Living Up The Street

Soto’s father is showing him how to water the land: “Earlier in the day he and a friend had leveled the backyard with a roller, then with a two-by-four they dragged on a rope to fill in the depressed areas, after which they watered the ground and combed it slowly with a steel rake. They were preparing the ground for a new lawn” (8). They have just moved into a new house, and Soto’s mom and father talk about the trees they will plant. Then Soto’s father dies suddenly, to which he doesn’t relate his feelings: “The next day Father was hurt at work. A neck injury. Two days later he was dead […] I didn’t feel sorrow nor did I cry, but I felt conspicuous because relatives were pressing me against their legs or holding my hand or touching my head, tenderly” (9).

After the funeral, Soto’s relatives come over to help build the fence that his father had planned on building for the new house. A week after that, Soto and his siblings are playing marbles in their unfurnished bedroom, “the clatter of marbles hitting the walls so loud [he] could not hear the things in [his] heart” (10). 

Soto opens the story with a description of his childhood neighborhood:

When I was seven years old I spent most of the summer at Romain playground, a brown stick among other brown kids. The playground was less than a block from where we lived, on a street of retired couples, Okie families, and two or three Mexican families (11).

During the summer, Romain playground has coaches that oversee the children whose parents work during the day. Soto and the neighborhood kids play board games and participate in activities the coaches orchestrate.

One of Soto’s friends is Ronnie, “an Okie kid who was so poor that he had nothing to wear but a bathing suit. All summer he showed up in his trunks, brown as the rest of us Mexicans, and seemed to enjoy himself playing checkers, Candyland, and Sorry” (11). Rosie, a little girl at the playground, continually eats sunflower seeds while spitting them at Soto and calling him “blackie” (12).

One Saturday morning, a nicely dressed man visits the park with his nicely dressed daughter. Rosie and the little girl play together, until the little girl falls off the swing while Rosie is pushing her. The dad rushes over and calls Rosie a “filthy Mexican” (13). She tries to say that she didn’t do anything, but “he shoved her hard against the chain link fence so that her sunflower seeds flew in every direction” (13). Rosie’s older brothers run over to help her, and the man yells “You nigger people” (14) at them. The coach comes over and tells the man not to touch the kids, since it’s clear that he was about to fight Rosie’s brothers. The man and his daughter leave, and Soto tries to comfort Rosie, but she says, “Go away, Blackie” (15).

That summer, Soto plays a game with his brother where they see who can stare at a fan the longest; due to all the dust and debris continuously blowing in Soto’s eyes, they become infected. He wakes up to his eyes completely covered in mucous and unable to open his eyelids. His mother takes him to the doctor, where he receives special eye drops and sunglasses. He’s instructed not to go out in the sun because the combination of the sun and eye drops could make him go blind. However, once his mother is at work, he goes to the park with Rick and Debra, careful to wear his special sunglasses. Rick is angry at Soto for getting special attention from their mother for being sick, so he steals Soto’s sunglasses. Soto hides under a hedge, afraid he’ll go blind, until his mother walks by and rescues him. Rick gets a spanking once they get home.

At the park, the coach announces a craft contest. Soto works hard to create various crafts, his masterpiece being a planter made from a Campbell’s soup can. He “ripped off the paper label, and in the garage painted it red with a stiff brush” (22). He packs the planter with dirt and plants two pinto beans inside. He waits for the plant to grow, but it never does because his brother Rick took the seeds out of the planter. Despite not growing a plant, Soto wins third prize in the craft contest. While he’s happy with winning a certificate, he’s so mad at Rick that he mutters, “My brother has to die” (25). 

Soto get an idea of how to generate money for his family: “One July, while killing ants on the kitchen sink with a rolled newspaper, I had a nine-year-old’s vision of wealth that would save us from ourselves” (26). He grabs a rake and goes through the neighborhood looking for work: “We lived on an ordinary block of mostly working class people: warehousemen, egg candlers, welders, mechanics, and a union plumber. And there were many retired people who kept their lawns green and the gutters uncluttered of the chewing gum wrappers we dropped as we rode by on our bikes” (26).

He stops at a neighbor’s house, asking if he can rake the leaves, but since it’s summer there aren’t any leaves. Instead, the woman whose “face was pinched with lines; fat jiggled under her chin,” says she will give him a nickel if he buys her a Coke from the liquor store. He goes to another neighbor’s house, Mrs. Moore, the “mother of Earl the retarded man” (27), and he weeds her flower bed for a quarter and two peaches from her tree.

With the money he made, Soto, his friend Little John, and Debra all go to the swimming pool at Roosevelt High: “We spent the day swimming under the afternoon sun, so that when we got home our mom asked us what was darker, the floor or us?” (29). That night at dinner as they’re eating beans, he asks his mom if they can try turtle soup someday because he had seen a Polynesian tribe on TV eating it and thought it looked good. His mom laughs and says, “Boy, are you a crazy Mexican. Where did you get the idea that people eat turtles?” (29). 

For four years, Soto went to St. John’s Catholic School:“[W]here short nuns threw chalk at me, chased me with books cocked over their heads, squeezed me into cloak closets and, on slow days, asked me to pop erasers and to wipe the blackboard clean” (33). However, in fifth grade he goes to Jefferson Elementary. He ends up in Mrs. Sloane’s room, where “perhaps the most memorable thing she said to us all year was that she loved to chew tar […] street tar—it’s like gum” (33).

During this year, Soto feels torn between wanting to be a priest and being “your basic kid with a rock in his hand” (34). Even though he’s not in Catholic school anymore, his mom still expects him to go to church. She sends him to church on his own and gives him a quarter to put in the offering plate. He goes at first, but eventually he skips church and uses the money to buy comics, Coke, and gum. Eventually his mom says she sees a difference in him for the better and he can stop going to church.