Summary
Act II picks up several months after Mario’s going-away party. Juan passes by the Valle house, reciting prayers. He runs into Dolores who is crouching behind some bushes and peeking into her house. Conspiratorially, she asks Juan if he can see inside their house at night. Juan is taken aback. Dolores explains that Cerezita likes to look out the window at night, so she’s trying to figure out if people passing by outside can tell Cerezita “is sick.” She adds that people looking in will figure out that there are no men living in the Valle house.
Dolores goes back inside where Yolanda is trying to feed her baby, Evalina. Concerned, Yolanda tells Dolores that Evalina will not eat and has a slight temperature. At the clinic, they told Yolanda there might be something wrong with her milk and gave her formula, but Yolanda is worried that it’s something more serious. Meanwhile, Dolores puts a napkin under Cerezita’s chin and begins to spoon-feed her soup. Dolores tells Yolanda that at one point Cerezita also stopped breastfeeding and that a mother never forgets when her baby “turns her face away like that.”
Amparo enters. She is excited to show the Valle family a map she made of all the homes in the neighborhood with health problems. The map is color-coded based on the type of illness people have. Dolores angrily asks Amparo why she brings such things into her house, adding she doesn’t need a map to tell her she has problems. They continue back and forth, disagreeing about whether to demand help from the government and about Amparo’s interviews with the press. Amparo defends her political activity, explaining that it makes her feel good to fight for something. She says they’re proving that even people who are undocumented and without a formal education can stand up and fight for their kids. Dolores tells Amparo she’ll never understand because she does not have children of her own. Dolores continues that a mother’s bond with her children is so strong that one’s children take a piece of you with them and you’re never whole again. How can a woman feel strong when she’s walking around with so many empty places inside her, Dolores asks. She throws Amparo’s map out the door and Amparo leaves in silence.
Bonnie is playing in the Valles’ house, constructing a coffin out of a shoe box. Bonnie explains to Cerezita that her doll died of cancer and so she’s making a pretty coffin to bury her in. Bonnie states matter-of-factly that Evalina is going to die too, that all children who go to the hospital come out in a box. Yolanda overhears and pours herself a shot of tequila. Commiserating with Yolanda, Dolores shares that she understands what it feels like to have a sick child. When Cerezita was born, Dolores did not even want to look at her and told the doctors to smother Cerezita with a blanket. However, Cerezita screamed so loudly that it was a sign she wanted to live. In despair, Yolanda tells Dolores that Evalina has a malignant tumor and is dying. Dolores councils Yolanda to pray to God. Cerezita is a miracle; every day she lives proves God has not forgotten about them. Suddenly, helicopters fly overhead and their searchlights flood the kitchen windows. Yolanda rushes outside and yells up at them angrily to take her and kill her. She’s ablaze with the light of their searchlights. Dolores grabs Yolanda, worried they’ll see her. Pulling Yolanda back, they fall to the ground weeping. Yolanda tells Dolores she needs to find Evalina’s killer, put a face to him, and make him suffer the way they do.
The next scene opens on a political demonstration. A group of mothers are wearing white bandanas. Protesters are holding signs that read “Boycott Grapes,” “I Want to Live,” and they’re waving the red and black United Farm Workers flags. Don Gilberto, Juan, Bonnie, and Amparo are there. The protesters are part of a group called Mothers for McLaughlin which Amparo has formed. Ana Perez speaks to the cameras explaining that the group is protesting in Sacramento to demand that the federal government pay for their families to be relocated to an environmentally safe area. In addition, they demand that the well providing their tap water be shut down and that the governor establish a free health clinic to serve the families affected by the pesticides.
Amparo steps forward holding a picture of a dead child, each of the mothers following her lead. Amparo reads off the name of the child, her age, the day she died, and her illness. Each of the eight mothers does the same; all the children have died from some type of cancer. Yolanda is the last of the mothers to step forward, crying as she reads off Evalina’s name. The protesters advance yelling “murderers” and a policeman in riot gear tries to hold back the crowd. Bonnie slips and Amparo steps out of line to pick her up. At that moment, the policeman starts beating Amparo with his nightstick. He beats her using slow, methodical blows. Don Gilberto rushes through the crowd and throws himself on top of Amparo to protect her.
Juan, Cerezita, and Bonnie are outside. The sun is setting and the black silhouettes of pecan trees and grape vineyards are in the background. Bonnie is on the porch singing a lullaby. She ties two twigs together in the shape of a cross and hangs her doll from it. Juan is shaken as he tells Cerezita about how badly Amparo was beaten. He berates himself that he should have done something, but was too scared. “Heroes and saints…that’s all people want right now,” Cerezita replies. She looks out at the grape vineyard and comments that it looks like a cemetery with a thousand mini-crucifixions. She explains to Juan how each of the plants looks like the gnarled body of Christ: all of them lined up in neat, orderly rows of despair. Baffled, Juan asks Cerezita how she can see these things. She answers, “I see it all.” As they talk, the sun bursts through the clouds and bathes Cerezita’s face in light. Bonnie brings two pieces of wood and Juan eagerly takes them, raising them up to make a child-sized cross.
