The House On Mango Street.

We didn't always live on Mango street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six--Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.
The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people down stairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get.
We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town.
They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the house on T.V.And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.
But the house on Mango street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom--Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny.
Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw m playing out front. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner has painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as not to lose business.

Where do you live? she asked.
There, I said pointing up to the third floor
You live there?

There. I had to look to where she pointed--the third floor, the painting peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I loved there. I nodded.
I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.

Hairs.

Everybody in our family has different hair. My Papa's hair is like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands. Carlos' hair is thick and straight. He doesn't need to comb it. Nenny's hair is slippery——slides out of your hand. And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur.
But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring. The snoring, the rain, and Mama's hair that smells like bread.

Boys & Girls

The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The
boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for
example. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside
the house. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls.
Carlos and Kiki are each other's best friend ... not ours.
Nenny is too young to be my friend. She's just my
sister and that was not my fault. You don't pick your sisters,
you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny.
She can't play with those Vargas kids or she'll turn
out just like them. And since she comes right after me, she
is my responsibility.
Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I
can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes
without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red
balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.

My Name

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means
too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is
like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican
records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is
shaving, songs like sobbing.
It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is
mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the
Chinese year of the horse-which is supposed to be bad
luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese
lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their
women strong.
My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't
marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her
head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a
fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.
And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked I
out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit
their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best
with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be
all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited
her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the
window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables
were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth.
But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something,
like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena-which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at
least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always
Esperanza.
I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a
name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza
as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something
like Zeze the X will do.

Cathy Queen of Cats
She says, I am the great great grand cousin of the
queen of France. She lives upstairs, over there, next door
to Joe the baby-grabber. Keep away from him, she says.
He is full of danger. Benny and Blanca own the comer
store. They're okay except don't lean on the candy counter.
Two girls raggedy as rats live across the street. You don't
want to know them. Edna is the lady who owns the building
next to you. She used to own a building big as a whale, but
her brother sold it. Their mother said no, no, don't ever
sell it. I won't. And then she closed her eyes and he sold
it. Alicia is stuck-up ever since she went to college. She used
to like me but now she doesn't.
Cathy who is queen of cats has cats and cats and cats.
Baby cats, big cats, skinny cats, sick cats. Cats asleep like
little donuts. Cats on top of the refrigerator. Cats taking a
walk on the dinner table. Her house is like cat heaven.
You want a friend, she says. Okay, I'll be your friend.
But only till next Tuesday. That's when we move away.
Got to. Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the
neighborhood is getting bad.
Cathy'S father will have to fly to France one day and
find her great great distant grand cousin on her father's
side and inherit the family house. How do I know this is
so? She told me so. In the meantime they'll just have to
move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther
away every time people like us keep moving in.
Our Good Day

If you give me five dollars I will be your friend forever.
That's what the little one tells me.
Five dollars is cheap since I don't have any friends
except Cathy who is only my friend till Tuesday.
Five dollars, five dollars.
She is trying to get somebody to chip in so they can
buy a bicycle from this kid named Tito. They already have
ten dollars and all they need is five more.
Only five dollars, she says.
Don', talk to them, says Cathy. Can't you see they smell
like a broom.
But I like them. Their clothes are crooked and old. They are wearing shiny Sunday shoes without socks. It
makes their bald ankles all red, but I like them. Especially
the big one who laughs with all her teeth. I like her even
though she lets the little one do all the talking.
Five dollars, the little one says, only five. !
Cathy is tugging my arm and I know whatever I do
next will make her mad forever.
Wait a minute, I say, and run inside to get the five
dollars. I have three dollars saved and I take two of Nenny's.
She's not home, but I'm sure she'll he glad when she
finds out we own a bike. When I get back, Cathy is gone
like I knew she would be, but I don't care. I have two new
friends and a bike too.
My name is Lucy, the big one says. This here is Rachel
my sister.
I'm her sister, says Rachel. Who are you?
And I wish my name was Cassandra or Alexis or Maritza-anything
but Esperanza-but when I tell them my
name they don't laugh.
We come from Texas, Lucy says and grins. Her was
born here, but me I'm Texas.
You mean she, I say.
No, 1'1)1 from Texas, and doesn't get it.
This bike is three ways ours, says Rachel who is thinking
ahead already. Mine today, Lucy's tomorrow and yours
day after.
But everybody wants to ride it today because the bike
is new, so we decide to take turns after tomorrow. Today
it belongs to all of us.
I don't tell them about Nenny just yet. It's too complicated.
Especially since Rachel almost put out Lucy's eye
about who was going to get to ride it first. But finally we
agree to ride it together. Why not?
Because Lucy has long legs; she pedals. I sit on the back seat and Rachel is skinny enough to get up on the
handlebars which makes the bike all wobbly as if the wheels
are spaghetti, hut after a bit you get used to it.
We ride fast and faster. Past my house, sad and red
and crumbly in places, past Mr. Benny's grocery on the
corner, and down the avenue which is dangerous. Laundromat, junkstore, drugstore, windows and cars and more
cars, and around the block back to Mango.
People on the bus wave. A very fat lady crossing the
street says, You sure got quite a load there.
Rachel shouts, You got quite a load there too. She is
very sassy.
Down, down Mango Street we go. Rachel, Lucy, me.
Our new bicycle. Laughing the crooked ride back.

Laughter
Nenny and I don't look like sisters ... not right away.
Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have
the same fat popside lips like everybody else in their family.
But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would
know. Our laughter for example. Not the shy ice cream
bells' giggle of Rachel and Lucy's family, but all ofa sudden
and surprised like a pile of dishes breaking. And other
things I can't explain.
One day we were passing a house that looked, in my
mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico. I don't know why.
There was nothing about the house that looked exactly like the homes I remembered. I'm not even sure why I thought it but it seemed to feel right.
Look. at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico.
Rachel and Lucy look at me like I'm crazy, but before
Lucy can let out a laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that's Mexico all
right. That's what I was thinking exactly.

Gil's Furniture Bought & Sold

There is a junk store. An old man owns it. We bought
a used refrigerator from him once, and Carlos sold a box
of magazines for a dollar. The store is small with just a
dirty window for light. He doesn't turn the lights on unless
you got money to buy things with, so in the dark we look
and see all kinds of things, me and Nenny. Tables with
their feet upside-down and rows and rows of refrigerators
with round corners and couches that spin dust in the air
when you punch them and a hundred T.V.'s that don't
work probably. Everything is on top of everything so the
whole store has skinny aisles to walk through. You can get
lost easy.
The owner, he is a black man who doesn't talk much
and sometimes if you didn't know better you could be in there a long time before your eyes notice a pair of gold glasses floating in the dark. Nenny who thinks she is smart and talks to any old man, asks lots of questions. Me, I never
said nothing to him except once when I bought the Statue
of liberty for a dime.
But Nenny, I hear her asking one time how's this here
and the man says, This, this is a music box, and I turn
around quick thinking he means a pretty box with flowers
painted on it, with a ballerina inside. Only there's nothing
like that where this old man is pointing, just a wood box
that's old and got a big brass record in it with holes. Then
he starts it up and all sorts of things start happening. It's
like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the
dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones.
It's like drops of water. Or like marimbas only with a funny
little plucked sound to it like if you were running your
fingers across the teeth of a metal comb.
And then I don't know why, but I have to turn around
and pretend I don't care about the box so Nenny won't see
how stupid I am. But Nenny, who is stupider, already is
asking how much and I can see her fingers going for the
quarters in her pants pocket.

This, the old man says shutting the lid, this ain't for
sale.

Meme Ortiz

Meme Ortiz moved into Cathy's house after her family
moved away. His name isn't really Meme. His name isJuan.
But when we asked him what his name was he said Meme,
and that's what everybody calls him except his mother.
Meme has a dog with gray eyes, a sheepdog with two
names, one in English and one in Spanish. The dog is big,
like a man dressed in a dog suit, and runs the same way
its owner does, clumsy and wild and with the limbs flopping
allover the place like untied shoes.

