#38 -- I was seven…

We were six and seven when my younger sister and I got our green cards in 1967. As a favor, a friend of my mother’s, La Viuda or The Widow, made the long bus ride with us from Guadalajara to Tijuana so we could reunite with our parents.

At school children didn’t like me; they laughed at me and called me names. Children would stop drinking from water fountains after I used it making faces of how gross it would be to drink from the same water fountain as the Mexican kid.

The last thing I want is pity, because I realize we all have issues. In my case, mine have to do with abandonment, loss, bewilderment and a sense of not belonging and of unworthiness, and I do believe there is a direct correlation between them and my condition as an immigrant, being left behind and brought unprepared to a new country and all this implies. My defense mechanism has been detachment and forgetfulness. I just do not associate the natural pain with the traumatic events, and then I forget the events altogether.

But I do remember my first English word upon entering first grade:

There’s a white teacher in front a me. She holds a large whiteboard card in her hands. There is a red square drawn on the card and three letters under it. R-E-D. The teacher points to the red square and I understand I’m supposed to name the color, so I say “rojo.” She shakes her head vigorously and it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong. She points again, and again I say “rojo.” And she says no and insists on “red” pronouncing the word slowly and purposefully. I say “rojo” in the same manner. I don’t know how long we do this, until I guess I begin doubting everything I held for certain up to that moment, and my “rojos” quaver and quiet down and I timidly try my first “red.”

Instead of denying my “rojo,” I wonder if had my teacher reaffirmed it with my new “red,” would I have been a less scared and scarred little girl? Because through words we name our world and ourselves and if you already have a language by which you can say who you are, but then at some point, unexplainably, you’re taught or made to give it up, I think it’s fair to assume that you’ll question your worth and your value.

Now I know better. But it’s been a long and weary road the one I’ve walked to be at this point where I can say that I know I’m fortunate to know two languages, to belong to two cultures. I believe multilingualism and multiculturalism make you a more tolerant, understanding, forgiving and universal human being. We are able to relate better to human beings in all latitudes, and realize and accept that we are rather small in the greatness of our planet and our universe, and finally, that we are not the center of it all.