“In the summer of my fifth year, I discovered Grandmother’s Iolana’s special power: she could make the entire barrio sleep, in the middle of the day.”
“Black trumpets, whale-colored pamphlets, or shingles, or ears, bookmarks of the netherworld, breakfast food of the box turtle. For a long time, she could not find them, hovering just above them the way an inanimate lamp will hang blindly above the lucidities of geometry.”