Night at the Fiestas

“This wasn’t unusual in our New Mexico town in those years between the wars: If someone died or someone came upon hard times, or simply had too many children, there were always aunts or sisters or grandmothers with room for an extra child.”

Familial relationships and the nature of family bonds are key focal points in this collection of stories, and this illustration of nontraditional familial organization speaks to the author’s focus on depicting the complexities of life in her home state of New Mexico. Although this kind of family structure strays from the traditional nuclear unit, it allows for children to be cared for by other family members in the event that their parents experience difficulty. Because Nemecia finds a loving home in the household of her aunt and uncle, the author presents this practice in a positive light.

“When they were discovered, your grandfather was already dead. Benigna was unconscious on the floor. And they found Nemecia behind the wood box. She’d seen the whole thing. She was five.”

In this passage, the author uses short, blunt sentences and a flat tone to reveal the source of Nemecia’s trauma. Although Maria initially perceives Nemecia to be a difficult, volatile girl, she now realizes that Nemecia’s troubled behavior is rooted in the experience of having witnessed her father in an act of extreme brutality.

“Nemecia held a wineglass up to the window and turned it. ‘See how clear?’ Shards of light moved across her face.”

Marred by childhood trauma, Nemecia desperately desires a normal, functional adult life. She wants nice things and a nice home. Although she pursues her attempts at normalcy, remnants of her difficult past remain. She collects dolls reminiscent of the one she’d broken as a young girl, and here, the image of fractured light across her face mirrors her broken doll, whose shattered porcelain visage was repaired by her uncle but always bore the scars of having been smashed.