American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [95]
Our rooms were narrow, closed, dim on a sunny day. The vendors who came hawking bread and fruit were impatient urbanites with jingling pockets and places to go. The garden was minimal—a Potemkin illusion—with no room for children’s games. After the scale of Paramonga or Wyoming, George and I could see that we needed to rein in, straiten the radius, think small. We had, in every material measure, stepped back. Qualms were starting to show.
“The children need school uniforms, Jorge.”
“Buy them the minimum, please.”
The last luxury that was left us—our mother’s classroom, a luxury of the spirit if not of the purse—was traded in for the sepulchral halls of the Roosevelt School. “A real school! With English books and American teachers!” my mother beamed, but when we went to register, it seemed a vast building, full of arrogant gringos and a brain-numbing clangor of bells. “La escuela Americana?” my grandmother gasped when we told her. “With so many fine old Catholic schools in this city?”
We were squeezed into gray wool and starched shirts. On our first day of school, Papi motioned us to the walkway where our geraniums stood sentry, bright red and anxious.
“This is Tang,” he said, pointing to a round Buddha of a man who nodded genially from inside our yellow Studebaker. “First he takes me to work, then he drives you to school. Pay close attention. This is a big city. Bad things happen.”
Mother stood in the frame of our carved front door and waved. “You’re going to learn so much!” she called out. But she turned back into the house as if there were something she’d just mislaid.
THE PLAYGROUND OF the Roosevelt School was swarming with hundreds of children, milling about and yammering, waiting for the bell to ring. We edged through the gate and stood in awe.
A girl about my age leaned against the wall and stared at us. She was dark-skinned, frail, her eyes bulging from her face like boiled eggs, blue-white and rubbery.
“Primer día?” she asked. First day? I was gawking around me, an obvious newcomer. I nodded that it was so.
“You speak English,” she said, more of a fact than a question.
“Yes,” I answered, ready to prove it. But she continued in Spanish, and my affirmation hung in the air like a hiss.
“Then you’ll be fine,” she assured me. “Don’t look so worried. I’m Margarita Martinez. My English is not so good. They put me in Señora Arellano’s class.”
There were two streams for every grade at Roosevelt, Margarita explained. The main one was for English-speakers, a smaller one for those who spoke better Spanish. I would be tested for my abilities and streamed according to my tongue.
The man who would decide my fortune was vexed in the company of children. I could see it the moment he called out my name. He was frowning and fidgety, flicking his hair with his fingers and peering impatiently at his wrist. I followed his orange head into a room next to the headmaster’s office.
“Do you speak English or Spanish at home, señorita?” he asked me in Spanish, motioning me to a chair.
“Both,” I replied, and stared at his hair. There was something miraculous about the way it cocked up on top and slicked flat around the ears.
“Which do you read?”
“Both,” I answered again.
“No,” he said, drumming a long white hand on the tabletop. Gold fuzz sprouted on his knuckles. He was wearing a ring, ponderous as a prime minister’s. “You don’t understand me. There must be a difference in the level at which you speak and read your two languages.” Ee-dee-oh-muzz. His Spanish was broad and drawling, like my mother’s. He opened a green folder and looked through it, and then switched his questions to English. “What I’m asking you, missy, is which language are you more proficient in?