It's me—Mama, Mama said. I open up and she's there with bags and big boxes, the new clothes and, yes, she's got the socks and a new slip with a little rose on it and a pink-and-white striped dress. What about the shoes? I forgot. Too late now. I'm tired. Whew!
      Six-thirty already and my little cousin's baptism is over. All day waiting, the door locked, don't open up for nobody, and I don't till Mama gets back and buys everything except the shoes.
      Now Uncle Nacho is coming in his car, and we have to hurry to get to Precious Blood Church quick because that's where the baptism party is, in the basement rented for today for dancing and tamales and everyone's kids running all over the place.
      Mama dances, laughs, dances. All of a sudden, Mama is sick. I fan her hot face with a paper plate. Too many tamales, but Uncle Nacho says too many this and tilts his thumb to his lips.
      Everybody laughing except me, because I'm wearing the new dress, pink and white with stripes, and new underclothes and new socks and the old saddle shoes I wear to school, brown and white, the kind I get every September because they last long and they do. My feet scuffed and round, and the heels all crooked that look dumb with this dress, so I just sit.
      Meanwhile that boy who is my cousin by first communion or something asks me to dance and I can't. Just stuff my feet under the metal folding chair stamped Precious Blood and pick on a wad of brown gum that's stuck beneath the seat. I shake my head no. My feet growing bigger and bigger.
      Then Uncle Nacho is pulling and pulling my arm and it doesn't matter how new the dress Mama bought is because my feet are ugly until my uncle who is a liar says, You are the prettiest girl here, will you dance, but I believe him, and yes, we are dancing, my Uncle Nacho and me, only I don't want to at first. My feet swell big and heavy like plungers, but I drag them across the linoleum floor straight center where Uncle wants to show off the new dance we learned. And Uncle spins me, and my skinny arms bend the way he taught me, and my mother watches, and my little cousins watch, and the boy who is my cousin by first communion watches, and everyone says, wow, who are those two who dance like in the movies, until I forget that I am wearing only ordinary shoes, brown and white, the kind my mother buys each year for school. And all I hear is the clapping when the music stops. My uncle and me bow and he walks me back in my thick shoes to my mother who is proud to be my mother. All night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance.

　　 I like coffee, I like tea. I like the boys and the boys like me. Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .
      One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where?
      They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says, turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has no imagination.
      You need them to dance, says Lucy.
      If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny says this and she believes it. She is this way because of her age.
      That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make fun of her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister.
      But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a woman's.
      They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on my side. The bones just one day open. Just like that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give.
      But don't have too many or your behind will spread. That's how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a boat. And we just laugh.
      What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be able to know what to do with hips when you get them, I say making it up as I go. You gotta know how to walk with hips, practice you know—like if half of you wanted to go one way and the other half the other.
      That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells, copper hells, eevy, ivy, over.
      I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but the more I think about it.. .
      You gotta get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance. She has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her end of the double-dutch steady.
      It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too slow. Not too fast and not too slow.
      We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it.
      I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is crazy.
      I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on the cue.
      I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity.
      Or tembleque!
      Yes, tembleque. That's a good one.
      And then it's Rachel who starts it:
      Skip, skip, snake in your hips. Wiggle around and break your lip.
      Lucy waits a minute before her turn. She is thinking. Then she begins:
      The waitress with the big fat hips
      who pays the rent with taxi tips . . .
      says nobody in town will kiss her on the lips
      because . . .
      because she looks like Christopher Columbus!
      Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so.
      She misses on maybe so. I take a little while before my turn, take a breath, and dive in:
      Some are skinny like chicken lips. Some are baggy like soggy Band-Aids after you get out of the bathtub. I don't care what kind I get. Just as long as I get hips.
      Everybody getting into it now except Nenny who is still humming not a girl, not a boy, just a little baby. She's like that.
      When the two arcs open wide like jaws Nenny jumps in across from me, the rope tick-ticking, the little gold earrings our mama gave her for her First Holy Communion bouncing. She is the color of a bar of naphtha laundry soap, she is like the little brown piece left at the end of the wash, the hard little bone, my sister. Her mouth opens. She begins:
      My mother and your mother were washing clothes. My mother punched your mother right in the nose. What color blood came out?
      Not that old song, I say. You gotta use your own song. Make it up, you know? But she doesn't get it or won't. It's hard to say which. The rope turning, turning, turning.
      Engine, engine number nine, running down Chicago line. If the train runs off the track do you want your money back? Do you want your MONEY back? Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .
      I can tell Lucy and Rachel are disgusted, but they don't say anything because she's my sister.
      Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .
      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. Nenny. Going. Going.
      Y-E-S spells yes and out you go!

