Esmeralda, When I Was Puerto Rican

In the section titled, A Shot at It, the school counselor sets up an audition for Esperanza. She spends hours preparing and practicing, and even though she doesn't understand all the words to her monologuw, she practices until she can speak it perfectly. During the audition itself, Esperanza was so nervous that she rattled off her entire three-minute dialogue. She was then asked to wait outside, before being recalled to perform a pantomime with a sudent already enrolled in the program. The pair is told to pretend they are decorating a Christmas tree, something Esmeralda has never done before. As a result, she calls on her memories of her father decorating an eggplant bush with colored lights and becomes so entranced that she is lost in the pretending and called back to the present by the audition judges thanking her for her time.