Mama Chona’s strict moral standard privileges traditional social and religious norms and gendered power dynamics. This pressure forces any family member who doesn’t conform to her prescribed image to do so in secret or live apart from the family in a mutually agreed-upon exile. For example, when Mema has a child out of wedlock, she goes “to live across the river with her man, which in her sisters’ eyes was the same as becoming a woman of the streets […] Mama Chona [adopts Mema’s son, seeing] it as a way to get her daughter away from her sinful life and back into the family. But Mema refuses […] and stubbornly remain[s] with her man” (165). Mema’s refusal to conform to Mama Chona’s rules of conduct relegates her to a life apart from her family.

In contrast, Felix chooses to maintain a public-facing, heteronormative marriage with Angie, while finding private outlets to explore his attraction to men. The need to keep these encounters secret leads him to cross ethical lines and endanger his personal safety. For example, the narrator describes Felix’s insistence on performing mandatory physicals for his male employees in order to initiate sexual encounters in the workplace: “These examinations, Felix told them, were absolutely necessary and, if done by him, were free of charge” (116). Islas nuances this portrayal by emphasizing Felix's implicit decency, and the consensual nature of the examinations that progress to sexual intimacy: “The physical[s] did not go [further] unless the young worker […] expressed an interest in more […] None but the most insecure harbored ill will toward him, because his kindness […] was known to all” (117). Throughout the novel, the language Islas uses in telling Felix’s story holds this tension between his inherent guilelessness and his violation of ethical boundaries, emphasizing the complexity of living as a closeted gay man in a deeply religious, Mexican American family in a Texas border town in the 1970s.

The Angel family’s response to Felix’s death highlights their instinct to maintain their reputation of respectability and keep the family secrets private. They accept the police’s decision not to press charges against the soldier, fearing that a trial will expose the life Felix kept hidden. While Miguel Grande expresses his private grief—“I don't care what my brother did. I loved the hell out of him" (86)—he publicly accepts the DA’s decision not to prosecute the soldier who killed Felix to avoid the public embarrassment of a trial. Felix’s daughter, Lena, notes that her family, “as usual—more concerned with its pride than with justice—had begun to lie to itself about the truth” (85). When she discovers the DA doesn’t intend to prosecute Felix’s killer, she waits “for her uncle to raise the obvious objections, to express the deep rage she felt at such injustice. Miguel Grande remained silent” (87). In this way, Islas creates a contrast between Miguel Grande and his niece, highlighting the divide between the older generation and the younger.

Islas positions Lena and Miguel Chico as foils for each other, highlighting the dual perspectives of the younger generation. Both Lena and Miguel Chico self-identify as family sinners, but Miguel Chico perpetuates his familial pattern of secrecy and estrangement, while Lena publicly defies it. In defiance of Mama Chona’s insistence on a prescribed standard of social respectability, “Lena was a scandal to the family because she ran around with the ‘low class’ Mexicans in her high school” (85). When Lena goes to family gatherings, she “put[s] on more makeup than usual and [wears] the shortest, tightest skirt she could find” (85). In contrast, Miguel Chico lives far from home in San Francisco and senses the family’s silent suspicions about his lifestyle but refuses to acknowledge them. When relatives ask about his bachelorhood, he hides behind vague comments and lets them “guess at the rest” (5). His distance shields from his family’s judgement and their tendency to treat honesty and authenticity as a threat.