by Roger Bruner
I waited several days before broaching the subject. “Does it bother you that the village children don’t associate with you because they think you are maldita?” I spoke as gently and off-handedly as I could.
“It…cannot be changed,” she responded evasively. “Things will always be what they have always been.”
Seeing the shocked look on my face—I kept opening and closing my mouth, unable to speak—Anjelita smiled and spoke more like her normal self, “Don’t worry, Momma.”
But how could I keep from worrying? I had seen tears trickling down her cheeks, and I was crying on the inside because she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—share her feelings with me. I had read, I had studied enough psychology to know she was dealing with rejection the only way she could—by denying her feelings.
Denial wasn’t something she did intentionally. It was an automatic defense.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned enough to know how to break through it.
I had never told Anjelita how the villagers treated me as a child. I wondered whether telling her now would help, but decided against it. As sensitive as she was, she might wrongly focus her attention on me. I had broken free of my earlier rejection, but she would never be free of the way people were treating her.
Not unless the villagers experienced a true change of heart.
~*~
Alazne had always been an excellent reader, but she had improved so much she could now read and comprehend many of the same books I was reading. No matter how much her vocabulary had increased, however, some of the books in my library wouldn’t interest even the brightest of eight-year-old girls.
Many of them didn’t appeal to her mother, either.
From early childhood, Anjelita had loved having me read to her. Sometimes when other tasks kept me busy, Alazne would entertain Anjelita by reading the same books I had read to her when she was small.
Shortly after my failed attempt to help Anjelita overcome or at least deal with her feelings of rejection, Alazne thrilled me by teaching her sister to read and write. She used the same methods Mother Chalina had used with me. The same ones I had used with her.
Although I avoided interfering in their lessons more than necessary, I made every effort to be involved.
The three of us sat together for reading lessons, and I named the letters and gave the sounds they made along with Anjelita as if I were learning them for the first time myself. That tickled both girls.
So Anjelita became as prolific as Alazne had been at her age, and she seemed satisfied to have her face in a book whenever she wasn’t playing with her sister. Although the pain of rejection must have still been there, I felt better knowing Anjelita had found lasting companionship through reading and learning. If the “disease” caused by prejudice lacked known cures, the placebo worked remarkably well in treating the symptoms.
~*~
Nikki continued driving Tomás’s truck to Santa María several times each quarter, and we always picked up our conversation wherever we had left off at our previous parting.
She still left the truck in the warehouse overnight, and she still returned to San Diego without knowing whether she was transporting hidden marijuana. The border authorities had stopped the truck several times, but it had either been empty or the villagers had hidden the cargo so well no one could find it.
Although the four years I’d been back in Santa María had been the happiest ones in my life, I grew weary of trying to find an alternative source of village income. I was familiar with every book in my library, and I had read most of them. Yet not one of them had provided the slightest insight into solving the villagers’ problem.
“Nikki, will you get this book for me, please? Perhaps it will help.” I wrote down the name and the author. I was thankful writers often referred to other books and other authors.
“Of course.” She smiled in her willingness to do whatever she could to help break the economic cycle.
“Oh, and will you get me this one, too?” I reached for the piece of paper and scribbled another name on it.
“You know I will. I’ll buy anything that might help.”
I now had bookcases lining the side walls of my shack as well as the back. Many good sources of information on a variety of subjects. But no solution to the most pressing problem.
Despite the endless amount and variety of knowledge in the world, I was running out of options. I needed a different type of resource, but I didn’t know what.
I had even investigated the possibility of growing farm crops in Santa María and perhaps raising livestock. Then I learned we already grew corn to help hide the marijuana plants, but the villagers never harvested it, and no one thought to use what was left.
After much consideration and numerous mathematical calculations, I concluded that selling the part of the crops we didn’t need wouldn’t begin to pay for the rest of the things we did need.
I hated to admit it, but I finally understood why the villagers had never chosen a different livelihood. Generation after generation of their ancestors had run out of viable options. How could the current generation hope to do any better?
A new problem arose. The villagers were having trouble keeping up with production. The young people had begun hitching rides to San Diego with Nikki. Falling in love with the new world they discovered there, few of them returned. Not permanently, anyhow.
The boys who used to snicker when they invited me to go to the fields with them had left. So had the majority of the girls who purposely let me overhear misinformation about the facts of life.
I didn’t question how they got passports. Every town and city probably had at least one Señor Alejandro.
33
The search for god had grown equally stale. When Nikki mentioned the word bible to me originally, she didn’t explain that it was the name of a book. If she had, I would have asked her to bring me one.
But she could read my mind just as well now as she had years earlier. “Girlfriend Rosa, do you still want to learn about God?”