Cathy's father built the house Meme moved into. It
is wooden. Inside the floors slant. Some rooms uphill. Some
down. And there are no closets. Out front there are twenty one steps, all lopsided and jutting like crooked teeth (made
that way on purpose, Cathy said, so the rain will slide off),
and when Meme's mama calls from the doorway, Meme goes scrambling up the twenty-one wooden stairs with the
dog with two names scrambling after him.

Around the back is a yard, mostly dirt, and a greasy
bunch of boards that used to be a garage. But what you
remember most is this tree, huge, with fat arms and mighty
families of squirrels in the higher branches. All around,
me neighborhood of roofs, black-tarred and A-framed,
and in their gutters, the balls that never came back down
to earth. Down at the base of the tree, the dog with two
names barks into the empty air, and there at the end of
the block, looking smaller still, our house with its feet
tucked under like a cat.
This is the tree we chose for the First Annual Tarzan
Jumping Contest. Meme won. And broke both arms.

Louie, His Cousin & His Other Cousin

Downstairs from Meme's is a basement apartment that
Meme's mother fixed up and rented to a Puerto Rican
family. Louie's family. Louie is the oldest in a family of
little sisters. He is my brother's friend really, but I know
he has two cousins and that his T-shirts never stay tucked
in his pants.
Louie's girl cousin is older than us. She lives with
Louie's family because her own family is in Puerto Rico.
Her name is Marin or Maris or something like that, and
she wears dark nylons all the time and lots of makeup she
gets free from selling Avon. She can't come out-gotta
baby-sit with Louie's sisters-but she stands in the doorway a lot, all the time singing, clicking her fingers, the same song:

Apples, peaches, pumpkin pah-ay.
You're in love and so am ah-ay.

Louie has another cousin. We only saw him once, but
it was important. We were playing volleyball in the alley
when he drove up in this great big yellow Cadillac with
whitewalls and a yellow scarf tied around the mirror.
Louie's cousin had his arm out the window. He honked a
couple of times and a lot of faces looked out from Louie's
back window and then a lot of people came out-Louie,
Marin and all the little sisters.
Everybody looked inside the car and asked where he
got it. There were white rugs and white leather seats. We
all asked for a ride and asked where he got it. Louie's cousin
said get in.
We each had to sit with one of Louie's little sisters on
our lap, but that was okay. The seats were big and soft like
a sofa, and there was a little white cat in the back window
whose eyes lit up when the car stopped or turned. The
windows didn't roll up like in ordinary cars. Instead there
was a button that did it for you automatically. We rode up
the alley and around the block six times, but Louie's cousin
said he was going to make us walk home if we didn't stop
playing with the windows or touching the FM radio.
The seventh time we drove into the alley we heard
sirens ... real quiet at first, but then louder. Louie's cousin
stopped the car right where we were and said, Everybody
out of the car. Then he took off flooring that car into a
yellow blur. We hardly had time to think when the cop car
pulled in the alley going just as fast. We saw the yellow
Cadillac at the end of the block trying to make a left-hand
turn, but our alley is too skinny and the car hashed into
a lamppost.
Marin screamed and we ran down the block to where
the cop car's siren spun a dizzy blue. The nose of that yellow
Cadillac was all pleated like an alligator's, and except for
a bloody lip and a bruised forehead, Louie's cousin was
okay. They put handcuffs on him and put him in the backseat
of the cop car, and we all waved as they drove away.

Marin

Marin's boyfriend is in Puerto Rico. She shows us his
letters and makes us promise not to tell anybody they're
getting married when she goes back to P.R. She says he
didn't get a job yet, but she's saving the money she gets
from selling Avon and taking care of her cousins.
Marin says that if she stays here next year, she's going
to get a real job downtown because that's where the best
jobs are, since you always get to look beautiful and get to
wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who
might marry you and take you to live in a big house far
away.
But next year Louie's parents are going to send her back to her mother with a letter saying she's too much
trouble, and that is too bad because I like Marin. She is
older and knows lots of things. She is the one who told us
how Davey the Baby's sister got pregnant and what cream
is best for taking off moustache hair and if you count the
white flecks on your fingernails you can know how many
boys are thinking of you and lots of other things I can't
remember now.
We never see Marin until her aunt comes home from -.
work, and even then she can only stay out in front. She is
there every night with the radio. When the light in her
aunt's room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn't
matter if it's cold out or if the radio doesn't work or if we've
got nothing to say to each other. What matters, Marin says,
is for the boys to see us and for us to see them. And since
Marin's skirts are shorter and since her eyes are pretty,
and since Marin is already older than us in many ways, the
boys who do pass by say stupid things like I am in love with
those two green apples you call eyes, give them to me why
don't you. And Marin just looks at them without even blinking and is not afraid.
Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is
singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for
a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.

Those Who Don't

Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood
scared. They think we're dangerous. They think
we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid
people who are lost and got here by mistake.
But we aren't afraid. We know the guy with the crooked
eye is Davey the BabY's brother, and the tall one next to
him in the straw brim, that's Rosa's Eddie V., and the big
one that looks like a dumb grown man, he's Fat Boy, though
he's not fat anymore nor a boy.
All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive
into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go
shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and
our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.

There was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do

Rosa Vargas' kids are too many and too much. It's
not her fault you know, except she is their mother and
only one against so many.
They are bad those Vargases, and how can they help
it with only one mother who is tired all the time from
buttoning and bottling and babying, and who cries every
day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come.
The kids bend trees and bounce between cars and
dangle upside down from knees and almost break like
fancy museum vases you can't replace. They think it's
funny. They are without respect for all things living, including themselves.
But after a while you get tired of being worried about
kids who aren't even yours. One day they are playing
chicken on Mr. Benny's roof. Mr. Benny says, Hey ain't
you kids know better than to he swinging up there? Come
down, you come down right now, and then they just spit.
See. That's what I mean. No wonder everybody gave
up. Just stopped looking out when little Efren chipped his
buck tooth on a parking meter and didn't even stop Refugia
from getting her head stuck between two slats in the back
gate and nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas
learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut,
just like a faIling star, and exploded down to earth without
even an "Oh."

Alicia Who Sees Mice

Close your eyes and they'll go away, her father says,
or You're just imagining. And anyway, a woman's place is
sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star, the
one that appears early just in time to rise and catch the
hind legs hide behind the sink, beneath the four-clawed
tub, under the swollen floorboards nobody fixes, in the
corner of your eyes.
Alicia, whose mama died, is sorry there is no one older
to rise and make the lunchbox tortillas. Alicia, who inherited
her mama's rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and
smart and studies for the first time at the university. Two
trains and a bus, because she doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin. Is a good
girl, my friend, studies all night and sees the mice, the ones
her father says do not exist. Is afraid of nothing except
four-legged fur. And fathers.

Darius & The Clouds

You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep
and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when
you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not
enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and
most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can
get and make the best of it.
Darius, who doesn't like school, who is sometimes stupid
and mostly a fool, said something wise today, though
most days he says nothing. Darius, who chases girls with
firecrackers or a stick that touched a rat and thinks he's
tough, today pointed up because the world was full of
clouds, the kind like pillows.
You all see that cloud, that fat one there? Darius said,
that? Where? That one next to the one that look like
popcorn. That one there. See that. That's God, Darius said.
God? somebody little asked. God, he said, and made it
simple.

