Summary
At the beginning of "Aurora," the narrator, Lucero, and his best friend Cut go to pick up a shipment of drugs from their Peruvian supplier. They sort the drugs over the course of four hours, and as they do so, they get high. Lucero expects that Aurora, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, will show up because it is a Friday, which is when Lucero and Cut usually pick up drugs. Lucero reveals that they haven't seen each other since last week, when Aurora left long scratches on his arm. He hears her tapping on his window around midnight. Cut tells Lucero not to let her in and Lucero reveals that Cut is "not a fan of Aurora" (48). When Aurora leaves messages for Lucero with Cut, he never gives them to Lucero, and Lucero has to find them "in his pockets and under [their] couches" (48). Lucero meets Aurora in the utility room, which Cut and Lucero are using illegally after Cut broke the lock. He sees that she's skinny and reveals that she was released from juvie six months ago. Lucero notices that Aurora "has the shakes," which makes it hard for him to make any sexual advances on her. Lucero notices that she's "living out of her bag again" and he asks her where she has been. Lucero makes a move on Aurora, and they have sex. He wakes up the next morning to Cut's salsa music and discovers that she has searched and emptied his pants pockets.
Lucero and Cut go on their rounds to deal drugs. He notices that they are "dropping rocks all over" and that "everybody's buying for the holiday weekend" (50). While they deal drugs, Cut gives Lucero a hard time about his encounter with Aurora the previous night. Cut says he's surprised that Lucero hasn't gotten AIDS yet. Lucero notes that none of their customers are "anybody special" (51). Mostly, they deal to kids and older people. Lucero describes how the drug scene in their town has changed over the years and notes that even though they are making good money, it has gotten more difficult for them to deal drugs and Cut has already been stabbed once. Lucero and Cut work all day, and when Cut leaves to visit his girlfriend, Lucero deals alone.
Lucero thinks about his relationship with Aurora. Their relationship seems explosive and toxic. Lucero reveals that when Aurora asks him to promise her love, his mind wanders to other girls. That evening, Aurora watches TV, sharing a case of Budweiser and doing heroin. Aurora begins to kiss Lucero's face, and he reveals that she "once tried to jam a pen" into his thigh (53). That night, however, he had physically beat her. Lucero falls asleep before Aurora. When he opens his eyes again, she and Cut are having sex. He falls back asleep and wakes again to see her snoring on the couch. Lucero reveals that she's "barely seventeen" (53). When he wakes up again, he is in the tub with blood on his chin, but he can't remember how he got there. He goes into living room, hoping to see Aurora there. When he finds that she is absent, he punches himself in the face "just to clear [his] head" (53).
Lucero reveals that he and Aurora only see each other about twice a month. He thinks that they had a closer relationship before she went to juvie, and that they would spend time together every day, breaking into empty apartments for a place to sleep. While squatting in those apartments, Aurora would use candle wax and crayons to paint the walls. They would stay in the apartments for a couple weeks until they got caught and would have to find somewhere else to stay. Lucero goes to look for her and finds her hanging out with her friend group, a "gang of crackheads," which includes a guy named Harry who she also is in a relationship with. Harry asks Lucero for drugs but Lucero denies him and takes Aurora to the next room. He gives her a pack of cigarettes. They have sex, and after Aurora picks at Lucero's back and he feels nasty. He expresses the urge to physically harm her. Sometimes, when he goes looking for Aurora, he doesn't find her and instead is forced to wander the decrepit rooms of the Hacienda, which are often littered with vomit and feces.
In the next scene, Lucero is watching a street corner. He watches as the people hanging out there play dice with each other. Cut and his girlfriend are with Lucero, and Cut pays attention to his girlfriend and her son, but his eyes are constantly scanning their surroundings for the police. Lucero offers to get burgers and Cut's girlfriend's son asks for two. Lucero drives around town and every place he passes carries a memory from his past. Once he arrives at the restaurant, it's already closed, but the girl who works the front knows him and lets him in. When Lucero returns to the corner, he sees that his friend, Eggie, is passed out on the grass. Several kids are peeing on his face. Lucero reveals that Aurora was once pregnant with his child.
At a later point in time, Lucero finds Aurora sitting outside of a convenience store, so sick she has a fever. She convinces Lucero to go with her to the Hacienda, a popular hangout for addicts and prostitutes. Lucero is apprehensive because he knows that the police bust Hacienda twice a year, but he goes with Aurora anyway. Aurora tells him that her mom is getting married and invites Lucero to her wedding. He turns her down. She tells him that her mom gave her money to buy a dress. When they arrive at the Hacienda, Aurora tells Lucero to wait outside. Lucero stands in the shadows and watches the Hacienda, waiting for Aurora to return. Lucero gets impatient waiting for Aurora. An older gentleman leaves the Hacienda with a smile on his face, and Lucero makes him believe that he has a gun before stepping on his ankle and grinding down.
