Sandra Cisneros

.I.ISandra Cisneros is one of the most brilliant of

today's young writers. Her work is sensitive, alert, nuanceful...
rich with music and picture."-Gwendolyn Brooks
 Sandra Cisneros's
The House on Mango Street
"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-s-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....
"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,
name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Espe-
ranza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something
like Zeze the X will do."
 the taxicab had
Poof!
All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, . . . "-'..A.'-~LA.lL
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 be-
cause of the three flights of stairs, 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 din-
No Speak English ner. Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He
doesn't eat hamandeggs anymore.
Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street, Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't
third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Ma- climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come
masota, but I think that's mean. down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish
The man saved his money to bring her here. He saved radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her
and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that ill a voice that sounds like
,r"E"'o ...... ...",11-""-.:y

country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he Home. Home. Home is a house photograph, a
left early. Every day. pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light.
Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's
in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's not the same, you know. She still for house,
arm. Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rab- and then I think she cries. I would.
bit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuch- Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts scream-
sia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, ing and you can hear it all the way down the street.

76 Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street 77

 Ay, she says, she is sad.
Oh, he says. Not again.
~Cuando, cuando, cuandot she asks.
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 Rafaela
in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no
speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she Who Drinks
can't believe her ears.
Coconut & Papaya
Juice
on Tuesdays
On Tuesdays Rafaela's husband come's home late be-
cause 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
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

78 Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street 79

 go to the store and buy me something? She throws a crum-
pled dollar 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 of-
fering 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 over
her shoulders and laughs.
Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble.
are very strict in his religion. They are not supposed to
dance. He remembers his sisters and is sad. Then she can't
go out. Sally I mean.
Sally, who taught you to paint your
patra? And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and

80 Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street 81

 chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no mo-
in the little red box, will you leach me? torcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only
I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could
did you get them? My mother says to wear black so young laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never
is dangerous, but I want to buy shoes just like yours, like have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could
your black ones made out of suede, just like those. And close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people
one day, when my mother's in a good mood, maybe after said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody
my next birthday, I'm going to ask to buy the nylons too. could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange
Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore, not since last because you like to dream and dream. And no one could
Tuesday before Easter, not since the day you made her ear yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against
bleed, not since she called you that name and bit a hole in a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking
your arm and you looked as if you were going to cry and you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without
everyone was waiting and you didn't, you didn't, Sally, not the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when
since then, you don't have a best friend to lean against tile all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to
schoolyard fence with, to laugh behind your hands at what love and to love and to love, and no one could call that
the boys say. There is no one to lend you her hairbrush. crazy.
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 close your eyes like that? And why do you always
have to go straight home after school? You become a dif-
ferent 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

82 Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street 83

A Mango
House Says
of Goodbye
MyOwn Som.etitnes
Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell
house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch them after the mailman says, Here's your mail. Here's your
and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and mail he said.
my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody I make a story for my life, for each step my brown
to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. shoe takes. I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs,
Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never
clean as paper before the poem. 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

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