And Some More

The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I
say. I read it in a book.
I got a cousin, Rachel says. She got three different
names.
There ain't thirty different kinds of snow, Lucy says.
There are two kinds. The clean kind and the dirty kind,
clean and dirty. Only two.
There are a million zillion kinds, says Nenny. No two
exactly alike. Only how do you remember which one is
which?
She got three last names and, let me see, two first
names. One in English and one in Spanish ...
And clouds got at least ten different names, I say.
Names for clouds? Nenny asks. Names just like you and me?
That up there, that's cumulus, and everybody looks
up.
Cumulus are cute, Rachel says. She would say something
like that.
What's that one there? Nenny asks, pointing a finger.
That's cumulus too. They're all cumulus today. Cumulus,
cumulus, cumulus.
No, she says. That there is Nancy, otherwise known
as Pig-eye. And over there her cousin Mildred, and little
Joey, Marco, Nereida and Sue.
There are all different kinds of clouds. How many
different kinds of clouds can you think of?
Well, there's these already that look like shaving
cream ...
And what about the kind that looks like you combed
its hair? Yes, those are clouds too.
Phyllis, Ted, Alfredo and Julie ...
There are clouds that look like big fields of sheep,
Rachel says. Them are my favorite.
And don't forget nimbus the rain cloud, I add, that's
something.
Jose and Dagoberto, Alicia, Raul, Edna, Alma and
Rickey ...
There's that wide puffy cloud that looks like your face
when you wake up after falling asleep with all your clothes
on.
Reynaldo, Angelo, Albert, Armando, Mario ...
Not my face. Looks like your fat face.
Rita, Margie, Ernie ...
Whose fat face?
Esperanza's fat face, that's who. Looks like Esperan­za's ugly face when she comes to school in the morning.
Anita, Stella, Dennis, and Lolo ...
Who you calling ugly, ugly?
Richie, Yolanda, Hector, Stevie, Vincent ...
Not you. Your mama, that's who.
My mama? You better not be saying that, Lucy Guerrero.
You better not be talking like that ... else you can
say goodbye to being my friend forever.
I'm saying your mama's ugly like ... ummm ...
... like bare feet in September!
That does it! Both of yous better get out of my yard
before I call my brothers.
Oh, we're only playing.
I can think of thirty Eskimo words for you, Rachel.
Thirty words that say what you are.
Oh yeah, well I can think of some more.
Uh-oh, Nenny. Better get the broom. Too much trash
in our yard today.
Frankie, Licha, Maria, Pee Wee ...
Nenny, you better tell your sister she is really crazy
because Lucy and me are never coming back here again.
Forever.

Reggie, Elizabeth, Lisa, Louie ...
You can do what you want to do, Nenny, but you
better not talk to Lucy or Rachel if you want to be my sister.
You know what you are, Esperanza? You are like the
Cream of Wheat cereal. You're like the lumps.
Yeah, and you're foot fleas, that's you.
Chicken lips.
Rosemary, Dalia, Lily ...
Cockroach jelly.
Jean, Geranium and Joe ...
Cold frijoles
Mimi, Michael, Moe ...
Your mama's frijoles.
Your ugly mama's toes.
That's stupid.
Bebe, Blanca, Benny ...
Who's stupid?
Rachel, Lucy, Esperanza, and Nenny.



The Family of Little Feet

There was a family. All were little. Their arms were
little, and their hands were little, and their height was not
tall, and their feet very small.
The grandpa slept on the living room couch and
snored through his teeth. His feet were fat and doughy
like thick tamales, and these he powdered and stuffed into white socks and brown leather shoes.
The grandma's feet were lovely as pink pearls and
dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a
wobble, but she wore them anyway because they were
pretty.
The baby's feet had ten tiny toes, pale and see-through like a salamander's. and these he popped into his mouth
whenever he was hungry.
The mother's feet, plump and polite. descended like
I white pigeons from the sea of pillow, across the linoleum
roses, down down the wooden stairs, over the chalk hopscotch
squares, 5,6, 7, blue sky.
Do you want this? And gave us a paper bag with one
pair of lemon shoes and one red and one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue.
Here, and we said thank you and waited until she went
upstairs. Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit
exactly, and we laugh





A Rice Sandwich

The special kids, the ones who wear keys around their
necks, get to eat in the canteen. The canteen! Even the
name sounds important. And these kids at lunch time go
there because their mothers aren't home or horne is too
far away to get to.
My home isn't far but it's not close either, and somehow
I got it in my head one day to ask my mother to make
me a sandwich and write a note to the principal so I could
eat in the canteen too.
Oh no, she says pointing the butter knife at me as if
I'm starting trouble, no sir. Next thing you k.now everybody
will be wanting a bag lunch-I'll be up all night cuttingbRad into little triangles, this one with mayonnaise, this
one with mustard, no pickles on mine, but mustard on one
side please. You kids just like to invent more work for me.
But Nenny says she doesn't want to eat at schoolever-because
she likes to go horne with her best friend
Gloria who lives across the schoolyard. Gloria's mama has
it big color T.V. and all they do is watch cartoons. Kiki and
Carlos, on the other hand, are patrol boys. They don't want
to eat at school either. They like to stand out in the cold
especially if it's raining. They think suffering is good for
you ever since they saw that movie 300 Spartans.
I'm no Spartan and hold up an anemic wrist to prove
it. I can't even blow up a balloon without getting dizzy.
And besides, I know how to make my own lunch. If I ate
at school there'd be less dishes to wash. You would see me
less and less and like me better. Everyday at noon my chair
would be empty. Where is my favorite daughter you would
cry, and when I came home finally at three p.m. you would
appreciate me.
Okay, okay, my mother says after three days of this.
And the following morning I get to go to school with my
mother's letter and a rice sandwich because we don't have lunch meat. Mondays or Fridays, it doesn't matter, mornings always
go by slow and this day especially. But lunchtime
came finally and I got to get in line with the stay-at-school
kids. Everything is fine until the nun who knows all the
canteen kids by heart looks at me and says: You, who sent
you here? And since I am shy, I don't say anything, just
hold out my hand with the letter. This is no good, she says,
till Sister Superior gives the okay. Go upstairs and see her.
And so I went.
I had to wait for two kids in front of me to get hollered
at, one because he did something in class, the other because he didn't. My turn came and I stood in front of the big
desk with holy pictures under the glass while the Sister
Superior read my letter. It went like this:

Dear Sister Superior,
Please let Esperanza eat in the lunchroom
because she lives too far away and she gets tired.
As you can see she is very skinny. I hope to God
she does not faint.
Thanking you,
Mrs. E. Cordero

You don't live far, she says. You live across the boulevard.
That's only four blocks. Not even. Three maybe.
Three long blocks away from here. I bet I can see your
house from my window. Which one? Come here. Which
one is your house?
And then she made me stand up on a box of books
and point. That one? she said, pointing to a row of ugly
three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to
go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my
house and started to cry. I always cry when nuns yell at
me, even if they're not yelling.
Then she was sorry and said I could stay-just for
today, not tomorrow or the day after-you go home. And
I said yes and could I please have a Kleenex-I had to
blow my nose.
In the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys
and girls watched while I cried and ate my sandwich, the
bread already greasy and the rice cold.

Chanclas

It's me-Mama, Mama said. I open up and she's there
with bags and bi~ boxes, the new clothes and, yes, she's got
the socks and a new slip with a little rose on it and a pink and-white
striped dress. What about the shoes? I forgot.
Too late now. I'm tired. Whew!
Six-thirty already and my little cousin's baptism is
over. All day waiting, the door locked, don't open up for
nobody, and I don't till Mama gets back and buys everything
except the shoes.
Now Uncle Nacho is coming in his car, and we have
to hurry to get to Precious Blood Church quick because
that's where the baptism party is, in the basement rented for today for dancing and tamales and everyone's kids running
all over the place. Mama dances, laughs, dances. All of a sudden, Mama is sick. I fan her hot face with a paper plate. Too many tamales, but uncle Nacho says too many this and tilts his thumb to his lips.
Everybody laughing except me, because I'm wearing
the new dress, pink and white with stripes, and new underclothes
and new socks and the old saddle shoes I wear
to school, brown and white, the kind I get every September
because they last long and they do. My feet scuffed and
round, and the heels all crooked that look dumb with this
dress, so I just sit.
Meanwhile that boy who is my cousin by first communion
or something asks me to dance and I can't. Just
stuff my feet under the metal folding chair stamped Precious
Blood and pick on a wad of brown gum that's stuck
beneath the seat. I shake my head no. My feet growing
bigger and bigger.
Then Uncle Nacho is pulling and pulling my arm and
it doesn't matter how new the dress Mama bought is because
my feet are ugly until my uncle who is a liar says,
You are the prettiest girl here, will you dance, but I believe
him, and yes, we are dancing, my Uncle Nacho and me,
only I don't want to at first. My feet swell big and heavy
like plungers, but I drag them across the linoleum Roor
straight center where Uncle wants to show off the new
dance we learned. And Uncle spins me, and my skinny
arms bend the way he taught me, and my mother watches,
and my little cousins watch, and the boy who is my cousin
by first communion watches, and everyone says, wow, who
are those two who dance like in the movies, until I forget
that I am wearing only ordinary shoes, brown and white,
the kind my mother buys each year for school.
And all I hear is the clapping when the music stops.
My uncle and me bow and he walks me back in my thick
shoes to my mother who is proud to be my mother. All
night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched
me dance.

