Summary
The flight to New York is a completely novel experience for Esmeralda. She’s full of questions and wonder, having a hard time believing they’re actually moving. Esmeralda notes that the sleek flight attendants seem to have plastered on smiles when they attend to her family. Esmeralda feels dirty compared to them even though Ramona ensured that the family looked their best for the flight. Esmeralda’s maternal grandmother, Tata, is waiting for them at the airport. She’s tall, confident, and smells of beer and cigarettes. Esmeralda does not recognize Tata, and hangs back until Tata comes over and gives her a hug. Tata is accompanied by Don Julio, her boyfriend. Don Julio struggles to find a taxi; the first two drivers look at their family with all their suitcases and refuse. One driver gives them a hateful look as he drives away.
Esmeralda is surprised to see the streets of New York as so dark and harsh. Arriving at Tata’s apartment, a tall man named Chico introduces himself as Tata’s brother. Esmeralda and her family have an apartment above Tata’s; it’s spacious and the ceilings are tall with angels painted on them. Esmeralda takes in her new surroundings. The apartment is one of the fanciest places she’s ever been in, but with the doors and windows locked she finds the air stifling. Esmeralda spends the first two days hunting for bargains with Ramona, getting winter clothes and other necessities. Ramona makes a point of telling Esmeralda that they live in Brooklyn, which is not New York. Esmeralda is exposed to Jews, Italians, and Black people for the first time, a diverse mix of people, each with their own customs, food, and dress. She struggles to make sense of the cultural and racial divisions in her new home.
Esmeralda arrives at school with her eighth-grade report card filled with A’s and B’s. Yet, because of her limited English, they assign her to seventh grade. Esmeralda pushes back, saying she’s smart and can do the work. She convinces them to let her try out eighth grade, but Esmeralda’s excitement is short-lived when she realizes they placed her in a remedial class. Undeterred, Esmeralda studies hard, going to the library every day to study English. After four months, she is awarded for having the highest grades in her class, earning the respect of teachers and students alike. Socially Esmeralda finds school much more challenging to navigate. Students divide themselves by ethnicity and race, distinguishing their behavior and dress accordingly. Each clique keeps to themselves and expresses hostility towards the others. Even among Puerto Rican students, there are divisions between those who recently arrived in the U.S. and those born in Brooklyn. Esmeralda feels out of place not fitting into either group.
In October of 1961, the rest of Esmeralda’s siblings arrive in New York. Esmeralda notices that Delsa, who’s the second oldest, looks pinched and tired. Her siblings look wide-eyed and scared, much as Esmeralda did two months before. The family moves into a bigger apartment and Tata lives with them to help look after the children. All of Esmeralda’s siblings enter school and are sent one grade back so they can learn English. When Esmeralda gets her period, Ramona shows her where the pads are and offers to teach her how to use them but, embarrassed, Esmeralda says she already knows what to do. The family pass their first winter in New York, and without working heat in the apartment they huddle around the stove and Esmeralda tells them fantastical stories. That same winter, Ramona falls in love with Francisco. Tata disapproves of Ramona dating a younger man but Ramona ignores her judgments. One day, Tata drunkenly attacks Francisco when he comes by to visit. A week later, Ramona moves the family to another apartment and Francisco moves in.
Ramona gets pregnant just as Francisco is diagnosed with cancer. Ramona goes between work and the hospital to look after him. He continues to worsen, looking more and more like a skeleton with translucent skin and protruding bones. Soon after their baby is born, Francisco dies and Ramona mourns him deeply. In the beginning, Esmeralda writes to Pablo regularly about her new life in New York. However, after the rest of her siblings arrive, Delsa tells Esmeralda that Pablo remarried and dispersed the children among relatives, rarely visiting them. Esmeralda writes to Pablo asking why he never told her but rather than receiving a response Pablo thinks Ramona is turning the children against him. Ramona forces the children to write to their father saying they can never forget him.