　　    Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Está 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 don't know what to do.
      I know 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 oldest, my father has told me first, and now it is my turn to tell the others. I will have to explain why we can't 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 before 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.

　　Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there.My brother says I was born on an evil day and pray for me.Lucy and Rachel 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 swimmer`s legs.Aunt Lupe of the photographs.

　　But I knew her sick fromthe 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 spoonsl.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 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 don't 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, and 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

　　wouldn't.

　　Maybe the sky didn't look the day she fell down. Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didn't 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 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 maybe this is why we chose her.

　　It was a game, that's all. It was the game we played every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented it. I can't remember who. I 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 to guess who it was. It started out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe... But then somebody thought it'd 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 don't know why we picked her. Maybe 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 blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink. She couldn't see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I can't 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 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 Water Babies. 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 water babies swimming in the sea. I held the book up to her face. I can't see it, she said, I'm 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 the clouds in the wind,

　　but I'm me.

　　One day I'll jump

　　out of my skin.

　　I'll shake the sky

　　like a hundred violins.

　　That's nice. That's 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 didn't know what she meant.

　　The day we played the game, we didn't 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 the 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 easy.

　　We didn't 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 papa's shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again.

　　And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems.

　　And then we began to dream the dreams.
　　　　　　　　　　　　
　　很可能我会去地狱，很可能我该去那里。妈妈说我出生不的日子不吉利，并为我祈祷。露西和拉切尔也祈祷。为我们自己也为相互之间……为我们对卢佩婶婶做的事情。

　　她的全名叫瓜达卢佩。她像我妈妈一样漂亮。暗色皮肤。十分耐看。穿着琼·克劳馥式的裙子，长着游泳者的腿。那是照片上的卢佩婶婶。

　　可我知道她生病了，疾病缠绵不去。她的腿绑束在黄色的床单下面，骨头变得和蠕虫一样软弱。黄山的枕头，黄色的气味，饼子勺子。她像一个口渴的女人一样向后仰着头。我的婶婶，那个游泳者。

　　很难想象她的腿曾经强健。坚韧的骨，劈波分浪，动作干净爽利，没有像婴儿的腿那样蜷曲皱缩，也没有淹滞在黏浊的黄光灯下。二层楼背面的公寓。光秃的电灯泡。高高的天花板，灯泡一直在燃烧。

　　我不知道是谁来决定谁该遭受厄运。她出生的日子没有不吉利。没有邪恶的诅咒。头一天我想她还在游泳，第二天她就病了。可能是拍下那张灰色照片的那天。也可能是她抱着表弟托奇和宝宝弗兰克的那天。也可能是她指着照相机让小孩们看可他们不看的那一刻。

　　也许天空在她摔倒的那天没有看向人间。也许上帝很忙。也许那天她入水没入好伤了脊椎是真的，也许托奇说的是真的，她从高高的梯凳上重重地摔了下来。

　　我想疾病没有眼睛。它们昏乱的指头会挑到任何人，任何人。比如我的婶婶，那天正好走在街上的婶婶，穿着琼?克劳馥式裙子，戴着缀有黑羽毛的、滑稽的毡帽，一只手里是表弟托奇，一只手里是宝宝弗兰克。

　　有时你会习惯病人，有时你会习惯疾病，如果病得太久，也就习以为常了。她的情况就是这样。或者这就是我们选择她的原因。

　　那是一个游戏。仅此而已。我们每天下午都玩的游戏，自从某天我们中的一个发明了它。我不记得是谁，我想那是我。

　　你得挑选一个人。你得想出大家都知道的一个人，一个你可以模仿，而别人都能猜出来的人。先是那些名人：神奇女侠 、披头士、玛丽莲?梦露……后来有人认为我们稍稍改变一下，如果我们假装自己是宾尼先生、或者他的妻子布兰卡，或者鹭鸶儿，或者别的我们认识的人，游戏会好玩点。

