The previous group of chapters found Esperanza being pulled by her emotions and physical feelings toward a sexual relationship with a young man. For Esperanza, such a relationship is still indefinite: “a boy” is what she dreams of; the only specific boy in her thoughts is one who now has a girlfriend, and Esperanza’s interest in him seems more theoretical than practical. Yet the forces drawing her toward such a relationship with someone are powerful, coming from within herself and reinforced by her culture, which designates early marriage as the norm for young women. Now, in the chapters from “No Speak English” through “Minerva Writes Poems,” Esperanza is concerned with women whose response to this imperative has resulted in terrible unhappiness. Thus the tension between what she feels and what she sees, what she knows of herself on two different levels, is again expressed.
Of the women described here, only Sally—who is certainly no older than Esperanza—is unmarried. She is, in the parlance of the time, a “bad girl,” sexually promiscuous (if the boys’ stories are true). Sally, at a fragile age when controlling the forces within and around her is well nigh impossible, is in a double bind. As she develops into a young woman, her father attempts to resist this inevitability by forcing her to hide her own sexuality (and, as we shall see in a later chapter, by beating Sally). Although her father is probably acting mainly out of a desire to protect her, his attitude and actions make Sally even more desperate to get away from him, and the only way she knows of doing this is to try to attract boys and young men, the very kind of behavior that gives rise to her father’s fears and jealousies.
To make matters worse, Sally’s behavior is socially counterproductive: promiscuity (or even its appearance) makes it more likely that boys will talk about her and try to get sexual favors from her but less likely that any one of them will court her, protect her from the others, and eventually rescue her from her father. Moreover, her behavior prevents the friendships with girls that might offer some relief from her unhappy situation. Only Esperanza is loyal to her—and Esperanza’s loyalty will eventually be betrayed, for one facet of the sexual imperative that both girls feel (and to which Sally can find no alternative) is the feeling that other females are expendable. Whether this tendency is “natural” or culturally conditioned, U.S. culture in the 1950s and 1960s certainly reinforced it, approving solidarity among young men but promoting divisiveness and suspicion among young women.
The world of womanhood, into which Sally has already taken a wrong turn, is further represented here by three married women, at least one of whom is barely older than Esperanza herself. All three of these women have achieved what Sally wants, escape from the control of their fathers, and all three have reason to regret it. The happiest of the three, one might say, is the woman Esperanza and her friends call Mamacita (“little mama”). She has a husband who provides for her, a home, and a baby—in other words, she has reached the “goal” set for her by her culture. But she is entirely alienated and is becoming more so, as her child begins to speak a language she herself doesn’t want to know. Significantly, Esperanza does not even know her name; this woman is entirely identified as a wife and mother, not as an individual.
The other two women in these chapters, Minerva and Rafaela, are prisoners in one way and another. Rafaela literally gets locked into her apartment while her husband goes out to play with his friends. This behavior on his part is not considered monstrous or insane in his culture (which, in this respect at least, is only an exaggeration of American culture in general in the middle 1960s); the husband has a right to lock up his wife, “protecting” her from men who might be attracted to what attracted him. Rafaela is one of her husband’s possessions, useful when he has a use for her and kept in a safe place when he does not. All that marriage has done for Rafaela is to transfer her from one owner to another.
Minerva is less lucky, with a husband who beats her and then begs for forgiveness so that he can beat her again. Whether he is really sorry or not (and he may well be, for young men’s socialization was and remains as potentially flawed as that of young women), Minerva knows of no way to get out of the cycle of abuse and apology. This is her husband, so she must do what he tells her—which means opening the door when he wants in.
Esperanza’s response is in the form of a comfortable fantasy. She will have a big house of her own some day, and she will allow “bums”—meaning homeless people—to stay in her attic, because she knows what it is to be homeless. What Esperanza seems to mean is this: She is being driven by the changes she is experiencing and by her culture to make a choice she does not want to make. Esperanza loves her parents, and they seem to be much better parents than, for example, Sally’s father and mother; this is not the point. She is disappointed in her family’s small, ugly house, with its lack of privacy, where she must share a bedroom with the younger sister she loves but does not particularly like; this is not the point, either. Esperanza feels herself to be homeless in that there is no place for her in anything she knows, no precedent that she is aware of for a woman who wants to live a life of her own, not directed by her father or by a husband, and not—at the same time—required to renounce her existence as a sexual being in order to avoid being the property of a man.
Esperanza is a creative person, and the space she needs for herself is a space she must create—a roomy place, where she can be generous but can relegate others to “the attic” as guests but not necessarily friends. In Esperanza’s fantasy, this is a real place, a large house different from the houses her friends dream of having in that it is hers alone, not contingent upon her becoming somebody’s wife. But—as the playfulness of “Bums in the Attic” shows—Esperanza is beginning to realize that her dream house is also a metaphor, a symbol that stands for partial independence from other people. It may someday take on concrete reality, but until then it will be (and even after that it will remain) what Elenita foresaw for her: a home in the heart.
