How we cite our quotes: ("Abbreviated chapter name," page)
Quote #7
"Her son would have been different. He wouldn't have talked back to her or taken drugs or drunk beer from bags like the other teenagers. Her son would have helped her in the bakery without complaint. He would have come to her for guidance, pressed her hand to his cheek, told her he loved her." ("Enough Attitude," 129)
There probably isn't a mother in the world who hasn't thought "What if..." Lourdes takes this normal maternal exercise all the way to eleven, claiming impossible feats for the boy who never was. She is inspired to think this because of the Navarro boy and her unsatisfactory relationship with Pilar. She clearly needs comforting, and she reaches out for the only person who could not be affected by the concerns of her family or the outside world.
Quote #8
"Rufino has taken to raising pigeons in wire-mesh cages in their backyard the way he saw Marlon Brando do in On the Waterfront. He prints messages on bits of paper, slips them through metal rings on the pigeons' legs, then kisses each bird on the head for good luck and lets it loose with a whoop." ("Attitude," 131)
Once Pilar catches him out with the "blonde bombshell" and promptly discards him from her mind, we don't hear much about Rufino. We can tell from this passage, however, that the alienation he feels from his family and the inability to assimilate to American society has started to take its toll on him.
Quote #9
"During the following week, Felicia begins to assemble bits and pieces of her past. They stack up in her mind, soggily, arbitrarily, and she sorts through them like cherished belongings after a flood. She charts sequences and events with colored pencils, shuffling her diagrams until they start to make sense, a possible narrative. But the people remain faceless, nameless." ("Baskets," 154).
Once again, Felicia can't locate herself in the world around her. She literally wakes up married to yet another man, completely unaware of how she got there—or who her husband really is. Interestingly, in her attempts to trace her past, Felicia is actually constructing her own life and identity. We never do get to see those diagrams and tables so we don't know how close she came to reality in this exercise.