Hips
I like coffee, I like tea.

Ilike the boys and the boys like me.

Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so ...

One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and
waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready
to take you where?
They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking,
Rachel says, turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has
no imagination.
You need them to dance, says Lucy..

If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny believes this and she believes it. She is this way because of her
age.
That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make
fun of her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister.
But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating
what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know
which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which
a woman's.
They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious
I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have
science on my side. The bones just one day open. Just like
that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then
where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones
got to give.
But don't have too many or your behind will spread.
That's how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a
boat. And we just laugh. What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be
able to know what to do with hips when you get them, I
say making it up as I go. You gotta know how to walk with
hips, practice you know-like if half of you wanted to go
one way and the other half the other.
That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby
asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells,
copper bells, eroy, ivy, over.
I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever
heard, but the more I think about it ...
You gotta get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance.
She has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her
end of the double-dutch steady.
It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too
slow. Not too fast and not too slow.
We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so
Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it.
I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is
crazy.
I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on
the cue.
I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity.
Or tembleque!
Yes, tembleque. That's a good one.
And then it's Rachel who starts it:
Skip, sJcip,

snake in your hips.

Wiggle around

and break your lip.

Lucy waits a minute before her turn. She is thinking.
Then she begins:
The waitress with the big fat hips

who pays the rent with taxi tips . . .

says nobody in town will kiss her on the lips

because . ..

because she looks like Christopher Columbus!

Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so.

She misses on maybe so. I take a little while before

my turn, take a breath, and dive in:

Some are skinny like chuken lips.

Some are baggy like soggy Band-Aids

after you get out of the bathtub.

I don't care what kind I get.

Just as long as I get hips.

Everybody getting into it now except Nenny who is

still humming not a girl, not a boy, just a little baby. She's like

that.

When the two arcs open wide like jaws Nenny jumps in across from me, the rope tick-ticking, the little gold
earrings our mama gave her for her First Holy Communion
bouncing. She is the color of a bar of naphtha laundry
soap, she is like the little brown piece left at the end of the
wash, the hard little bone, my sister. Her mouth opens.
She begins:

My mother and your mother were washing clothes.
My mother punched your mother right in the nese.
What color blood came out1
Not that old song, I say. You gotta use your own song.
Make it up, you know? But she doesn't get it or won't. It's
hard to say which. The rope turning, turning, turning.
Engine, engine number nine,
running down Chicago line.
If the train runs off the track
do you want your money back
Do you want your MONEY back
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so ...

I can tell Lucy and Rachel are disgusted, but they
don't say anything because she's my sister.
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . ..
Nenny, I say, but she doesn't hear me. She is too many
light-years away. She is in a world we don't belong to anymore.
Nenny. Going. Going.
Y-E-S spells yes and out you go!



The First Job -- Will

It wasn't as if I didn't want to work. I did. I had even
gone to the social security office the month before to get
my social security number. I needed money. The Catholic
high school cost a lot, and Papa said nobody went to public
school unless you wanted to turn out bad.
I thought I'd find an easy job, the kind other kids
had, working in the dime store or maybe a hotdog stand.
And though I hadn't started looking yet, I thought I might
the week after next. But when I came home that afternoon,
all wet because Tito had pushed me into the open water
hydrant-only I had sort of let him-Mama called me in
the kitchen before I could even go and change, and AuntLa1a _~ sitting there drinking her coffee with a spoon.
Aunt Lala said she had found a job for me at the Peter
Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where she
worked, and how old was I, and to show up tomorrow
saying I was one year older, and that was that.
So the next morning I put on the navy blue dress that
made me look older and borrowed money for lunch and
bus fare because Aunt Lala said I wouldn't get paid till the
next Friday, and I went in and saw the boss of the Peter
Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where Aunt Lala
worked and lied about my age like she told me to and sure
enough, I started that same day.
In my job I had to wear white gloves. I was supposed
to match negatives with their prints, just look at the picture
and look for the same one on the negative strip, put it in
the envelope, and do the next one. That's all. I didn't know
where these envelopes were coming from or where they
were going. I just did what I was told.
It was real easy, and I guess I wouldn't have minded
it except that you got tired after a while and I didn't know
if I could sit down or not, and then I started sitting down
only when the two ladies next to me did. After a while they
started to laugh and came up to me and said I could sit
when I wanted to, and I said I knew.
When lunchtime came, I was scared to eat alone in
the company lunchroom with all those men and ladies looking,
so I ate real fast standing in one of the washroom stalls
and had lots of time left over, so I went back to work early.
But then break time came, and not knowing where else to
go, I went into the coatroom because there was a bench
there.
I guess it was the time for the night shift or middle
shift to arrive because a few people came in and punched
the time clock, and an older Oriental man said hello andwe talked for a while about my just starting, and he said
we could be friends and next time to go in the lunchroom
and sit with him, and I felt better. He had nice eyes and 1
didn't feel so nervous anymore. Then he asked if 1 knew
what day it was, and when I said 1 didn't, he said it was his
birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. 1
thought I would because he was so old and just as I was
about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with
both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't
let go.


Papa Who Wakes Up Tired In The Dark

Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning
in my room. Esta muerto, and then as if he just heard the
news himself, crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa
cries. I have never seen my Papa cry and don't know what
to do.
I know he will have to go away, that he will take a
plane to Mexico, all the uncles and aunts will be there, and
they will have a black-and-white photo taken in front of
the tomb with flowers shaped like spears in a white vase
because this is how they send the dead away in that country.
Because I am the oldest, my father has told me first,
and now it is my turn to tell the others. I will have to explain why we can't play. I will have to tell them to be quiet today.
My Papa. his thick hands and thick shoes, who wakes
up tired in the dark, who combs his hair with water, drinks
his coffee, and is gone before we wake, today is sitting on
my bed.
And I think if my own Papa died what would I do. I
hold my Papa in my arms. I hold and hold and hold him.



