Esperanza, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel are talking about getting "Hips." Esperanza gives the others some scientific information learned from Alicia and says one has to practice walking with hips; Nenny says that the walk is to rock a baby inside you to sleep. The girls are jumping rope, and their thoughts fit in with their jump-rope steps and rhymes. Everyone makes up an original rhyme for double-dutch, but Nenny uses a worn-out old rhyme.
In "The First Job," Esperanza gets a summer job in a photo-development establishment where her aunt works. She needs the money in order to go to the Catholic high school, and she lies about her age in order to get the job, which she finds easy but tiring. She is nervous in her new workplace; at last a man befriends her, but he does so only to take sexual advantage of her.
Early one morning, Esperanza's father tells her that her grandfather is dead. He weeps, and Esperanza thinks how she would feel should he die. As the eldest child, she must tell the others the news. She knows her father will go to Mexico for the funeral.
