Ms. Quinson\'s Period 5 Blog 2008-09

ICECREAM TRUCK

On Mango Street people don’t have a lot of extra money.  So most of the times the icecream trucks skip us because no one ever buys anything.  But today there must have been a new driver. Because just as I was riding the bike into the street (it was my turn with it) I heard a sound.  A strange sound I could vaguely remember but I hadn’t heard in a while.  It sounded like bells.  Not real bells.  Bells like the ones on the bike’s handle bars or the one Cathy used to play with her cats with or the one Rosa Vargas rang everyday to the deaf ears of her kids.  Every time it rang Rosa would yell out Come home! It’s time for dinner.  But the Vargas kids just ignored her and just kept on playing.  They knew their mama would keep the dinner out on the table for them.  But the sounds I heard that day were not the same as the sad hopeless bell that no one but Rosa heard.  It wasn’t the tinny ring of the bicycle bells or the tiny ringing of cat’s toys either.  It was happy and strong.  It had a feeling of hope that called out all the children from their houses.  At first it was soft.  Almost too soft to hear.  So soft, that I thought that something was stuck in my ear.  I thought it was an earwig.  Cathy had once told me that earwigs crawled into your ears at night to eat your earwax and keep it from clogging up.  But sometimes, she said, they got stuck and would make you hear things.  So I tried sticking my pinky in my ear to try to pull it out.  But then, I saw the other kids looking down the street to where the sounds of bells were coming from.  It was louder now.  I could see a white truck coming around the corner.  At first we all thought it was the mail truck.  We were all wondering who was going to get the mail that played happy bell music.  But then as it got closer, we saw that it was no mail truck.  It had too many stickers and colors.  Then, as Mr. Benny was coming back from grocery shopping, he said it looked like the icecream truck is here.  I heard about icecream from Cathy. She said that in France everybody ate icecream and that it was the most delicious thing in the world.  When heard Mr. Benny say it was the icecream truck, I saw some of the Vargas kids running up asking for icecream.  They had no idea what it was, but they saw from the stickers on the truck that it made people happy.  The truck stopped, and a person inside opened a window and stuck out his head.  I heard him say that icecream was one dollar.  I ran inside and got the money I saved.  Since I helped buy the bike, I only had a quarter left.  I ran to get it from Nenny, and told her about how Cathy said icecream was delicious.  But she also only had a quarter.  We walked into the street, and saw Lucy and Rachel looking for money on the floor.  They had found a quarter, a dime, six pennies, and two nickels.  We decided we were going to buy an icecream and share.  We bought it and it was a rolled up hard waffle with some cold soft stuff in the top.  We licked it, and it was delicious!  It tasted like that vanilla milk Mr. Benny let us have when he bought more than he needed, except creamier and colder.  We took bites after a while, but then our heads began to feel weird.  Then, there was a feeling like someone was squeezing my brain.  We dropped the icecream, but we were all happy.  When I live in my giant house, I’m going to buy icecream and I’ll eat it with the bums everyday.

This entry was posted on June 11, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under House on Mango Street.