How does Pachicho explore Angelina's relationship with her child through "the bird thing"?

Pachico explores Angelina’s complex relationship to her child through the figure of the bird thing. Throughout the story, Angelina is more concerned with caring for the bird thing than she is caring for her own child, and indeed, than caring for Stephanie, for at one point, Angelina leaves Stephanie and her friend in the pool to check on the bird thing. The narration implies that the bird thing is helpless, for it depends entirely on Angelina for food. Despite Angelina’s best efforts to keep the bird thing alive, at the end of the story, she finds it “trembling” (179) in the bottom of a trash can just before death. As Angelina looks at the bird thing, “it occurs to [her] that there are many ways that something can come to be buried” (178). In this way, Angelina implies that she has buried her attachment to her child, for if she were still attached to her son, it would be too painful to live without him. Thus, when Angelina buries the bird thing, she is symbolically burying her own relationship with her child.