The House on Spruce Street

Reading Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street reminded me of when my family and I moved into our first house. The book follows Esperanza Cordero as she and her family move into their first house on Mango Street. I didn’t love The House on Mango Street only because it’s a book of vignettes and I’m more into traditional novels, but I fell in love with the author’s introduction where she talks about becoming an author. I liked a few vignettes like “Cathy Queen of Cats.” In it Esperanza is with her neighbor Cathy on Mango Street and Esperanza tells us: “Then as if [Cathy] forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad.” Cathy also ignorantly tells her that she and her father will “just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like [Esperanza] keep moving in.” There’s other great vignettes like this that speak to the racism Esperanza experiences and feels all around her such as, “Those Who Don’t.” In that story she states, “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” She goes on to say how she isn’t afraid of the people in her neighborhood because she knows them, they are like her. They are brown like everyone else around them and for that reason she feels safe there. I remember when my family and I moved to Spruce Street into our first house when I was in the 4th grade around 1998 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Before that we lived in apartments. On Spruce Street, our neighbors were white and they invited us into their home to introduce themselves as they were friendly with the previous homeowner, a church friend of my parents. Our neighbors were elderly and my dad would always help them with anything they needed, especially our next-door neighbor Ms. Goodman who lived all alone. She eventually passed away and as the years went by more and more Hispanics moved to our block and I didn’t see any white people anymore.

It’s an interesting story why we moved to Spruce Street. Before that we lived on South 6th Street in an apartment on the first floor—me, my mom and dad, and my little sister who was three years younger. My youngest sister who’s ten years younger than me, and the final member of the family, wasn’t born until 1999 when we were living on Spruce Street. Above our huge apartment on 6th street were two other apartments, but I don’t remember fraternizing too much with the neighbors. I lived there from Kindergarten until 4th grade and man did I love that apartment. It really looked more like a house even from the outside except when you walked in there was a brown staircase to the second-floor apartments and a dark hallway that led to our apartment door. There were also two white doors on the side of the hall that led to our main living room and were always remained closed. There were three spacious bedrooms on the second floor, one for each us to live comfortably; it was always my parents’ wish that my sister and I have our own rooms. My sister’s bedroom had a door that led to the hallway where she often heard people and it would sometimes scare her. We had a musty basement that may or may not have been haunted by a creepy lady, a small backyard, one bathroom, two living rooms for some reason, and a dining room with these French double doors that I absolutely loved because it gave a fancy touch to our home. The second living room had a door that led to the side of the yard, which whenever my sister and I would play house, I would make believe that that door was the front door to our “house” and I would carry a purse to play the role of the mom. There was also a locked shed in the backyard that looked like a small house to me; no matter how hard I would jiggle the doorknob it wouldn’t budge. I would always pretend in my mind that it was a witch’s hut that stored secret spell books and potions. I really loved that idea. My imagination ran wild in that apartment where I rode my first bike and drove my sister around the yard in a toy jeep we had. Those formative years living on 6th Street is where I learned to play and had the most fun time. My cousins would visit us from Puerto Rico, too, so I have so many memories there of just being a carefree kid playing games and laughing. I also learned a few grown-up lessons, which leads right into why we needed to leave that apartment.

My younger sister and I in front of the “witch’s hut.”

One of my clearest memories in that apartment is of my dad going to work. He worked two jobs, one at K-Mart and the other at a chocolate factory called Palmer. I remember one time my sister and I were laying on our bellies on the floor in the second living room watching TV. It was nighttime and my dad came home from work only to greet us, give my mom a kiss as she handed him his lunch, and he was out the door again to work another shift at his second job. My parents were 21 and 22 when they had me and neither came from money, so it was only my dad working because he wanted my mom to be home with us. My mom had also had an accident that messed up her back and left her paralyzed for a year. When I was in kindergarten she laid in a hospital bed in our main living room and my best friend’s mom took me to school. That was obviously a rough time for my parents but I was too young to really understand that anything was wrong or maybe it’s too traumatizing for me to remember. I just knew I never wanted for anything. I only remember the surgeries my mom needed and crying in the backseat of my dad’s Chevrolet because we had to leave her at the hospital. As an adult now I appreciate the love and stability that I always had as a child. My dad never abandoned us when my mom was sick, we were never moving around too much, or getting evicted from places because my dad couldn’t pay the rent. I always remember having a good and safe life with both my parents at home. That sense of safety melted away one day when we came home to find our apartment broken into. The TV was gone and the leather jackets my dad had bought in Ecuador were missing, too. In our modest abode those were the only valuable things we possessed. My dad, who read the bible every night before bed, pointed out to the policeman that it was a miracle the thieves hadn’t stolen the twenty-dollar bill he left on the fireplace mantel at the foot of his Sacred Heart of Jesus statue. Those must have been some real God-fearing robbers. They also must not have liked our jackets too much because when my dad went out to look for the burglars he found our leather jackets beside a stoop of a nearby house. Soon after that my parents made a deal with their friend who was moving out of her house on Spruce Street and by the middle of the 4th grade we were moving into our first house, a row home in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood.

