What Sally Said

When people ask I say he doesn't hit me hard, my mom rubs lard on the places that hurt, thats why i have brusies and scratches. Or i say i fell down the stairs. But I think to myself asking who would believe me, im sorta a big girl and the way people look at my face probably think she couldnt be falling off the stairs. If i was an animal, that'd be the way he would beat/hit me. I think he's just afriad that i would leave like his sisters did and make the family ashamed. I go to school with a bad full of clothes and a little brown bag of sweetbread that my mama had sent. But then my dad came crying and said please come back, this will be the last time. So I went. I was talking to a boy one day and i guess my father had seen and the next day i didnt go to school and the next, no school. He just went crazy and told me that i wasn't his daugther, and broke our with his hands.

A Smart Cookie

Esperanzas mom always tells her I could've been somebody, you know? Her mom can do many things such as sing opera, fix a t.v., and speak two different languages. But she doesn't know how to find the right subway to get downtown. When Espernaza is with her, her mother is very tense while they wait for the right one to come. Esperanza says that her mom would love to go and see a ballet, she goes to the public library and gets opera records and listens and sings with powerful lungs. One day though when she and Esperanza were in the kitchen her mother said the her the same thing. I could've been someone, you know? Her mom tells Esperanza to keep up with school and don't drop out or quit for any reason. To study hard. Then her mother says why she dropped out of school. It was because she didn't have nice clothes, but she had brains. She then says, disgusted, I was a smart cookie.