A Place Where the Sea Remembers

In this brief chapter Remedios invokes the element of fire. She bathes in the warmth of the sun; she lights the cooking fire to prepare her breakfast; she visualizes her own inner heat “glowing as rosily as Abuelo (Grandfather Sun)” (64). She imagines a distant tree surrounded by spirit animals: jaguar, coyote, scorpion, and lizard. A serpent sits atop the tree with a caged magpie on its head. Remedios’s spirit flies to the tree and frees the magpie, her spirit animal.

Chapter 7 tells the story of Rafael Beltran, a second-grade teacher who lives alone with his mother in Santiago; his two older brothers have both moved away to big cities. Rafael has taught for 16 years and, at 41 years old, he feels life is passing him by. He has a fondness for the cultural stories of Mexico’s native Indians, and he is compiling a book of these collected tales. Every day Rafael comes home during the two-hour siesta period and eats lunch with his mother, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. One day he comes home to find his mother has hired Inés, a young Indian girl of Nahuatl descent, to help with cooking and serving.