Among Schoolchildren

by Tracy Kidder

  Those first five families had each other, at least. Felipe's father, Eduardo, when he finally decided to emigrate for good, was essentially alone. Traveling with his father to the Connecticut River Valley at the age of fourteen, Eduardo entered a mainland school in the old mill town of Westfield, not far from Holyoke. Bilingual programs didn't exist then, so Eduardo learned his English by the method now formally known as "immersion." That is, he had to teach himself. The first English word he learned was "hi." He remembered trying it out on a girl in a school hallway. She said "hi" back to him. "I was so happy. It worked!" He stayed behind with relatives when his family went back to Puerto Rico. At sixteen, he doctored his birth certificate and got a job in a bicycle factory in Westfield. Not long after that, Eduardo got laid off and went back to the island. On that return trip, he felt as if he saw his homeland clearly for the first time, both its splendor and the ironic fact that most of the people with the money to enjoy it were not Puerto Ricans. "I lived in a paradise, and it didn't mean anything to me," Eduardo said. "I went and lived in Westfield and came back, and I thought, 'How come these gringos have this, and I can't?' " When word came that he could have his job in Westfield back, he left home again. He did not imagine he was leaving the island forever.

  Jíbaros tell jokes that they would not like to hear from other mouths. One of Eduardo's favorites, a Puerto Rican version of a classic immigrant joke, went like this: A jibaro has heard that in New York City there is so much money that you find it lying on the ground everywhere, and you have to kick it out of your way. Sure enough, when he arrives at Kennedy Airport, at the Eastern Airlines terminal, this farmer of the hills sees a fifty-dollar bill lying on the ground right in front of him. "Already you're starting to bother me," he says. "Get out of my way." He kicks that fifty-dollar bill aside. "I got plenty of time for you." At the punch line, Eduardo would laugh and say, "He never sees a fifty-dollar bill again!"

  Realism came to the jíbaro Eduardo on a lonesome New Year's Eve when he was in his early twenties and living alone in a small apartment above a hardware store in Westfield. He had some money in his pocket and no place to spend it. He was hungry, but he didn't have a car, and there wasn't an open restaurant or even a grocery store within walking distance. He stared out the window of his room at the snow in grimy piles on the street outside, and he thought of his father's farm and of the green bananas in the trees. If only he could have one now! "What am I doing here?" he asked himself then. "Why not go back to the island?" He remembered a period that followed, during which he asked himself again and again, "Who am I? I know this body. But who is Eduardo?" Immigrants, even such a hardy one as Eduardo, have to ask themselves questions that children ask. He told himself repeatedly, "You got to be realistic. If you want to dream, okay. If it comes true, it comes true. Beautiful. But tomorrow you got to go to work. That's reality."

  He worked, and finished high school on the side. He picked tobacco. He learned to be a machinist, and, unhappy with the policies of his union local, he put himself up for president and won. He also worked as a disc jockey on a Spanish-language station in Hartford. Along the way, at a softball game in Chicopee, he met a lovely countrywoman who, as it happened, came from Cayey, too—he'd had to come to Massachusetts to meet her. He had settled down to raise a family.

  The Puerto Rican community of the Flats was not, of course, a monolith. Eduardo divided the Puerto Ricans he knew into several groups. These days far fewer newcomers arrived directly from the island, but there were still a substantial number of people he called "old-fashioned," who didn't want to speak English and held tightly to old island customs and traditions. Some cosmopolitans—he counted himself one of those—spoke both languages and traveled in both worlds and might even eat in a fast food restaurant now and then. "And," he said, "there are a few rotten potatoes, who are involved with drugs and will rob your apartment and break into your car." He liked to point out, though, that he never locked his car in the Flats and had never yet been robbed.

  Finally, there were the children. "They are going to be doctors and lawyers," he said. The high school dropout rate among Puerto Rican children was alarmingly high, but his own children did well in school. They would go to college, he hoped.

  Speaking of the children and of the Puerto Rican community of Holyoke in general, Eduardo said, "We are here to stay." He guessed that statement applied to him, although he still dreamed of retiring to the island.

