The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
Excerpt from Chapter 1
:
click on underlined words for definitions or pictures.
The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay
rent
to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn’t a
landlord
banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it’s not the house we’d thought we’d get.
...
They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldnt have to move each year. And our house would have
running water
and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we'd have a basement and at least three
washroom
so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big
yard
and grass growing without a
fence
. This was the house Papa talked about when he held up a
lottery ticket
and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.
But the house on Mango street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so
swollen
you have to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four little
elms
the city planted by the
curb
. Out back is a small
garage
for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are
stairs
in our house, but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house only has one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom -- Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny.
Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed and saw me playing out front. The
laundromat
downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as to not lose business.
Where do you live? She asked
There, I said pointing up to the third floor.
You live
there
?
There
. I had to look to where she pointed -- the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live
there
? The way she said it made me feel like nothing.
There
. I lived
there
. I nodded.
I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isnt it. For the time being, Mama says.
Temporary
, says Papa. But I know how those things go.
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