　　我不知道我们为什么挑选了她。也许那天我们很无聊。也许我们累了。我们喜欢我们的婶婶。她会听我们讲故事。她经常求我们再来。露西、我和拉切尔。我讨厌一个人去那里。走六个街区才到那昏暗的公寓，阳光从不会照射到的二层楼背面的房子，可那有什么关系？我婶婶那时已经瞎了。她从来看不见水池里的脏碗碟。她看不到落满灰尘和苍蝇的天花板。难看的酱色墙壁，瓶瓶罐罐和黏腻的茶勺。我无法忘记那里的气味。就像黏黏的胶囊注满了冻糊糊。我婶婶，一瓣小牡蛎，一团小肉，躺在打开的壳上，供我们观看。喂，喂。她好像掉在一口深井里。

　　我把图书馆借的书带到她家里。我给她读故事。我喜欢《水孩子》 这本书。她也喜欢。我从来不知道她病得有多重，直到那天我想要指给她看书里的一幅画，美丽的画，水孩子在大海中游泳。我把书举到她眼前。我看不到。她说。我瞎了。我心里便很愧疚。

　　她会听我念给她听的每一本书，每一首诗。一天我读了一首自己写的给她听。我凑得很近。我对着枕头轻轻耳语：

　　我想成为

　　海里的浪，风中的云，

　　但我还只是小小的我。

　　有一天我要

　　跳出自己的身躯

　　我要摇晃天空

　　像一百把小提琴。

　　很好。非常好。她用有气无力的声音说。记住你要写下去，埃斯佩朗莎。你一定要写下去。那会让你自由，我说好的，只是那时我还不懂她的意思。

　　那天我们玩了同样的游戏。我们不知道她要死了。我们装作头往后仰，四肢软弱无力，像死人的一样垂挂着。我们学她的样子笑。学她的样子说话，那种盲人说话的时候不转动头部的样子。我们模仿她必须被人托起头颈才能喝水的样子。她从一个绿色的锡杯里把水慢慢地吮出来喝掉。水是热的，味道像金属。露西笑起来，拉切尔也笑了。我们轮流扮演她。我们像鹦鹉学舌一样，用微弱的声音呼喊托奇过来洗碗。那很容易做到。

　　可我们不懂。她等待死亡很长时间了。我们忘了。也许她很愧疚。也许她很窘迫：死亡花了这么多年时间。孩子们想要做成孩子，而不是在那里洗碗涮碟，给爸爸熨衬衫。丈夫也想再要一个妻子。

　　于是她死了。听我念诗的婶婶。

　　于是我们开始做起了那些梦。

　　Elenita, 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. Can't you see I'm busy? Ernie takes the baby into the living room where Bugs Bunny is on TV.
      Good lucky you didn't 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 with plastic. I think this is on account of the baby.
      Yes, it's 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 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 it, do you see anything?
      But all I see are bubbles.
      You see anybody's face?
      Nope, just bubbles, I say.
      That's okay, and she makes the sign of the cross over the water three times and then begins to cut the cards.
      They're not like ordinary playing cards, these cards. They're strange, with blond men on horses 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 fortune 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 espíritus are here. And begins.
      This card, the one with the dark man on 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? It's clear that's what that means.
      What about a house, I say, because that's what I came for.
      Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the heart.
      Is that it?
      That's 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 I'm disappointed. She's a witch woman and knows many things. If you got a headache, rub a cold egg across your face. Need to forget an old romance? Take a chicken's 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. And lots of other stuff. Only now she can tell I'm sad.
      Baby, I'll 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 don't get it.
      A new house, a house made of heart. I'll light a candle for you.
      All this for five dollars I 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.

　　She met him at a dance. Pretty too, and young. Said he worked in a restaurant, but she can't remember which one. Geraldo. That's all. Green pants and Saturday shirt. Geraldo. That's what he told her.
      And how was she to know she'd be the last one to see him alive. An accident, don't you know. Hit-and-run. Marin, she goes to all those dances. Uptown. Logan. Embassy. Palmer. Aragon. Fontana. The Manor. She likes to dance. She knows how to do cumbias and salsas and rancheras even. And he was just someone she danced with. Somebody she met that night. That's right.
      That's the story. That's what she said again and again. Once to the hospital people and twice to the police. No address. No name. Nothing in his pockets. Ain't it a shame.
     Only Marin can't explain why it mattered, the hours and hours, for somebody she didn't even know. The hospital emergency room. Nobody but an intern working all alone. And maybe if the surgeon would've come, maybe if he hadn't lost so much blood, if the surgeon had only come, they would know who to notify and where.
      But what difference does it make? He wasn't anything to her. He wasn't her boyfriend or anything like that. Just another brazer who didn't speak English. Just another wetback. You know the kind. The ones who always look ashamed. And what was she doing out at three a.m. anyway? Marin who was sent home with her coat and some aspirin. How does she explain?
      She met him at a dance. Geraldo in his shiny shirt and green pants. Geraldo going to a dance.
      What does it matter?
      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?
      His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo—he went north ... we never heard from him again.