Ramona finds work sewing at a factory in Manhattan. She takes pride in the work but reminds the children that they must work hard in school so they can have better opportunities than she does. At times, Esmeralda doubts Ramona’s faith that life will be better in Brooklyn, worried that it might be a continuation of their struggle in Puerto Rico. Tata, Don Julio, and Chico are heavy drinkers. Alone in the apartment one day, Chico offers to pay Esmeralda if she shows him her breasts. She refuses but the next day he passes by her and pinches her nipple, whispering that she must keep it a secret. Afterward, he throws her a crumpled dollar and Esmeralda collapses in bed, humiliated.
After Ramona loses her job, she tries to find work but is unsuccessful. Needing support, she goes to the welfare office. On these visits, Esmeralda translates for Ramona. As they navigate the bureaucratic system, they meet other women in similar situations who ask Esmeralda to help translate for them. A few times, Esmeralda realizes they’re lying about their cases, pretending to be Puerto Rican to get the benefits of American citizenship. Unsure of what to do, Esmeralda does her best to be helpful. There’s a lot of crime and gang activity in the neighborhood they live in, which forces the family to spend all their time inside. They remain separated from their neighbors behind bolted doors and windows with iron grates, the children only leaving to go to school. After Don Julio gets mugged at the subway station, Esmeralda worries about Ramona every time she comes home from work. Ramona often tells the children, “I can’t depend on anyone,” feeling that life in the United States is 'every person for themselves.'
After one of their moves, Esmeralda changes schools. At the new school they recognize her potential, placing her in an advanced ninth-grade class even as she’s still improving her English. Mr. Barone, the guidance counselor, calls Esmeralda in one day to ask her what she wants to be. Unsure, Esmeralda spends a few days thinking about it and decides she wants to be on television. Mr. Barone tells her about the High Scool of Performing Arts where she could pursue acting. Esmeralda throws herself into preparing for an audition to the school. Rushed for time, she memorizes her monologue phonetically without fully understanding its meaning.
The day of the audition Ramona takes Esmeralda into Manhattan. The idea of Esmeralda getting to attend school outside their neighborhood excites them both. Esmeralda is intimidated by the three impeccably groomed women on the panel. In her nervousness, she rushes through the monologue, forgetting her English and stumbling over her words. Defeated, she waits out in the hall near tears. After a while, the panel calls Esmeralda back in and asks her to act out a pantomime with a current student of the school. Sitting on the stage they pretend to be two sisters decorating a Christmas tree. Esmeralda loses herself in memories of decorating an eggplant bush with Pablo one Christmas. Following the other student’s lead she acts out the scene, even picking up shards of an imagined ornament that shattered on the floor. Before she knows it the scene is over. Esmeralda heads back home with Ramona, convinced that she let everyone down and will never escape Brooklyn.
In the Epilogue, Esmeralda is studying at Harvard University. She graduated from the Performing Arts High School a decade ago and is back to visit her old mentor, one of the women on the panel the day of her audition so many years before. Her mentor shares that the day of the audition they admired the courage it took for Esmeralda to perform a monologue even though she was still learning English. Esmeralda shares that she is the only one of her now eleven siblings in college. When her mentor asks Esmeralda if she ever stops to think of how far she’s come, Esmeralda replies no, “it might jinx the momentum.” Passing the bulletin board in the school where famous alumni are featured, Esmeralda thinks one day she’ll be up there too.
Analysis
Santiago continues to explore the themes of migration and identity throughout this section. Traveling to New York, Esmeralda gets her first taste of the discrimination that immigrants face in the United States. First, she feels it from the flight attendants who seem to hide their distaste and sense of superiority behind forced smiles. Ramona has experienced this treatment on previous trips, and tries to make a good impression by only letting the family pack their best clothes. She sniffs at other Puerto Ricans who arrive with hastily packed bags and overworn clothes, betraying the same sense of superiority that Americans have for them. Ramona's best efforts do not prevent the taxi drivers from refusing service to their family. Despite being U.S. citizens, Santiago suggests that to some they will always be outsiders.
