THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET 04.docx

1、THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET 0422 Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the DarkYour abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Est 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 dont know what to do.I kn

2、ow 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

3、oldest, my father has told me first, and now it is my turn to tell the others. I will have to explain why we cant 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 b

4、efore 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.23 Born BadMost 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 Rache

5、l 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 swimmers legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs.But I knew her sick from the disease that would not go, h

6、er 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

7、 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 dont know who decides who deserves to go bad. There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse.One day I believe she was swimming, an

8、d 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 wouldnt.Maybe the sky didnt look the day she fell dow

9、n. Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didnt 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

10、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. This is how it was with her, and m

11、aybe this is why we chose her.It was a game, thats all. It was the game we played every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented itI cant remember whoI 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

12、 to guess who it was. It started out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe. . . . But then somebody thought itd 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 dont know why we picked her. Maybe

13、 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 b

14、lind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink. She couldnt see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I cant 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

15、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 wat

16、er babies swimming in the sea. I held the book up to her face.I cant see it, she said, Im 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 close. I whispered it into the pillow:I want to be like the waves on the sea, like

17、the clouds in the wind, but Im me. One day Ill jump out of my skin. Ill shake the sky like a hundred violins.Thats nice. Thats very good, she said in her tired voice. 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 didnt

18、know what she meant.The day we played the game, we didnt 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 t

19、he 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 eas

20、y.We didnt 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 papas shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again.And then she died, my aunt who lis

21、tened to my poems.And then we began to dream the dreams.24 Elenita, Cards, Palm, WaterElenita, 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 Kool-Aid in the living room. Cant you see Im busy?

22、Ernie takes the baby into the living room where Bugs Bunny is on TV.Good lucky you didnt come yesterday, she says. The planets were all mixed up yesterday.Her TV is color and big and all her pretty furniture made out of red fur like the teddy bears they give away in carnivals. She has them covered w

23、ith plastic. I think this is on account of the baby.Yes, its 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

24、 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

25、 it, do you see anything?But all I see are bubbles.You see anybodys face?Nope, just bubbles, I say.Thats okay, and she makes the sign of the cross over the water three times and then begins to cut the cards.Theyre not like ordinary playing cards, these cards. Theyre strange, with blond men on horses

26、 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 TV. I know, I saw it before and recognize the music and wish I could go sit on the plastic couch with Ernie and the baby, but now my fort

27、une 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 espritus are here. And begins.This card, the one with the dark man on

28、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? Its clear thats what that means.What about a house, I say, because thats what I came for.Ah, yes, a h

29、ome in the heart. I see a home in the heart.Is that it?Thats 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 Im disappointed. Shes a witch woman and knows m

30、any things. If you got a headache, rub a cold egg across your face. Need to forget an old romance? Take a chickens 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. A

31、nd lots of other stuff. Only now she can tell Im sad.Baby, Ill 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 dont get it.A new house, a house made of heart. Ill light a candle for you.All this for five dollars I

32、 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.25 Geraldo No Last NameShe met him at a dance. Pretty too, and young. Said he worked in a restaurant, but she cant remember which one. Geraldo. Thats all. Green pants and