Drown

Yunior tells us that his mother’s youngest sister, Yrma, had arrived in the U.S.—after implied struggle—in the year that this story takes place. Yrma and her husband, whom Yunior calls tío (English: uncle) Miguel, moved into an apartment in the Bronx. Yunior’s father has determined that the whole family should have a party, and everyone else “thought it a dope idea” (23). This tío Miguel is ostensibly the same uncle that Yunior mentions in “Ysrael”, placing “Fiesta, 1980” at a later point in the chronology of Yunior’s childhood. In “Ysrael,” Rafa and Yunior lived with their mother in Santo Domingo, and Madai, their younger sister, has not yet been born. In this story, the entire family has moved from Santo Domingo and joined Ramón in New Jersey.

Yunior narrates that on the day of the party, his father (whom he calls “Papi”, and whose real name is Ramón) comes home at six o’clock from work—right on time. Everyone is dressed and ready to go when Papi comes home: if they weren’t, he would beat them. Papi enters the house without talking to anybody—even pushing his mother aside—and heads directly to the shower. Rafa and Yunior exchange knowing looks, as they both know that Papi has just been with his mistress, a Puerto Rican woman, and that he wants to wash off the evidence quickly.