Under the Feet of Jesus: Chapter Five Summary & Analysis

When the car pulls up beside the bungalow, the headlights sweep across the few possessions they’d left outside that morning. Everyone sits still for a minute in the creaking station wagon. Eventually, Petra walks into the bungalow with difficulty and stamps on some lurking insects. Perfecto and Estrella follow, carrying the sleeping children.

Perfecto closes the car doors and watches as Petra drags a stick in the dirt around the bungalow, recreating the protective circle against scorpions. He feels that he needs to think, and doesn’t want to talk to her. He wishes he had a cigarette. He’s almost sure that the nurse has called the police, who are probably searching for them in the labor camps right now.

He can’t decide whether his remaining money – $4.07 – is enough for him to “bail out.” He wonders “what has happened to his instincts”; he should be running to save himself right now, just as he would pull out an arrow if it was shot into his belly. When Perfecto puts his head in his hands, Petra wonders if he’s crying. He has a hunch that she will tell about her pregnancy tonight. He’s too old to start another family, especially with a woman so much younger.

Perfecto tells himself to think clearly. The nurse wasn’t really hurt at all, and anyway if she called the authorities they would probably have been arrested by now. Maybe, he thinks hopefully, she just reapplied her lipstick and picked up her sons like nothing had happened. Perhaps she’s drinking decaffeinated coffee right now and breezily telling her husband what happened at work today. This is the way Perfecto believes that “people who had couches and living rooms and television sets” behave.

Perfecto is desperate to load his tools and some peaches into the car. He can’t tell if it’s “love or simply” fear that’s keeping him from doing so. It’s silly to wait until the barn is pulled down; if he leaves now, with a few dollars and some gasoline in the car, “he would have a second chance.” He’s glad that he gave up smoking years ago; he’s so nervous that if he had the chance right now, he would have spent the last of his money on cigarettes.

Inside the bungalow, the children are quickly returning to sleep. Petra wonders how long it will be until the authorities wake them up. Maybe they’ll even come with dogs. She wonders why she didn’t stop Estrella at the clinic but concludes that no force can restrain her daughter or hold “back the will of her body.” If Petra could’ve controlled her, she wouldn’t have let her become involved with Alejo in the first place. She goes outside and inspects the circle Estrella once made, finding numerous breakages and retracing the line. She remembers how her mother kicked her out of the house when she became pregnant with Estrella.

Petra sees Perfecto standing with his back to her. He once told her to trust him, but now she only trusts “Jesucristo.” She returns inside and decides to make an offering in front of her icon. She feels Jesucristo’s eyes watching her as she kneels and lights several candles around the statue’s base. Smoke rises and one of the children sneezes. Petra straightens the doily underneath the statue, which her grandmother once crocheted. The old woman had spent days and nights crocheting, while people lived and died around her. Petra wishes she knew how to crochet and keep her prayers from becoming “soot above her.”

Beneath the doily is a manila envelope, which Petra now opens, full of documents. There are five birth certificates with a footprint on each of them, making her children “legal” and enabling them to go to school or join the military. There are five baptism certificates and her own identification card, which allays her fear that she will die and “no one would know who she was.” There are Holy Communion certificates for some of the children and an award for an essay Estrella once wrote. Last of all is her marriage certificate, from a ceremony that took place when she was four months pregnant. She got married after a long and complicated bus ride to the courthouse. No one had been able to talk her out of the idea.

Petra carefully refolds the documents and places them under the statue. She can’t stand up unaided, so she leans on the crate that supports the icon, and Jesucristo trembles and suddenly tumbles to the floor, where his head breaks off. From the other side of the curtain Estrella asks what’s wrong, and Petra tells her to go to sleep. Petra replaces the body on the crate and cradles the head, which is surprisingly light.

Petra walks to the porch and looks out at Perfecto, who is still leaning on the car. She’s intensely cognizant of the “lima bean in her stomach” and wishes she could crochet the long night away. Suddenly, it seems possible that scorpions have already invaded the bungalow; the stick she used for protection now looks “slight and feeble.” All she has to protect her children are “papers and sticks and broken faith and Perfecto,” and none of these things seem very effective right now. She hopes that Perfecto can fix the statue.

Hoping for some fresh air, Estrella forces the bungalow window open. She remembers how Alejo begged her to stay with him in the hospital waiting room. He was so frightened, and she was unable to comfort him; meanwhile, the car was burning precious gasoline while the family waited for her. At the time she reassured him briskly that the doctors would take care of him, but now she has to acknowledge that she might never see him alive again.

Estrella takes off her muddy dress. She feels filthy and exhausted, “as if her body had been beaten into a pulp of ligaments and cartilage.” Suddenly, she hears something shatter on the other side of the curtain; she asks her mother if she needs help but is only ordered to bed. Estrella picks up the lantern and goes out to the porch, where Petra hugs her so tightly that it feels like she’s “trying to hide her back in her body.”

Disregarding Petra’s warnings, Estrella walks toward the barn with the lantern, soon breaking into a run. She can hear dogs and coyotes in the distance. Inside the barn is dark and soothing, although the owls above startle her. As her eyes adjust to the gloom, she sees the heavy chain that leads to a loft and the trapdoor to the roof. Estrella takes off her shoes and socks and ties up her hair. Then she grabs the chain and starts shimmying her way up.

As Estrella moves up the chain with difficulty, splinters and dust rain down from above. Her biceps and legs are straining with the effort, and she knows she can’t look down. Finally, soaked with sweat, she reaches the loft, which is covered in bird droppings. Looking for the trapdoor, she walks across the loft and accidentally kicks a glass bottle to the floor. She looks down to see it shatter, realizing how far she’s climbed.

When Estrella first pushes the trapdoor, it refuses to move. She feels for a bolt or lock, but there’s nothing holding the door closed. She has to shove it with her entire body in order to overcome its resistance and emerge onto the roof. Reaching the open air, Estrella is stunned by the “violently sharp” stars. Birds are flying around, and she’s surprised that they never crash into each other. It seems logical that “the angels had picked a place like this to exist.”

Estrella carefully steadies herself on the slanted roof. Shingles crumble beneath her feet “like the serpent under the feet of Jesus” and she feels she can trust her feet and her body to keep her safe. At the edge of the roof, she stops and feels the wind brushing against her face. Birds start to land near her, and she remains “immobile as an angel.” She has to believe that her heart is “powerful enough to summon home all those who strayed.”