55 pages • 1 hour read
Esmeralda SantiagoAlmost a Woman
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12
Chapter 10 Summary: “It must be a sin to be so disrespectful to the Virgin.”
Esmeralda and her family move into a new place—a house this time—where Esmeralda once again must share a room with her sisters. The house is near Esmeralda’s cousin Alma, and the two make plans to move in with each other when Esmeralda graduates from high school. However, when their mothers learn of the plan, they object: “[A]ccording to our mothers, two young women living together were still alone if there was no man to keep an eye on them” (139). Mami gives birth to her son, Charlie, and Don Carlos re-inserts himself into their lives. An angry Tata belittles both Don Carlos for being a scoundrel and Mami for taking him back. Esmeralda’s cousin, La Muda, and her long-time boyfriend, Luigi, break up when their relationship becomes increasingly volatile. Luigi returns to Puerto Rico, where he dies under mysterious circumstances; some people think it was his arthritis, while others believe he committed suicide.
At school, Esmeralda’s teachers and counselors urge her to go to college, but Esmeralda wants a different path: “I wanted to be out in the world, to earn my own living, to help Mami, yes, but also to stop depending on her for my every need” (141). Esmeralda takes a secretary course in the hopes of getting to work in Manhattan. At her Senior Showcase, Esmeralda plays the part of a dancing, erotic Virgin Mary. After she performs her scene, Esmeralda realizes her costume was made transparent by the stage lights, and everyone saw her naked. Esmeralda’s family comes to the performance, and she feels a strange disconnect between her family members and her classmates: “The distance was not much, a few feet at most, but it was a continent” (144). Esmeralda asks her father to come to her graduation, but Papi doesn’t commit, and Esmeralda both misses him and is angry at him for not being a part of her life.
A film version of Up the Down Staircase holds auditions at Esmeralda’s school, and Esmeralda meets one of the producers, Mr. Jeffers, who seems to like her. Esmeralda worries he might be trying to seduce her, but Alma teases Esmeralda, “Now you sound just like your mother!” (147). Esmeralda and Alma discuss what type of man they want to marry, and Esmeralda says she’ll only fall in love with a rich man. Mr. Jeffers sends Esmeralda to audition for a major role in the movie. At the audition, Esmeralda does well, and Mr. Jeffers encourages her over the phone that she did a great job. Esmeralda fantasizes about becoming famous from her part, but when she goes to meet Mr. Jeffers the next day, she realizes that he mistook her for another actress. Mr. Jeffers tells her the other girl “looks more Puerto Rican” (151), and that Esmeralda is too pretty to play the part. Esmeralda graduates from her school, realizing she is still being torn between many worlds as she forges ahead in her life.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Who do you think you are?”
Esmeralda begins her work as an extra in Up the Down Staircase, doing whatever she can to stand out so she might be featured in more scenes. Esmeralda is impressed by the roster of talent in the film, including the lead, Sandy Dennis. Esmeralda recalls when Sandy Dennis burped right before a scene was about to be shot and all the other actors and extras began laughing so hard it was difficult to keep filming. Esmeralda spends more time in Manhattan and several young men approach her to have coffee or speak for a while, though none pursue her romantically, and Esmeralda wonders what she’s doing wrong. Though she has nothing to hide currently, Esmeralda begins testing her boundaries with curfew to see how much she’ll get away with if the need ever arises.
After the movie wraps, Esmeralda and her family move to a new apartment, where the owner of the house has a handsome teenage son, Neftalí. Esmeralda becomes besotted with him, finding whatever excuses she can to go past his apartment and try to be near him. Esmeralda realizes that Neftalí doesn’t take opportunities he could to get her alone, though he does spend a lot of time in her apartment with her family. Alma reassures her that he likes her, but Esmeralda doubts: “If he liked me, he should show it. He should send flowers, hire mariachis to serenade me, bring me chocolates, write poems” (160). Esmeralda learns Neftalí has been drafted to Vietnam and thinks it’s like the radio novelas she listened to growing up, “where the handsome hero went to war, while the beautiful heroine stayed home, wrote soulful letters, and fended off suitors” (161).
