Summary
The novel begins in the year 2009 with Cara Romero, a Dominican woman living in Washington Heights (a neighborhood in Manhattan) attending an interview session as part of a Senior Workforce Program. She has been unemployed for two years after losing her job at a lamp factory. She has enrolled in this program to receive unemployment benefits while she looks for work. She is being interviewed by an employee of the program (whose name, Lissette Fulana De Robertis, is only revealed at the end of the novel). The opening of the novel is a quotation from official documents in the program, saying that in twelve sessions the interviewer will assess how ready the candidate is for work.
Cara begins the first interview by talking about who she is. She says that the factory where she worked closed and moved to Costa Rica and that ever since she has been living off of unemployment checks sent by the Obama administration. She says she did not expect to be looking for a new job at this point in her life. She says she attended "La Escuelita" in these two intervening years and learned how to use a computer and read and write in English. She says her friend Lulu went to class with her and was encouraging throughout. In this same class, Cara clicks an ad for an online psychic and starts receiving emails from her.
She says that times are hard for everyone, as the country faces rampant unemployment. She talks about her sister Ángela and her son Fernando, who she says has run away. She also notes that she and her sister have a strained relationship. She then discusses her marriage to her husband Ricardo, saying that things were good in the beginning but rapidly deteriorated. When she has an affair with another man, he finds out and becomes enraged. He travels to the man's house and cuts off his leg. Fearing for her life, she takes Fernando and flees the Dominican Republic for America. The chapter ends with the text from Cara's intake application, indicating her various skills.
In the following session, Cara begins talking about her strengths and weaknesses as a worker. She digresses and talks more about her son, saying she once pushed him and he hit his head on a door frame. He tells his teacher about this and Cara is briefly investigated for domestic abuse. She says he overreacted and that she is a good mother. However, she notes that Ángela always blamed her for Fernando leaving.
She then talks about having had an operation a few days before their first session. She says that despite being in a great deal of pain, she left the hospital immediately after and got into a cab. She throws up in the cab but cleans it up right away and the cab driver assists her up the stairs to her home. There, she recuperates and is brought food by her neighbors. She uses this as an example of how nothing stops her from holding to her commitments.
She says that on many nights Lulu comes over and they drink wine and watch the security camera footage on television. She says that recently people have been renting out their apartments to wealthy tourists and that she sees more and more unrecognizable faces in the lobby everyday. She also mentions that Lulu has something of a snobby attitude at times because her son Adonis is a banker and her daughter is a well-educated poet. Cara believes that Lulu indulges them both, especially Adonis, too much.
She says she and Lulu became friends immediately after Fernando left and Lulu supported her. She asks if they can take a break from the questions so she can go to the bathroom. The chapter concludes with text from an unemployment office document in which Cara creates an online account to keep track of her forms. It includes her email address and her security questions.
Analysis
Money is one of the most important themes in these early pages of the book. Cara is in the employment office because she is taking part in a workforce training program. She has been unemployed for two years after the lamp factory where she worked closed down. She has been relying on unemployment to make ends meet and is faced with dwindling prospects, particularly as an older person whose ability to do physically demanding work is diminishing. Money is a huge source of frustration and anxiety for Cara, as she has worked extremely hard her whole life, but now finds herself in a position of incredible vulnerability. Wealth, in the novel, is not portrayed as something primarily earned by labor, but is instead shown to be something hugely influenced by existing wealth and access to resources.
Violence is another key theme in this first section of the book. Cara mentions at one point how Fernando bumped his head on the doorframe after she shoved him. He complains to one of his teachers at school and officials from child protective services come to their home. Finding nothing out of order, they depart, and Cara is furious with Fernando. This foreshadows later events, as Cara also says that Fernando has been away from home for about ten years and they are no longer in contact. While she thinks this instance was not a notable moment of violence, it shows how she regards physical discipline very casually. Unlike her sister Ángela, she believes violence has its place in raising a child.
Parenting is also an important theme in these two chapters. Cara critiques the parenting of both Ángela and Lulu. She says that Lulu constantly dotes on her son, Adonis, and celebrates him in a way that Cara finds suspect. Likewise, she thinks Ángela is too soft on her children, as she does not discipline them firmly or harshly. In contrast, she says that she made absolutely certain that Fernando was respectful and was never afraid to be tough with him. These comments Cara makes indicate her beliefs about parenting. For her, parenting is about preparing a child for the world, making them tough enough to endure many hardships. What she fails to see is that her sister, Ángela, is attempting to break generational cycles of violence by not hitting her children. While Fernando ends up being more self-reliant than Adonis, he is also deeply wounded by Cara's harshness.
The motif of gentrification also appears prominently in this part of the book. Cara notes that while she used to recognize everyone in her building, she now sees a number of younger people with backpacks. She is almost certain that these people are guests of people who are renting out their apartment buildings. This moment shows how her neighborhood is rapidly shifting to accommodate an influx of wealthy young people, the majority of whom are not Dominican. It is also a major part of the novel's conflict, as Cara's money problems are amplified by the fact that her neighborhood has recently become desirable real estate. In this way, the book shows how gentrification forces people like Cara out of their homes by taking advantage of their economic vulnerability. Once there is money to be made, the original residents are faced with higher rent and a push to leave.
This section of the book sets its main conflicts into motion. The reader's introduction to Cara brings them into contact with all of the struggles she is facing simultaneously. Caught in the fallout of an economic downturn, she takes stock of her life and details the various sources of pain in it. The book reveals that her struggles are as much personal as they are financial. She is attempting to not only remain financially stable, but also put back together the parts of her life that feel or appear broken, like her relationship with her son, Fernando.