“Yes.” I answered as enthusiastically as if I hadn’t abandoned my search in frustration.
She waved a shrink-wrapped box in front of my eyes. “Then perhaps you would like to have this Bible?” How huge my eyes must have grown at my first sight of it!
“Ah, but since you’re obviously no longer interested, I’ll take it back to the bookstore and get my money back.” She withdrew it quickly and held it behind her back.
“I want it! I want it!” I almost screamed in her ear as I picked her up in the air with a hug and swung her in a circle several times before setting her down again and grabbing the Bible with both hands.
“Your gift has given me new energy.” I chuckled. “New strength. You are taller and slightly heavier than I am. I couldn’t have lifted you so easily otherwise.”
“And they say blondes are the dizzy ones.” Nikki laughed along with me while I fought my way through the plastic covering and took the Bible out of the box. She sniffed the air like a dog that has detected a nearby rabbit.
“This book smells extra good,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything about what’s inside. I hope it smells good, too.” (I would recall that comment later when I read the passage about Christians needing to be a rare and sweet perfume.)
“You are the dearest friend, Nikki. I’ll surprise you with something special sometime.”
“Something I’ll have to pick up for myself in San Diego?”
I laughed and pretended to hit her with my new treasure. “Oh, you.”
I spent many days and nights reading the Bible. I learned that “God” was not just “god.” He was so important he merited uppercase treatment.
And whoever or whatever he was, he had created the world and everything in it. Including the first human beings. I had never considered the possibility that humanity hadn’t always existed.
The first man and the first woman were disobedient children. Not nearly as good as my girls. Adam and Eve disobeyed God
and lost their ideal dwelling place. Although I couldn’t relate personally to their act of disobedience, I realized this book might tell me something about myself as well as about God.
The more I read, however, the less sense the story made. God’s children—most of them, anyhow—appeared to be good-for-nothings. They kept aggravating and displeasing their God and bringing his punishment on themselves. Nonetheless, he was a wonderful father. His punishments were severe, but he always forgave them.
I read perhaps three hundred of the fifteen hundred pages in the Bible. I didn’t stop because I was bored. I wasn’t.
But reading about people who knowingly kept disobeying God frustrated and irritated me. His punishment never kept them from rebelling all over again. Although I placed the Bible in the most honored spot among all of my books, I left it alone for a while.
At least I had gained a slight understanding of God first.
~*~
Life took an unexpectedly pleasant turn when Alazne demonstrated her reading and writing to the other children. Their attentiveness gave her a needed platform for pointing out that Anjelita was an excellent reader, too. My girls could use their skills to show the other children that maldita was a questionable term to use for describing Anjelita.
Alazne came to me one day while I was baking bread. “Momma, the other children want me to teach them to read and write. But I don’t want to.”
“That surprises me. You would be a very good teacher. You did a wonderful job with Anjelita.”
“That’s the problem. As long as she and I are the only children who can read, the other children may eventually come to accept her. But if I teach them, she may lose that advantage.”
“They will never be as good at reading as you and your sister. They will always look up to her—even if they aren’t willing to admit it.” A smile replaced the tension on her face. “Yet that might be a good reason for you not to teach them.” I motioned for her to sit down on the floor beside me.
“Your success with Anjelita has spoiled you. How patient would you be with children who don’t catch on as fast as your sister?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Some of the village kids are…less than brilliant.”
Alazne broke into such a fit of laughter I couldn’t keep from laughing with her. “But let me caution you about something,” I said as our laughter died down. “These children do need to learn to read. The future of the village may depend on it. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
~*~
When Elder Diaz came to my door later that day, the timing was more than coincidental. “You read and write. Alazne reads and writes, too, or so we have heard.”
“So does my Anjelita,” I responded as matter-of-factly as I could. Refraining from sarcastically adding “…my maldita daughter Anjelita” took all of my restraint.
I was almost certain where this conversation was going, and the prospect excited me. But I couldn’t be sure unless I allowed him to continue.
Getting right to the point—the bottom line, as they called it in San Diego—was characteristic of many of the Americans I had met. But the villagers didn’t do things that way, and I had to bite my tongue in impatience while Elder Diaz snail-crawled in the general direction of whatever he had come to say.
“You own many books.”
I nodded.
“You’ve read them all?”
“Many of them.” I scratched my head and smiled. “Most.” But then I sighed. I had still never finished reading the Bible.
“And you understand many things the villagers have never even heard of?”
“Probably.”
His tone intensified as he began the next section of his speech. I grinned inwardly at the thought that he might yet arrive at the reason for his visit.
“You have proven to be a useful member of the village by your wise handling of the distribution of supplies. You could not have succeeded so well without reading and writing?”
