Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

The unnamed child narrator of this story admires and even adores her friend Lucy, who comes from a large, female-filled family and a chaotic, messy household full of “pissy mattress[es]” and with a beat-up sofa on the front porch (5). While the narrator’s family upbraids her for getting messy (“Abuelita will say didn’t I tell you? and I’ll get it because I was supposed to wear this dress again”) (4), in Lucy’s household, anything goes.

The two girls revel in the simple pleasures of childhood together, daring one another to do silly things, like peeking under a dark porch where rats are rumored to roost or stuffing themselves with secret sweets. The girls are unladylike together, picking at their scabs and running around in the dirt barefoot. But they also dress up and do one another’s hair.

The narrator insinuates that to some, Lucy and her family may be too poor, too large of a family, or of too dark a complexion. The narrator, however, minds none of these things. The screen door without a screen and the old-fashioned wash wringer are a novelty to the narrator. Even the smell of Lucy, the corn smell that carries over from the tortillas cooking in her house, is a delight to the narrator.