Born Bad

Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve
to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and
prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray too. For ourselves and
for each other ... because of what we did to Aunt Lupe.
Her name was Guadalupe and she was pretty like my
mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford dress
and swimmer's legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs.
But I knew her sick from the disease that would not
go, her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones
gone limp as worms. The yellow pillow, the yellow smell,
the bottles and spoons. Her head thrown back like a thirsty
lady. My aunt, the swimmer.
Hard to imagine her legs once strong, the bones hard
and parting water, clean sharp strokes, not bent and wrinkled like a baby, not drowning under the sticky yellow light.
Second-floor rear apartment. The naked light bulb. The
high ceilings. The light bulb always burning.
I don't know who decides who deserves to go bad. I
There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse. One day - I believe she was swimming, and the next day she was sick.
It might have been the day that gray photograph was taken.
It might have been the day she was holding cousin Totchy
and baby Frank. It might have been the moment she
pointed to the camera for the kids to look and they
wouldn't.
Maybe the sky didn't look the day she fell down.
Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didn't dive right
one day and hurt her spine. Or maybe the story that she
fell very hard from a high step stool, like Totchy said, is
true.
But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a
dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. Like my aunt who happened
to be walking down the street one day in her Joan ,
Crawford dress, in her funny felt hat with the black feather,
cousin Totchy in one hand, baby Frank in the other.
Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes
the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal.
Th'is is how it was with her, and maybe this is why we chose
her.
It was a game, that's all. It was the game we played
every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented it-
can't remember who-I think it was me.
You had to pick somebody. You had to think of someone
everybody knew. Someone you could imitate and
everyone else would have to guess who it was. It started
out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles,
Marilyn Monroe.... But then somebody thought it'd be better if we changed the game a little. if we pretended we were Mr. Benny, or his wife Blanca, or Ruthie, or anybody we knew.
I don't know why we picked her. Maybe we were bored
that day. Maybe we got tired. We liked my aunt. She listened
to our stories. She always asked us to come back.
Lucy, me, Rachel. I hated to go there alone. The six blocks
to the dark apartment, second-floor rear building where
sunlight never came, and what did it matter? My aunt was
blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink.
She couldn't see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I can't forget the smell. Like sticky capsules filled with jelly. My aunt, a little oyster, a little piece of meat on an open shell for us to look at. Hello, hello. As if she had fallen into a well.
I took my library books to her house. I read her stories.
I liked the book The Waterbabies. She liked it too. I
never knew how sick she was until that day I tried to show
her one of the pictures in the book, a beautiful color picture
of the water babies swimming in the sea. I held the book
up to her face. I can't see it, she said, I'm blind. And then
I was ashamed.
She listened to every book, every poem I read her.
One day I read her one of my own. I came very dose. I
whispered it into the pillow:
I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the douds in the wind,
but I'm me.
One day I'll jump
out of my skin.
I'll shake the sky
like a hundred violins.
That's nice. That's very good, she said in her tired voice.
You just remember to keep writing, [speranza. You must
keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at
that time I didn't know what she meant.
The day we played the game, we didn't know she was
going to die. We pretended with our heads thrown back,
our arms limp and useless, dangling like the dead. We
laughed the way she did. We talked the way she talked, the
way blind people talk without moving their head. We imitated
the way you had to lift her head a little so she could
drink water, she sucked it up slow out of a green tin cup.
The water was warm and tasted like metal. Lucy laughed.
Rachel too. We took turns being her. We screamed in the
weak voice of a parrot for Totchy to come and wash those
dishes. It was easy.
We didn't know. She had been dying such a long time,
we forgot. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she was embarrassed
it took so many years. The kids who wanted to
be kids instead of washing dishes and ironing their papa's
shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again.
And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems.
And then we began to dream the dreams.

Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water

Elenita, witch woman, wipes the table with a rag because
Ernie who is feeding the baby spilled Kool-Aid. She
says: Take that crazy baby out of here and drink your KoolAid
ill the living room. Can't you see I'm busy? Ernie takes
the baby into the living room where Bugs Bunny is on T.V.
Good lucky you didn't come yesterday, she says. The
planets were all mixed up yesterday.
Her T.V. is color and hig and all her pretty furniture
made out of red fur like the teddy bears they give away in
carnivals. She has them covered with plastic. I think this is
on account of the baby.
Yes, it's a good thing, I say.
But we stay in the kitchen because this is where she
works. The top of the refrigerator busy with holy candles,
some lit, some not, red and green and blue, a plaster saint
and a dusty Palm Sunday cross, and a picture of the voodoo
hand taped to the wall.
Get the water, she says.
I go to the sink and pick the only clean glass there, a
beer mug that says the beer that made Milwaukee famous,
and fill it up with hot water from the tap, then put the
glass of water on the center of the table, the way she taught
me.
Look in it; do you see anything?
But all I see are bubbles.
You see anybody's face?
Nope, just bubbles, I say.
That's okay, and she makes the sign of the cross over
the water three times and then begins to cut the cards.
They're not like ordinary playing cards, these cards.
They're strange, with blond men on horses and crazy baseball
bats with thorns. Golden goblets, sad-looking women
dressed in old-fashioned dresses, and roses that cry..
There is a good Bugs Bunny cartoon on T.V.) know,
I saw it before and recognize the music and wish) could
go sit on the plastic couch with Ernie and the baby, but
now my fortune begins. My whole life on that kitchen table:
past, present, future. Then she takes my hand and looks
into my palm. Closes it. Closes her eyes too.
Do you feel it, feel the cold?
Yes, I lie, but only a little.
Good, she says, Los esperitus are here. And begins.
This card, the one with the dark man on a dark horse,
this means jealousy, and this one, sorrow. Here a pillar of
bees and this a mattress of luxury. You will go to a wedding soon and did you lose an anchor of arms, yes, an anchor
of arms? It's clear that's what that means.
What about a house, I say, because that's what I came
for.
Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the
heart.
Is that it?
That's what I see, she says, then gets up because the
kids are fighting. Elenita gets up to hit and then hug them.
She really does love them, only sometimes they are rude.
She comes back and can tell I'm disappointed. She's
a witch woman and knows many things. If you got a headache,
rub a cold egg across your face. Need to forget an
old romance? Take a chicken's foot, tie it with red string,
spin it over your head three times, then burn it. Bad spirits
keeping you awake? Sleep next to a holy candle for seven
days, then on the eighth day, spit. And lots of other stuff.
Only now she can tell I'm sad.
Baby, I'll look again if you want me to. And she looks
again into the cards, palm, water, and says uh-huh.
A home in the heart, I was right.
Only I don't get it.
A new house, a house made of heart. I'll light a candle
for you.
All this for five dollars I give her.
Thank you and goodbye and be careful of the evil
eye. Come back again on a Thursday when the stars are
stronger. And may the Virgin bless you. And shuts the
door.

Geraldo No Last Name

She met him at a dance. Pretty too, and young. Said
he worked in a restaurant, but she can't remember which
one. Geraldo. That's all. Green pants and Saturday shirt.
Geraldo. That's what he told her.
And how was she to know she'd be the last one to see
him alive. An accident, don't you know. Hit-and-run. Marin,
she goes to all those dances. Uptown. Logan. Embassy.
Palmer. Aragon. Fontana. The Manor. She likes to dance.
She knows how to do cumbias and salsas and rancheras
even. And he was just someone she danced with. Somebody
she met that night. That's right.
That's the story. That's what she said again and again.
<>ott to the hospital people and twice to the police. No
address. No name. Nothing in his pockets. Ain't it a shame.
Only Marin can't explain why it mattered, the hours
and hours, for somebody she didn't even know. The hospital
emergency room. Nobody but an intern working all
alone. And maybe if the surgeon would've come, maybe if
he hadn't lost so much blood, if the surgeon had only come,
they would know who to notify and where.
But what difference does it make? He wasn't anything
to her. He wasn't her boyfriend or anything like that. Just
another brazer who didn't speak English. Just another wetback.
You know the kind. The ones who always look
ashamed. And what was she doing out at three a.m. anyway?
Marin who was sent home with her coat and some
aspirin. How does she explain?
She met him at a dance. Geraldo in his shiny shirt and
green pants. Geraldo going to a dance.
What does it matter?
They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew
about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented,
the weekly money orders sent home, the currency exchange.
How could they?
His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another
country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder,
shrug. remember. Geraldo...he went north... we never
heard from him again.