When Esmeralda takes out the trash, Neftalí asks her to wait for him, but Esmeralda is put off by the lack of romance: “[H]e expected me to propose to myself as we stood in a dim hallway holding bags heavy with trash” (162). The two fight and part ways. Esmeralda realizes she won’t be getting an acting job and gets a job in a mail room in Manhattan instead, run by Ilsa Gold. During breaks at work, Esmeralda hears a lot of gossip in the office and worries what people will say about her when she’s not there. Neftalí confronts Esmeralda again, asking her to marry him, but Esmeralda realizes she’s become disenchanted about him: “Who did I think I was? I wasn’t sure, but I knew for certain I wasn’t about to be Neftalí’s wife” (167). Esmeralda’s coworkers become curious about her background, especially Mami’s multiple children with various boyfriends. Esmeralda reassures her coworkers that she won’t follow in her mother’s footsteps, resenting the stereotypes they all seem to believe about Puerto Ricans.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Pearls bring tears.”
Esmeralda gets a new coworker, a Brazilian girl named Regina who becomes Esmeralda’s friend and confidant. Esmeralda gets asked out by a coworker, Sidney, and she is excited, though she worries what Sidney will think when he meets her family. Regina helps Esmeralda shop for a new dress, which her family mocks as being “an old lady outfit” (173). Regina gives Esmeralda her dead mother’s pearls to wear on the date, but a superstitious Tata warns Esmeralda that pearls are bad luck. At dinner with Sidney, Esmeralda learns that her supervisor, Ilsa, is a Nazi concentration camp survivor from Hungary. Sidney and Esmeralda have a good time, but Sidney confesses his mother would be angry if she knew he was dating a “shiksa” (175). Esmeralda takes Sidney to meet her family, who mock him after he leaves for being short and wearing glasses.
Esmeralda falls in love with another man at work: Otto, a German who works in the International Department. Esmeralda goes Christmas shopping with Alma and spots actress Greta Garbo in one of the stores. After attending a late-night dance, Esmeralda is tired leaving work and almost gets run down on the street by a truck, but Otto pulls her out of the way. Thinking he’s a stranger who’s trying to rape her, Esmeralda elbows him in the face. Otto doesn’t speak very good English, but Esmeralda realizes he’s trying to ask her to a Christmas party at his sister’s house. Mami objects to Esmeralda going alone, so she takes along Regina as a double date for Otto’s cousin Gilbert. When Otto picks up Esmeralda for the date, Mami and Don Carlos worry over her and insist that she call when she gets to Otto’s sister’s house.
At the party, Esmeralda meets Otto’s sister, Minna, and Esmeralda and Otto dance to American music. Otto leads Esmeralda upstairs, where they kiss passionately until Esmeralda worries she’ll give in and sleep with him. She runs away. Mami and Don Carlos arrive at the party, angry that Esmeralda didn’t call when she arrived, and they force a humiliated Esmeralda to come home with them. Esmeralda worries she’s scared Otto off, but he continues to visit her at work. Ilsa admits that she doesn’t like Otto because she hates all Germans: “The whole country stood by as Jews were murdered. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother” (189). As Otto prepares for a trip to Switzerland, Esmeralda wishes he would stop treating her like a gentleman: “He was a man, and his kiss had made me feel like a woman” (191).
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
As Esmeralda graduates from high school and prepares to enter the “real world,” she once again feels herself torn between multiple identities. Esmeralda was born in Puerto Rico, raised into young adulthood in Brooklyn, and now wants to start her adult life in Manhattan:
That world in Brooklyn from which I derived both comfort and anxiety was home, as was the other world, across the ocean, where my father still wrote poems. As was the other world, the one across the river, where I intended to make my life. I’d have to learn to straddle all of them, a rider on three horses, each headed in a different direction (153).
