The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Page B

she’d be the last one to see him alive. An accident, don’t you know. Hit-and-run. Marin, she goes to all those dances. Uptown. Logan. Embassy. Palmer. Aragon. Fontana. The Manor. She likes to dance. She knows how to do cumbias and salsas and rancheras even. And he was just someone she danced with. Somebody she met that night. That’s right.
    That’s the story. That’s what she said again and again.Once to the hospital people and twice to the police. No address. No name. Nothing in his pockets. Ain’t it a shame.
    Only Marin can’t explain why it mattered, the hours and hours, for somebody she didn’t even know. The hospital emergency room. Nobody but an intern working all alone. And maybe if the surgeon would’ve come, maybe if he hadn’t lost so much blood, if the surgeon had only come, they would know who to notify and where.
    But what difference does it make? He wasn’t anything to her. He wasn’t her boyfriend or anything like that. Just another
brazer
who didn’t speak English. Just another wetback. You know the kind. The ones who always look ashamed. And what was she doing out at three a.m. anyway? Marin who was sent home with her coat and some aspirin. How does she explain?
    She met him at a dance. Geraldo in his shiny shirt and green pants. Geraldo going to a dance.
    What does it matter?
    They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented, the weekly money orders sent home, the currency exchange. How could they?
    His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo—he went north … we never heard from him again.

Edna’s Ruthie
    Ruthie, tall skinny lady with red lipstick and blue babushka, one blue sock and one green because she forgot, is the only grown-up we know who likes to play. She takes her dog Bobo for a walk and laughs all by herself, that Ruthie. She doesn’t need anybody to laugh with, she just laughs.
    She is Edna’s daughter, the lady who owns the big building next door, three apartments front and back. Every week Edna is screaming at somebody, and every week somebody has to move away. Once she threw out a pregnant lady just because she owned a duck … and it was anice duck too. But Ruthie lives here and Edna can’t throw her out because Ruthie is her daughter.
    Ruthie came one day, it seemed, out of nowhere. Angel Vargas was trying to teach us how to whistle. Then we heard someone whistling—beautiful like the Emperor’s nightingale—and when we turned around there was Ruthie.
    Sometimes we go shopping and take her with us, but she never comes inside the stores and if she does she keeps looking around her like a wild animal in a house for the first time.
    She likes candy. When we go to Mr. Benny’s grocery she gives us money to buy her some. She says make sure it’s the soft kind because her teeth hurt. Then she promises to see the dentist next week, but when next week comes, she doesn’t go.
    Ruthie sees lovely things everywhere. I might be telling her a joke and she’ll stop and say: The moon is beautiful like a balloon. Or somebody might be singing and she’ll point to a few clouds: Look, Marlon Brando. Or a sphinx winking. Or my left shoe.
    Once some friends of Edna’s came to visit and asked Ruthie if she wanted to go with them to play bingo. The car motor was running, and Ruthie stood on the steps wondering whether to go. Should I go, Ma? she asked the gray shadow behind the second-floor screen. I don’t care, says the screen, go if you want. Ruthie looked at the ground. What do you think, Ma? Do what you want, how should I know? Ruthie looked at the ground some more. The car with the motor running waited fifteen minutes and then they left. When we brought out the deck of cards that night, we let Ruthie deal.
    There were many things Ruthie could have been if she wanted to. Not only is she a good whistler, but she cansing and dance