Summary

This chapter, called “Ate Hero,” redirects the focus away from Paz and introduces the novel’s main heroine: Pol’s niece Geronima De Vera, known to the family as Nimang. Geronima arrives in California and is welcomed in by her Tita (aunt) Paz and Tito (uncle) Pol. It is now the summer of 1990. Paz and Pol’s daughter—who, as we learned in the Prologue was named Geronima after this very cousin, and now goes by the nickname “Roni”—declares that her older cousin Geronima’s nickname will be “Hero.” When she arrives, Hero cannot hold her own suitcase; the reader is not told why, but this fact stands out as important. Later, Pol asks how Hero’s hands are, and she responds that they are much better since the surgery.

Despite not having a driver’s license, it is decided that Hero...