For Esmeralda, Puerto Rico represents her past; Brooklyn is her present; and Manhattan is where she wants to make her future. Although Manhattan and Brooklyn may not seem as different as Puerto Rico, for Esmeralda, Manhattan represents wealth, success, and financial security. Esmeralda has spent most of her life worried about where she and her family will be living from day to day and if Mami will get the money she needs from welfare. Esmeralda’s desire for material things might seem superficial, but after such a turbulent, tumultuous life, Esmeralda longs for the security that she believes wealth will bring.
Similarly, Esmeralda jokes with Alma about falling in love with a rich man: “Once I know he’s rich, I’ll fall in love with him” (148). Although falling in love with somebody for his wealth shocks the more romantic Alma, Esmeralda has seen firsthand what happens to a woman when she follows her heart instead of her mind. Mami passes from relationship to relationship, always scrounging for money, losing sight of her own dreams to take care of her children. As much as Manhattan and marrying a rich man symbolize stability for Esmeralda, they also signify Esmeralda wanting to lead a very different lifestyle from her mother and not make the same mistakes Mami has made.
Despite her own turbulent history with men, Mami has always warned Esmeralda not to let men trick her or take advantage. Because of this, Esmeralda has kept her difference, and her lack of experience with men leads her to develop overly romantic ideas about what love should be. In Chapter 11, Esmeralda becomes fixated with her neighbor, Neftalí, until Neftalí begins to show interest in return. Esmeralda first becomes disenchanted that Neftalí doesn’t express himself more eloquently: “This was not the way I imagined it. He was supposed to get down on one knee, to say he loved me, to offer a diamond ring” (161). Esmeralda wants her love story to be more like a movie or a novela, and she daydreams about “the romance of a boyfriend in a faraway country fighting for democracy” (161).
However, Esmeralda discovers that she prefers dreaming about Neftalí to actually being with him: “I realized that the Neftalí of my imagination was taller and better dressed than the Neftalí in real life” (166). Esmeralda’s inexperience with men has made her careful, as Mami wished, but it has also made Esmeralda hold romance at a distance, cutting herself off from potential opportunities to explore and learn what a real relationship might be like. In Chapter 12, Esmeralda continues to struggle to pair fantasy with reality, and feels guilty for desiring Otto when Mami warns her against him: “Shame and desire alternated, fused until they were the same” (188).
As Esmeralda becomes more exposed to the world outside her family’s home, she encounters various cultures and backgrounds. With some of her new acquaintances, like Regina and Otto, Esmeralda bonds over not being from America. Regina and Esmeralda agree that Brazil and Puerto Rico were not quite so big and confusing as American life, and Otto tells Esmeralda it’s good she’s not an American girl because “[t]hey are very free” (188). However, some of Esmeralda’s introductions to other cultures are not so pleasant. Despite working at the Yiddish theater, Esmeralda doesn’t know much about Jewish culture and is surprised when she learns from Sidney that his mother would be upset for him to date a non-Jewish girl: “I didn’t know if he was insulting me or if I should feel flattered that he’d gone against his mother’s wishes to be with me” (176).
Though Esmeralda loves Otto almost immediately, they sometimes have difficulty communicating, because Otto doesn’t speak very good English. One of the biggest cultural clashes that Esmeralda encounters comes between Ilsa, the survivor of a concentration camp, and Otto, a German. Esmeralda can’t understand why Ilsa blames Otto, because “they can’t all be bad” (189), but Ilsa can’t overcome the anguish she suffered and sadly tells Esmeralda, “I hope you never have to hate” (190). Esmeralda has lived a relatively sheltered life, and though she has suffered poverty and prejudice, she has never dealt with the kind of suffering that Ilsa has been through, and she cannot fully understand what it is like to hate another culture that way.
