was what set them apart the most.
    How is it at home, Yunior?
    What do you mean?
    How’s it going in the apartment? Are you kids OK?
    I knew an interrogation when I heard one, no matter how sugar-coated it was. I didn’t say anything. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my tía, but something told me to keep my mouth shut. Maybe it was family loyalty, maybe I just wanted to protect Mami or I was afraid that Papi would find out—it could have been anything really.
    Is your mom all right?
    I shrugged.
    Have there been lots of fights?
    None, I said. Too many shrugs would have been just as bad as an answer. Papi’s at work too much.
    Work, Tía said, like it was somebody’s name she didn’t like.
     
     
     
    Me and Rafa, we didn’t talk much about the Puerto Rican woman. When we ate dinner at her house, the few times Papi had taken us over there, we still acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. Pass the ketchup, man. No sweat, bro. The affair was like a hole in our living room floor, one we’d gotten so used to circumnavigating that we sometimes forgot it was there.
     
     
     
    By midnight all the adults were crazy dancing. I was sitting outside Tía’s bedroom—where Madai was sleeping—trying not to attract attention. Rafa had me guarding the door; he and Leti were in there too, with some of the other kids, getting busy no doubt. Wilquins had gone across the hall to bed so I had me and the roaches to mess around with.
    Whenever I peered into the main room I saw about twenty moms and dads dancing and drinking beers. Every now and then somebody yelled, ¡Quisqueya! And then everybody else would yell and stomp their feet. From what I could see my parents seemed to be enjoying themselves.
    Mami and Tía spent a lot of time side by side, whispering, and I kept expecting something to come of this, a brawl maybe. I’d never once been out with my family when it hadn’t turned to shit. We weren’t even theatrical or straight crazy like other families. We fought like sixth-graders, without any real dignity. I guess the whole night I’d been waiting for a blowup, something between Papi and Mami. This was how I always figured Papi would be