I. Overview:
Constancia’s factory for her Cuerpo de Cuba line of beauty products is complete. Allusions to Blanca’s infidelity, as well as Ignacio’s guilt surface in regard to Blanca’s untimely death and Ignacio’s subsequent behavior. Memories from the past continue to strain the relationship between Reina and Constancia. In Miami, Reina is the recipient of much interest and attention from numerous men and is finally cured of her insomnia. Ignacio relates his first meeting with Blanca and their ensuing “courtship.”

II. Analysis:
The differences between the ways Reina and Constancia relate to their past come to a head after their reunion in Miami. Reina faces the truth about their parents, while Constancia prefers to ignore the elements of her past in Cuba and to remain detached from the memory of their mother. Because Reina remained in their family’s home in Cuba after the death of her parents, she retains a strong bond with the memories of both her mother and father. Reina carries her father’s birds to Miami and displays them in her room, demonstrating her connection to the past she shared with her father. Likewise, Reina treasures her mother’s memory and is disturbed by her sister’s resemblance to her: “It’s a form of visual cruelty…that Constancia looks so much like their mother. Looks like her but shares none of Mami’s attributes. Reina keeps expecting to be comforted by Constancia’s presence, yearns to submit to a forgotten solace” (200), yet Constancia is cold and detached. Constancia’s use of their mother’s face as a marketing ploy to sell her beauty products is also disconcerting to Reina: “I just can’t see working with Mami’s face like this. Her image parading past me every day, as if she were no longer mine” (170).

While Reina’s past relationship with her mother and father has also given her a better understanding of the events surrounding their mother’s death. In a discussion with Constancia, Reina relates “how a tall and corpulent” man with skin “a flawless evening black,” came to visit their mother’s grave and polished their mother’s headstone. As the text contains numerous references to Reina’s dark “nutmeg color” as well as her large hands and above average height of 5’11”—this recollection is an unmistakable implication of her mother’s infidelity and the true identity of the stranger (66). Reina also implies their father’s guilt by maintaining that their father looked “too good” after their mother’s death: “Reina remembers how their father’s appearance conspicuously improved after Mami died, as if he’d stolen something of her life to replenish his own” (194-195). Yet Constancia refuses to entertain her sister’s efforts to sort out the truth surrounding their mother’s death.

After spending most of her life with her uncles and moving to the U.S., Constancia endeavors to leave the memories of Cuba behind her. Yet Constancia is hurt by the lack of affection she received from her father and she experiences a desire to re-connect with him. She remembers wishing she were “the last dodo on earth, because her father loved nothing more than imperiled birds” (179), as if becoming a bird would have endeared her to her father. Her desperate desire to resurrect her father’s memory is further represented by the birds Reina brings with her from Cuba, which Constancia sees displayed in Reina’s room: “She decides that she, too, must attend to Papa’s lost birds…[she] begins wiping every faded wing and feather, methodically, as her father would have done…But no matter how much she dusts, the birds still look dead” (180-181). Constancia mourns the loss of the relationship she never experienced with her father.

Despite Constancia’s desire to resurrect her father’s memory, she remains detached from the memory of her mother: “Her memories of Mama are altogether different from her sister’s, hardly benign” (174). Constancia resents her mother’s power over her father, and her mother’s decision to send her away. While she views her mother’s likeness on her beauty products as “strictly business” (170), her mother’s face beckons to her “as if she knew someone would ask her a crucial question long after she died” (181). The emergence of her mother’s face in place of her own, as well as Reina’s arrival in Miami after so many years apart forces her to face the events surrounding their mother’s death. No matter how hard she tries to ignore the past, the mystery and the memories of her mother haunt her. As Reina says while staring at Constancia’s face: “Sometimes we become what we try to forget the most” (175).

III. Questions:
1) How does Reina’s beauty differ from the Cuban image of beauty that Constancia markets in her products?

2) How do the references to the relationship habits of birds and mammals in this portion of the text function on a deeper level?