A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
The First Job
From the end of the previous chapter: “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.”
A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
The First Job
From the end of the previous chapter: “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.”
A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
The First Job
How old is she now? Peter Pan Photo Finishers.
“I just did what I was told”
A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
The First Job
He [the old man she meets] asked if I knew what day it was, and when I said I didn’t, he said it was his birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. I thought I would…he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go.
Women are often the victims of men’s injustices – Jean de Coras
The Return of Martin Guerre
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Papa Who Wakes Up…
Your abuelito is dead…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.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Papa Who Wakes Up…
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.
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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.
A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
Aunt Lupe of the photographs.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
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.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
Maybe the sky didn’t look the the day she fell down… But I think diseases have no eyes.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
It was a game, that’s all….I can’t remember who—I think it was me.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
We liked my aunt. She listened to our stories.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
One day I read her one of my own…
I want to be
like the waves on the sea,
like the clouds in the wind,
but I’m me.
One day I’ll jump
out of my skin.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
Her aunt: “You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn’t know what she meant.”
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
After she died – 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.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Born Bad
And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems. And then we began to dream the dreams.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water
On the cards: Golden goblets, sad-looking women dressed in old-fashioned dresses, and roses that cry.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water
This card…this means jealousy, and this one, sorrow.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water
What about a house, I say, beause that’s what I came for.
Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the heart.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water
A new house, a house made of heart.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Geraldo
No name. Nothing in his pockets. Ain’t it a shame.
What does it matter?
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Geraldo
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?
Geraldo—he went north…we never heard from him again.
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the balls that never come back to earth
A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Edna’s Ruthie
Ruthie sees lovely things everywhere…she’ll point to a few clouds. Look, Marlon Brando. Or a sphinx winking. Or my left shoe.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Edna’s Ruthie
She had lots of job offers when she was young, but [she] got married instead and moved away to a pretty house outside the city.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Edna’s Ruthie
I used to write children’s books once, did I tell you? [Ruthie says]
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Edna’s Ruthie
Ruthies teeth are all bad because of how much candy she eats – after Esperanza reads “The Walrus and the Carpenter” – “But answer came there none—and this was scarcely odd, because they’d eaten every one…”
She said, “You have the most beautiful teeth I have ever seen.”
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
The Earl of Tennessee
The word is that Earl is married and has a wife somewhere.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Sire
But Mama says those kinds of girls, those girls are the ones that go into alleys… Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
Four Skinny Trees
Four who do not belong here but are here…Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground…Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-81)
No Speak English
Whatever her reasons [for not leaving the house]…she won’t come down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs…
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A Vertext of The House on Mango Street (pages 53-79)
No Speak English
And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy, who has begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial he hear on T.V.
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