Though Chucha works for the family, Anita seems to have a relationship with her that’s more familial than anything else. Chucha’s eccentricities provide some comic relief—but the way that Anita talks about Chucha sleeping in a coffin also shows that children can get used to anything if it’s presented to them as normal. In this case, this isn’t a bad thing; it just makes Anita more accepting of Chucha. Indeed, Chucha plays an important role in Anita’s life, given that she can see the future and keep Anita occupied with riddles. The riddle that Chucha tells here shows that either she really can see the future, or she’s just perceptive enough to know the family’s likely fate. When she says that Anita will see her cousins “before they come back,” she means that when Anita and her cousins are reunited, the cousins will not yet have returned to the Dominican Republic—implying that Anita might see them next in New York. And it’s not totally clear yet what Chucha means when she says that Anita will see them only after she is free—that’s the story that the novel will tell.