Homes

"We didn't always live on Mango Street."

Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street


It's Tuesday night I am lying on my bed and catching up on some reading for my LA 9 class. I gave this writing assignment ages ago--last week, maybe--and I hadn't found a spare moment at school to grade them. I continue to be amazed at how difficult it is this year to find quiet space for things like reading pages and pages of student writing. This afternoon, a time that I had set aside for grading, I weighed the benefit of staying late at school against that of going for a run in the park on this cold, clear October day. Oddly enough, the park was victorious. But then the assignment followed me home, here to my bed, where words blend chaotically with the pattern of my bedspread in this pleasant room.

I've asked my students to mimic the first chapter of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street, a story of a young girl growing up in a Latino section of Chicago's south side. As we finished the chapter, in each class the conversation was the same:

"How many of you—raise your hands—have lived in the same house your whole life?”

In each class there were fewer than three raised hands. I knew this. A third of them were born in different countries, and another third are the first of their family to be raised in the United States. For the rest, I know that moving houses is as common as changing grades, and perhaps as frequent. My students and I have probably known hundreds of different homes all over the world. “We didn’t always live in…”

"Who can finish that?” I asked hopefully. “Where didn’t you always live?”

All day the answers poured out eagerly:

"Um… here. I did not…always… live in Seattle, before that London, and before that Somalia…”

“Oh, right. We din’ always live in… Northgate? Does that work?”

“Sure. Neighborhoods count, too. Or even streets. I could do it, too. We didn’t always live on 34th Avenue…”

“Where’s that?” someone interrupts.

“Magnolia.”

“Oh, right. I went there once.”

“Me too. I live there. Don’t interrupt me.”

“Sorry.”

“So, I didn’t always live on 34th Avenue. Before that it was 97th Street, and before that… um, 19th. And before that it was Emerson and before that Sixth Avenue and before that North 66th Street.”

“That’s a lot of streets.”

“I move a lot,” I shrugged.

“Me too,” a student agreed from the back.

“So you know what she’s talking about. Now, I want you to write it. Your version of this chapter. It’ll be different for everyone. Some of you have moved around Seattle, and some of you have come from other countries. It doesn’t matter how far, even. This is about change, about home, moving. So, get started. In your notebooks.”

Write they did. For most of these classes I traced dizzy paths of assistance, repeating the same hints and questions to the perpetually confused, directing my students again and again back to the book for guidance. They borrow syntax from Cisneros and from my version, which I leave on the overhead as they write, but the stories are their own. I glance down occasionally at a sentence or two, or read a few paragraphs when I have time, but mostly I flit from student to student, helping with micro-problems and hearing little of the scope of these tales.

Tonight, two-thirds of the way into grading, I am weighed down by the magnitude of what they have written. I should have guessed that when I asked them to write about homes and moving and dreams I would in turn read tales of those same things. And that the stories they told, my students, would not be like their sparkling fantasies, which made me laugh for hours last month. It's so much easier, I remind myself, not to ask these questions. Keep the class in the realm of hypotheticals and abstractions, fantasies and academics. I could have avoided the weight of their writing, simply by choosing a different assignment. Write about a good day, I could have asked. Write about food traditional to your culture. Instead I had to ask about moving. They wrote exactly what I asked. These are stories about exile, loss, and upheaval. How foolish of me to expect the same cheery story of young-adult apartment hopping that I had used for their example. I feel honored but weary as I read their honest words.

From my students I learn of hopes thwarted and expectations not yet fulfilled, but disappointment is not the only tone. There are moves that seemed at first like the end of everything, only to lead them to places that they came to love. There are homes that were plain and small but surrounded by neighbors who spoke the same language and chatted in the front yard. There are apartments filled to the brim with people, but the people that my students love best in the world.

I look around my apartment, looking up from the stack of papers. It's not forever, this home, like I wrote in my own chapter. Not the home I dreamed up when I was in ninth grade. Though I have not lived through the same suffering, I find that their voices are telling my story, too; their longings for permanence, safety, and wholeness are mine as well. And with them I see great beauty here, in this temporary place, which is home for now.