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Cleófilas is a young bride taken from her family’s home in Mexico, across the U.S.–Mexico border, to Texas, where she starts a new life. Leaving Mexico, she also leaves her father and his complaints and her six “good-for-nothing” brothers. She mistakenly believes that she is also leaving behind her never-ending chores and a town where “there isn’t very much to do.” For as long as she can remember, she has yearned for the romantic, passionate love found in books, songs, and telenovelas. She believes that her new husband, Juan Pedro, is “the great love of [her] life.”
Once in Texas, Cleófilas soon realizes that her life is nothing like what she expected. Her and Juan Pedro’s love sours, with no romance and no roses. Instead, her husband is her man, rival, keeper, lord, and master. He abuses her verbally and physically, drinks too much, brings home too little money from his job, and has extramarital affairs. Cleófilas is isolated by her inability to speak English and her lack of transportation. Sitting beside Woman Hollering Creek near her new home, she remembers the legend of La Llorona, the weeping woman who, in a fit of despair, drowned her children after her husband left her for another woman. She fears the scandal she would create going home to her father’s house “with one baby on her hip and one in the oven” and without her husband. And she worries that suicide may be her only escape. However, Cleófilas contrasts La Llorona by choosing life, escaping her bad situation instead of committing suicide.
Cleófilas’s name suggests idealized character traits. Cleófilas means “one who loves glory”; Enriqueta is “the home ruler”; DeLeon, a royal Spanish name, means “from the lion”; and Hernández is “the bold voyager.” It is not until Cleófilas leaves her abusive husband that she has the potential to live up to her name. She becomes glorious, or worthy of praise and honor, by leaving her abuser with the help of Felice. By taking Juan Pedrito, she displaces Juan Pedro as the head of their family. By leaving she shows the courage of the lion. And in returning home to her family in Mexico, she risks the unknown, becoming the bold voyager.
