仇父心理据说在弗洛伊德那里很可以找到些依据。可是我不懂心理学，也不懂我父亲。从前他憎恶我，我不知道为什么。我从Junot Diaz的一篇小说里看到这样一句话：I was the one who was always in trouble with my dad. It was my God-given duty to piss him off, to do everything the way he hated. 但是What way exactly？我不知道，也许处处与他相反？又或者恰恰与他相同：
他说，别学我的样。
我说，别学我的样。
他吼，我跟你说别学我的样。
我说，我跟你说别学我的样。
他扬起手，“啪”，煽在我脸上。
——凭什么？
——我是你爸爸。
【Father】
克里玛的小说里写过一个傻乎乎的儿子，才五岁便从自家阳台上跳下来，自杀。因为他想杀死他的父亲，可是太小，杀不动，只好自寻了断。克里玛说，那位父亲，虽然有些诗人的气质，但本质上是个骗子。就象我的父亲，他常在暴打过我之后，显得心满意足，走到闲庭信步，数落风流人物。——You’re a cheater！Diaz在他挨打的时候就拼命幻想当众向父亲这样咆哮，光天化日之下。——过去我以为这只是儿子聊以自慰的想象，后来我怀疑父亲是不是也这么想，他的不安表现在总是疑心我刻意模仿他。搞笑，继而搞臭。每个人都赞叹孩子越来越象他的时候，他却十分尴尬，非常不爽。可我发誓不是故意的，也许起初我只是想讨他喜欢，只是后来我和他一样，自己也不能分辨了。我象非法复制品一样不可遏制地满街泛滥，惟妙惟肖中潜伏着错字和乱码。【Fatherlike】
Darius& the Clouds
You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it.
Darius, who doesn't like school, who is sometimes stupid and mostly a fool, said something wise today, though most days he says nothing. Darius, who chases girls with firecrackers or a stick that touched a rat and thinks he's tough, today pointed up because the world was full of clouds, the kind like pillows.
You all see that cloud, that fat one there? Darius said, See that? Where? That one next to the one that look like popcorn. That one there. See that. That's God, Darius said.God? somebody little asked. God, he said, and made it simple.
Cathy who is queen of cats has cats and cats and cats. Baby cats, big cats, skinny cats, sick cats. Cats asleep like little donuts. Cats on top of the refrigerator. Cats taking a walk on the dinner table. Her house is like cat heaven.
You want a friend, she says. Okay, I'll be your friend. But only till next Tuesday. That's when we move away. Got to. Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad.
Cathy's father will have to fly to France one day and find her great great distant grand cousin on her father's side and inherit the family house. How do I know this is so? She told me so. In the meantime they'll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.
Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody’s garbage to pick up after.
Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.
Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous, They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.
But we aren't afarid. We know the guy with the crooked eye is Davey the Baby brother, and the tall one next to him in the straw brim, that's Rosa's Eddie V.,and the big one that looks like a dumb grown man,he's Fat Boy, though he's not fat anymore nor a boy.
All brown all around,we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled uptight and our eyes look straight.Yeah,That's is how it goes and goes.
We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there’d be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six --- Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.
The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people down stairs, 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.
We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn’t fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That’s why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that’s why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town.
They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t 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 house on T.V.And we’d have a basement and at least three washrooms 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 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. Our 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 has only 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 by 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 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 to house. A real house. One I could point to .but this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.
The boys and the girls live in separate world. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brotxmfish for example. They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls. Carlos and Kiki are each other’s best friend…not ours.
Nenny is too young to be my friend. She’s just my sister and that was not my fault. You don’t pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny.
She can’t play with those Vargas kids or she’ll turn our just like them. And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility.
Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.
My name
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.
It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of horse—which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female—but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong.
My great-grandmother. I would’ve liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn’t marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s the way he did it.
And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she dory because she couldn`t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister`s name—Magdalena--- which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.
I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody see. Esperanza as Lasiandra or Maritza or Zeze the X.Yes. something like Zeze the X will do.
Our good days
If you give me five dollars I will be your friend forever. That’s what the little one tells me.
Five dollars is cheap since I don’t have any friends except Cathy who is only my friend till Tuesday.
