![]() Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Someday I will have a best friend all my own. And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility. She can't play with those Vargas kids or she'll turn out just like them. You don't pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny. She's just my sister and that was not my fault. Carlos and Kiki are each other's best friend. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. The boys in their universe and we in ours. Boys & Girls The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The snoring, the rain, and Mama's hair that smells like bread. But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring. ![]() And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur. Nenny's hair is slippery-slides out of your hand. My Papa's hair is like a broom, all up in the air. Everybody in our family has different hair. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. I had to look to where she pointed-the third floor, the painting peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. There, I said pointing up to the third floor You live there? There. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner has painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as not to lose business. Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw m playing out front. Everybody has to share a bedroom-Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny. There are stairs, and the house has only one washroom. ![]() 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 is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. But the house on Mango street is not the way they told it at all. 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. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. 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. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. 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 yea r. 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. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get. 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. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six-Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor and before that we lived on Keeler.
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