　　Ruthie, tall skinny lady with red lipstick and blue babushka, one blue sock and one green because she forgot, is the only grown-up we know who likes to play. She takes her dog Bobo for a walk and laughs all by herself, that Ruthie. She doesn't need anybody to laugh with, she just laughs.
      She is Edna's daughter, the lady who owns the big building next door, three apartments front and back. Every week Edna is screaming at somebody, and every week somebody has to move away. Once she threw out a pregnant lady just because she owned a duck . . . and it was a nice duck too. But Ruthie lives here and Edna can't throw her out because Ruthie is her daughter.
      Ruthie came one day, it seemed, out of nowhere. Angel Vargas was trying to teach us how to whistle. Then we heard someone whistling—beautiful like the Emperor's nightingale—and when we turned around there was Ruthie.
      Sometimes we go shopping and take her with us, but she never comes inside the stores and if she does she keeps looking around her like a wild animal in a house for the first time.
      She likes candy. When we go to Mr. Benny's grocery she gives us money to buy her some. She says make sure it's the soft kind because her teeth hurt. Then she promises to see the dentist next week, but when next week comes, she doesn't go.
      Ruthie sees lovely things everywhere. I might be telling her a joke and she'll stop and say: The moon is beautiful like a balloon. Or somebody might be singing and she'll point to a few clouds: Look, Marlon Brando. Or a sphinx winking. Or my left shoe.
      Once some friends of Edna's came to visit and asked Ruthie if she wanted to go with them to play bingo. The car motor was running, and Ruthie stood on the steps wondering whether to go. Should I go, Ma? she asked the gray shadow behind the second-floor screen. I don't care, says the screen, go if you want. Ruthie looked at the ground. What do you think, Ma? Do what you want, how should I know? Ruthie looked at the ground some more. The car with the motor running waited fifteen minutes and then they left. When we brought out the deck of cards that night, we let Ruthie deal.
      There were many things Ruthie could have been if she wanted to. Not only is she a good whistler, but she can sing and dance too. She had lots of job offers when she was young, but she never took them. She got married instead and moved away to a pretty house outside the city. Only thing I can't understand is why Ruthie is living on Mango Street if she doesn't have to, why is she sleeping on a couch in her mother's living room when she has a real house all her own, but she says she's just visiting and next weekend her husband's going to take her home. But the weekends come and go and Ruthie stays. No matter. We are glad because she is our friend.
      I like showing Ruthie the books I take out of the library. Books are wonderful, Ruthie says, and then she runs her hand over them as if she could read them in braille. They're wonderful, wonderful, but I can't read anymore. I get headaches. I need to go to the eye doctor next week. I used to write children's books once, did I tell you?
      One day I memorized all of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" because I wanted Ruthie to hear me. "The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might..." Ruthie looked at the sky and her eyes got watery at times. Finally I came to the last lines: "But answer came there none—and this was scarcely odd, because they'd eaten every one ..." She took a long time looking at me before she opened her mouth, and then she said, You have the most beautiful teeth I have ever seen, and went inside.

