Esperanza's Box of Saints pp. 106-129

By the way Esperanza, you are only allowed to be in your room and the common areas of the house" (128). As she speaks to Esperanza, issuing this brusque command, Dona Trini's face is like "an old male" mackerel and Dona Trini seems like a tough emotional nut to crack. But Esperanza, just as she took Father Salvador off guard, makes people like her character and quest (128). She wins affection, even of a tough, masculine woman like Dona Trini: "I like her," Dona Trini later confesses to another person (128). Dona Trini is initially mistrustful of Esperanza, because of the glow of goodness Esperanza gives off. Esperanza is initially mistrustful of Dona Trini, because of Dona Trini's harshness, and because of the woman's strange appearance. But Esperanza, over the course of her quest to find her daughter Blanca,...

The strange nature of where the twists and turns of her life have taken her has forced her to question her assumptions about goodness, life, and death, and she no longer trusts the surfaces of things.
As always, the novel frames this question with a good deal of humor. Esperanza wonders if Dona Trini is perhaps a man, and if the woman shaves like a man. Also, the comparison with Dona Trini to a male fish seems strange and out of place. Why is Dona Trini fish-like -- the metaphor is as startling as Esperanza's apparently impossible quest to find Blanca. But this language is in keeping with the spirit of the novel, which combines a sense of seriousness with play, and highlights the fact that Esperanza is a fish out of water, wherever she goes. She has left her original job and home, and few people understand…