Summary
"Negocios" is narrated by an adult Yunior as he describes his father's life in the United States. He describes what happened right before Papi left for the States: Mami discovered that he was cheating on her with a woman who lives in Los Millonitos. Mami is told about Papi's affair through a friend of hers who is the woman's neighbor. She gets so angry at Papi that she throws silverware at his head. Mami throws a fork that pierces Papi in the cheek, which causes him to move out. On his second night out of the house, with his mistress sleeping next to him, Papi wakes in the middle of the night worried that the money that Abuelo (Mami's father) has promised him is no longer in the picture. He immediately dresses himself and goes to visit Abuelo. Papi finds Abuelo sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch. Abuelo asks Papi about the mistress. Papi lies to Abuelo and says that his mistress is lying. Papi then brings up the money that Abuelo promised him in the past. Abuelo deliberates for a while and then advises Papi to go back home. Abuelo tells Papi that he will tell Mami himself that Papi is leaving soon, which he hopes will smooth things over between them.
That night, Papi goes back home. Mami acts troubled by his return, sleeps with the children, and spends as much time out of the house as possible. Every so often Papi grabs her arms and pushes her against the walls of their house in an attempt to break her out of her moodiness. Instead of having his desired effect, however, she slaps him. Papi asks her if she realizes that he is leaving soon. Mami upholds her silence and anger at Papi. Papi stays for about a month, taking Yunior and Rafa to the movies and telling his sons how much they will miss him when he is gone. Eventually, Abuelo gives Papi the money that he promised. Abuelo tells him to make his children proud. Papi kisses Abuelo's cheek and the next day he buys himself a flight to the United States. Mami does not kiss Papi goodbye when he goes, sending Rafa and Yunior instead to embrace him. Her last words to him before he leaves are "You had best remember where this money came from" (167). It is the last thing that she says to him for five years.
Papi arrives in Miami at four in the morning. He plans on raising money in Maimi to make it over to New York City soon. He has trouble making it out of the terminal, and he spends a significant amount of time wandering around in darkness. Eventually, a Spanish-speaking cab driver helps him out. He drives Papi into Miami and advises him to find a place to stay around Calle Ocho. He tells Papi to find a job first thing in the morning. He drops Papi off at a hotel and charges him only $5 for his help. Papi spends the night at the hotel. He doesn't dream of his family. Instead, he dreams of a giant stack of gold coins.
The next morning, Papi does his daily set of sit-ups and push-ups. He tells the housekeeper that comes into his room that she should do his workout. She tells him that if he had a job he wouldn't have to work out. That day, he gets a job at a Cuban sandwich shop and scores a room in an apartment with three Guatemalan men. Papi's roommates are two brothers, Stefan and Tomás Hernández, and a man named Eulalio. Eulalio tells Papi that he needs to learn English. He starts off sleeping on the floor of the living room but is eventually able to salvage himself a mattress. He works two long shifts at the sandwich shop with two 4-hour breaks between them. During one of the breaks he sleeps in the apartment and during the other break he sleeps in the shop's storage room. If he gets bored in the storage room, he walks around Miami and checks out the girls.
Papi soon starts going with Eulalio to the bars a few times a week. Papi dislikes Eulalio but prefers not to drink alone. He generally leaves the bars dissatisfied and walks the mile home. Sometimes, he stops people on the street who invite him up to their apartments for a party. At those parties, he uses the opportunity to practice his English outside of Eulalio's scorn. When he gets back to the apartment, he lays on his mattress and tries not to think about home.
By the time winter comes around, Papi leaves Miami. He lost his job at the sandwich shop and can no longer afford living on the apartment floor. To add insult to injury, Papi discovers that Eulalio is not paying as much as the rest of them for rent even though he has the best room. Papi steals a suitcase of Eulalio's clothes and hops on a bus headed to Virginia. After Virginia, Papi walks the remaining 380 miles to New York in order to save the money he had left for rent. He becomes exhausted after walking for so many miles, his arms sore beneath the bags he is carrying. Twice, Papi hitches a ride with truckers. The second time he hitches a ride, the driver leaves him next to a state patrol car. The officers offer Papi a ride. It takes ten miles on the road before Papi realizes that there is a man shackled in the back seat. One of the officers asks Papi how far he is going. Papi tells them he is headed to New York. The officers offer to drive him to Trenton. The officers get suspicious when Papi tells them he is from Miami. He tells them he is a musician who plays the accordion. Papi asks the officers about the crying prisoner in the back seat. They tell him that he has committed many murders. The officers drop Papi off in Trenton. He is so relieved they didn't arrest him that he doesn't mind walking four hours until hitching a ride again.
