When Josephine, a young woman living in Ville Rose, sees her porcelain Madonna statue cry, she fears that her mother has died, and she walks barefoot to the prison in Port-au-Prince where her mother is incarcerated. Josephine was born in 1937, on the day that a dictator, whom she calls El Generalissimo, ordered the massacre of all Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Josephine travels with her Madonna statue to Port-au-Prince, where she plans to visit her mother in prison. She is stopped by an elderly woman, who asks to touch the Madonna statue and shudders when she does so. The elderly woman tells Josephine to bring her mother food.

At the prison, Josephine worries about her mother’s health. Her mother—who has been accused of having wings of flame—has grown thin in prison. The guards suspect that her skin is sagging because she takes it off each night and has no time to put it back on correctly in the morning. Josephine struggles to speak to her mother in prison, but gives her the food and the Madonna statue, which her mother holds tightly. When Josephine’s mother was arrested, they had been staying at a friend’s house, and Josephine’s mother sometimes cared for the friend’s sick baby.