　　 Earl lives next door in Edna's basement, behind the flower boxes Edna paints green each year, behind the dusty geraniums. We used to sit on the flower boxes until the day Tito saw a cockroach with a spot of green paint on its head. Now we sit on the steps that swing around the basement apartment where Earl lives.
      Earl works nights. His blinds are always closed during the day. Sometimes he comes out and tells us to keep quiet. The little wooden door that has wedged shut the dark for so long opens with a sigh and lets out a breath of mold and dampness, like books that have been left out in the rain. This is the only time we see Earl except for when he comes and goes to work. He has two little black dogs that go everywhere with him. They don't walk like ordinary dogs, but leap and somersault like an apostrophe and comma.
      At night Nenny and I can hear when Earl comes home from work. First the click and whine of the car door opening, then the scrape of concrete, the excited tinkling of dog tags, followed by the heavy jingling of keys, and finally the moan of the wooden door as it opens and lets loose its sigh of dampness.
      Earl is a jukebox repairman. He learned his trade in the South, he says. He speaks with a Southern accent, smokes fat cigars and wears a felt hat—winter or summer, hot or cold, don't matter—a felt hat. In his apartment are boxes and boxes of 45 records, moldy and damp like the smell that comes out of his apartment whenever he opens the door. He gives the records away to us—all except the country and western.
      The word is that Earl is married and has a wife somewhere. Edna says she saw her once when Earl brought her to the apartment. Mama says she is a skinny thing, blond and pale like salamanders that have never seen the sun. But I saw her once too and she's not that way at all. And the boys across the street say she is a tall red-headed lady who wears tight pink pants and green glasses. We never agree on what she looks like, but we do know this. Whenever she arrives, he holds her tight by the crook of the arm. They walk fast into the apartment, lock the door behind them and never stay long.

　　    I don't remember when I first noticed him looking at me—Sire. But I knew he was looking. Every time. All the time I walked past his house. Him and his friends sitting on their bikes in front of the house, pitching pennies. They didn't scare me. They did, but I wouldn't let them know. I 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. I had to look back hard, just once, like he was glass. And I did. I did once. But I looked too long when he rode his bike past me. I looked because I wanted to be brave, straight into the dusty cat fur of his eyes and the bike stopped and he bumped into a parked car, bumped, and I walked fast. It made your blood freeze to have somebody look at you like that. Somebody looked at me. Somebody looked. But his kind, his ways. He is a punk, Papa says, and Mama says not to talk to him.
      And then his girlfriend came. Lois I heard him call her. She is tiny and pretty and smells like baby's skin. I see her sometimes running to the store for him. And once when she was standing next to me at Mr. Benny's grocery she was barefoot, and I saw her barefoot baby toenails all painted pale pale pink, like little pink seashells, and she smells pink like babies do. She's got big girl hands, and her bones are long like ladies' bones, and she wears makeup too. But she doesn't know how to tie her shoes. I do.
      Sometimes I hear them laughing late, beer cans and cats and the trees talking to themselves: wait, wait, wait. Sire lets Lois ride his bike around the block, or they take walks together. I watch them. She holds his hand, and he stops sometimes to tie her shoes. 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?
      Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can't see.
      A boy held me once so hard, I swear, I felt the grip and weight of his arms, but it was a dream.
      Sire. How did you hold her? Was it? Like this? And when you kissed her? Like this?

　　They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things.

　　Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep. Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.

　　When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.

　　他们是唯一懂得我的。我是唯一懂得它们的。四棵细瘦的树儿长着细细的脖颈和尖尖的肘骨，像我的一样。不属于这里但到了这里的四个。市政栽下充数的四棵残次品。从我的房间里我们可以听到它们的声音，可蕾妮只是睡觉，不能领略这些。

　　他们的力量是个秘密。他们在地下展开凶猛的根系。他们向上生长也向下生长，用它们须发样的脚趾攥紧泥土，用它们猛烈的牙齿噬咬天空，怒气从不懈怠。这就是它们坚持的方式。

　　假如有一棵忘记了他存在的理由，他们就全都会像玻璃瓶里的郁金香一样耷拉下来，手挽着手。坚持，坚持，坚持。树儿在我睡着的时候说。他们教会人。

　　当我太悲伤太瘦弱无法坚持再坚持的时候，当我如此渺小却要对抗这么多砖块的时候，我就会看着树儿。当街上没有别的东西可看的时候。不畏水泥仍在生长的四棵。伸展伸展从不忘记伸展的四棵。唯一的理由是存在存在的四棵。

　　Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street, third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Mamasota, but I think that's mean.
      The man saved his money to bring her here. He saved and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he left early. Every day.
      Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm.
      Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. Push, pull. Poof!
      All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful 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 because 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 dinner. Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He doesn't eat hamandeggs anymore.
      Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull.
      Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light. The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's not the same you know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would.
      Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming and you can hear it all the way down the street.
      Ay, she says, she is sad.
      Oh, he says. Not again.
      ¿Cuándo, cuándo, cuándo? she asks.
      ¡ Ay, caray! We are home. This is home. Here I am and here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!
      ¡ Ay! 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 TV.
      No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she can't believe her ears.

　 On Tuesdays Rafaela`s husband comes home late because 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.

