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When she thinks to herself in her father’s language, she knows sons and daughters don’t leave their parents’ house until they marry. When she thinks in English, she knows she should’ve been on her own since eighteen.
We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.
Landlords and the city take no responsibility for the rats, trash that isn’t collected often enough, porches that collapse, apartments without fire escapes, until a tragedy happens and several people die. Then they hold investigations for a little while, but the problems go on until the next death, the next investigation, the next bout of forgetting.
Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it.
Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal.
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.
People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth.
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.
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 better. Who’s going to do it? The mayor?
