The House on Mango Street

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
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.

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 house 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 houses 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.
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 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 to 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 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. I knew then I had to have a 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.