And The Earth Did Not Devour Him

A boy is lying under a house because he does not want to go to school. The teacher “would spank him for sure because he didn’t know the words” (139). He is afraid of spiders, and fleas bite him, but he likes hiding in the dark where he can think. He thinks about the stories his father used to tell him at night about how he could get witches to fall from the sky by praying. The boy reflects on events that transpired over the last year: His father insisted that he would get his haircut. Don Mateo scared the portrait artist from returning. The fireman who carried out the bodies of the burned children cried. The narrator’s mother, Doña María, cried each time she recalled her solo trip downtown.

Children throw rocks at the boy until he comes out of his hiding place. He hears the woman of the house under which he has been hiding say, “That poor family” and lament that the boy is losing his mind as his mother has (144). As he walks away, though, he feels happy. He does not feel he has lost anything but has discovered, recovered, and pieced things together.