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. 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.”

Rachel elaborates on her theory of aging. She believes that someone is simultaneously all the ages they have ever been in life, and that different ages might make themselves known at different times. The reader also gets a glimpse of Rachel’s family life; it can be extrapolated that Rachel and her mother have a close connection, but sometimes Rachel assumes the role of comforting her mother. This reflects the contrast between Rachel’s internal and external selves; while she is unassertive and childlike in the public sphere of Mrs. Price’s classroom, she is competent and capable in the private sphere of her own home.

“Because the way you grow old is kind of like an 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.”

Rachel expands on her theory of aging, this time defining what it looks like to be 11 years old. Once more, she uses parallel structure with the repetition of “or like,” establishing her voice as childlike. Her mention of dolls also situates her as an immature narrator. However, in offering an imaginative series of similes to represent the feeling of getting older, her thoughts also display wisdom, competence, and capability.

“‘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.’”

This quote introduces the red sweater. It is immediately clear that the sweater is undesirable, having sat in the coatroom for a month, unnoticed and unwanted. Furthermore, this line establishes the classroom as a microcosm society; Rachel’s humiliation, when it comes, is made worse by the fact that it is public and witnessed by the whole class.

“‘Not mine,’ says everybody. ‘Not me.’”

In this moment, Rachel is not yet isolated. She is part of the “everybody” in the class, and they all insist that the sweater does not belong to them. This shows that, however precariously, Rachel is part of the group at the beginning of the story. However, the next time Rachel uses the word, saying, “all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody” (Paragraph 19), it marks a clear divide between her and her peers, reinforcing the theme of isolation and ostracization.

“It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.”

This description further confirms the sweater as undesirable and introduces it as a symbol of poverty. The imagery establishes the sweater as overused and unfashionable, with the stretched sleeves and plastic buttons. Furthermore, it is ugly, reinforcing that it will serve as a symbol for social ostracization.

“Maybe it’s because I’m skinny, maybe it’s because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, ‘I think it belongs to Rachel.’”

Rachel lists potential reasons why Sylvia Saldivar insists the sweater belongs to her. Both reasons indicate that Rachel has an “outsider” status in the classroom. For whatever reason, her skinniness is a point of disdain, and it is taken as fact that Sylvia doesn’t like Rachel. This establishes Sylvia’s character as a secondary antagonist; while she is not the main driver of conflict, she supports it, and she is motivated by her disdain for the protagonist.

“An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her.”

This sentence shows the difference between Rachel’s view of herself compared to how others perceive her. In Rachel’s eyes, she would never wear or associate herself with a sweater that is raggedy and old, adjectives that emphasize its status as a symbol of poverty. However, Mrs. Price easily associates Rachel with the sweater and all it represents. This shows that, whether implicitly or explicitly, Mrs. Price sees Rachel as someone who is inferior and thus likely to wear such a garment.

“‘That’s not, I don’t, you’re not… Not mine,’ I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.”

This is one of Rachel’s two lines of dialogue. In both instances, she feebly attempts to defend herself against Mrs. Price. Her spoken dialogue stands in stark contrast to her internal monologue and to Mrs. Price and Sylvia’s more assertive dialogue. Rachel is thus positioned as being on the losing end of a power struggle.

“Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.”

This sentence frames Mrs. Price as the definitive authority figure in the classroom. Her age is cited as one reason for her authority, and her status as teacher makes her decision immutable. What Mrs. Price believes is decisive fact, and what Rachel claims in protest is irrelevant.

“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 to remember that today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.”

Rachel’s anxiety threatens to overcome her, and she bolsters herself by thinking of her family at home, where she has the clear love of her parents and of an unspecified “everybody” who will celebrate her birthday. Although Rachel is losing her composure, she manages to ward off the tears and nausea by remembering her family at home. This relates to the story’s coming-of-age theme: Rachel stands alone in this moment, as she will many times later in life, but she can lean on family for strength and support.

“I move the red sweater to the corner 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.”

This quote shows Rachel pushing back against the authority figure in the only way available to her. Buoyed by thoughts of her family, she seeks to create physical distance between herself and the red sweater. Although it is on her desk, she positions herself as far away from it as possible, to avoid conflating it with her identity. Symbolically, Rachel is pushing away the social stigma that has been thrust upon her; she’s trying to reclaim her personhood by claiming the things that truly are hers: her pencil, her books, her eraser.

“Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, ‘Now Rachel, that’s enough,’ because she sees that I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-top corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.”

Mrs. Price notices Rachel’s attempts to reject the sweater and her authoritarian decisions, and she is not happy about it. Her dialogue here is significant, both the words and the tag, as she speaks loudly and very publicly. Once more, the classroom functions as society, with Rachel’s classmates the audience to her humiliation. She is othered from her classmates, as is demonstrated by her description of the onlookers as an “everybody” that she is separated from. With her loud, sharp, and shaming dialogue, Mrs. Price effectively isolates and disempowers Rachel.

“My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me, until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.”

This passage details Rachel’s physical reaction to breaking down crying when forced to wear the red sweater. The figurative language highlights how thoroughly Mrs. Price has disempowered her. Rachel continues to express her abstract feelings with concrete similes. However, she now evokes unpleasant images—hiccups and drinking milk—to illustrate her distress.