A Place Where the Sea Remembers free essay sample

by Rohanâ„ ¢-Enjoying Life! Member since: June 16, 2007 Total points: 19,555 (Level 6) * Add Contact * Block Best Answer Chosen by Asker 1. Remedios Remedios is la curandera, a healer. She knows the town’s stories, and the sea is witness to those stories. El pico, the swordfish beak, tells her the drowned body will wash up on this part of the shore. 2. Candelario Marroquin Cande celebrates his promotion to salad-maker by painting his door his favorite color, blue. He works at a restaurant in Santiago owned by Don Gustavo del Norte. Don Gustavo has taught him to make Caesar salad, hoping the restaurant will become famous for it.His 19-year-old wife, Chayo, and her 15-year-old sister, Marta, arrive. Marta was raped by Roberto Ramos and wants an abortion from the visiting doctor from Guadalajara. Luz told her it costs 100,000 pesos. Chayo hasn’t been able to have children, so without thinking, Cande says he’ll raise the baby. We will write a custom essay sample on A Place Where the Sea Remembers or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page As a man, he can’t take his word back. Months later, Chayo has a nightmare about throwing the flowers she makes to sea. Cande makes salad for the doctor and his wife at don Gustavo’s. The doctor says the abortions he does aren’t illegal because they have good causes, like rape. He charges 20,000 pesos.They don’t like the salad, so don Gustavo blames and fires Cande. 3. Remedios Elementales: Tierra In Remedios’s hut on top of a hill sits la mesa santa, an altar, with relics from earth and sea, and statues. Remedios chants, â€Å"I am she who knows. † 4. Fulgencio Llanos Fulgencio, el fotographo, roams the Mexican countryside, taking pictures. He misses the bus because he’d spent too much time cajoling dona Elvira Cantos. Yesterday, he’d photographed the famed masked wrestler El Santo without his mask, and plans to sell the photos to La Tribuna and become famous. He goes into a cantina for a drink when a hippie gringo, Jaime, offers him a ride.They leave in his Ford station wagon, filled with merchandise. Fulgencio offers to photograph the amphibian mariachi band. The gringo takes a detour to the beach at Playa de Oro. As night falls, Fulgencio realizes the gringo’s going to rob him and tries to bargain with God. At the beach, the gringo gets out. He returns just as Fulgencio is reaching for a machete in the back. The gringo throws him out and drives off with his valise. Fulgencio’s hopes are ruined without the pictures of El Santo. As he walks, he finds his valise intact by the road, and realizes the gringo was terrified of him. 5.Marta Rodriguez Marta, la recamerera, cleans a room at the hotel. She sees Elizabeth Taylor, her favorite actress, in Life magazine, on the table. She plans to give her baby to Chayo and has been saving money to leave and find work in El Paso, where she’ll live in luxury. Luz Gamboa comes in to help. Her husband, Tito, has run off with Tula Fuentes to El Paso, and she’s enlisted Remedios’s charms to bring him back. She thinks Tula had el brujo put a spell on Tito. Marta goes to help Chayo make flowers. Marta’s ashamed of her pregnancy and is the talk of the town. Cande hasn’t found work, so he’s fishing.Chayo says she’s pregnant and that Cande won’t take her baby anymore. Marta goes to talk to Luz, then goes to the apartment she shares with tia Fina and cries. Her neighbor, Don Justo, says Tito has come home. Thinking Remedios has been successful, she goes to see her for the first time. Remedios tells Marta she should not cross the border, and refuses to make Cande change his mind. Marta leaves, angered, to convince Cande. He claims he never said he wouldn’t take her baby—it was Chayo’s idea. Betrayed, Marta finds el brujo, don Pico Lara, who says he will kill the baby. Marta thinks he means her baby, but he means Chayo’s baby.She consents. 6. Remedios Elementales: Fuego Remedios prepares breakfast, affirming herself. She envisions her spirit flying to release a magpie, urraca, from a cage. The bird tells her it is her own spirit. She feeds her real magpie. 