Edna’s Ruthie


Ruthie, tall skinny lady with red lipstick and blue babushka,
one blue sock and one green because she forgot,
is the only grown-up we know who likes to play. She takes
her dog Bobo for a walk and laughs all by herself, that
Ruthie. She doesn't need anybody to laugh with, she just laughs.
She is Edna's daughter, the lady who owns the big
building next door, three apartments front and back. Every
week Edna is screaming at somebody, and every week
somebody has to move away. Once she threw out a pregnant
lady just because she owned a duck ... and it was a nice duck too. But Ruthie lives here and Edna can't throw
her out because Ruthie is her dauRhter.
Ruthie came one day, it seemed, out of nowhere.
AnReI Vargas was trying to teach us how to whistle. Then
I we heard someone whistling-beautiful like the Emperor's
nightingale-and when we turned around there was
Ruthie.
Sometimes we go shopping and take her with us, but
she never comes inside the stores and if she does she keeps
looking around her like a wild animal in a house for the
first time.
She likes candy. When we go to Mr. Benny's grocery
she gives us money to buy her some. She says make sure
it's the soft kind because her teeth hurt. Then she promises
to see the dentist next week, but when next week comes,
she doesn't go.
Ruthie sees lovely things everywhere. I might be telling
her ajoke and she'll stop and say: The moon is beautiful
like a balloon. Or somebody might be singing and she'll point to a few clouds: Look, Marlon Brando. Or a sphinx
winking. Or my left shoe.
Once some friends of Edna's came to visit and asked
Ruthie if she wanted to go with them to play bingo. The
car motor was running, and Ruthie stood on the steps
wondering whether to go. Should I go, Ma? she asked the
gray shadow behind the second-Roor screen. I don't care,
says the screen, go if you want. Ruthie looked at the ground. What do you think, Ma? Do what you want, how
should I know? Ruthie looked at the ground some more.
The car with the motor running waited fifteen minutes
and then they left. When we brought out the deck of cards
that night, we let Ruthie deal.
There were many things Ruthie could have been if
she wanted to. Not only is she a good whistler, but she can
sing and dance too. She had lots of job offers when she
was young, but she never took them. She got married in­stead and moved away to a pretty house outside the city.
Only thing I can't understand is why Ruthie is living on
Mango Street if she doesn't have to, why is she sleeping on!
a couch in her mother's living room when she has a real
house all her own, but she says she's just visiting and next weekend her husband's going to take her home. But the weekends come and go and Ruthie stays. No matter. We are glad because she is our friend.
I like showing Ruthie the books I take out of the library. Books are wonderful, Ruthie says, and then she
runs her hand over them as if she could read them in
braille, They're wonderful, wonderful, but I can't read anymore.
I get headaches. I need to go to the eye doctor next
week. I used to write children's books once, did I tell you?
One day I memorized all of "The Walrus and the
Carpenter" because I wanted Ruthie to hear me. "The sun
was shining on the sea, shining with all his might ..."
Ruthie looked at the sky and her eyes got watery at times.
Finally I came to the last lines: "But answer came there
none-and this was scarcely odd, because they'd eaten
everyone ..." She took a long time looking at me before
she opened her mouth, and then she said, You have the
most beautiful teeth I have ever seen, and went inside.

The Earl of Tennessee

Earl lives next door in Edna's basement, behind the
flower boxes Edna paints green each year, behind the dusty
geraniums. We used to sit on the flower boxes until the day
Tito saw a cockroach with a spot of green paint on its head.
Now we sit on the steps that swing around the basement
apartment where Earl lives.
Earl works nights. His blinds are always closed during
the day. Sometimes he comes out and tells us to keep quiet.
The little wooden door that has wedged shut the dark for
so long opens with a sigh and lets out a breath of mold
and dampness, like books that have been left out in the
rain. This is the only time we see Earl except for when he
comes and goes to work. He has two little black dogs that
go everywhere with him. They don't walk. like ordinary
dogs, but leap and somersault like an apostrophe and
comma. f At night Nenny and I can hear when Earl comes home ,
from work. First the click and whine of the car door open­ f
ing, then the scrape of concrete, the excited tinkling of dog
tags, followed by the heavy jingling of keys, and finally the
moan of the wooden door as it opens and lets loose its sigh
of dampness.
Earl is a jukebox repairman. He learned his trade in
the South, he says. He speaks with a Southern accent,
smokes fat cigars and wears a felt hat-winter or summer,
hot or cold, don't matter-a felt hat. In his apartment are
boxes and boxes of 45 records, moldy and damp like the
smell that comes out of his apartment whenever he opens
the door. He gives the records away to us-all except the
country and western.
The word is that Earl is married and has a wife somewhere.
Edna says she saw her once when Earl brought her
to the apartment. Mama says she is a skinny thing, blond
and pale like salamanders that have never seen the sun.
But I saw her once too and she's not that way at all. And
the boys across the street say she is a tall red-headed lady
who wears tight pink pants and green glasses. We never
agree on what she looks like, but we do know this. Whenever
she arrives, he holds her tight by the crook of the
arm. They walk fast into the apartment, lock the door
behind them and never stay long.

Sire

I don't remember when I first noticed him looking at
me-Sire. But I knew he was looking. Every time. All the
time I walked past his house. Him and his friends sitting
on their bikes in front of the house, pitching pennies. They
didn't scare me. They did, but I wouldn't let them know.
I don't croSS the street like other girls. Straight ahead,
straight eyes. I walked past. I knew he was looking. I had
to prove to me I wasn't scared of nobody's eyes, not even
his. I had to look back hard, just once, like he was glass.
And I did. I did once. But I looked too long when he rode
his bike past me. I looked because I wanted to be brave,
straight into the dusty cat fur of his eyes and the bike
stopped and he bumped into a parked car, bumped, and
I walked fast. It made your blood freeze to have somebody
look at you like that. Somebody looked at me. Somebody
looked. But his kind, his ways. He is a punk, Papa says,
and Mama says not to talk to him.
And then his girlfriend came. Lois I heard him call
her. She is tiny and pretty and smells like baby's skin. I see
her sometimes running to the store for him. And once
when she was standing next to me at Mr. Benny's grocery
she was barefoot, and I saw her barefoot baby toenails all
painted pale pale pink, like little pink seashells, and she
smells pink like babies do. She's got big girl hands, and her
bones are long like ladies' bones, and she wears makeup
too. But she doesn't know how to tie her shoes. I do.
Sometimes I hear them laughing late, beer cans and
cats and the trees talking to themselves: wait, wait, wait.
Sire lets Lois ride his bike around the block, or they take
walks together. I watch them. She holds his hand, and he
stops sometimes to tie her shoes. But Mama says those kinds
of girls, those girls are the ones that go into alleys. Lois
who can't tie her shoes. Where does he take her?
Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything
is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new
and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my
neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every
evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining
what I can't see.
A boy held me once so hard, I swear, I felt the grip
and weight of his arms, but it was a dream.
Sire. How did you hold her? Was it? Like this? And
when you kissed her? Like this?



Four Skinny Trees


They are the only ones who understand me. I am the
only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with
skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do
not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted
by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny
just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things.
Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots
beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down
and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the
sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is
how they keep.
Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other.
Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.
When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping,
when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I
look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this
street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach I
and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to
, be and be.


No Speak English


Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street,
third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Mamasota,
but I think that's mean.
The man saved his money to bring her here. He saved
and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that
country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he
left early. Every day.
Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived
in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's
arm. Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's
ear, then the thick ankle, a Rutter of hips, fuchsia
roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her,
the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. Push, pull.
Poof!
All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful
to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her
hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take
my eyes off her tiny shoes.
Up, up, up the stairs she went with the baby boy in a
blue blanket, the man carrying her suitcases, her lavender
hatboxes, a dozen boxes of satin high heels. Then we didn't
see her.
Somebody said because she's too fat, somebody because
of the three flights of st3irs, but I believe she doesn't
come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe
this is so since she only knows eight words. She knows to
say: He not here for when the landlord comes, No speak
English if anybody else comes, and Holy smokes. I don't know
where she learned this, but I heard her say it one time and
it surprised me.
My father says when he came to this country he ate
hamandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He
doesn't eat hamandeggs anymore.
Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't
climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come
down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish
radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her
. country in a voice that sounds like a seagull.
Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a
pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light.
The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's
not the same, you know. She still sighs for her pint house,
and then I think she cries. I would.
Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming
and you can hear it all the way down the street.
Ay. she says, she is sad.
Oh, he says. Not again.
,Ctuindo, ctuindo, ctuindor she asks. I
I
f~ jAy, caray! We are home. This is home. Here I am and
here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!
jAy! Mamacita, who does not belong, every once in a
while lets out a cry, hysterical. high, as if he had torn the
only skinny thread that kept her alive, the only road out
to that country.
And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy,
who has begun to talk. starts to sing the Pepsi commercial
he heard on T.V.
No speak English. she says to the child who is singing
in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no
speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she
can't believe her ears.

Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesday

On Tuesdays Rafaela's husband comes home late because
that's the night he plays dominoes. And then Rafaela,
who is still young but getting old from leaning out the
window SO much, gets locked indoors because her husband
is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to
look at.
Rafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow
and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's. On the corner there
is music from the bar, and Rafaela wishes she could go
there and dance before she gets old.
A long time passes and we forget she is up there
watching until she says: Kids, if I give you a dollar will you go to the store and buy me something? She throws a crumpled
donar down and always asks for coconut or sometimes
papaya juice, and we send it up to her in a paper shopping
bag she lets down with clothesline.
Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks,
not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women
much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and
open homes with keys. And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks. someone promising to keep them
on a silver string.

Sally


Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the
color of smoke. The boys at school think she's beautiful
because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over
her shoulders and laughs.
Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They
are very strict in his religion. They are not supposed to
dance. He remembers his sisters and is sad. Then she can't
go oul. Sally I mean.
Sally, who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra?
And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one
in the little red box, will you teach me?
I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where
did you get them? My mother says to wear black so young
is dangerous, but I want to buy shoes just like yours, like
your black ones made out of suede, just like those. And
one day, when my mother's in a good mood, maybe after
my next birthday, I'm going to ask to buy the nylons too.
Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore, not since last
Tuesday before Easter, not since the day you made her ear
bleed, not since she called you that name and bit a hole in
your arm and you looked as if you were going to cry and
everyone was waiting and you didn't, you didn't, Sally, not
since then, you don't have a best friend to lean against the
schoolyard fence with, to laugh behind your hands at what
the boys say. There is no one to lend you her hairbrush.
The stories the boys tell in the coatroom, they're not
true. You lean against the schoolyard fence alone with your
eyes closed as if no one was watching, as if no one could
see you standing there, Sally. What do you think about
when you dose your eyes like that? And why do you always
have to go straight home after school? You become a different
Sally. You pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue
paint off your eyelids. You don't laugh, Sally. You look at
your feet and walk fast to the house you can't come out
from. Sally, do you sometimes wish you didn't have to go
home? Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking
and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and
maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one
with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb
up two by two upstairs to where a room is waiting for you.
And if you opened the little window latch and gave it a
shove, the windows would swing open, all the sky would come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles
and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only
trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could
laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never
have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could
close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people
said because' you never belonged here anyway and nobody
could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange
because you like to dream and dream. And no one could
yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against
a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking
you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without
the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when
all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to
love and to love and ta love, and no one could call that
crazy.

Minerva Writes Poems


Minerva is only a little bit older than me but already
she has two kids and a husband who left. Her mother raised
her kids alone and it looks like her daughters will go that
way too. Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every
night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are
asleep after she's fed them their pancake dinner, she writes
poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over
and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper
that smell like a dime.
She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She
is always sad like a house on fire-always something wrong.
She has many troubles, but the big one is her husband who r
left and keeps leaving.
One day she is through and lets him know enough is
enough. Out the door he goes. Clothes, records, shoes. Out
the window and the door locked. But that night he comes
back and sends a big rock through the window. Then he
is sorry and she opens the door again. Same story.
Next week she comes over black and blue and asks .­
what can she do? Minerva. I don't know which way she'll II.
go. There is nothing I can do.



Bums in the Attic

I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens
where Papa works. We go on Sundays, Papa's day off. I
used to go. I don't anymore. You don't like to go out with
us, Papa says. Getting too old? Getting too stuck-up, says
Nenny. I don't tell them I am ashamed-all of us staring
out the window like the hungry. I am tired of looking at
what we can't have. When we win the lottery ... Mama
begins, and then I stop listening.
People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they
forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't
look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats.
Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the "'-md.
One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget
who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask
Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay.
because I know how it is to be without a house.
Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in froot
of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.
Rats? they'll ask.
Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy.



Beautiful & Cruel

I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes
for.
Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband
to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's
house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that
way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose.
Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you
are pretty.
My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will
settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have
decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their
necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.In the movies there is always one with red red lips . who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the
men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own.
She will not give it away.
I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am
one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back
the chair or picking up the plate.


A Smart Cookie

I could've been somebody, you know? my mother says
and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can
speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows
how to fix a T.V. But she doesn't know which subway train
to take to get downtown. I hold her hand very tight while
we wait for the right train to arrive.
She used to draw when she had time. Now she draws
with a needle and thread, little knotted rosebuds, tulips
made of silk thread. Someday she would like to go to the
ballet. Someday she would like to see a play. Shf' borrows
opera records from the public library and sings with velvety
lungs powerful as morning glories. Today while cooking oatmeal she is Madame Butterfly
until she sighs and points the wooden spoon at me. I
could've been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to
school. Study hard. That Madame Butterfly was a fool. She
stirs the oatmeal. Look at my comadres. She means Izaura
whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead.
Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head.
Then out of nowhere:
Shame is a bad thing, you know. It keeps you down.
You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn't have
nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.
Yup. she says disgusted, stirring again. I was a smart
cookie then.


What Sally Said

He never hits me hard. She said her mama rubs lard on all the places where it hurts. Then at school she'd say she fell. That's where all the blue places come from. That's why her skin is always scarred.
But who believes her. A girl that big, a girl who comes
in with her pretty face all beaten and black can't be falling
off the stairs. He never hits me hard. But Sally doesn't tell about that time he hit her with
his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. J
He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made
the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then
she doesn't say Sally was going to get permission to stay with us a little and one Thursday she came finally with a sack full of clothes and a paper bag of sweetbread her mama sent. And would've stayed too except when the dark came her father, whose eyes were little from crying, knocked on the door and said please come back, this is the last time. And she said Daddy and went home.
Then we didn't need to worry. Until one day Sally's
father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she
doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally
tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father
between the buckle and the belt. You're not my daughter, you're not my daughter.
And then he broke into his hands.

The Monkey Garden

The monkey doesn't live there anymore. The monkey
moved-to Kentucky-and took his people with him. And
I was glad because I couldn't listen anymore to his wild
screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people
who owned him. The green metal cage, the porcelain table
top, the family that spoke like guitars. Monkey, family,
table. All gone.
And it was then we took over the garden we had been
afraid to go into when the monkey screamed and showed
its yellow teeth.
There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and
thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater
curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies
turning somersaults and humming in the air. Sweet sweet
peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like
so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles
itch and itch until you washed with soap and water.
There were big green apples hard as knees. And everywhere
the sleepy smell of rotting wood, damp earth and
dusty hollyhocks thick and perfumy like the blue-blond
hair of the dead. Yellow spiders ran when we turned rocks over and
pale worms blind and afraid of light rolled over in their
sleep. Poke a stick in the sandy soil and a few blue-skinned
beetles would appear, an avenue of ants, so many crusty
lady bugs. This was a garden, a wonderful thing to look at
in the spring. But bit by bit, after the monkey left, the
garden began to take over itself. Flowers stopped obeying
the little bricks that kept them from growing beyond their
paths. Weeds mixed in. Dead cars appeared overnight like
mushrooms. First one and then another and then a pale
blue pickup with the front windshield missing. Before you knew it, the monkey garden became filled with sleepy cars.
, Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as
if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man
memory, it put them away and forgot them. Nenny found
a dollar and a dead mouse between two rocks in the stone
wall where the morning glories climbed, and once when
we were playing hide-and-seek, Eddie Vargas laid his head
beneath a hibiscus tree and fell asleep there like a Rip Van
Winkle until somebody remembered he was in the game
and went back to look for him.
This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there.
Far away from where our mothers could find us. We and
a few old dogs who lived inside the empty cars. We made
a clubhouse once on the back of that old blue pickup. And besides. we liked to jump from the roof of one car to another
and pretend they were giant mushrooms.
Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had
been there before anything. We liked to think the garden
could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the
roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates
and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal.
This is where I wanted to die and where I tried one
day but not even the monkey garden would have me. It
was the last day I would go there. Who was it that said I was getting too old to play the
games? Who was it I didn't listen to? I only remember that
when the others ran, I wanted to run too, up and down
and through the monkey garden, fast as the boys, not like
Sally who screamed if she got her stockings muddy.
I said, Sally, come on, but she wouldn't. She stayed
by the curb talking to Tito and his friends. Play with the
kids if you want, she said, I'm staying here. She could be
stuck-up like that if she wanted to, so I just left.
It was her own fault too. When I got back Sally was
pretending to be mad ... something about the boys having
stolen her keys. Please give them back to me, she said
punching the nearest one with a soft fist. They were laughing.
She was too. It was a joke I didn't get.
I wanted to go back with the other kids who were still
jumping on cars, still chasing each other through the garden,
but Sally had her own game.
One of the boys invented the rules. One of Tito's
friends said you can't get the keys back unless you kiss us
and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes. It
was that simple.
I don't know why, but something inside me wanted
to throw a stick. Something wanted to say no when I
watched Sally going into the garden with Tito's buddies all grinning. It was just a kiss, that's all. A li.ss for each one, So what, she said,
Only how come I felt angry inside. Like something
wasn't right. Sally went behind that old blue pickup to Usa
the boys and get her keys back, and I ran up three flights
of stairs to where Tito lived. His mother was ironing shirts.
She was sprinkling water on them from an empty pop bottle
and smoking a cigarette.
Your son and his friends stole Sally's keys and now
they won't give them back unless she kisses them and right
now they're making her kiss them, I said all out of breath
from the three flights of stairs.
Those kids, she said, not looking up from her ironing.
That's all?
What do you want me to do, she said, call the cops?
And kept on ironing.
I looked at her a long time, but couldn't think of
anything to say, and ran back down the three flights to the
garden where Sally needed to be saved. I took three big
sticks and a brick and figured this was enough.
But when I got there Sally said go home. Those boys
said leave us alone. I felt stupid with my brick. They all
looked at me as if I was the one that was crazy and made
me feel ashamed.
And then I don't know why but I had to run away. I
had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the
jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down
and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so
that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything
inside hiccupped.
I read somewhere in India there are priests who can
will their heart to stop beating. I wanted to will my blood
to stop, my heart to quit its pumping. I wanted to be dead.
to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like two black snails. I wished and wished. I closed my eyes and
willed it, but when I got up my dress was green and I had
a headache.
I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round
shoes. They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my
feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good
place to play didn't seem mine either.