If I learned about creative play and imagination on 6th Street, then on Spruce Street I learned about discipline and appreciating the arts. I lived there from 4th grade until the summer just before my Sophomore year of college. We upgraded from an apartment to a four bedroom row home with a full bathroom the size of a closet on the first floor and a humongous bathroom upstairs that was larger than my sister’s and my bedrooms. It was so big we stored our dressers in it. It had a broken tub and toilet and anytime my dad said the toilet was fixed we would use it and then the kitchen ceiling would leak. The house on Spruce Street is where I was introduced to dial-up internet when my computer teacher from my elementary school, Mr. Bill, donated a computer to us and set up our internet; it’s where I participated in my first school play in the 6th grade and came up with the idea that I wanted to be an author; it was where I read the Harry Potter series; where I got over my fear of the dark; and where I got my driver’s license after failing three times.

My dad was a huge influence on me growing up; he was the one who helped me with my homework assignments, tests, and school projects. It was from him that I got my love of movies and books; he got me into Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Our entertainment center was always filled with movies on VHS and DVDs—action and dramas for my dad, Disney princess movies for my sisters and me. Next to the entertainment center was a rack full of CD’s indiscriminate of gender—my dad loved Celine Dion and Whitney Houston; he listened to Michael Jackson and his sister Janet. Upstairs was a metal bookshelf so huge it filled up the entire hallway where my middle sister’s and my rooms were. I cultivated my own library in my room with a much smaller bookshelf as both our bedrooms were tiny with vinyl oak accordion doors. I was a real scaredy-cat then and needed to sleep with the light on in the hallway, which annoyed my sister. This fear of the dark went as far back as the apartment on 6th street where I would have my mom sleep with me (she would sneak back to her room once I was out). If I saw anything scary before bed I would beg my sister to let me sleep with her. She would let me, but it definitely bugged her!

What’s funny is that the girl who was afraid of the dark got it in her head that she wanted to move to the attic for more space. That summer I packed up my room and painted the attic walls blue. I don’t know whose idea it was to let me do that by myself because I ended up with a wall full of streaks and paint everywhere on the floor and ceiling, but I had a lot of fun with that project. While I daydreamed of moving into a larger room, I didn’t actually think about the part where I would need to sleep in the attic. Alone. So once again I begged my sister to sleep with me because I was too scared. She did but her presence wasn’t enough to qualm my fears; I still needed a night light now that I didn’t have the hallway light so I made a makeshift one out of the lamp on the floor. I threw a white shirt over it like a shade because the lamp alone was too bright, then I laid down next to my sister. After only a few minutes my mom stuck her head inside the door and hollered up the stairs. Something smelled like it was burning, she said. I shot out of bed and noticed that there was smoke coming out of the shirt covering the light bulb in the lamp. I quickly took it off and with embarrassment explained to my mom the stupid mistake I was too old to have made. Never one for disciplining us, my mom cracked up laughing and closed the door. I moved back downstairs shortly after. Funnily enough, that’s not even the first time I almost burned down the house on Spruce Street.

As a 12-year-old tall, scrawny girl I somehow got it in my head that I needed to use the Belly Burner Ab Belt that my Titi Gary lent my parents one summer. Anything for a flat stomach, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t need it. Nevertheless, without my mom’s knowledge I laid down on my parents’ brand new Queen sized mattress and wrapped that yellow belt around my tummy. I watched TV and let the belt work its magic melting away the fat I imagined I had. When the twenty minutes were up, I took it off and went outside to hang out on the porch with my sister. After a few minutes, I suddenly heard my first and middle name being called out from the upstairs window: “Maria Fernanda!” It was my mom yelling from her bedroom. I knew I was in trouble. I flew upstairs and was alarmed when I entered her room. There was smoke everywhere and my mom was freaking out trying to put out the small fire dancing on the mattress with a hair spray bottle. A hundred scenarios ran through my mind about our house burning down, firefighters thundering up the stairs to douse the flames, and ultimately how it was all my fault simply because I had left the Ab Belt on the bed and forgot to switch it off, or rather, because I used something I had no business using in the first place. My mom yelled for me to bring a wet towel, so I ran downstairs to the bathroom. Eventually my mom put out the fire then called our firefighter friend, Papo, to make sure everything was alright. The fire had left a gaping hole on the right side of the mattress where the Ab Belt had been and I felt so guilty. I had burned my parents’ brand new bed and, because they couldn’t afford a new one so quickly, they turned the mattress over and slept on that side. I don’t remember getting punished but I do vaguely remember my mother laughing as she sprayed the fire with the hair spray bottle most likely thinking how ridiculous it all was that her skinny daughter had used her Belly Burner and lit her mattress on fire.

That’s how my mom is though. She was so laid-back that my sister and I could never take her seriously when she tried to discipline us. Because my dad was always working and my mom was home (until I entered the 8th grade and she got a part-time job), my sisters and I were always with her. In the summers, we tagged along with her when she visited her friends in the projects of Oakbrook and we became friends with her friends’ kids. Before the attic temporarily became my room, my sister and I once helped my mom carry a big couch up there. My sister and I were fooling around and my mom was getting mad so she started scolding us, but it didn’t work. She busted out laughing, so my sister and I started laughing, and we were all unable to lift the couch anymore because our bodies were shaking so much. I don’t remember how long it took us to get that couch up the stairs. I just remember how much fun we had.

I’ve been thinking lately how you hear the phrase “I came from nothing” a lot and I understand it means you didn’t come from money, but not everything is about money. I came from a strong household that only showed me love. Often, my house on Spruce Street was the safe house my friends ran to for shelter. It was where my parents first started gathering all their friends from church on Christmas, most of whom had come from other countries just like them and didn’t have much if any family living in the United States. I’m really lucky I came from a safe house. I didn’t come from nothing.