1995 Read the following short story carefully. Then write an essay analyzing how the author, Sandra Cisneros, uses
literary techniques to characterize Rachel. (Suggested time 40 minutes)
ELEVEN
What they don't understand about birthdays and what
they never tell you is that when you're eleven, and you're
also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and
five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when
5 you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to
feel eleven, but you don't You open your eyes and
everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And
you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still
ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you
10 eleven
Like some days you might say something stupid, and
that's the part of you that's
still ten. Or maybe some
days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because
you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five.
15 And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe
you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's
okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and
needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an
20 onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my
little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each
year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years
old is.
You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few
25 days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you
say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't feel
smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's
the way it is
Only today I wish I didn't have only eleven years
30 rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.
today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of
eleven because if I was one hundred and two I'd have
known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater
on my desk. I would've known how to tell her it wasn't
35 mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my
face and nothing coming out of my mouth.
-Whose is this?" Mrs. Price says, and she holds the
red sweater up in the air for all the class to see
"Whose? It's been sitting in the coatroom for a month."
"No mine," say everybody, "Not me."
saying, but nobody can remember. It's an ugly sweater
with red plastic buttons and collar and sleeves all
„stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It's
45 maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to
me I wouldn't say so.
Maybe because I'm skinny, maybe because she
doesn't like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I
think it belongs to Rachel." An ugly sweater like that
50 all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs.
Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk,
but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.
"That's not, I don't, you're not... Not mine." I
finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I
55 was four
"Of course it's yours," Mrs. Price says. "I remember
you wearing it once." Because she's older and the
teacher, she's right and I'm not.
Not mine, no mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is
60 already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem
number four. I don't know why but all of a sudden I'm
feeling sick inside, like the part of me that's three
wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them
shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try
65 to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is
making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa
comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday,
happy birthday to you
But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my
70 eyes, the red sweater's still sitting there like a big red
mountain. I move the red sweater to the comer of my
desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and
eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair
a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.
75 In my head I'm thinking how long till lunchtime,
how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it
over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a
parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss
it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs.
80 Price says loud and in front of everybody, "Now,
Rachel, that's enough," because she sees I've shoyed
40