The Convent

The convent mentioned in "The sisters" (3) is a symbol of how memory is fallible and open to different interpretations, depending on who is doing the remembering. Two of the Garcia sisters joke about how their mother, Laura, used to threaten to leave them at the local convent if they misbehaved. When this is mentioned to Laura, however, she denied it ever happened, recalling instead a story about Yo running away to the convent and then making up a lie about wanting to visit her cousin. Perhaps both of these stories are true, but the exact details remain unclear, shrouded in the mystery of the past.

Laura's Mink Coat

Laura's coat is a symbol of the difficulties of parenting and her good, if misguided intentions. When the Garcia girls were little, Laura used to put the coat on and pretend to be a bear to scare...