After her beating, Amparo is taken to the hospital. Her spleen is so damaged that the doctor takes it out. The spleen, the doctor says, is connected with courage. Juan visits Amparo in the hospital where Don Gilberto is taking care of her. Amparo tells Juan the policeman will be disappointed if he thought attacking her would take away her passion. Don Gilberto nods off and Amparo asks Juan how Dolores is. Worried, Juan says he found Dolores hiding in the bushes outside her house again, saying that she saw Mario’s ghost trying to get back in the house. Since Mario left, no one has had any contact with him and Dolores believes he is dead. Amparo sadly notes that Dolores is a very scared woman.
Amparo takes a newspaper clipping out of her bag and hands it to Juan. It’s an article from the New York Times published fifteen years ago when Cerezita was two years old. Amparo recounts that Dolores thought God made Cerezita the way she did to punish Arturo for his infidelities. Dolores shared this with the newspapers but, instead of changing, Arturo left the family. After Arturo left, Dolores closed up. Amparo explains that Dolores does not want to feel like a victim; she prefers to believe that God is responsible for Cerezita’s condition rather than the agricultural industry and their pesticides. That way, even if Dolores and her family suffer on earth, they’ll receive their reward in heaven. Juan and Amparo shift to talking about Evalina’s vigil happening that night. Amparo is worried about the helicopters that the Arrowhead bosses have hired to monitor the fields; she says they’ll shoot anyone they see in the fields. Amparo makes Juan promise to watch over Cerezita and not let her go outside. Haltingly, Juan promises.
Analysis
The lack of news from Mario combined with Evalina getting sick takes a strain on Dolores’s mental health. Fear of losing her family causes her to become paranoid. She becomes focused on hiding Cerezita from public view, and refers to her disability as a sickness. Dolores is convinced Mario is dead, a prediction that foreshadows his eventual illness. She continues to clash with Amparo over whether or not to stand up and fight for better living and work conditions. Despite getting fired, Amparo doubles down and dedicates herself to organizing the community and pushing for accountability. Wanting to prove that there are widespread health problems, Amparo maps out instances of cancer, tumors, and other illnesses in their neighborhood. She also creates the group Mothers for McLaughlin. Dolores wants nothing to do with this political activity.
Although Dolores feels the suffering of her family deeply, she turns to God rather than getting involved politically. As Amparo explains to Juan, Dolores is scared: standing up to the bosses with their money, power, and violent tactics is dangerous and intimidating. Dolores prefers to attribute Cerezita’s condition to God’s will. As tensions rise in McLaughlin, Dolores turns more and more to religion. Amparo understands her close friend but seems critical of the church for encouraging passivity for communities facing systemic injustice.
As the people of McLaughlin become more outspoken against the agricultural industry and the government, tensions rise. They take their fight all the way to the Governor of California. At the protest, they directly link the grape industry with the high prevalence of death and sickness in their community. Each of the mothers shows a picture of their dead child. Similar to the crucifixions, this act of resistance forces those in power to see each and every death that their greed and inaction are causing. Moraga uses repetition as each of the eight mothers steps forward to make sure the audience feels the weight and loss of each of these deaths.
In response, Arrowhead takes more measures to crack down. Amparo is singled out as a leader of the movement and punished. Moraga makes note that the police officer beats her with “slow, methodical blows.” His actions parallel the fact that people in McLaughlin are dying slowly, as well as the methodical nature of the cover-up. Despite Amparo’s severe injuries, she refuses to back down.
Moraga explores the theme of motherhood through the characters of Dolores and Yolanda. Much of Dolores’s identity is wrapped up in being a mother, and she differentiates between giving birth to a child and caring for one. For Dolores, motherhood and a mother’s love are deeply intertwined with suffering. In an impassioned speech to Amparo, Dolores reveals that she’s given so much of herself to her children that she no longer feels whole. Just like her mother, Yolanda watches helplessly as toxic exposure to pesticides harms her daughter. The clinic blames Yolanda, the mother, rather than acknowledge the harmful environmental conditions in which the community is forced to live. Beside herself, Yolanda searches for someone to blame, but Evalina’s killers remain faceless, hidden behind a system. Yolanda channels her anger at the helicopters that pass overhead: a symbol of the bosses at Arrowhead who prioritize profits over the Chicano families who work for them. Each mother has a different reaction to their child’s suffering. Dolores suffers alone, accepting her fate, while Yolanda wants to make those who are responsible pay.
When Cerezita looks out across the grape vineyards she sees a cemetery. She compares the grapevines tied to their wood posts to Christ on the cross. Moraga uses this metaphor to highlight how the land is being tortured into submission to fulfill the demand for high production at all costs. Gazing at the vineyards, Cerezita does not see abundance, but death. Moraga relates the themes of sickness and the land. She draws a connection between the land and the people who work it, as both become poisoned by pesticides and greed. Cerezita’s role as a prophetic figure is reinforced by the fact that she sees what others do not. Juan is amazed by Cerezita’s ability to view things so clearly. Her role as a source of illumination and enlightenment is emphasized by the lighting of the play which notes that in this scene Cerezita is bathed in sunlight.
Death and sickness are a part of daily life in McLaughlin. So much so that Bonnie, a child, mimics this reality in her play. At the beginning of the play, Bonnie’s doll was sick. In the second act, Bonnie creates a coffin for her doll who has died. Yet, Bonnie sees death through a child’s eyes, decorating the coffin with valentine cards and hair ribbons. Later, Bonnie strings up her dead doll on a cross, just as people have done in protest with the children who’ve died. Her playing parallels Evalina’s decline and eventual death.
