49 pages • 1 hour read
Angie CruzHow Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Session Seven”
Despite her tenuous financial situation, Cara is glad to see an email from Alicia the Psychic, who promises Cara that wealth will come. Alicia has foreseen three fortunes that will visit in succession. For a reduced fee, Alicia the Psychic will perform a ritual to guarantee that the visions come true, or Cara can request her money back. Though Cara sends Alicia no money, she believes Alicia’s prediction because it comes with a money-back guarantee.
Cara believes that she will make a good security guard for the school because she has the right temperament to keep people safe. To demonstrate her suitability, she tells a story about going with Ángela to pick up Ángela’s daughter Yadiresela from school. At that time, a man approached them, claiming to know Hernán and requesting a picture of Yadiresela to show his wife. He claimed that his wife would not believe how much Yadiresela has grown. Ángela posed with her daughter while Cara was suspicious enough to take pictures of the man, believing that Ángela had given personal information to a trafficker. News of missing girls in Washington Heights had been on the news frequently, and Cara censured Ángela for lacking common sense. The next day, Cara inconspicuously followed Yadiresela home to make sure that the man was not waiting for her. Now, Cara explains that she heard about a study in which monkeys showing signs of anxiety were rounded up and treated with drugs before being returned to the wild. However, the scientists discovered that the other monkeys had been killed. To Cara, this proves that pessimistic people like her contribute to a safer society.
Cara connects her love of security footage in the apartment to the security guard job. This line of thought reminds her that Sabrina, her neighbor’s daughter, has been letting someone into the building after hours. Cara waits until she sees the two in the lobby and leaves, planning to catch them on the stairwell. She catches the girls sharing marijuana and kisses. Their look of innocent terror reminds her of Fernando and how he must have felt about himself. She resolves not to tell Sabrina’s mother to prevent her from beating Sabrina as punishment.
Cara admits that shortly after Fernando left, she found him working for the superintendent in a nearby building, but instead of coming home for dinner like he promised, he filed a restraining order against her and left his job so that she could not find him.
Following this latest interview with Cara, the narrative includes the restraining order. An application for In-Home Daycare follows. In addition to many misspellings in her application, the Behavior Management Plan prohibits corporeal punishment, isolation, and the withholding of food as punishment.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Session Eight”
Patricia and Adonis will not allow Lulú to negatively discipline their children or watch TV, and the children are too demanding. Cara decides that she and Lulú will pool their childcare responsibilities. While Cara cares for Yadiresela and Julio, Lulú watches Adonis’s babies. Five-year-old Julio is too rowdy. Cara tries the behavior management plan, but it does not correct his misbehavior. When he dumps spaghetti on the babies as Cara prepares the table for dinner, she asks him to sit, but he laughs and runs amuck. She catches him roughly and asks if he needs a beating. Ángela walks in on this scene and compares Cara to their abusive mother, then forbids Cara from watching her children in the future.
In the latest session with Lissette, Cara states that she has decided not to pursue the in-house daycare plan because she does not know how to raise American children who are so easily traumatized. She claims that she is not cold like their mother and uses a childhood anecdote as proof.
Cara explains that after she fled from her abusive husband, Ricardo, her mother locked her out of the house, believing that Cara deserved Ricardo’s wrath. Ángela, who was only 13 at the time, let Cara in after their mother fell asleep. When their mother caught them, she beat Ángela while Cara watched, unable to intervene for fear. Now, years later, Cara knows that Ángela has never forgiven her for this moment, even though Cara worked to bring Ángela and Rafa to New York as soon as possible.
However, Cara also admits that when Fernando tried to leave her apartment, she threw a hot iron at the door, accidentally hitting him. Even so, Cara refuses to acknowledge the harm she has caused, maintaining that unlike her mother, she never intends harm and acts from love, not spite. She does not understand why Ángela and Fernando cannot understand this distinction.
Another billing invoice follows, showing that even less money has been paid toward Cara’s rent and growing debt.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Session Nine”
Cara apologizes by making Ángela pastelitos with raisins, but Ángela refuses them. Cara understands that it will take time for Ángela’s anger to fade because she is a fiery Aries. Cara is grateful that Hernán visits. When she is visiting with Hernán, she realizes that she has spent so little time enjoying life because she focuses on her responsibilities and survival.
Cara apologizes to her caseworker, Lisette, for oversharing and hopes that Lisette knows that Cara is not a bad person. Although Cara’s parents are not perfect, she does not want her caseworker to blame them for her faults because they have done their best with their circumstances. She relies on herself because she is all she has ever had.
Cara explains that in Hato Mayor, her father dreamed of sending her to university, but she married Ricardo at 19 when they conceived a child. Ricardo was kind at first, but when she miscarried repeatedly, he became cold, drinking more and beating her. She was 26 when she had Fernando. When she went into labor, Ricardo was too drunk to wake and could not fetch the midwife, the Old Woman Who Knows, so Cara delivered Fernando herself. She stayed with Ricardo only two more years before leaving to give Fernando a better life.
