How we cite our quotes: ("Abbreviated chapter name," page)
Quote #4
"The air was different from Cuba's. It had a cold, smoked smell that chilled my lungs. The skies looked newly washed, streaked with light. And the trees were different, too. They looked on fire. I'd run through great heaps of leaves just to hear them rustle like the palm trees during hurricanes in Cuba. But then I'd feel sad looking up at the bare branches and thinking about Abuela Celia. I wonder how my life would have been different if I'd stayed with her." ("Going South," 32)
Pilar has romanticized the possibility of Cuba and her life in it, so her memories of her early days in New York are equally biased toward the negative. She's definitely not feeling like a native New Yorker and feels that her poor lungs (and the rest of her) would have thrived better on the tropical island. She has a different set of feelings when she later reaches Cuba.
Quote #5
"For twenty-five years, Celia wrote her Spanish lover a letter on the eleventh day of each month, then stored it in a satin-covered chest beneath her bed. Celia has removed her drop pearl earrings only nine times, to clean them. No one ever remembers her without them." ("Palmas Street," 36)
This is the first time we understand the importance of those pearl earrings. Celia defines herself by wearing them so persistently, and others come to identify her by the trademark jewelry. This is something to hold on to as you move into the ending of the book.
Quote #6
"She imagines [Jorge] swinging the broom round and round in a quickening circle...swinging so hard that the air breaks in a low whistle...then releasing the broom until it flies high above him, crashing through the window and shattering the past." ("Palmas Street," 43)
Celia relives her past as she walks through Havana and stops in front of the hotel where she and lover Gustavo used to meet. Time collapses for her as she stands there (as it so often does to the characters in this book), bringing the two men of her life together in a battle for her memory and heart.