7. Rafael Beltran At 41, Maestro Rafael feels he’s let life pass him by. He doesn’t go to lunch with the other teachers. At the bus stop, he chats with Cuco, who’s told him Indian legends for a book he’s compiling. When he gets home to Santiago, he finds his mother, Dona Lina, has hired a 14-year-old Indian servant, Ines Calzada. He objects to her calling Ines la indita (derog).His two brothers live elsewhere and send money. As Dona Lina listens to a radio soap, Ines asks him to teach her to read. Her graveness reminds him of himself. Dona Lina disapproves of the arrangement. He wants to rebuke her, but he knows he’s meek and obedient. He visits the poor town El Cerro to speak with Concha Burgos, Beto’s mother, about Beto’s absences. She says he’s been fishing. She’s taking her sons to Oaxaca, but Beto will stay. He sees Ines down the street being pushed around by an older man who must be her father. Serving lunch, Ines collapses and bleeds. Rafael fetches the nurse and midwife, Esperanza, whom he loves.Dona Lina tells him the girl is having a miscarriage because her father beat her, which is just as well since Rafael is the father of the baby. He’s infuriated at the assumption. Esperanza tells her the old man is Ines’s husband. Later, the well-known photographer Llanos comes to take their picture, but Rafael refuses. His mother knows the truth now, but still thinks he could have slept with Ines anyway. He leaves her and finds Esperanza, who says a couple in Guadalajara will take Ines in. The next day, he gives Ines the satchel his mother gave him when he became a teacher and sees her off. . Cesar Burgos Cesar, el pescador, awakens to a chilly day. He’ll fish anyway, because it’s an escape from his troubles. Ever since the accident, his son Beto has refused to talk. Cesar has lost his wife, Concha Ojeda, and his two younger sons, whom Beto used to tell stories about his seashell collection to, in a bus accident. Cesar is working on a road shrine, but it’s plain and Beto won’t help decorate it. Beto refuses to eat breakfast. Cesar tells him to come fishing with him, but gets no response. He realizes there’s nothing he can do for his son. As they fish, it begins to rain.Cesar weeps for the first time since the accident. He tells Beto he’ll send him to his tia Bersa, who has offered to take him in. Beto shakes his head. Back home, Cesar is mending his fishing net when Beto takes out his seashell collection. He glues seashells to the shrine (Concha means â€Å"seashell†), and Cesar joins him. When they run out of seashells, they use his collection of polished glass shards, which look like jewels, to add the finishing touch. They buy paper flowers from Chayo, who gives them lunch. Her warm home reminds mournful Cesar of happy times. Cande asks Santos, the cab driver, to provide free transport.On Christmas Eve, Santos drops them off on the road to Oaxaca, where the bus flew into a deep ravine. They set up the shrine. Beto drapes his mother’s rebozo over it and apologizes for not following her to Oaxaca (el maestro didn’t want him to miss school). If he’d gone, he could’ve saved his brothers. Thunderstruck, Cesar assures him that nobody could’ve saved them. Beto replies that he should’ve died too, then, so he wouldn’t be a burden. Cesar tells him he’s all he has left in the world, and hands the rebozo back to him. 9. Remedios Elementales: Agua Remedios stands before the ocean with Urraca.People tell her their stories—their dreams, secrets, burdens, grief. â€Å"It is stories that save us. † She has come to the sea for renewal, for â€Å"people’s stories take a toll. † The listens, remembers, preserves. 10. Justo Flores Don Justo Flores, el pajarero (the birdman), goes with his 13-year-old German shepherd to check his canaries: Romeo, Julieta, and his pride, Rita. Each day, people at the beach pay to see the birds perform tricks and to have Rita pick their fortunes. He’s had two wives and five children, including Justina, his first, and Ernestina, his fifth. Suddenly, he receives a telegram. He suspects bad news, but can’t read.Marta, who’s named her son after Elizabeth Taylor’s husband Richard, is at work. Meddlesome tia Fina comes over and tries to engage him in conversation. The other day, she’d told Chayo that Marta asked el brujo to curse her child. Although Marta had gone to Remedios to reverse the spell and begged Chayo for forgiveness, Chayo refused. Don Justo escapes la tia and goes to the beach. He’s nervous about the telegram and wants a drink. He hasn’t drunk for ten years as penance. He hopes the telegram is from Justina, saying all is forgiven. A customer reads the telegram for him: â€Å"Come home at once, Papa. Justina is gone from us. -Ernestina. Don Justo gathers up his things and goes to town for a tequila. Back home, the accusing look in Rita’s eye reminds him of the past. He’d allowed his second wife to turn Justina out of the house. He can’t stand the pain. When he awakens with a hangover, he discovers that he’s killed