When Papi arrives in New York, he gets an apartment in Washington Heights. He gets two jobs, one cleaning offices and the other washing dishes. Then he begins to write letters home. He sends money home. He does not calculate this money out of his living costs, and sometimes they leave him broke until the next time he gets paid. While in New York, he works 19-hour and 20-hour days. He writes home sporadically. Despite getting sick all the time, he has saved up enough money to start looking for a wife. He is put into contact with a man named el General. This guy tells Papi that if he pays him 50 dollars, he will find a woman who is willing to marry Papi. It is clear that Papi is getting sick of his lifestyle. He is tired of working so hard and his living conditions are less than desirable. He meets el General and gives him the money. El General tells him that he found a woman willing to marry Papi. He calls her Flor de Oro, but he tells him that's not her real name.
Papi meets Flor in a cafeteria. She tells him that he needs to give her one thousand dollars for them to get married. She is in her fifties. Papi tells her he only has six hundred dollars. She tells him to find two hundred more and they have a deal. The next day, he brings her the money in a paper bag and she gives him a pink receipt. She tells him that they will be married next week and she starts on the paperwork right away. Papi's friends celebrate the news and his boss takes him out for drinks in Harlem. He never hears from the woman again and realizes that he has been robbed. He punches his friend who recommended el General to him and he loses his job. He is forced to move in with a family in the same neighborhood and find a new job. He does not send money or a letter home for six months.
While doing his laundry, Papi meets a Dominican woman who has been living in the United States for six years. She is an American citizen. Papi considers inviting her to the Christmas Eve party he is going to in Queens but decides against it. Instead, he asks her if he can practice his English with her. She gives him her number and her address. Papi goes to the party and has a great time. He doesn't get drunk and chooses instead to sit with two older people and talk about his days in Santo Domingo. The next day, Papi calls the woman that he met in the laundromat, whose name is Nilda. She invites him over to her house that afternoon. She lives in Brooklyn. Papi meets Nilda's daughter, Milagros, and Papi cooks her dinner. Nilda tells him about the restaurant she owned with her first husband, who used to physically abuse her. Papi does not tell her about his family back home. Two weeks into their English lessons, he kisses Nilda. She kicks him out of her house. The next week, he is back in Nilda's house and he tries to kiss her again. Again, she kicks him out of her house. Every time Papi goes back to her house, he tries to kiss her and she throws him out. One day, though, she kisses him back. After a month of this routine, Papi moves into Nilda's house. They get married in March.
Papi starts to work out and regain his health. He gets two jobs near Nilda's house. One of these jobs is as a cook at a Chinese restaurant. The owners are Chinese-Cuban and they play dominos when the restaurant is slow. One day, Papi tells his employers about his family back in Santo Domingo. The cook tells Papi not to forget his family in Santo Domingo. Papi does not send money home to them for an entire year. Eventually, Nilda learns about Papi's family through friends who live in the Dominican Republic. She is upset and Papi has to work hard to convince her that he has forgotten about them. When Mami reaches Papi through a chain of friends, he tells her to send her letters to the restaurant instead of Nilda's apartment. Nilda spends her days working at her restaurant and tailoring the customers' clothes.
Papi's best friend at this time is Nilda's neighbor, Jo-Jo. He owns two hot dog stands and co-owns a prosperous grocery store. Jo-Jo and Papi spend time together at the local bar. Jo-Jo sees Papi as a man who is in need of life guidance. He tells Papi that now he is married and an American citizen it is time for him to start getting serious about bringing his family over to the United States. He offers to sell Papi one of his hot dog stands at a discount. Papi dislikes the idea of selling hot dogs. He wants to "break in to the American establishment" much more easily, but he doesn't know what that looks like (191). Jo-Jo's insistence that Papi should send for his family grates on Papi, who would much rather forget about them and immerse himself completely into his new life. However, Mami's letters don't let Papi forget them. In her letters, Mami insults Papi and disparages him for abandoning them. Papi shows these letters to Jo-Jo and his friend tells him that he needs to sort his life out. Papi and Nilda have a son who he names Ramón. Papi and his friends cannot celebrate because they know about the family that is waiting for him in Santo Domingo. Papi starts sending money to Mami in Santo Domingo again. Nilda notices and asks Papi what he is doing. He tells her that one of his sons has died and he has to pay for the funeral costs. Nilda asks him which one it is. Papi hits her in the face.
Papi gets a job at an aluminum factory that pays well. His coworkers are racist to him but he slogs through. One day, he goes with his friend from work, Chuito, to New Jersey. Chuito tells him that they are looking for people to fill the role of superintendent in up-and-coming New Jersey towns. The job offers a good salary and free rent. Papi sees this place as an opportunity to bring his family to the States once and for all. One day, Nilda tells him that she wants to go to the Dominican Republic. He goes with her. He stays in Santo Domingo for five days with Nilda's family. On their first night there, Nilda asks him if he is planning on seeing his family. He says that he might, if he gets the time. In Santo Domingo, he feels like a tourist. He stands out with the affluence that he has gained in the United States. Often, he considers going to see his family, but every time he thinks about it, his resolve weakens. He goes one day to walk around his old neighborhood in Santo Domingo. But Yunior never learns of it until years later.
