1Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve

2to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and

3prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray too. For ourselves and

4for each other . . . because of what we did to Aunt Lupe.

5Her name was Guadalupe and she was pretty like my

6mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford dress

7and swimmer's legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs.

8But I knew her sick from the disease that would not

9go, her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones

10gone limp as worms. The yellow pillow, the yellow smell,

11the bottles and spoons. Her head thrown back like a thirsty

12lady. My aunt, the swimmer.

13Hard to imagine her legs once strong, the bones hard

14and parting water, clean sharp strokes, not bent and wrinkled like a baby, not drowning under the sticky yellow light.

15Second floor rear apartment. The naked light bulb. The

16high ceilings. The light bulb always burning.

17I don't know who decides who deserves to go bad.

18There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse. One day

19I believe she was swimming, and the next day she was sick.

20It might have been the day that gray photograph was taken.

21It might have been the day she was holding cousin Totchy

22and baby Frank. It might have been the moment she

23pointed to the camera for the kids to look and they

24wouldn't.

25Maybe the sky didn't look the day she fell down.

26Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didn't dive right

27one day and hurt her spine. Or maybe the story that she

28fell very hard from a high step stool, like Totchy said, is

29true.

30But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a

31dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. Like my aunt who happened to be walking down the street one day in her Joan

32Crawford dress, in her funny felt hat with the black feather,

33cousin Totchy in one hand, baby Frank in the other.

34Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes

35the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal.

36This is how it was with her, and maybe this is why we chose

37her.

38It was a game, that's all. It was the game we played

39every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented it—

40I can't remember who—I think it was me.

41You- had to pick somebody. You had to think of someone everybody knew. Someone you could imitate and

42everyone else would have to guess who it was. It started

43out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe. . . . But then somebody thought it'd be

44better if we changed the game a little, if we pretended we

45were Mr. Benny, or his wife Blanca, or Ruthie, or anybody

46we knew.

47I don't know why we picked her. Maybe we were bored

48that day. Maybe we got tired. We liked my aunt. She listened to our stories. She always asked us to come back.

49Lucy, me, Rachel. I hated to go there alone. The six blocks

50to the dark apartment, second floor rear building where

51sunlight never came, and what did it matter? My aunt was

52blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink.

53She couldn't see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I can't forget the

54smell. Like sticky capsules filled with jelly. My aunt, a little

55oyster, a little piece of meat on an open shell for us to look

56at. Hello, hello. As if she had fallen into a well.

57I took my library books to her house. I read her stories. I liked the book The W aterbabies. She liked it too. I

58never knew how sick she was until that day I tried to show

59her one of the pictures in the book, a beautiful color picture

60of the water babies swimming in the sea. I held the book

61up to her face. I can't see it, she said, I'm blind. And then

62I was ashamed.

63She listened to every book, every poem I read her.

64One day I read her one of my own. I came very close. I

65whispered it into the pillow:

66I want to be

67like the waves on the sea,

68like the clouds in the wind,

69but I'm me.

70One day I'll jump

71out of my skin.

72I'll shake the sky

73like a hundred violins.

74That's nice. That's very good, she said in her tired voice.

75You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must

76keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at

77that time I didn't know what she meant.

78The day we played the game, we didn't know she was

79going to die. We pretended with our heads thrown back,

80our arms limp and useless, dangling like the dead. We

81laughed the way she did. We talked the way she talked, the

82way blind people talk without moving their head. We imitated the way you had to lift her head a little so she could

83drink water, she sucked it up slow out of a green tin cup.

84The water was warm and tasted like metal. Lucy laughed.

85Rachel too. We took turns being her. We screamed in the

86weak voice of a parrot for Totchy to come and wash those

87dishes. It was easy.

88We didn't know. She had been dying such a long time,

89we forgot. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she was embarrassed it took so many years. The kids who wanted to

90be kids instead of washing dishes and ironing their papa's

91shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again.

92And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems.

93And then we began to dream the dreams.