Lucero remembers Aurora's time in juvie. While there, she sent him three letters. Lucero responded to her letters two times and then stopped writing her. When she was released from juvie, Cut warned Lucero to stay away from her because she was bad luck. Lucero agrees with Cut but then Aurora finds him and he is drawn to her. They find an empty apartment. Lucero asks Aurora what it was like in juvie. Lucero tells her that he and Cut once drove by the juvie and honked their horn, hoping that she would hear them inside. Aurora tells him that she was put into solitary confinement after hitting two girls for a total of 25 days. While in solitary confinement, she imagined a "whole new life" with Lucero, where they had "kids, a big blue house, hobbies, the whole fucking thing" (65). Lucero lets himself believe for a moment that they could get better, but he knows that in a few weeks time they will be sucked back into the same toxic cycle.
Analysis
The events of "Aurora" are narrated by Lucero, a drug dealer who likes to think about his relationship with his on-again-off-again flame, Aurora. Lucero narrates his story in an understated, matter-of-fact tone, which causes tension within the work as it soon becomes clear that we cannot fully trust him. When he first admits to physically abusing Aurora, he does so in passing, as if it does not constitute a major event: "She once tried to jam a pen in my thigh, but that was the night I punched her chest back-and-blue so I don't think it counts" (53). In the syntax of this sentence, Aurora is the subject and Lucero is the object, which places the focus on her for her attempted violence rather than on Lucero for his actualized violence.
Similarly, later in the story, Lucero reveals to us that it seems like women are afraid of him, even though he puts in a lot of work to make the reader believe that he is a good guy. When he goes to the burger place to get food for himself, Cut, Cut's girlfriend, and her son, he knows the woman behind the counter and reveals that he has made out with her before. He gives her a compliment, but she reacts aversely to him: "Any woman who laughs as dope as she does won't ever have trouble finding men. I tell her that and she looks a little scared of me" (58).
Ultimately, by the end of the story, the reader becomes suspicious of Lucero's good intentions, which places his love for Aurora into question. He professes a desire that she will break out of her addiction: "I'm thinking about how easy it would be for me to turn around and say, Hey, let's go home. I'd put my arm around her and I wouldn't let her go for like fifty years, maybe not ever. I know people who quit just like that, who wake up one day with bad breath and say, No more. I've had enough" (61). However, he never stops to interrogate the fact that he consistently gives her drugs. In fact, often Lucero and Aurora only see each other because she wants drugs. Thus, even though "Aurora" is told in Lucero's voice, it becomes clear that he is not to be trusted and as readers we have to look a little harder to see the truth beneath his words.
On another note, the narrative of "Aurora" is defined by cycles. The cycle begins with either Lucero or Aurora seeking the other out, and it turns to them consuming drugs together and sharing an intimate moment. However, it always ends with Lucero and Aurora enacting violence on one another and a sudden goodbye. They enable each other's vices: Lucero is a drug dealer, Aurora is a drug addict. She cannot fully escape him because of the drugs he supplies her with as well as the occasional food and shelter that come with it. Despite the fact that Aurora seems to want to stay away and will evade him for long stretches of time, she always makes her way back to him. An indication that Aurora is stuck in this cycle with Lucero is the fact that she has another boyfriend, Harry, who she spends time with when she is not with Lucero. Lucero describes how Aurora reacts when the three of them are in the same room: "On the nights I find her she clings to him like she's his other nut, never wants to step outside for a minute" (54). However, Lucero always eventually gets Aurora alone and they tumble back into the same compulsive and abusive cycle.
Any hope for a better future is ultimately crushed by the sheer power of this cycle, and it becomes clear that neither Aurora nor Lucero will be able to truly break away. As Ana María Manzanas-Calvo explains in "From Locus Classicus to Locus Lumpen: Junot Díaz's 'Aurora,'" the very structure of the story mirrors this cyclical force: "The scratches on the narrator's arm open the narration, and Aurora's forceful inscription on Lucero's body closes it. The possibility of a new day, of a new narrative beginning, is doubly crushed, both in the present, with Aurora unable to escape her drug addiction, and in the past, with the violence that pervaded the relationship all along."
