The Madonnas of Echo Park

Chapter 3 is the story of an encounter with Our Lady of Guadalupe (the Mexican Virgin Mary) told from the perspective of Beatriz, the grandmother of Aurora Esperanza. Beatriz narrates the story of her encounter to a second-person “you” who is waiting with her at the bus stop.

As a child, Beatriz lives with her sisters, her mother, and her grandmother in her Uncle Archie’s house. At night, her Uncle Archie climbs into bed with her sisters and molests them, and Beatriz fears the night he will come for her. She seeks solace in the company of her grandmother, who explains that before Beatriz was born, she thought she would be a boy because she sensed the spirit of a wolf in her (56). Empowered by this wolf spirit, Beatriz leaves a mousetrap under her legs at night and catches her Uncle Archie when he attempts to molest her. As a result, Archie turns Beatriz and her family out of his house. Her mother blames Beatriz for their homelessness and sends her to live in a convent.

A rich man named Gabriel, who donates generously to the convent, buys Beatriz as a wife when she is 16.