The House on Mango Street

Esperanza doesn’t like Darius because he chases girls around and bothers people with his stupidity. One day, he does something that helps Esperanza understand the importance of sky. He points to the clouds and notes that one of them is “God” (34). Esperanza thinks his simple observation is brilliant, and it reminds her that “you can never have too much sky […] here there is too much sadness and not enough sky” (33). 

Rachel, Lucy, Nenny, and Esperanza are chatting about names. They talk about the different names for snow, clouds, and their cousins. The girls start to tease Esperanza about having an “ugly face when she comes to school” (36). The girls all take turns calling each other names and get upset with each other. Esperanza tells Nenny that she can’t speak to Rachel and Lucy anymore if she wants to be her sister.  

A neighborhood family, all with small feet, donates some high-heeled shoes to Rachel. She shows Esperanza, Nenny, and Lucy. They take turns trying on the shoes and trading back and forth. This is their first time wearing high heels and they are giddy with excitement at feeling and looking like young women. They decide to walk around the neighborhood to show off. Boys holler out that the girls look beautiful. Mr. Benny tells them those kinds of shoes are dangerous and not for little girls. A homeless man on the street tells Rachel that she looks beautiful and offers to pay her a dollar to kiss him. This scares the girls away, and when they reach home, they hide the high heels because they “are tired of being beautiful” (42). When Lucy’s mother finds the high heels, she throws them away. The girls are relieved.

Esperanza is jealous of the children who bring bagged lunches to school and eat in the canteen, instead of walking home for lunch like she does. Nenny eats lunch at her friend Gloria’s house, where they are allowed to watch cartoons. Her brothers prefer to stay outside.

Esperanza spends three days convincing her mother to allow her to start bringing her own lunch to school. She brings a rice sandwich to school. When lunchtime arrives, she brings her note from her mother to the canteen, but the nun in charge of the lunch line sends her to see Mother Superior to get approval. Esperanza shows her the note her mother wrote, which says that Esperanza cannot walk home for lunch without getting too tired and faint. Mother Superior does not believe this. She makes Esperanza stand in front of the window and point to where her house is. The nun asks if it is one of the shanty homes that she can see from her office, and Esperanza says yes, even though it isn’t true. Esperanza is very nervous around nuns and afraid of their yelling. Mother Superior allows her to eat in the canteen that day, but not again: “In the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys and girls watched while I cried and ate my sandwich” (45). 

Esperanza is excited to wear a new dress and underclothes to her cousin’s baptism. The family has a big party in a rented-out church basement where there is food, drinking, dancing, and children running wild. She is embarrassed that she has to wear her old shoes with her new dress because her mother forgot to buy her new ones. After the baptism, at the party, her mother drinks too much and feels ill. Everyone teases her, but Esperanza is morose about the shoes. Her cousin asks her to dance, but she refuses because she would rather sit with her feet and ugly shoes hidden under a chair. Finally, her uncle Nacho tells her she is “the prettiest girl here” (47) and pulls her onto the dance floor. They dance so well together that everyone watches and cheers them on. Esperanza forgets all about her “ordinary shoes” (47) and feels special. She is amazed that her cousin, “the boy who is a man” (47) watched her dance with such interest. 

This chapter begins with a limerick about boys and girls flirting with each other. Then, Esperanza describes the sudden appearance of her hips. Esperanza and her friends try to discern the importance of having and developing hips; from being good to hold babies on to signifying the difference between a man and a woman if you only have their skeleton. Esperanza explains, scientifically, why a woman needs her hips to spread in order to have children. Rachel reminds them that if they have too many kids, their “behind will spread” (50). Nenny says that the rhythm of the hips is meant to lull a baby to sleep in the womb. The girls all practice swinging their hips while jumping rope, singing out phrases to go with their jumps: “Some are skinny like chicken lips. Some are baggy like soggy band-aids…I don’t care what kind I get. Just as long as I get hips” (51). Then, Nenny takes a turn. She sings the old jump rope rhymes that the girls used when they were younger. The older girls are embarrassed. Esperanza tries to get Nenny to make up her own songs like they do, but Nenny won’t. Esperanza is mortified. 

Esperanza attends an expensive Catholic school. She wants to get a job to help her father pay tuition, so she gets her social security card and fudges her age in order to work with her aunt at a photo shop. Esperanza’s job is to match printed photos with their negatives and place them in an envelope. The work makes her legs tired, but she doesn’t know if she is allowed to sit down, so she only sits when the other women do. She is too nervous to eat lunch in the cafeteria or to take breaks anywhere, so she hides in the coatroom. This is where an older man (a fellow employee) introduces himself and tells her they can be friends. Then, he forces her to kiss him and won’t let go of her face.