Coconuts and papayas taste like a better place. People will use anything as an escape. This includes Rafaela, “who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays,” to escape her life. Each Tuesday she gives Esperanza and her friends a crumpled up dollar that represents her poverty to buy her a drink because she can’t leave by herself. Tuesday is the only day that she can be alone in her home without her husband, this is why she asks the children to get her a sugary drink because that’s the only way she can escape. Though, “she wishes there were sweeter drinks,” because the sweet drink may represent a sweeter man, a man who will treat her better than the husband who has trapped her and locked her away. However, “not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island,” not bitter like her husband but sweet like a man who will let her go out with friends and dance whenever she wants. Also, “like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys,” symbolizes Rafaela’s resentment for her husband because she thinks, if these women that are much older than her can go and dance when they want to, why can’t she. She realizes that she is beautiful enough to get a better man,”And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.” She knows that there are men out there that will cherish her, not lock her up in an empty house everyday. She also wonders why she was so unlucky as to be trapped with a man who wouldn’t take care of her.

“Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys.and always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.” (80)