The House on Mango Street Read Online Free PDF

of little sisters. He is my brother’s friend really, but I know he has two cousins and that his T-shirts never stay tucked in his pants.
    Louie’s girl cousin is older than us. She lives with Louie’s family because her own family is in Puerto Rico. Her name is Marin or Maris or something like that, and she wears dark nylons all the time and lots of makeup she gets free from selling Avon. She can’t come out—gotta baby-sit with Louie’s sisters—but she stands in the doorwaya lot, all the time singing, clicking her fingers, the same song:
    Apples, peaches, pumpkin pah-ay
.
    You’re in love and so am ah-ay
.
    Louie has another cousin. We only saw him once, but it was important. We were playing volleyball in the alley when he drove up in this great big yellow Cadillac with whitewalls and a yellow scarf tied around the mirror. Louie’s cousin had his arm out the window. He honked a couple of times and a lot of faces looked out from Louie’s back window and then a lot of people came out—Louie, Marin and all the little sisters.
    Everybody looked inside the car and asked where he got it. There were white rugs and white leather seats. We all asked for a ride and asked where he got it. Louie’s cousin said get in.
    We each had to sit with one of Louie’s little sisters on our lap, but that was okay. The seats were big and soft like a sofa, and there was a little white cat in the back window whose eyes lit up when the car stopped or turned. The windows didn’t roll up like in ordinary cars. Instead there was a button that did it for you automatically. We rode up the alley and around the block six times, but Louie’s cousin said he was going to make us walk home if we didn’t stop playing with the windows or touching the FM radio.
    The seventh time we drove into the alley we heard sirens … real quiet at first, but then louder. Louie’s cousin stopped the car right where we were and said, Everybody out of the car. Then he took off flooring that car into a yellow blur. We hardly had time to think when the cop car pulled in the alley going just as fast. We saw the yellow Cadillac at the end of the block trying to make a left-handturn, but our alley is too skinny and the car crashed into a lamppost.
    Marin screamed and we ran down the block to where the cop car’s siren spun a dizzy blue. The nose of that yellow Cadillac was all pleated like an alligator’s, and except for a bloody lip and a bruised forehead, Louie’s cousin was okay. They put handcuffs on him and put him in the backseat of the cop car, and we all waved as they drove away.

Marin
    Marin’s boyfriend is in Puerto Rico. She shows us his letters and makes us promise not to tell anybody they’re getting married when she goes back to P.R. She says he didn’t get a job yet, but she’s saving the money she gets from selling Avon and taking care of her cousins.
    Marin says that if she stays here next year, she’s going to get a real job downtown because that’s where the best jobs are, since you always get to look beautiful and get to wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who might marry you and take you to live in a big house far away.
    But next year Louie’s parents are going to send herback to her mother with a letter saying she’s too much trouble, and that is too bad because I like Marin. She is older and knows lots of things. She is the one who told us how Davey the Baby’s sister got pregnant and what cream is best for taking off moustache hair and if you count the white flecks on your fingernails you can know how many boys are thinking of you and lots of other things I can’t remember now.
    We never see Marin until her aunt comes home from work, and even then she can only stay out in front. She is there every night with the radio. When the light in her aunt’s room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn’t matter if it’s cold out or if the radio doesn’t work or if we’ve got nothing to say to each other.