When Papi gets home, he has a hard time getting back into the rhythm of his life. Papi spends more and more time away from home. He and Nilda begin to fight more and more. One day, while moving something heavy, Papi's back gives out. The pain is so intense that he vomits. Papi takes a cab home. Nilda takes care of him and has a cousin watch over the restaurant. Papi begins to plan to sue his employer. Nilda and Chuito think it's a bad idea. Papi goes to see the workplace doctor and he is only given three weeks of medical leave. Papi abuses the pain medication he received and makes it back to work. He gets demoted at his job. He blames Nilda for his misfortunes. They begin to fight constantly. Papi starts thinking that leaving Nilda is inevitable. He starts wanting to bring his family to the United States. Soon enough, he learns that the apartments where he will apply to be superintendent have opened. Papi gets an apartment, half with Jo-Jo's help, and half by saving money.
Yunior reveals in the final moments of the story that years later he meets Nilda. This is after Papi has left their family for good and Ramón, Yunior's half brother, has a job at JFK Airport. Yunior sees a picture of him and can see their likeness. Yunior meets her in her apartment in Brooklyn. Mami gives him the address. He tells Nilda that he is Ramón's son and she tells him that she knows who he is. She tells him that Papi left in the morning one day. She knew something was wrong because he was lying in bed, stroking her hair. Nilda didn't want to fight with him so she just went back to sleep. She tells Yunior that at that moment she knew what it must have felt like to be Mami. Yunior leaves when it is already dark outside.
Analysis
The final story of the collection, "Negocios," is the longest story in Drown. It tracks Papi's journey after he leaves the Dominican Republic for the United States. Papi makes several moves throughout his time in the United States, eventually making his way to New York City. While in New York, he meets Nilda, a Dominican woman with American citizenship. He marries her and they have a child together named Ramón. (Note that Yunior's name is just a nickname for "junior"—his name is also Ramón.)
Yunior imagines that in his father's mind, he might have been blended together with the new Ramón: "The third Ramón resembled Papi's other sons and on occasion he'd say, Yunior, don't do that. If Nilda heard these slips she would explode. Maldito, she'd cry, picking up the child and retreating with Milagros into the bedroom" (204). That Papi has another child and names him Ramón emphasizes the parallels in Papi's life. He holds two different lives that are separate but also irrevocably intermingled. He is in an unhappy relationship with both women and he gives birth to a little boy named Ramón who he has a loving but tenuous relationship with. This story does a lot to explain Papi's character to us readers, since we only see him from Yunior's limited point of view in previous stories. Throughout Drown, the most we know about Papi is that Yunior doesn't understand him at all.
As Dorothy Stringer explains in "Passing and the State in Junot Díaz's 'Drown,'" the title of "Negocios" holds important weight: the Spanish word negocios "translates as 'business' in the sense of 'entrepreneurship,' but its English false cognate 'negotiations' well conveys the dialogic back-and-forth informing both the character's life choices (back and forth between the Dominican Republic and the United States, back and forth between two women, back and forth between heroic breadwinning and authoritarian cruelty)."
Natalie J. Friedman suggests in "Adultery and the Immigrant Narrative," Papi's new life in the United States results in a huge "marital transgression" that is much worse than the macho behavior that we have seen throughout Drown. As a result, his second family is both a sneaky and underhanded act on his part, as well as a "symbol of Ramón's desperate desires as an immigrant striver." It is clear, of course, that Papi does struggle when he first comes into the United States. He works long, grueling hours (in New York for 19- and 20-hour workdays) and lives in terrible conditions. He has so many cockroaches in his apartment in New York, for example, that he can feel them crawling on him in his sleep: "The roaches were so bold in his flat that turning on the lights did not startle them. They waved their three-inch antennas as if to say, Hey puto, turn that shit off. He spent five minutes stepping on their carapaced bodies and shaking them from his mattress before dropping into his cot and still the roaches crawled on him at night" (179). Papi makes incredible sacrifices in the effort to make a living for himself in the United States, which does not excuse his behavior along the way, but explains why he chose to marry Nilda. Nilda is well off: she owns her own apartment in Brooklyn and supports herself with a bustling restaurant business. When he marries her, he lives in relative comfort. Though it is never clear whether or not he loves her, she gives him a good life. When Papi eventually leaves her and returns home for his family, he breaks her heart. In this way, Mami and Nilda are mirrors of each other, no matter how little they want that to be the case. Nilda underscores this point when she meets Yunior in person, years later: "She cracked her knuckles slowly. I thought that I would never stop hurting. I knew then what it must have been like for your mother. You should tell her that" (207).
In the end, Papi has left Mami again for good. We know from "Drown" that he is living in Florida with some other woman, and he calls her from time to time, asking for money. It seems that he never changes his ways. It seems, in the end, that Jo-Jo's prediction for Papi's fate has come true: "Jo-Jo would shake his head, waving for two more beers. You, my compadre, have done too many things wrong. If you keep this up, your life will spring apart" (192).
