-- Junot Díaz
The game was part of our mornings, the way our showers and our sex and our breakfasts were. We stopped playing only when it started to go wrong for us, when I'd wake up and listen to the traffic outside without waking her, when everything was a fight
The nameless woman who used to belong to the nameless narrator I feel is a symbolization of the bigger picture Junot Diaz was trying to portray in his short story. Being with someone you love, care about and value to a point where they have become apart of your life becomes a familiar and comfortable feeling knowing that they know the ins and outs of your personality, family background and experiences which have shaped you into the person you are today. Couples are together because they have shared beliefs, common goals and destinations in which each aide each other into getting for the benefit of one another. All trust is put into them and yet, relationships don't always work out. Everything you new is now unknown, everything familiar is now a strange and distant concept to you, they are no longer your lover, but merely a person you used to know. That closeness is shattered and you don't know what to think or believe anymore.
I used the quote at the top as a gateway to explain Díaz's bigger picture in his short story. While doing the pool table jobs with Wayne, the narrator, who is Dominican talks of being judged based on a preconceived idea that he is associated with dishonesty and untrustworthy. The wealthy customers "linger" in the hallways wondering if they should actually leave or not, "memorizing" everything in their house. The American culture vs. the Dominican almost seem alien and foreign to one another and so when he meets a Dominican women he immediately assumes he'll have a connection with her. But much like his girlfriend whom he assumed he knew everything about (where obviously he didn't or they would have still been together) he knew nothing of this women regardless if they shared the same cultural background. He helps her escape back to this Dominican community where, in just a couple of days she returns back, "choosing" Pruitt over her "own".
The way I tied this into the relationship with the narrator and his ex girlfriend is simply this: a relationship is about similar wanting, needing and things. But even with an extended amount of time shared together doesn't mean they'll always pick you at the end of the day. The days ended for the narrator's girlfriend picking him at the end of their days together. She choose life without him and thus the Dominican woman chose in a sense, the "American way" over the "Dominican Way".
Just because you think you know someone, think you have a connection with them, doesn't mean that you actually do. Maybe you are blinded by the fact that you share one or two things in common, a few at most. Blinded by his girlfriend. Blinded by the Dominican woman. He thought he knew both because of the Dominican woman's shared culture and his girlfriend because of shared intimacy and experiences. But clearly he didn't. Because neither did what he thought they would have done.
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