Cara goes on to explain that many years later, she returned with Fernando because her mother misled her into believing that she was dying. Suddenly, Ricardo arrived and started an altercation. Fernando was only 16 and was unaccustomed to fighting, and when he stepped between his mother and father, Ricardo hit him, then beat Cara when she tried to stop him. Ricardo insulted them both until Cara’s father ran him off, but Cara’s mother sided with Ricardo, heaping abusive words on Cara and Fernando both and accusing Cara of raising a gay son. Fernando cried publicly, something that men do not do in the Dominican Republic. Cara and Fernando left in humiliation.
Despite this, Cara still calls and sends money to her mother because she believes that it is right to support family and wrong not to do so, as her mother has proven. To Cara, her continued dedication to family proves that she is a good mother and daughter despite the incidental harm she has caused through the years. She does not want to live in the negative past like Ángela and Fernando, and she wishes that they would ignore the past so that it would go away. But some things she cannot ignore, like the lease termination paper that follows, giving her 30 days to pay her back rent or be evicted.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
As Cruz uses these chapters to intensify the narrative tension, Cara’s story becomes more intimately focused on the inner conflict that she faces at her core. Despite her many external hardships, Cara’s deepest challenge is her unresolved resentment regarding her life’s work and her own deferred sense of fulfillment. Although Cara’s belief in The Importance of Familial and Community Support and her commitment to building a better life are both powerful motivating factors, her focus on others has also been a source of intense internal pressure, leading to the deferral of her own aspirations. As external pressures mount, Cara’s propensity for focusing her narrative on others becomes an indirect confessional by which Cara confronts her strengths and weaknesses—not as a job applicant, but as a person. To this end, Cruz uses the shift from the external to the internal to explore Cara’s underlying identity crisis and the tension that results from her conflicting motivations.
To support her family and community, Cara constantly defers her own fulfillment, and as a result, she takes credit for others’ successes because she believes that her labors have enabled those around her to succeed. While there is some truth to Cara’s observation that her years of work and support have enabled Ángela to earn her degrees and save for a house, Cara oversteps when she takes credit for Ángela’s choices and resents her sister for her own lack of savings and job security. Similarly, when she uses Fernando’s independence as proof of her own good parenting, it becomes clear that Cara feels compelled to take credit for these things because she finds herself lacking. This overlooked resentment and overbearing aspect of her identity is driven by the fear that despite her hard work for others, she will end up alone with nothing to show for her efforts. At the novel’s turning point, she is jobless, facing eviction, estranged from her son, and deprived of her role as caretaker for Ángela and her children. This perfect storm of external events drives the inner crisis of identity that forces Cara to question who she is and unpack the ways in which this identity crisis has harmed herself and others.
Ironically, as Cara defers her needs in support of her family and community, her very self-denial becomes integral to her self-identity, serving as a coping mechanism for the uncertainties in her life. As an abused daughter, she becomes perfectionistic in her attempts to be the mother that she never had. Cara so strongly defines herself in opposition to her mother that she cannot admit her own mistakes, for fear that doing so will prove Ángela correct in her comparison of Cara and their mother. Seeking to prove her worth as a mother figure, Cara dwells on the many sacrifices that she has made for others. Because she cannot measure her success in the American way—by hanging degrees on the wall or buying a fancy house—she must rely on intangible markers of worth, such as her ability to soothe Ángela’s daughter, Yadiresela, or her patience with Lulú. However, by exhibiting her sacrifices as proof of her strength, Cara fails to recognize that her need to be the perfect caregiver also renders her stubbornly self-reliant, overbearing, and resentful. She also fails to consider the fact that the very strength of her identity may be harmful to herself and her relationships. The lack of fulfillment and support she feels because of her need for perfection and self-reliance fuels an unspoken resentment that surfaces when she finds herself steps from ruin. Unlike Ángela, Cara does not connect her independence or unwillingness to ask for help with her traumatic upbringing and emotionally absent mother, but she does at least understand that keeping her surgery a secret and correcting Ángela’s parenting also cause harm. By placing herself above others as their caretaker, she simultaneously alienates those closest and prevents herself from being supported. To change for the better, Cara must reconcile the fact that she needs familial and community support just as much as she needs to give support to others. These chapters prove that Cara cannot continue to view herself as an island, or she will lose everything.
Cara’s disagreement with Ángela shows Cara that in addition to facing external economic ruin, she also faces the possibility of losing the supportive relationships that have sustained her throughout her life. Ángela’s choice to deny Cara a caregiving role is a crucial turning point that forces Cara to confront the disconnect between her view of herself and how others perceive her. By accusing Cara of being like their mother and denying Cara her preferred role, Ángela forces Cara to acknowledge the identity crisis that has been building since Fernando’s estrangement and the loss of her job. No longer a worker, a mother, or a sister, Cara can no longer distract herself with meaningful work or deflect attention from her faults. Though she argues that Ángela unfairly equates her actions with their mother’s, Cara can no longer deny that she has lost everything and that her own actions are partially to blame. When she finally confesses her worst moment (throwing a hot iron at the door and injuring Fernando by mistake), this scene opens a new avenue of thought that she has long repressed in order to serve her own self-image. Lissette’s gentle question regarding her regrets allows Cara to soften her perfectionism, address her weaknesses, and reconnect with her deepest desires. To maintain her role as an important fixture in her community, Cara must resolve the inner fears and resentments that she has repressed and learn to be as receptive as she is giving.