Esmeralda’s outspokenness was always criticized as unseemly and rebellious in Puerto Rico. At her new school, Esmeralda refuses to be underestimated and defends her right to be placed in eighth grade. Rather than being punished, she gets what she wants. At this moment, Esmeralda realizes the rules of behavior are different in the U.S. and perhaps her pushiness can afford her new opportunities or freedoms. Santiago's decision to spell phonetically when Esmeralda speaks English allows the reader to hear her voice as it was, spoken with a heavy Puerto Rican accent.
For Esmeralda, so much time passed that it is as though she is meeting Tata for the first time. Tata smokes and drinks frequently, freedoms that would not be permitted under the strict ideas of feminine behavior in Puerto Rico. However, Tata still holds onto certain ideas from Puerto Rico; she finds it shameful that Ramona, a woman of thirty with seven children, would date Francisco, a younger man. Although it was Ramona’s decision to leave Pablo, Esmeralda and her siblings feel a sense of abandonment by Pablo’s decision to remarry and disperse the children in relatives' households. The physical and emotional distance between Pablo and his children deepens, even though Ramona tries to impress on her children the importance of keeping in touch with their father. More than ever, the children see Ramona as their sole caregiver. Throughout everything they have been through, her consistency and commitment to the family are something they can always rely on.
The family moves around four times in their first year in Brooklyn; many of their apartments are nicer than where they lived in Puerto Rico but money is still tight. When Ramona loses her job she’s forced to go to the welfare office for support. Their interactions with the bureaucratic welfare system are dehumanizing and Ramona tries to maintain a defiant sense of dignity by making sure they always dress nicely when they visit. Ramona relies on Esmeralda to translate. Esmeralda feels a sense of responsibility, worrying that if she says the wrong thing their family will be evicted. The threat of poverty still looms over the family, and at times Esmeralda has a hard time believing Ramona’s optimism in the American Dream.
Esmeralda adapts to aspects of their life in Brooklyn with ease. She excels in school, pushing herself to learn English and prove that she’s as smart as any of her fellow classmates. Yet, for a girl who grew up free to run outside and play, a life stuck indoors is suffocating. Although in Puerto Rico the family suffered many challenges, there was a sense of community and neighbors supported one another. In Brooklyn, the family lives isolated from their neighbors, shut behind thick doors and fearful of strangers. Without a feeling of community support, the family tries to become self-reliant, hiding their fears and struggles behind a stubborn pride.
Even inside the home, Esmeralda is not always safe. Chico’s sexual violence puts Esmeralda on edge even in her own home. It’s a reminder that even all of the most stringent rules from her childhood as to how a girl must behave do not ensure her safety from men’s predatory behavior. Chico tries to buy Esmeralda’s silence by throwing her a dollar that “was wrinkled and dirty, its edges ragged.” The dollar symbolizes how Esmeralda feels at that moment, dirty and used.
The chance to study at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan offers an escape for Esmeralda from the confines of life in Brooklyn. The teachers at Esmeralda’s second school see her potential and support her ambitions. Ramona also supports Esmeralda, excited about what this opportunity could mean for her. The audition is a turning point in Esmeralda’s life, a moment when she takes charge of the direction of her life rather than letting adults decide for her. Esmeralda has always had an active imagination, and the panel can see this as she acts out decorating the Christmas tree. Esmeralda loses herself in memories, her emotions showing on her expressive face. Despite being convinced that she failed the audition, the epilogue reveals that Esmeralda impressed the panel with her courageousness. In the epilogue, her mentor encourages Esmeralda to look back and recognize all she’s accomplished, all the barriers she had to face to get where she is. Esmeralda’s story is an example of the American Dream, yet her response reveals that like many immigrants she feels that she must always prove herself, that she can never fully relax to enjoy how far she's come.
