Elenita wishes her father was more honest and straightforward with her.
Explanation:
This wish is exemplified when her father would enlist reasons for not going back to Puerto Rico. The reasons varied from year to year. Elenita learned years later, through her mother's stories that her father, Jorge, was actually ashamed of the fact that he could not provide for them the kind of living standard her mother had had had growing up in a middle-class family in Puerto Rico. She wishes that culturally her communication with him would have been based on honesty instead of having him give excuses such as, "not the right time, not enough money or that he was needed in the U.S. by Mr. Reyes".
