Alternative Perspective Genre
This alternate perspective piece was written drawing from the vignette, “The Monkey Garden.” In this scene within The House on Mango Street, Esperanza tells about a moment in which she watches some boys playfully steal Sally’s keys, which develops into a game in which Sally must kiss each boy to get her keys back. Esperanza’s inexplicable rage as well as her instinct that Sally “needed to be saved” speaks to the trauma, both conscious and subconscious, of growing up a girl in a patriarchal world where the threat of violence is exacerbated by the likelihood of internalized oppression. This is manifested in “The Monkey Garden” through Sally’s complacency and even enjoyment of the boys’ power over her and commodification of her body. In this alternate narrative, I attempted to tell this scene from Sally’s point of view after Esperanza tries to rescue her from the boys. Through a telling from Sally’s perspective, I wanted to capture a sense of guilt, arising from beneath Sally’s defensiveness in participating in the boys’ “game,” as well as a sense of helplessness. Previous to this vignette, Esperanza has noted that “all that [Sally] wanted…was to love and to love and to love and to love” (p. 83). In this narrative, I hone in on this innate desire to be loved in the context of Sally’s “home,” a place in which she is abused by her father, limited by her socioeconomic status and gender, and gradually shaped into a person who accepts her inability to “get out.”
“Go home, Esperanza,” I said. My face was hot; my heart was loud. “Go home. I told you it’s not a big deal.” The way she looked at me made me mad. The kind of mad that jumps on your shoulders and squeezes you numb. The kind where you think you might have exploded because you can’t feel your arms or legs anymore. The kind that happens when you pinch your brother right as your mom walks in. I wasn’t sure how to look back at her, with her lips and knee caps shaking like that. Her mouth was open like she was going to say something, but the words in her throat looked frozen until they must have melted and disappeared. She took a step back, dropped the brick and sticks she was carrying, and ran. I watched her go, but I couldn’t see where she went. Probably home, I bet, or at least out of the Monkey Garden.
I watched Tito and his friends snicker and elbow each other. I looked around at them and laughed, too, except I could feel a burning, itchy pressure inching up my chest and neck. I hate that feeling. I knew my chest was probably red on the outside from the way it felt on the inside, and that made me mad, too. I hoped the boys wouldn’t see. I hate doing something that makes you look stupid after you’ve been kissing a boy. It’s the smallest you’ll ever feel, I think. Because it’s after you’ve been kissing and, most of all, you’ve been kissed. And you feel like you’re going to explode but in a different way, like your heart has gotten so loud and so big that you could go anywhere in the world and give your whole entire heart to everyone you meet and they’d love, love, love you. But then, if you do something stupid, and if a boy sees, then you have to become very, very small. Small enough so they can only see you like you’re far away. Then the only thing they can see from that far is that you’re a girl, and not how loud or big your heart was. But even though you had to become small, you feel a little less stupid. And even though the feeling in your limbs slowly comes back and you know you aren’t anywhere in the world, it feels okay. You can go back to kissing, and it’s no big deal.
I watched Tito and his friends snicker and elbow each other. I looked around at them and laughed, too, except I could feel a burning, itchy pressure inching up my chest and neck. I hate that feeling. I knew my chest was probably red on the outside from the way it felt on the inside, and that made me mad, too. I hoped the boys wouldn’t see. I hate doing something that makes you look stupid after you’ve been kissing a boy. It’s the smallest you’ll ever feel, I think. Because it’s after you’ve been kissing and, most of all, you’ve been kissed. And you feel like you’re going to explode but in a different way, like your heart has gotten so loud and so big that you could go anywhere in the world and give your whole entire heart to everyone you meet and they’d love, love, love you. But then, if you do something stupid, and if a boy sees, then you have to become very, very small. Small enough so they can only see you like you’re far away. Then the only thing they can see from that far is that you’re a girl, and not how loud or big your heart was. But even though you had to become small, you feel a little less stupid. And even though the feeling in your limbs slowly comes back and you know you aren’t anywhere in the world, it feels okay. You can go back to kissing, and it’s no big deal.