How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Papá looked at me a long time before he said, "He's got many of them, all over the island, set up in big, fancy houses. Lina Lovatón is just a sad case, because she really does love him, pobrecita." Right there he took the opportunity to lecture me about why the hens shouldn't wander away from the safety of the barnyard. (1.2.104)
Papá is giving Minerva the cold hard facts. Lina's romance with El Jefe, which seemed like a fairytale to the girls, becomes a cheap, ordinary fling. His lecture is an allegory where hens are girls, and the barnyard is their family or their boarding school.
Quote #8
I felt my breath coming short again. At first, I had thought it was caused by the cotton bandages I had started tying around my chest so my breasts wouldn't grow. I wanted to be sure what had happened to Lina Lovatón would never happen to me. (1.2.107)
Minerva equates growing older and developing breasts with being kidnapped by the president. This is not exactly practical but is understandable; she wants to stop her body from developing so that she won't draw the attention of the rapist dictator.
Quote #9
Minerva explained everything to me in detail and with diagrams as we were coming home on the train. I was not one bit surprised. First, she had already told me about cycles, and second, we do live on a farm, and it's not like the bulls are exactly private about what they do. But still, I don't have to like it. I am hoping a new way will be found by the time I am old enough to be married. (1.3.39)
Poor Mate. As the youngest daughter she has a lot of teachers to keep her up to date on what is to come in her life. Minerva's diagrams explain sex and reproduction, but Mate doesn't really need all that much information because, as a country girl, she's had a front-row seat at mating season.