The Moth
Helena Maria Viramontes
 The story is a first-person narrative of a Latina granddaughter reminiscing about her relationship between her family, most especially her grandmother, when she was a teenaged girl. She speaks about the indifference she felt among her sisters because she was not “pretty or nice” and could not “do the girl things they could do”. She was constantly in trouble, saying she was “used to the whippings” and spent her time watching over her grandmother since her grandmother always watched over her. Throughout the story, the grandmother becomes more and more ill, while the narrator becomes more and more responsible. When the cancer finally kills the grandmother, the granddaughter continues to take care of her, undressing her and cleansing her in the tub, as she holds her and rocks her back and forth saying “there, there abuelita”. At this point the moths are released from the grandmother; the moths which the grandmother told the narrator “lay within the soul and slowly eat the spirit up.” The narrator cries and sobs in the tub with her grandmother until her sadness transformed into relief.