A/N: This is a quick little vignette that I had to do after reading The House on Mango Street in High School (so yes, Mrs. O, if by some strange twist of fate you happen to see this online, no I did not plagiarize it.) Basically, we had to describe another neighbor on Mango Street in Sandra Cisneros's style, with one page double-spaced as the maximum length. In case anyone's wondering, my final grade was an A-. Hope you enjoy.
Sr. Restos Who Has No Face And Talks To Bones
He wears a grey mask and talks to bones. He finds them in the park and puts them together like pieces of a puzzle until they're all neat and pretty, like the ones in the museum. He polishes them and talks to them and takes care of them and puts them in his window for all of Mango Street to see. He sometimes takes them outside to keep him company.
Mango Street is a small place, everyone squashed together like sardines in a tin, but he seems so very far away. The moon and stars and sun seem closer than Sr. Restos, the masked man who talks to bones. But doesn't talk to people.
Everyone thinks he's crazy, but I think he's lonely. I looked into his eyes once. There wasn't any crazy there. They just cried out, sad and lonely and hopeless and broken. I wonder if my eyes looked the same to him.
I once saw a part of The Phantom of the Opera. Sr. Restos is the Phantom, hiding his face because it's not right. I saw his face one time. All he had was eyes. The rest was skin and scar and teeth with no lip to cover them.
I was in a war, he says, not to me, but to his bones. He doesn't say any more.
When I'm lonely and sad I think of Sr. Restos, who doesn't have a face and only has bones to talk to, and my life doesn't seem as bad.
Not good, never good.
Just better than his.