Literature Essay on gender and sexuality representations in selected Juiot Diaz's and Sandra Cisneros' short stories

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Anguisno Religious Articles Rosaries Stctues Medcls

Incense Candles Tofismqns Perfumes 0its Herbs

You know that religious store on soledad across from Sanitary Tor_ tillas? Next to El Divorcio Lounge. Don't go in there. The man who owns it is a crab ass. I'm not the only one who says it. He,s famous for being a crab ass.

I know all about him, but I stopped in anyway. Because I needed a Virgen de Guadalupe and the preciado sisters on south Laredo didn't have nothing that didn't look as if someone made it with their feet.

A statue is what I was thinking, or maybe those pretty 3_D pictures, the ones made from strips of cardboard that you look at sideways and you see the santo Nifro de Atocha, and you rook at it straight and it's La Virgen, and you look at it from the other side and it's Saint Lucy with her eyes on a plate or maybe san Martin caballero cutring his Roman cape in half with a sword and giving it to a beggar, only I want to know how come he didn't give that beggar all of his cape if he's so saintly, righr?

well, that's what I was looking for. one of those framed pictures with a silver strip o[ aluminum foil on the bottom and top, the wooden frame painted a happy pink or turquoise. you can buy them cheaper on the other side, but I didn't have time to go to Nuevo

A N G U T A N O R E L I G I O U S A R T I C L E S . r r t

Laredo 'cause

I only found out about Tencha Tuesday. They put

her right in Santa Rosa Hospital. I had to take a half-day off work

and the bus, well, what was I going to do? It's either Anguiano

Religious Articles or Sisters Preciado Botinica.

Then after I walk all the way from Santa Rosa in the heat, guess

what? Anguiano's is closed even though I could see him sitting in

there in the dark. I'm knocking and knocking, knocking and knock-

ing on the glass with a quarter. Know what he does before un-

locking? l"ooks me up and down like if I'm one of those ladies from

the Cactus Hotel or the Court House Pawnshop or the Western

Wear come to rob him.

I was thinking about those framed holy pictures with glitter in

the window. But then I saw some Virgen de Guadalupe statues

with real hair eyelashes. Well, not real hair, but some stiff black

stuff like brushes, only I didn't like how La Virgen looked with

furry eyelashes-bim mean,like los atnores dc l"a callc. That's not

right.

I looked at all the Virgen de Guadalupes he had. The statues,

the flramed pictures, the holy cards, and candles. Because I only

got $ro. And by then, there was other people had come in. But

you know what he says to mts-you won't believe it-he says, I can

see you're not going to buy anything. L"oud and in Spanish. I can

see you're not going to buy anything.

Oh, but I am, I says, I just need a little more time to think.

well, if it's thinking you want, lou just go across the street to

the church to think-you're just wasting my time and yours think-

ing here.

Honest to God. Real ugly is how he talked to me. Well, go across

the street to San Fernando if you want to think-you're just wasting

my time and yours thinking here.

I should've told him, You go to hell. But what for? He's already

headed there.