In these chapters, we get to know Esperanza a little better, and we feel her relax a bit, allowing her language to become slightly more informal and at the same time more colorful.
How old is Esperanza? About a year later, she will imply that she is about to enter the eighth grade, so we may guess that she is now eleven or twelve. But (as another Cisneros protagonist will remind us) “eleven” contains ten, and nine—and three, for that matter; each “age” remains within the person, layered over with the added years like the inside of an onion. In these chapters, “ten” or even “nine” seems to predominate in Esperanza, who rides triple on a bike and jumps through (or from?) a tree.
As everyone who has ever been eleven or twelve ought to remember, no one moves suddenly and irrevocably into adulthood or even adolescence—nor is the move a smoothly gradual one. Throughout Mango Street, Esperanza provides a superb illustration of this sometimes-uncomfortable truth: Sometimes she seems to look backward into childhood, sometimes forward into womanhood. Part of the reason for her looking backward, in this group of chapters, is that she has become acquainted with some neighborhood children, most of whom seem to be younger than she. Socialization seems to be easy for Esperanza, and she naturally gravitates into the familiar relationships and activities of childhood. She accepts Cathy as a short-term “friend” but quickly changes this allegiance, which means little to her, for another “friendship” with Lucy and Rachel (who tells Esperanza that for five dollars she’ll be her friend forever); she knows none of these is the “best friend” she has wished to have. Esperanza is not the kind of girl who hangs out with younger children so she can boss them around, but she and Lucy both have younger sisters whom they cannot ignore, and there seems to be only one older girl in the neighborhood—Marin, about whose name Esperanza is not even sure at first, and whose makeup and dark hose signify that she has already made the short crossing out of childhood.
But despite being part of a younger crowd, Esperanza is still an independent individual. She takes Nenny’s savings without permission (high-handedly; she’s the older sister and guesses—apparently correctly—that Nenny will be glad to own a share of the $15 bicycle). Within a few seconds of meeting Lucy and Rachel, she corrects Lucy’s grammar and is amused to find that Lucy doesn’t even recognize the correction. Esperanza’s individuality is best expressed, however, in her gift for metaphor. Her descriptions are peppered with similes and other figures that are spontaneous, unforced, entirely apt—and entirely in character for an 11-year-old (for example, after running into a lamppost, a Cadillac’s “nose” is “all pleated like an alligator’s”). This is who Esperanza is. She sees things in her own way.
This difference between Esperanza and the others, in fact, is the beginning of the tension that becomes part of Mango Street’s central theme. A unique individual, potentially a “strong woman” like her great-grandmother (who was punished for her strength), Esperanza still gets along easily and well with other children. But when she and Nenny go into the “junk store” and Nenny asks about a music box, we see a reaction that clearly separates Esperanza from Nenny—and from anything she herself has previously felt, so that she is as surprised at herself as at the incident that caused her to react. Esperanza’s own reaction baffles her, and she calls it “stupid.” In fact, it is a response to real beauty encountered unexpectedly. Nenny reaches for money; Esperanza knows, before the storeowner has said it, that such magic is not for sale. The difference between Esperanza and her sister is implied: It is a difference of worlds, the mundane world of prettiness and cost, and the spiritual world of beauty and worth. As the book progresses, Esperanza will be torn between these two worlds.
