A Cup of Water Under My Bed

When Hernández began her first job at McDonald’s at 15, she feels a sense of excitement because her employment marks “the start of the rest of my life. It is the first stop on my way to the country where rich people live and don’t worry about money or being treated badly when they don’t know all of the English words […]” (119). Nevertheless, she suffers racist verbal abuse while on the job and begins a pattern of excessive spending when her paychecks arrive. She laments the bygone time that bell hooks wrote about, when people appreciated what they already had rather than seeking out products that would make them feel better, a time when people “didn’t even blame the poor for being poor” (121). Hernández is a product of a new era in which she seeks to overcome the intersection of her class and her race through spending. She even participates in a scheme with one of her managers to steal cash from the register at the McDonald’s where she works.

Hernández gets her first credit cards when she is in college and begins racking up charges. One aunt questions the origins of her materialism. Hernández theorizes that it can be traced to her childhood encounter with poverty on the streets of Bogotá.