When Yolanda had decided she could no longer live with Juan, she had asked Jacinta for help.
It was not the beatings, or the drunken mounting of her body as if she were a brood mare or worse--nothing--for a mare was a valuable thing to a man. She had seen him sniffing around the neighbor's young daughters but Juan accused her of jealousy and beat her near breathless with his fists and a stick.
With every new birth there was sadness. For the boys, Yolanda spit on the soul of their fathers in the hope that she could change what they would become. For the girls, she grieved for their breasts and their wombs.
It was when he had beaten their youngest so badly that he did not survive that Yolanda made up her mind.