House On Mango Street

"My Name"

In English Esperanza's name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records her father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.

It was her great-grandmother's name and now it is hers. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse, which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female, but she thinks this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.

Her great-grandmother. She would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until Esperanza's great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.

And the story goes she never forgave him. She gazed out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. Esperanza wonders if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. She has inherited her name, but she don't want to inherit her place by the window.

At school they say her name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite like sister's name, magadalena, which is uglier than Esperanza's. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But Esperanza is always Esperanza.

She would like to baptize herself under a new name, a name more like the real Esperanza, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.