The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

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.

She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.

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.

who cries every day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come.

Sad :(

The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I say. I read it in a book.

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.

Lingustic determinism

Down to the corner where the men can’t take their eyes off us.

Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops, but we just run.

We are tired of being beautiful.

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.

Papa said nobody went to public school unless you wanted to turn out bad.

Then he 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 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.

Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there.

But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal.

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.

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?

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.

And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.

Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They are very strict in his religion.

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 to love, and no one could call that crazy.

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.

One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from.

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.

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.

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.

You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you.

They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.