As Filomena listens to his disembodied voice in the cemetery, Manuel (Alma’s father) recounts the story of his early life. He was born of a 49-year-old woman. His father, who didn’t care for him, already had 10 children with his first wife and now 15 with his second. His father, disapproving of Manuel’s love for poetry and his emotional reactions to stories, wanted to send him to military school, but Manuel’s loving mother demanded to homeschool him. She instilled in him a love of reading and stories. However, being homeschooled kept him in constant contact with his father, who often beat him and shamed him. His mother made excuses for his father, saying that he was not in good health or was upset by the American occupation.

Manuel’s father thought believed that Manual was too effeminate and teased him about being gay. One night, his mother proposed that they invent a world where they could escape from his father’s wrath and where every item had a story to tell. Mamá suggested calling this imaginary world Alfa Calenda, combining the first letter of the Greek alphabet with the name of a dance that the Haitian migrant workers would perform; this dance was banned by plantation owners in Haiti, who feared that it might incite a revolution.