Summary

Despite knowning about sex as a small child, Magda began to develop a greater understanding of what it entails and the complex nature of sexual attraction and interactions during the events described in this chapter. Her first ideas about sex were that it was how men and women fight against each other, which she admits in hindsight is simple but accurate. Her first experiences involved watching her father leave her mother to go spend time with his girlfriends. With the crammed living conditions of her pueblo, she heard this happen all around her in the barrio. During her retrospective narration, she remarks “Sex was as common as piss and food; its musk blended with stale manteca and sweat and urine to form the aroma of our small house” (39), and then contrasts that with what sex...