Roberto

Roberto is the first son of Pedro and Rosaura, and his brief life turns Tita’s forbidden love into an unexpected form of care. Born amid a household emergency, he becomes the child through whom Tita discovers a new capacity for love and performs an extraordinary act of nourishment. The later report of his death makes his absence the immediate cause of her refusal to keep obeying Mama Elena.

Identity and Place in the Family

Roberto is named during the preparations for his baptism, an important family occasion for which Tita has earthenware dishes made bearing his name. Pedro and Rosaura’s first child, he is welcomed with gifts and attention from family and friends. The celebration centers on a grand meal of mole, and Tita takes particular care to raise the turkeys for the feast. The preparations show how food and domestic labor organize family life: the meal marks Roberto’s entrance into the family, while Tita’s work expresses a tenderness she had not expected to feel.

That tenderness crosses the divisions created by the adults’ relationships. Roberto is the child of Rosaura, Tita’s sister, and Pedro, the man Tita loves. Yet Tita does not treat him as a reminder of that painful arrangement. She feels immense affection for him, setting aside her resentment toward Rosaura and her own claim on Pedro. As an infant, Roberto has no independent role in the conflicts around him; his importance lies in how his presence changes Tita’s response to the people around her.

Birth During a Household Emergency

Tita becomes the only person present to help when Rosaura goes into labor. Pedro has been captured by federal troops while trying to fetch the doctor. Mama Elena and Chencha cannot return from the village because shooting has broken out, forcing them to take refuge with the Lobos. Tita had expected neither Pedro’s detention nor the others’ absence, and suddenly the responsibility rests entirely with her.

She has prepared sheets, hot water, and sterilized scissors, but preparation cannot supply the knowledge she lacks. Tita has seen animals give birth, yet recognizes that watching them has not taught her what to do for a person. At the village school she learned subjects she now sees as useless to the emergency, but no one taught her how to deliver a baby. In desperation she kneels and asks Nacha for help, extending the cook’s familiar instruction beyond the kitchen and into a moment of danger.

When Roberto is born, Tita’s fear gives way to a powerful attachment. His cries fill the emptiness in her heart, and she recognizes new love not only for the child but also for life, Pedro, and even Rosaura, whom she has long despised. With Nacha’s guidance, she tends to him: she cuts the umbilical cord, cleans him with sweet almond oil, binds and dresses him, and wraps him securely. When Mama Elena and Chencha return that night with the Lobos, they admire Tita’s competent care; Roberto is sleeping peacefully, wrapped snugly. Pedro returns the next day with John Brown after the federal authorities release him, relieving the family.

Tita’s Miraculous Nursing

After the birth, Tita prepares the mole alone while Chencha goes to the village to look for another nurse. The search fails. Roberto cries, rejects cow’s milk and tea, and remains hungry. Tita tries the rebozo left by the wet nurse, thinking its familiar smell might soothe him, but it only intensifies his distress. Unable to bear his hunger, she offers him her breast despite believing that she has no milk.

Roberto suckles, and Tita discovers that milk is flowing. She cannot explain the change, which the narrative presents as extraordinary in an unmarried woman. She lets him feed until his hunger is satisfied, and he settles into peaceful sleep. The scene reverses the expected roles of dependence: Tita had thought she could offer only comfort, but her body sustains the child. Pedro enters and sees her nursing; his response is affectionate, but the moment also carries the danger of discovery. Mama Elena’s approaching footsteps make Tita adjust her blouse and Pedro move away before she enters the kitchen.

Roberto’s feeding thus binds care to secrecy. The household sees Tita as a capable aunt, while the intimacy between her and Pedro remains concealed. His need for nourishment draws out Tita’s tenderness and gives her a maternal role that the family’s formal arrangements do not recognize.

Reported Death and Consequences

Roberto’s story ends abruptly in the kitchen when Chencha returns weeping with news from Felipe that the child is dead. The announcement shatters Tita. She drops the sausage she is holding as Mama Elena enters, and the loss overwhelms the household order that Tita has been expected to maintain through work and obedience.

Mama Elena forbids grieving and insists that work come first. Tita, who has previously submitted to her mother’s commands, instead tears apart the sausages within reach and screams her refusal to obey. Mama Elena strikes her across the face with a wooden spoon. The immediate consequence of the death report is therefore not only mourning but open defiance: Roberto’s loss breaks through Tita’s habitual compliance and exposes the violence sustaining Mama Elena’s authority.

Roberto’s brief presence changes the emotional terms of Tita’s family life before his reported death removes him from it. His birth awakens affection across a bitter sisterly division; his hunger makes Tita’s care physically sustaining; and the news of his death precipitates her revolt. The contrast between the lovingly prepared baptism feast and the later kitchen crisis gives his short arc its force: a child first welcomed through food and communal celebration becomes the focus of a loss that the household’s rules cannot contain.