In “Marin,” Louie’s girl cousin Marin hangs out with the younger girls after her aunt gets home; she smokes cigarettes, wears short skirts, and flirts with boys. Marin says she’s going to marry her boyfriend who’s still in Puerto Rico, but since he doesn’t have a job, she’s saving her money. Louie’s parents, however, have written to Marin’s parents, saying they’re sending her back to Puerto Rico.
In “Those Who Don’t,” Esperanza says people who don’t live in their neighborhood are afraid to come into it, but the ones who live there know who everyone is and are not afraid. Everyone there is brown. They are, however, afraid to go into neighborhoods where the people are another color.
“There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do” is about the Vargas family, in which there are so many children that the mother, Rosa Vargas, can’t control them. Every day she weeps because her husband left her with all these children. They are bad, says Esperanza, with no respect for anyone. They take terrible chances with themselves, and people in the neighborhood are so used to this that they have stopped trying to keep the Vargas children out of trouble.
Alicia is a neighbor Esperanza first heard about from Cathy the Cat Queen. Alicia is an older girl who goes to college and takes care of her widowed father. He thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen, making tortillas, but Alicia commutes across town to the university because she doesn’t want to work all her life in a factory or at home making tortillas.