Five dollars, five dollars.
She is trying to get some body to chip in so they can buy a bicycle from this kid named Tito. They already have ten dollars and all they need is five more.
Don’t talk to them, says Cathy. Can’t you see they smell like a broom.
But I like them. Their clothes are crooked and old. They are wearing shiny Sunday shoes without socks. It makes their bald ankles all red, but I like them. Especially the big one who laughs with all her teeth. I like her even though she lets the little one do all the talking.
Five dollars, the little one says, only five.
Cathy is tugging my arm and I know whatever I do next will make her mad forever.
Wait a minute, I say, and run inside to get the five dollars I have three dollars saved and I take two of Nenny’s. She’s not home, but I’m sure she’ll be glad when she finds out we own a bike. When I get back, Cathy is gone like I knew she would be , but I don’t care. I have two new friends and a bike too.
My name is Lucy, the big one says. This here is Rachel my sister.
I’m her sister, says Rachel. Who are you?
And I wish my name was Cassandra or Alexis or Maritza—anything but Esperanza—but when I tell them my name they don’t laugh.
We come from Texas, Lucy says and grins. Her was born here, but me I’m Texas.
You mean she, I says.
No, I’m from Texas, and doesn’t get it.
This bike is three ways ours, says Rachel who is thinking ahead already. Mine today, Lucy’s tomorrow and yours day after.
But everybody wants to ride it today because the bike is new, so we decide to take turns after tomorrow. Today is belongs to all of us.
I don’t tell them about Nenny just yet. It’s too complicated. Especially since Rachel almost put out Lucy’s eye about who was going to get to ride it first. But finally we agree to ride it together. Why not?
Because Lucy has long legs she pedals. I sit on the back seat and Rachel is skinny enough to get up on the handlebars which makes the bike all wobble as if the wheels are spaghetti, but after a bit you get used to it.
We ride fast and faster. Past my house, sad and red and crumbly in places, past Mr. Benny’s grocery on the corner, and down the avenue which is dangerous. Laundoromat, junk store, drugstore, windows and cars and more cars , and around the block back to Mango.
People on the bus wave. A very fat lady crossing the street says. You sure got quite a load there.
Rachel shouts. You got quite a load there too. She is very sassy.
Down, down Mango Street we go. Rachel, Lucy, me. Our new bicycle. Laughing the crooked ride back.
laughter
Nenny and I don’t look like sisters…not right away. Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have the same fat popsicle lips everybody else in their family. But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would know. Our laughter for example. Not the shy ice cream bells’ giggle of Rachel and Lucy’s’ family, but all of a sudden and surprise like a pile of dishes breaking. And other things I can’t explain.
One day we were passing a house that looked, in my mind, like house I had seen in Mexico. I don’t know why. There was nothing about the house that looked exactly like the house I remembered. I’m not even sure why I thought it, but it seemed to feel right.
Look at the house, I said, it looks like Mexico.
Rachel and Lucy look at me like I’m crazy, but before they can let out a laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that’s Mexico all right. That’s what I was thinking exactly.
Meme Ortiz
Around the back is a yard, mostly dirt,and a greasy bunch of boards that used to be a garage. but what you remember most is this tree, huge, with far aims and mighty families of squirrels in the higher branches. All around, the nighborhood of roofs, black-tarred and A-framed, and in their gutters, the balls that never came back down to earth. Down at the base of the tree, the dog with two names barks into the empty air, and there at the end of the block, looking smaller still, our house with its feet tucked under like a cat.
This is the tree we chose for the First Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest. Meme won. And borke both arms.
We never see Marin until her aunt comes home from work, and even then she can only stay out in front. She is there every night with the radio. When the light in her aunt’s room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn’t matter if it’s cold out or if the radio doesn’t work or if we’ve got nothing to say to each other. What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us and for us to see them. And since Marin’s skirts are shorter and since her eyes are pretty, and since Marin is already older than us in many ways, the boys who do pass by say stupid things like I am in love with those two green apples you call eyes, give them to me why don’t you. And Marin just looks at them without even blinking and is no afraid.
Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by xmfishelf, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life.