Rita. 11. Esperanza Clemente Esperanza helps a woman give birth to a son. She herself is defiled, single, and childless. Marta, her servant and friend, tells her that Rafael’s mother is having rheumatism again. She visits dona Lina, who complains and claims Rafael wants to â€Å"get rid of† her by planning a one-month trip to visit his brother in Veracruz.She’ll leave in ten days is she’s well enough. Privately, Rafael tells Esperanza the trip would be good for both of them. Is dona Lina well enough to go? Esperanza leaves it up to fate. When dona Lina gets worse because of hysteria, Esperanza enlists Remedios’s help. Dona Lina leaves as scheduled. The next evening, Rafael takes Esperanza to a cafe, where they express their happiness. Two weeks later, they go to don Gustavo’s restaurant, then walk on the beach. They kiss, but she pulls away, thinking she doesn’t deserve such 11. Esperanza Clemente Esperanza helps a woman give birth to a son.She herself is defiled, single, and childless. Marta, her servant and friend, tells her that Rafael’s mother is having rheumatism again. She visits dona Lina, who complains and claims Rafael wants to â€Å"get rid of† her by planning a one-month trip to visit his brother in Veracruz. She’ll leave in ten days is she’s well enough. Privately, Rafael tells Esperanza the trip would be good for both of them. Is dona Lina well enough to go? Esperanza leaves it up to fate. When dona Lina gets worse because of hysteria, Esperanza enlists Remedios’s help. Dona Lina leaves as scheduled. The next evening, Rafael takes Esperanza to a cafe, where they express their happiness. Two weeks later, they go to don Gustavo’s restaurant, then walk on the beach. They kiss, but she pulls away, thinking she doesn’t deserve such happiness. She tells him how she was raped at 17, as a nurse in Miami. When she returned, she told no one and broke off her engagement to her boyfriend. Rafael becomes distant. A few days later, Cande comes for help for his dying son, Tonito. Marta and Chayo are sure it’s el brujo’s spell at work. Esperanza rushes to their house and finds Tonito in anaphylactic shock. Santos drives them to the hospital.Back home, Marta believes the outbreak has broken el brujo’s spell, and Chayo will forgive her. Esperanza knows better. She tried to help the two reconcile a year ago, but Chayo had refused. From now on, any insect sting or bite could kill her son. Rafael comes and asks Esperanza to forgive him. She accepts. 12. Remedios Elementales: Aire Remedios dreams of ascending to the stars with San Rafael Arcangel, Urraca, etc. They lead her to the center of the wind, where the ancestors (stars) reside, collecting wisdom, stories. The elements sustain her. Nothing dies in her heart, because she remembers. 13. Rosario â€Å"Chayo† Rodriguez de MarroquinChayo sells flowers to tourists on the beach. She’s saving up to buy clothes and to make mole for Esperanza’s upcoming wedding. She and Tonito, who sells gum, meet Don Justo as it begins to rain. His dog has died and he has a new blue canary, Carolina. He gives Tonito a fortune, but she takes it away, saying she doesn’t believe in stuff like that [but she believes in el brujo’s curses? ]. At home, as she makes mole, Tonito says he doesn’t want her to kill the turkey. Mischievous Santos describes turkey killing. Chayo tells Santos the governor should fill up the stinking arroyo, but it empties into the sea.Marta brings Richard, whom Tonito takes to see the turkey, but Chayo coldly shuts the door on her. During the wedding feast, Luz and Cesar dance and Tonito and Richard run about and get their photographs taken. Chayo allows Richard to come home with Tonito for the night. They make it home before the thunder and lightning storm begins. Before dawn, Santos gets Cande and Chayo to help him catch a pig that’s stranded in the flooded arroyo. However, the current carries the pig away. She thinks the boys are asleep when she sees Tonito fall into the river.Then she realizes that the boy is Richard. She and Cande are ready to save him themselves when the current washes away the tree he’s holding onto. 14. Remedios Remedios has been at the beach all day with el pico, waiting for Richard’s body to wash up. She had indeed expunged el brujo’s curse on Tonito. Others wait at the site where Richard fell, expecting him to be washed up there. Marta and Chayo join Remedios, and Marta says she was raped here. Remedios knows. â€Å"Seed spilled on this shore to this shore returns. † Marta says she’ll leave for El Paso, but Chayo cries no. The boy nears