Not a life I want
From her position “outside the window of the bridal shop”, Kimberley can see “a little girl sitting quietly at the mannequin’s feet”. Her eyes are “shut, the heavy folds of falling fabric closing her in”. Kimberley thinks, “this isn’t the life I wanted for my child”. She knows everything about this girl’s life. She “already spends all of her time after school at the shop, helping with small tasks like sorting beads”. Later on, she “will learn to sew by hand and then on the machines”. Finally, she will be able “to take over some of the embroidery and finishing work” and then she will too spend her days and weekends “bent over the unending yards of fabric”. There will be “no playing at friends’ houses, no swimming lessons, no summers at the beach, not much of anything”. This imagery creates a sad feeling, for it is impossible not to feel sorry for a child who is not going to have a chance to enjoy it.
The best city
Kimberley heard a lot about New York. When she dreamt about it, she always imagined Manhattan, beautiful buildings, crowds of happy people and whatnot. On her way to their flat, she “she could hardly sit in the car and kept twisting my head, looking for skyscrapers”. She “longed to see the New York I heard about in school”. The girl wanted to see “Min-hat-ton, glistering department stores, and most of all, the Liberty Goddess, standing proud in New York Harbor”. As they drove, “the highways turned into impossibly broad avenues, stretching out into the distance”. The buildings became “dirtier, with broken windows and English written spray-painted on the walls”. This imagery is supposed to show how confused and disappointed Kimberley is, when she sees nothing she expected to see.
A pit
Kimberley and her mother’s flat in slums of Brooklyn was a real pit. Although there were a lot of problems to be solved there, their main one was the roaches. “Even with the spray, the roaches were impossible to exterminate”. Kimberly and her Ma “sprayed all the cracks and corners with roach spray”, they even “scattered mothballs through all our clothes and in a thick ring around our mattress”. Nothing could help them. “The brown heads with wiggling antennae appeared out of every crack”. As soon as Kimberley and her Ma left an area or become “too quiet”, they approached. The mother and the daughter were “the only source of food in the entire building”. This imagery creates a feeling of despair, for no matter how hard Kimberley and her mother try to improve the conditions they live in, nothing works.