　　Fafaela 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 go 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 wiill you go to the store and buy me something? She throws a crumpled 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 offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.

　　每逢星期二，拉菲娜的丈夫回家就晚，因为这一晚他要玩多米诺骨牌。于是拉菲娜，年纪轻轻就因为倚在窗口太久太久而变老的她，被锁在了屋里，因为她的丈夫害怕拉菲娜会逃跑，因为她长得太美了，不能被人看到。

　　拉菲娜倚在窗口，倚着她的胳膊肘，梦想她的头发能像拉潘索公主的一样。酒吧的乐声从街角传来，拉菲娜希望能在变老以前去那里，去跳舞。

　　时间过去很久了，我们忘了她在那上面张望，直到她说：孩子们，我给你们一元钱，你们去店里帮我买点东西好吗？她扔下一张皱巴巴的票子来。她总是要可可汁，有时要木瓜汁。我们把它放进一个她用晾衣绳放下来的纸手袋里，给她递上去。

　  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 shawl over her shoulders and laughs.
      Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They 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 eyes like Cleopatra? And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one in the little red box, will you teach me?
      I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where did you get them? My mother says to wear black so young is dangerous, but I want to buy shoes just like yours, like your black ones made out of suede, just like those. And one day, when my mother's in a good mood, maybe after my next birthday, I'm going to ask to buy the nylons too.
      Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore, not since last Tuesday before Easter, not since the day you made her ear bleed, not since she called you that name and bit a hole in your arm and you looked as if you were going to cry and everyone was waiting and you didn't, you didn't, Sally, not since then, you don't have a best friend to lean against the schoolyard fence with, to laugh behind your hands at what the boys say. There is no one to lend you her hairbrush.
      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 different 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 come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange because you like to dream and dream. 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.

　　萨莉是一个描着埃及的眼圈，穿烟灰色尼龙丝袜的女孩。学校的男生认为她很美，因为她的头发像渡乌鸦毛一样乌黑闪亮，她笑的时候，把头发往后一甩，像一面滑缎方巾披在肩膀上，然后大笑起来。

　　她爸爸说长这么美是麻烦事。他们非常严格地遵从他的信仰。他们不能去跳舞。他想起他的姐妹们，很伤心。于是她就不能出来。我说的是萨莉。

　　萨莉，是谁教会你把眼睛涂得像克莉奥帕特拉？如果我把这个小刷子用舌头卷一下，舔成尖尖的，蘸到小泥饼里去，那个小红盒子里的，你会教我吗？

　   Minerva is only a little bit older than me but already she has two kids and a husband who left. Her mother raised her kids alone and it looks like her daughters will go that way too. Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are asleep after she's fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime.
      She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire—always something wrong. She has many troubles, but the big one is her husband who left and keeps leaving.
      One day she is through and lets him know enough is enough. Out the door he goes. Clothes, records, shoes. Out the window and the door locked. But that night he comes back and sends a big rock through the window. Then he is sorry and she opens the door again. Same story.
      Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what can she do? Minerva. I don't know which way she'll go. There is nothing I can do.

　　密涅瓦只比我大一点点，可她已经有两个孩子和一个出走的丈夫。她妈妈肚子抚养孩子们，看来她的女儿也要走她的老路了。因为她运气这样糟，密涅瓦哭呀哭。每个夜晚每个白天。并且祈祷。不过，在喂完孩子们煎饼晚餐后，他们就睡着了，她会在小纸片上写诗。那纸片他折了又折，捏在手里很长时间了，闻起来像一角硬币的小纸片。

　　她让我读她的诗，我让她读我的。她总是悲伤得像一所着了火的房子——总是有什么出了问题。他麻烦太多了，最大的麻烦就是丈夫会出走，而且不停地出走。

　   I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works. We go on Sundays, Papa's day off. I used to go. I don't anymore. You don't like to go out with us, Papa says. Getting too old? Getting too stuck-up, says Nenny. I 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. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind.
      One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house.
      Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.
      Rats? they'll ask.
      Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy.