You already know the answer to that. Hurry and get to the point. I remained outwardly patient and polite, however. “Thank you. Reading and writing were both essential to my success.”
“That is what the Council thought.” He paused. “Santa María must seem uncivilized after living in San Diego so long.”
I was speechless. His frankness and insight shocked me.
“You undoubtedly view San Diego and Santa María as two different worlds.” He was picking up speed.
Don’t stop now. Finish what you’ve come to say.
“Things don’t change rapidly here.” He released a good-sized sigh. “Sometimes I wonder whether they are changing at all. But if this village is to remain in existence, we must bring civilization here. Some aspects of it, anyhow. Else we will lose our few remaining young people.”
And so began the process of asking me to teach the children to read and write. Once he finished outlining the Council’s proposal, I didn’t take time to think. I gave him an immediate yes. He had just provided a way for Anjelita to earn the villagers’ respect.
He didn’t realize it, however. And I would have to bide my time rather than suggest my idea prematurely.
“Thank you, Rosa. When can you begin?”
“Let me think.” I hesitated several moments to avoid sounding overly anxious. “Is tomorrow too late?”
I hoped he understood the irony of my question. In too many ways, the future of Santa María was beyond hope. Today already seemed too late.
~*~
The Elders had already made preliminary plans for the school before approaching me.
We would order additional books, paper, and pencils from San Diego the next time Nikki came to the village, even if it cost each household a few of its nonessentials.
In the meantime, I would use whatever I could spare from my personal supplies, and the children would do a lot of sharing. The Elders left the teaching methods up to my discretion. In a village that had never had a school, accountability wasn’t a consideration.
Even if the villagers had money, I wouldn’t have received any compensation for my teaching. Any more than they were paid for marijuana growing and processing. Teaching was a civic responsibility, one I was pleased and proud to accept. Knowing how much the village actually needed me thrilled me beyond description.
Although several of the Elders suggested turning the so-called church building into a school, a number of superstitious villagers convinced the Council to reject the idea. Desperate for a workable alternative, the Elders demonstrated their belief in this project by permitting the children to enter the warehouse for the first time in a hundred years—perhaps longer.
Although we wouldn’t use the warehouse while the villagers were processing marijuana, the Council allotted sufficient time for both activities. Before the children came inside for lessons, everything related to the adults’ work would be covered up or put out of sight.
From what I had read, American children almost go crazy just before school lets out for the summer. The children of Santa María, however, demonstrated the same enthusiasm when they entered their schoolhouse the first time.
Rumors about what school might be like had spread throughout the village, but none of the children had the slightest notion of what to expect, and none of the adults could tell them. This was a new experience for everyone.
Even me.
After all, I had never attended school, even though I had seen classrooms depicted on television. And despite my experience working with Alazne and Anjelita, I had never taught a group of people before. Or children who weren’t members of my family.
Attendance was not required the way it was in America. The children came because they wanted to. When everyone was present—absenteeism was almost nonexistent—I had fifteen pupils.
Although I still wore the wristwatch Nikki had helped me select on our first shopping trip together eight years earlier, none of the other villagers owned a timepiece. So when I was ready, I sent my girls or one of the other early ar
rivals out to let the rest of the children know we were beginning.
I started as soon as most of them arrived and I stopped when I sensed that the lesson had exceeded their attention spans. I let the children take short breaks whenever they needed them. Someone was always coming and going, but nobody was gone long. No one wanted to fall behind—especially after realizing they were actually going to learn to read.
They were amazingly realistic, however. They didn’t get upset when I told them bluntly that they would not become expert readers overnight. I emphasized the need to practice as much as they could, even if it meant writing in the dirt with their fingers until we got additional supplies.
Teaching the children was going to be one of the most fulfilling things I’d ever done. But it hadn’t made the children accept Anjelita yet. How could I change that?
34
Elder Diaz knocked at my door one evening. He had brought several of the other Elders with him. “We—the Council—have a huge favor to ask.”
“What is it, please?” Although that day’s teaching had worn me out so completely I felt less patient than usual about having to endure another drawn-out visit, I tried to keep it from showing.
He surprised me by getting to the point more quickly than I’d expected. “You have done a marvelous job with the children. We are pleased—”
“Delighted,” one of the other Elders said.
Elder Diaz nodded. “We thank you.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “But now the adults want to learn to read, too.”
I could almost feel my eyes opening wide in surprise. “You—they—want to come into the classroom with the children?” How my eyes must have danced with merriment as I pictured adults and children sitting side by side on the dirt floor. Because the children were advancing well and the grownups would just be starting, I could picture the children tutoring the adults…
