The story closes out with the narrator crying in the tub with her dead grandmother's body:
There, there, I said to Abuelita, rocking us gently, there, there. (16)
Of course, Abuelita has already passed away and doesn't really need much comforting. What the narrator is really doing is comforting herself by rocking herself and her grandmother.
The narrator has, up to this point, been a rebellious child—she won't go to church, for instance, and beats up her sisters. When she's sent to help her dying grandmother, though, she's forced to grow up, to become the one doing the comforting instead of the one being comforted. In the end, she finally finds a way to take care of herself and others rather than needing others only for support. Her own consoling words, "There, there," tell her that everything will be all right.