The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende Page A

watching the bored creature open its jaws; it continued to grow and fatten until it was truly awe-inspiring, though it was lethargic until the day it died.
    The Reeves children survived on their own, in their individual ways. Judy found a job in a bakery, where she worked four hours every day after school; by night she baby-sat or cleaned offices. She was an excellent student; she learned to imitate any handwriting and for a reasonable sum would do homework for her classmates. She maintained her clandestine trade without ever being caught, all the while enjoying her reputation as a model young girl, always smiling and docile, never revealing the demons in her soul until the first symptoms of puberty transformed her personality. When two firm cherries budded on her breasts, her waistline slimmed, and her baby features became more modeled, everything changed. In that barrio of dark-skinned, rather short people, her golden color and Valkyrie-like stature made it impossible for her to pass unnoticed. She had always been pretty; once she emerged from girlhood, however, and males of all ages and conditions began to hound her, the once sweet child became a raging animal. She felt violated by men’s lustful glances and often came home shouting curses and slamming doors; she sometimes wept impotently because someone had whistled at her in the street or made lewd gestures. She acquired a sailor’s vocabulary to rebuff these advances, and for anyone who tried to touch her she kept a long hatpin at hand, which she would bury like a dagger, without compunction, in her admirer’s most vulnerable parts. In school she got into fights with boys over the look in their eye and with girls over racial differences and the jealousy she inevitably provoked. More than once Gregory saw his sister engaged in the strange wrestling matches females indulge in, rolling, scratching, hair-pulling, insults—so different from the way boys do battle, which is generally brief, silent, and conclusive. Girls look for a way to humiliate their enemy, while boys seem prepared to kill or be killed. Judy did not need any help in defending herself; with practice she became a true champion. While other girls her age were trying out their first makeup, practicing French kisses, and counting the days until they could wear high heels, she cut her hair like a jail-bird, dressed in men’s clothes, and compulsively ate leftover bread and rolls in the bakery. Her face broke out in pimples, and by the time she entered high school she had gained so much weight that no trace remained of the delicate porcelain doll she had been as a child; she looked like a sea lion, a description she used when she wanted to denigrate herself.
    When he was seven, Gregory turned to the streets. He was not bound to his mother by any emotion; between them there were only a few shared routines and a tradition of honor drawn from didactic stories about self-sacrificing sons who were rewarded and ungrateful ones who ended up in the witch’s oven. He felt sorry for his mother; he was sure that without Judy and him, Nora would die of attrition, sitting in her wicker chair staring into empty air. Both children thought of their mother’s indolence not as a vice but, rather, as a sickness of the spirit; perhaps her Mental Body had gone in search of their father and had wandered astray in the labyrinth of some cosmic plane, or had fallen behind in one of those vast spaces filled with weird machines or baffled souls. Gregory’s closeness with Judy had vanished, and when he tired of trying to reestablish contact with her, he replaced his sister with Carmen Morales, with whom he shared the unceremonious affection, the spats, and the loyalty of best friends. Gregory was mischievous and restless; he was a problem in school and spent half his time serving out various punishments—whether wearing donkey’s ears and standing with his face to the wall or suffering the