We moved to a house on the corner of Eight Street and Maple Avenue, many miles away from Mango Street. It was smaller than our house on Mango Street and there were no inside stairs and no basement and only one bathroom and it was yellow, but it was sturdy like tortoise shell. I was happy to have left Mango Street. My mother made me go to a school down the block from where we lived. The teachers there yap-yap-yap and make us write things down all the time which I don’t mind most of the time. I like to write though and I don’t like going to school very much so writing in school makes me excited.
One day one of the yap-yap-yap teachers sent a letter home to my parents. I thought I was in trouble, but from the look on my mother’s face I knew I wasn’t.
The teacher says you write very well.
I shrug my shoulders.
Your teacher sent me home some of your stories. They are very good, Esperanza. You are just like me, a smart cookie.
My mother sat and read the stories one by one and when my father walked in, he grabbed one of the stories my mother had already read and looked at the page. After scanning the lines for a moment he looked up at me with flames shooting from his eyes and walked to the garbage can that sat in the corner of our kitchen and let the piece of loose leaf paper fall into it like a kite floating to the ground when its string is broken by the wind.
