Lucy, Rachel, Nenny and Esperanza talk about names. Esperanza tells
them that Eskimos have thirty different names for snow. Rachel counters
with a story about her cousin who has many names, in English and Spanish.
They talk about what each cloud looks like, describing one like your
face when you wake up after falling asleep with all your clothes on.
Rachel and Lucy start teasing Esperanza about her puffy face, and the
girls begin insulting each other, half-seriously.
The girls talk in two different dreamy, whimsical ways: they come up
with creative insults for each other, and they discuss what (or who) different
clouds look like. All of their talk is interspersed with lists of names,
mostly common ones, that suggest what the girls' reality consists of:
the names around them and the names they give to things around them. The
endless string of people's names makes it seem as though the girls' conversation
is taking place within a crowd, and they are defining themselves within
it.
This chapter describes the feet of different members of a family: a
grandfather's feet, fat and doughy like tamales, a mother's feet, plump
and polite, etc. One day, someone gives Esperanza and her friends a box
of women's shoes. The girls try them all on excitedly, admiring their
legs, feeling grown up and a little dangerous. They run around the neighborhood
showing off, and a bum man tells Rachel he'll give her a dollar if she
kisses him. She seems to consider it, which scares the other girls, who
are worn out by trying to be adults. Lucy hides the shoes in her house,
and when her mother finds them and throws them away, no one complains.
This chapter continues Esperanza's ambivalence about growing up. She
uses the high-heeled shoes to transform her body, making her legs look
long. But at the same time, she seems to think of them like candy, describing
one pair as lemon-colored. As soon as she is confronted by the reality
of what the shoes can do (bum man's interest in Rachel) she becomes
frightened and is ready to take them off.
Esperanza wants to eat lunch in the canteen, where kids eat if their
homes are too far from school for them to eat at home. She asks her mother
to write her a note and make her a sandwich. At first Mrs. Cordero refuses,
but finally she gives in, and makes Esperanza a rice sandwich. But when
she gets in line in the lunchroom, a nun tells her she must get permission
from the Sister Superior. Esperanza goes to her office, and the Sister
Superior tells her her house isn't far enough away for her to stay for
lunch. She asks her which house is hers, pointing out the window, asking,
That one? Esperanza nods, even though it's the wrong house, and even
uglier than her own. She starts to cry, and the nun lets her stay at school
just for that day. She goes to the canteen, which is nothing special,
and eats her lunch, crying, while the other children stare at her.
The chapter is titled A Rice Sandwich to emphasize Esperanza's inability
to shake her feeling of dependence on her family, even when she tries
to escape it by eating with the special kids. Her attempt to be grown-up
backfires when she is unable to convince the nun to let her eat regularly
in the canteen, and she feels foolish. In fact, she allows herself to
be associated with houses that even the raggedy men are ashamed to go
into because she is too afraid to tell the nun which house is hers. The
fact that the canteen isn't even worth all the trouble makes her feel
even worse. This is the first example of real bitterness and sadness in
the book's tone: there is nothing whimsical about the way this chapter
is related. It simply tells a painful story quietly and plainly, without
even any solemnity to give it a sense of importance: it is not a tragic
story, but rather a pathetic one, dealing with Esperanza's feelings of
shame and foolishness.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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