　　我想要一所山上的房子，像爸爸工作的地方那样的花园房。星期日，爸爸的休息日，我们会去那里。我过去常去。现在不去了。你长大了，就不喜欢和我们一起出去吗？爸爸说。你傲起来了。蕾妮说。我没告诉他们我很羞愧——我们一帮人全都盯着那里的窗户，像饥饿的人。我厌倦了盯着我不能拥有的东西。如果我们赢了彩票……妈妈才开口，我就不要听了。

　　那些住在山上，睡得靠星星如此近的人，他们忘记了我们这些住在地面上的人。他们根本不朝下看，除非为了体会住在山上的心满意足。上星期的垃圾，对老鼠的恐惧，这些与他们无关。夜晚来临，没什么惊扰他们的梦，除了风。

　　有一天我要拥有自己的房子，可我不会忘记我是谁我从哪里来。路过的流浪者会问，我可以进来吗？我会把他们领上阁楼，请他们住下来，因为我知道没有房子的滋味。

　　有些日子里，晚饭后，我和朋友们坐在火旁。楼上的地板吱呀吱呀响。阁楼上有咕咕哝哝的声音。

　　是老鼠吗？他们会问。

　　是流浪者。我会回答说。我很开心。

　  I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for.
      Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty.
      My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.
      In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.
      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.

　  I could've been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows how to fix a TV. But she doesn't know which subway train to take to get downtown. I hold her hand very tight while we wait for the right train to arrive. She used to draw when she had time. Now she draws with a needle and thread, little knotted rosebuds, tulips made of silk thread. Someday she would like to go to the ballet. Someday she would like to see a play. She borrows opera records from the public library and sings with velvety lungs powerful as morning glories.
      Today while cooking oatmeal she is Madame Butterfly until she sighs and points the wooden spoon at me. I could've been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard. That Madame Butterfly was a fool. She stirs the oatmeal. Look at my comadres. She means Izaura whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead. Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head.
      Then out of nowhere:
      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.
      Yup, she says disgusted, stirring again. I was a smart cookie then.

　　我本来可以出人头地的，你知道么？妈妈说着叹了口气。她一辈子都住在这个城市里。她会说两种语言。她会唱歌剧。她知道怎么修理电视机。可她不知道坐哪条地铁线去市中心。在等对的那趟车来的时候，我紧紧攥着她的手。

　　她过去有时间就常画画。现在她用针和线画画，编织的玫瑰花苞，丝绣的郁金香。有一天她想去看芭蕾。又一天她想去看戏。她从公共图书馆里借来了歌剧唱片，用醇厚的嗓音唱起来，歌声像朝阳一样蓬勃。

　  He never hits me hard. She said her mama rubs lard on all the places where it hurts. Then at school she'd say she fell. That's where all the blue places come from. That's why her skin is always scarred.
      But who believes her. A girl that big, a girl who comes in with her pretty face all beaten and black can't be falling off the stairs. He never hits me hard.
      But Sally doesn't tell about that time he hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then she doesn't say.
      Sally was going to get permission to stay with us a little and one Thursday she came finally with a sack full of clothes and a paper bag of sweetbread her mama sent. And would've stayed too except when the dark came her father, whose eyes were little from crying, knocked on the door and said please come back, this is the last time. And she said Daddy and went home.
      Then we didn't need to worry. Until one day Sally's father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt.
      You're not my daughter, you're not my daughter. And then he broke into his hands.

　　萨莉得到了允许讲和我们住一阵子，星期四她终于来了，带着一布袋衣服和一纸袋她妈妈拿的甜面包。本来他可以住住下来的，可天黑的时候她爸爸来了，眼睛哭肿了，变得很小，他敲打着门说请回来吧。这是最后一次。她应了一声爸爸，就回家了。

　　然后我们就不用担心了。直到有一天，萨莉的爸爸抓到她和一个男孩说话，第二天她没有来上学。第三天也没有。直到后来萨莉说起来，他简直就是疯了，解开了皮带的他，忘记了他是她的父亲。

