Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 4, 2023 March 28, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Monday morning, Codi goes to Emelina's for breakfast. J.T. is in El Paso because the train he conducts was involved in accident, and he has to stay for an investigation. The kids get ready to go to day camp, and the women talk about the family. Emelina explains that the derailment was due to a problem with the track, but all of the men had to take a drug test anyway, and J.T. is concerned because he just ate poppy seed cake. Two other men they had known in high school, including Loyd Peregrina also work on the train, and Emelina informs Codi that Loyd lives nearby,. Codi has a strong reaction to this information. Codi explains the end of her relationship with Carlo: she had wanted him to "tell me the secret to a meaningful life" and finally realized that he could not do that. Holding Emelina's baby, Codi thinks briefly about how she almost became a mother.
Codi thinks about how she and Hallie referred to Emelina's grandmother as Abuelita when they were young. Abuelita and most of the other women in town called the sisters huerfanas, orphan girls, although they did not realize the girls understood Spanish when they did so.
Emelina and Codi spend the day visiting with the people in the town who appear to feel as out of place with Codi as she feels with them. Codi thinks about how Doc Homer instilled in her and Hallie the notion that they were different from their peers because of the family to which they belonged. Revisiting Grace fills Codi with memories. She can't sleep and walks out wondering if she can still find her way to Doc Homer's. She remembers, paradoxically since she knows she was not present, the day of her mother's death when she was three years old. Her mother had never flown and hated the idea. Her kidney was failing. A National Guard helicopter came to take her to the hospital, but she died before she could be lifted off the ground. In her musings, Codi stumbles on the path for which she was looking. She turns back, deciding to wait until morning to visit Doc Homer.
Codi remembers herself at fifteen. She remembers carrying her baby, and the dreams she had about losing it. In one of her four dates with Loyd Peregrina, Codi had gotten pregnant. She told no one, not even Loyd or Hallie. Codi feels that the pregnancy and its secrecy kept her distant from the people she knew.
Codi's troubled relationship to fertility is explained by the two events that framed her childhood: the deaths of her mother and of her unborn child. Pregnancy for Codi is linked not to the creation but to the destruction of life. Similarly, for Codi, love is attached to loss. An orphan has no family. While Codi tried to establish herself as having a family by calling an older woman abuelita (grandmother), that very same woman insisted on Codi's separation from any family, with the designation "orphan." Especially in a town where almost everyone is related in some way, having no family symbolizes having no community. The families of Grace are connected by their common descent from the Gracela sisters. The sisters came to the area from Spain, so we can assume that in addition to their blue eyes and their peacocks, they also contributed to the prevalence of the Spanish language in the town. As they thought that Codi and Hallie did not speak Spanish, the older women of the town assumed another level of separation between the girls and the community. Codi and Hallie did understand Spanish, but never told anyone, perpetuating the belief in their outsider status.
Codi's confusion about her memory of her mother's death is consistent with the confusing flow between past and present and between dreams and memories. Secrecy causes these confusions. Secrecy is also responsible for the separations between community members that disrupt the conservation of true memory. Codi was born into her father's secrecy and distance from the other community members, but she furthered the tradition by withholding knowledge of her pregnancy from Loyd, her sister, her friends, and—as far as she knew—from her father as well. In dreams and dreamlike states, however, even memories and connections that are blurred by secrets are able to reemerge. Thus while Codi thinks that she has lost her connection to the layout of Grace, as soon as she lets go of consciously looking for the path to her father's house, she finds it.
Please wait while we process your payment