Drown Chapter Summary & Analysis - Chapter Four, "Aguantando" Summary

Chapter Four, "Aguantando" Summary

"Aguantando" means "holding on," and this story is about how the family tries to hold on, waiting for a father and husband to return. The narrator says he has lived without a father for the first nine years of his life, and most of this story comes from the point of view of a child, not the adolescent in the former stories. The boy only knows his father from faded sepia photos with scalloped edges. They remain dry in a home with a leaky roof, where everything else is wet, only because they are encased in a plastic bag. The father left when the child was four, but since the boy cannot remember the father at all, he feels he grew up without a father.

The family is poor, supported for a while by the grandfather till he cannot or will not do it any longer. They eat poorly, almost...
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