　  The monkey doesn't live there anymore. The monkey moved—to Kentucky—and took his people with him. And I was glad because I couldn't listen anymore to his wild screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people who owned him. The green metal cage, the porcelain tabletop, the family that spoke like guitars. Monkey, family, table. All gone. And it was then we took over the garden we had been afraid to go into when the monkey screamed and showed its yellow teeth.
      There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies turning somersaults and humming in the air. Sweet sweet peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles itch and itch until you washed with soap and water. There were big green apples hard as knees. And everywhere the sleepy smell of rotting wood, damp earth and dusty hollyhocks thick and perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead.
      Yellow spiders ran when we turned rocks over and pale worms blind and afraid of light rolled over in their sleep. Poke a stick in the sandy soil and a few blue-skinned beetles would appear, an avenue of ants, so many crusty ladybugs. This was a garden, a wonderful thing to look at in the spring. But bit by bit, after the monkey left, the garden began to take over itself. Flowers stopped obeying the little bricks that kept them from growing beyond their paths. Weeds mixed in. Dead cars appeared overnight like mushrooms. First one and then another and then a pale blue pickup with the front windshield missing. Before you knew it, the monkey garden became filled with sleepy cars.
      Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them. Nenny found a dollar and a dead mouse between two rocks in the stone wall where the morning glories climbed, and once when we were playing hide-and-seek, Eddie Vargas laid his head beneath a hibiscus tree and fell asleep there like a Rip Van Winkle until somebody remembered he was in the game and went back to look for him.
      This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us. We and a few old dogs who lived inside the empty cars. We made a clubhouse once on the back of that old blue pickup. And besides, we liked to jump from the roof of one car to another and pretend they were giant mushrooms.
      Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything. We liked to think the garden could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal.
      This is where I wanted to die and where I tried one day but not even the monkey garden would have me. It was the last day I would go there.
      Who was it that said I was getting too old to play the games? Who was it I didn't listen to? I only remember that when the others ran, I wanted to run too, up and down and through the monkey garden, fast as the boys, not like Sally who screamed if she got her stockings muddy.
      I said, Sally, come on, but she wouldn't. She stayed by the curb talking to Tito and his friends. Play with the kids if you want, she said, I'm staying here. She could be stuck-up like that if she wanted to, so I just left.
      It was her own fault too. When I got back Sally was pretending to be mad. . . something about the boys having stolen her keys. Please give them back to me, she said punching the nearest one with a soft fist. They were laughing. She was too. It was a joke I didn't get.
      I wanted to go back with the other kids who were still jumping on cars, still chasing each other through the garden, but Sally had her own game.
      One of the boys invented the rules. One of Tito's friends said you can't get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes. It was that simple.
      I don't know why, but something inside me wanted to throw a stick. Something wanted to say no when I watched Sally going into the garden with Tito's buddies all grinning. It was just a kiss, that's all. A kiss for each one. So what, she said.
      Only how come I felt angry inside. Like something wasn't right. Sally went behind that old blue pickup to kiss the boys and get her keys back, and I ran up three flights of stairs to where Tito lived. His mother was ironing shirts. She was sprinkling water on them from an empty pop bottle and smoking a cigarette.
      Your son and his friends stole Sally's keys and now they won't give them back unless she kisses them and right now they're making her kiss them, I said all out of breath from the three flights of stairs.
      Those kids, she said, not looking up from her ironing.
      That's all?
      What do you want me to do, she said, call the cops? And kept on ironing.
      I looked at her a long time, but couldn't think of anything to say, and ran back down the three flights to the garden where Sally needed to be saved. I took three big sticks and a brick and figured this was enough.
      But when I got there Sally said go home. Those boys said leave us alone. I felt stupid with my brick. They all looked at me as if I was the one that was crazy and made me feel ashamed.
      And then I don't know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything inside hiccupped.
      I read somewhere in India there are priests who can will their heart to stop beating. I wanted to will my blood to stop, my heart to quit its pumping. I wanted to be dead, to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like two black snails. I wished and wished. I closed my eyes and willed it, but when I got up my dress was green and I had a headache.
      I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either.

　   Sally, you lied. It wasn't what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn't want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it's supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me?
      I was waiting by the red clowns. I was standing by the tilt-a-whirl where you said. And anyway I don't like carnivals. I went to be with you because you laugh on the tilt-a-whirl, you throw your head back and laugh. I hold your change, wave, count how many times you go by. Those boys that look at you because you're pretty. I like to be with you, Sally. You're my friend. But that big boy, where did he take you? I waited such a long time. I waited by the red clowns, just like you said, but you never came, you never came for me.
      Sally Sally a hundred times. Why didn't you hear me when I called? Why didn't you tell them to leave me alone? The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine.
      Sally, make him stop. I couldn't make them go away. I couldn't do anything but cry. I don't remember. It was dark. I don't remember. I don't remember. Please don't make me tell it all.
      Why did you leave me all alone? I waited my whole life. You're a liar. They all lied. All the books and magazines, everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing their thick-tongue laugh.
      Then the colors began to whirl. Sky tipped. Their high black gym shoes ran. Sally, you lied, you lied. He wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl.