How is treachery portrayed differently in the stories, Lucky and Lemon Pie?

In “Lucky,” Pachico implies that Angelina, the servant of Stephanie’s family, was the one who betrayed them to the communist rebels. When Stephanie opens the door to the man with the scar at the story’s end, she notices something which “could be the flash of a white apron or the metallic shine of a machete” (22). This white apron recalls the white apron Angelina wears when working in the house. By associating the apron with the machete, a weapon used by the communist rebels, Pachico implies that Angelina silently betrayed Stephanie’s family, alerting the communist rebels as to their whereabouts, and subsequently abandoning Stephanie so she could be taken hostage.

However, Pachico implies that this treachery is not unique to the communist rebels, for Stephanie herself betrays her family. She tells her mother that she wants to stay home because the dinner party is boring, omitting her “plans to meet up” (5) with the high-school’s football players. In this way, both Angelina and Stephanie become kinds of “traitors” in the story, thus complicating a purely negative view of the communist rebellion. Indeed, in “Lemon Pie,” treachery is framed more positively through the figure of Julisa. Before Julisa leaves the camp in order to search for the escaped hostage, she saves the Professor’s notebooks, “tuck[ing] a single brown stick between the pages” (56) so the Professor remembers his page. Julisa, then, uses treachery in order to help the hostage Professor, thus demonstrating that while treachery can be used to the detriment of others, it can also be used to their benefit.