Red Clowns

Sally, you lied. It wasn't what you said at all. What he
did. Where he touched me. I didn't want it, Sally. The way
they said it, the way it's supposed to be, all the storybooks
and movies, why did you lie to me?
I was waiting by the red clowns. I was standing by the
tilt-a-whirl where you said. And anyway I don't like carnivals.
I went to be with you because you laugh on the tilta-whirl,
you throw your head back and laugh. I hold your
change, wave, count how many times you go by. Those
boys that look at you because you're pretty. I like to be
with you, Sally. You're my friend. But that big boy, where
did he take you? I waited such a long time. I waited by the red clowns, just like you said, but you never came, you
never came for me.
Sally Sally a hundred times. Why didn't you hear me
when I called? Why didn't you tell them to leave me alone?
The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn't let me
go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, 1 love you, and pressed
his sour mouth to mine.
Sally, make him stop. I cou1,don't make them go away.
I couldn't do anything but cry. I don't remember. It was
dark. I don't remember. I don't remember. Please don't
make me tell it all.
Why did you leave me all alone? I waited my whole
life. You're a liar. They all lied. All the books and magazines,
everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails
against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon
that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing
their thick-tongue laugh.
Then the colors began to whirl. Sky tipped. Their high
black gym shoes ran. Sally, you lied, you lied. He wouldn't
let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl

Linoleum Roses

Sally got married like we knew she would, young and
not ready but married just the same. She met a marshmallow
salesman at a school bazaar, and she married him
in another state where it's legal to get married before eighth
grade. She has her husband and her house now, her pillowcases
and her plates. She says she is in love, but I think
she did it to escape.
Sally says she likes being married because now she
gets to buy her own things when her husband gives her
money. She is happy, except sometimes her husband gets
angry and once he broke the door where his foot went
through, though most days he is okay. Except he won't let
her talk on the telephone. And he doesn't let her look out
the window. And he doesn't like her friends, so nobody
gets to visit her unless he is working-.
She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission. She looks at all the things they own:
the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes.
She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth
as wedding cake.

The Three Sisters

They came with the wind that blows in August, thin
as a spider web and barely noticed. Three who did not
seem to be related to anything but the moon. One with
laughter like tin and one with eyes of a cat and one with
hands like porcelain. The aunts, the three sisters, las comadres,
they said.
The baby died. Lucy and Rachel's sister. One night a
dog cried, and the next day a yellow bird flew in through
an open window. Before the week was over, the baby's fever
was worse. Then Jesus came and took the baby with him
far away. That's what their mother said.
Then the visitors came ... in and out of the little
house. It was hard to keep the floors clean. Anybody who
had ever wondered what color the walls were came and
came to look at that little thumb of a human in a box like
candy.
I had never seen the dead before, not for real, not in
somebody's living room for people to kiss and bless themselves
and light a candle for. Not in a house. It seemed
strange.
They must've known, the sisters. They had the power
and could sense what was what. They said, Come here, and
gave me a stick of gum. They smelled like Kleenex or the
inside of a satin handbag, and then I didn't feel afraid.
What's your name, the cat-eyed one asked.
Esperanza, I said.
Esperanza, the old blue-veined one repeated in a high thin voice. Esperanza ... a good good name.
My knees hurt, the one with the funny laugh complained.
Tomorrow it will rain.
Yes, tomorrow, they said.
How do you know? I asked.
We know.
Look at her hands, cat-eyed said.
And they turned them over and over as if they were
looking for something.
She's special.
Yes, she'll go very far.
Yes, yes, hmmm.
Make a wish.
A wish?
Yes, make a wish. What do you want?
Anything? I said.
Well, why not?
I closed my eyes.
Did you wish already?
Yes, I said.
Well, that's all there is to it. It'll come true.
How do you know? I asked.
We know, we know.
Esperanza. The one with marble hands called me aside. Esperanza. She held my face with her blue-veined
hands and looked and looked at me. A long silence. When
you leave you must remember always to come back, she
said.
What?
When you leave you must remember to come back
for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be
Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't
erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.
Then I didn't know what to say. It was as if she could
read my mind, as if she knew what I had'wished for, and
I felt ashamed for having made such a selfish wish.
You must remember to come back. For the ones who
cannot leave as easily as you. You will remember? She asked
as if she was telling me. Yes, yes, I said a little confused.
Good, she said, rubbing my hands. Good. That's all.
You can go.
I got up to join Lucy and Rachel who were already
outside waiting by the door, wondering what I was doing
talking to three old ladies who smelled like cinnamon. I
didn't understand everything they had told me. I turned
around. They smiled and waved in their smoky way.
Then I didn't see them. Not once, or twice, or ever
again.

Alicia & I Talking on Edna’s Steps

I like Alicia because once she gave me a little leather
purse with the word GUADALAJARA stitched on it, which
is home for Alicia, and one day she will go back there. But
today she is listening to my sadness because I don't have a
house.
You live right here, 4006 Mango, Alicia says and
points to the house I am ashamed of.
No, this isn't my house 1 say and shake my head as if
shaking could undo the year I've lived here. I don't belong. I don't ever want to come from here. You have a home,
Alicia, and one day you'll go there, to a town you remem­ber, but me I never had a house, not even a photograph ... only one I dream of.
No, Alicia says. Like it or not you are Mango Street
and one day you'll come back too.
Not me. Not until somebody makes it beucr.
Who's going to do it? The mayor?
And the thought of the mayor coming to Mango Street makes me laugh out loud.
Who's going to do it? Not the mayor.

A House of My Own

Not a Rat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's
house. Not a daddy·s. A house all my own. With my porch
and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody
to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.
Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go,
clean as paper before the poem.

Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes

I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell them after the mailman says, Here's your mail Here's your
mail he said.
I make a story for my life, for each step my brown
shoe takes. I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs,
her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never
liked."
I like to tell stories. I am going to tell you a story about
a girl who didn't want to belong.
We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that
we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we
lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house
I belong but do not belong to.
I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not
ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye
sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets
me free.
One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One
day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her
to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.
Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to
that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and
paper? Why did she march so far away?
They will not know I have gone away to come back.
For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.