House Vignette

Being a teacher has been rough since moving to Utah. I struggle to connect with this culture. The people in New Mexico are quite secretive to outsiders and though I never thought I was this way, it has clearly been carried with me. Part of that connection is answering when students ask your birthday or favorite color. Sometimes, it is sharing examples you've created.

Quarter 1 starts with narrative. I love The House on Mango Street for this. It's short and easy, but complex and meaty. It inspires conversations. The first vignette of the book is the main character, Esperanza, describing the hosue she has just moved into and her disappointment.

After reading it, the students were assigned to write about their own homes (childhood, current, or dream). To get them going, I wanted to show them an example I wrote (inspired by another teacher doing the same). This vignette is my childhood home.

My house growing up had two faces. 

The first was that of childhood magic. Golden light filtered the windows and hit the floating dust in the air, making it sparkle. The desert land out back was the great unknown; bushes and shrubs turned into great oak trees. Lizards into fiery dragons. At night, the toads would come out and chirp. ‘Don’t touch those’ my mother would say. ‘They’ll give you warts’. But we would sit outside under the night sky admiring them together regardless. 

Storms rolled in and out of the land. Sunsets were great catalcysms of pinks and reds and oranges. The entire sky lit in neon shades.

The other face, however, was reality.

The trailer was all my parents could afford. We lived next to violent men and their barking dogs. Gunshots were a nightly occurrence as we looked at the toads. We were only outside because my mother had to get away from my father and their song was her only escape. 

The storms never brought enough water to the land. The drought was rough but we would never know that. We barely had enough money to keep the water running anyway.

The sunsets were beautiful only because the pollution from the oil rigs miles away. The sun iridescent against the gas. My father worked those wells that stunk up our skies. Hours and hours gone only to return to sleep. We always had to be quiet when he was home, otherwise... My mother never explained why but we all knew.

A child from a house with two faces grew to believe the world is both pink-lit school projects covered in confetti and the smell of whiskey and lonely covered porches.