  At home in Holyoke, Eduardo might say mockingly and affectionately to his wife, if she was acting shy, "Oh, you jíbara." But on the surface, anyway, there was no shy farm-boy left in him. He had a ready smile, like Felipe, and he was quick and easy making friends. He had Puerto Rican friends, South American friends, white and black North American friends, and though he had no interest in being a boss of any sort and mainly kept company with working men, he could travel easily in most of the worlds of balkanized Holyoke, including that of the country club—he was a marvelous, mainly self-taught golfer. He could wear an oxford shirt and necktie and speak the local language, in every sense, and never act obsequious or look as though he felt out of place. And yet this upwardly mobile and versatile traveler—skilled in all ways of contending—still had Some jibaro in him. He had a good job, and so did his wife. He could afford to live elsewhere. He chose to live in the Flats. When puzzled friends asked him why, he said, "I want to know what's going on with my people." He could afford a telephone, of course, but he thought phones were a nuisance. It bothered him that his hometown in Puerto Rico seemed more Americanized each time he visited—in shorthand he'd explain that his hometown in Puerto Rico had two Burger Kings now, whereas Holyoke had only one. He thought the island ought to gain political independence, and he had no use for independentistas who took welfare. "Puerto Ricans between thirty and forty, we like to be Puerto Ricans when it's convenient for us," he once said to some North American friends. "I feel I am a Puerto Rican American, and I feel, really, I am an American. You people took me over. You made me American, not me." He didn't always hold his tongue when, for instance, white acquaintances told him they'd just met a nice Puerto Rican. "How come you act so surprised? You never met one before?" he'd say. But he had swallowed his share of dirty looks and slurs while learning how to get along on the mainland.

  Old injuries welled up. Sometimes when he thought he could hear white people thinking, "Goddamn Puerto Rican, what's he doing here?" Eduardo would go back in his mind to his boyhood in Cayey, and tell himself those people knew nothing about him at all. Lying on his sofa, putting the Transcript-Telegram aside to climb in his mind back to the old farm, he'd feel his eyes getting misty. He'd remember the taste of the green bananas and of the oranges in his father's groves—he'd never found an orange anywhere as sweet as those. But even at those moments he would recall that it is possible to feel homesick for two places. He'd remember how on short trips back to the island, a few days would go by and he would find himself thinking, "It might be nice to see a little snow."

  2

  Just before April vacation, another child had left Chris's class for parts unknown. His name was Alejandro. He had come into her room at midyear from Victor's bilingual class, the only boy "mainstreamed" from that room so far. Mary Ann had arranged for Chris to get Alejandro. He was a gift—small and black-haired and glittering, with a movie star's clarity about his looks, and on top of that, very bright and very interested. Alejandro had just begun to get command of English. Unlike most of the children, he actually seemed to enjoy the basal reader's workbooks. He liked any chance to strut his stuff. Chris often found excuses to put Alejandro in bear hugs.

  But his father was taking him back to live in Puerto Rico. Alejandro said he felt scared. "Changing schools, that's the worst thing for me. You know the first day, when you go to school and they always stare at you? You don't know nobody, and when you go outside, there's nobody to play wit' you. That's the worst thing, the feeling you have. You all hot inside, and everybody lookin' at you like who's that n
ew kid, I never seen him before." He couldn't do his homework lately, Alejandro said. "I want to do it, but something happens to me. I get dizzy, and I fall asleep."

  Chris thought, "I never experienced that myself. I always lived in the same place." She got Victor to try to talk the father into letting Alejandro finish the year with her, but the boy's father said they had to leave town. She spent a long time bucking up Alejandro on the days before he left. On his last day she kissed him goodbye and told him he'd do fine. She thought he probably would; he had so many gifts. But when she wondered what it meant for a child to be transplanted to Puerto Rico, she couldn't conjure up any pictures at all.

  Now she was going there herself. Now, she thought, she'd have some idea.

  A year ago, a Holyoke teacher named Efrain Martinez had arranged a tour of his native island for other teachers over April vacation. Efrain had figured that many of the faculty would want to go, since nearly half their students these days were Puerto Rican. The school department had given its blessing; the superintendent of schools had gone on the first trip. But teachers had to pay their own way, and the ones who had the most to learn didn't want to. Several white colleagues had told Efrain to his face, "I wouldn't go to Puerto Rico if you paid me."

  An islander who emigrates from an outpost of empire to its mainland stands an excellent chance of being far less insular than many mainlanders. From an early age, Efrain had immersed himself in the art and history both of Puerto Rico and the world. He had come to Massachusetts for graduate school and had settled in Holyoke. He had landed, it didn't take him long to discover, in one of a parochial nation's bastions of parochialism. The sort of Holyoker who wanted to speak respectfully of Efrain's origins, he noticed, would refer to him as Hispanic. The sort who wanted to insult him called him Puerto Rican. He found that a social studies text in use in the city's schools designated Jamestown as the first settlement in the new world, and he wondered, "What happened to St. Augustine? What happened to California? What happened to San Juan?"

  Efrain didn't get paid for his arduous work as a tour guide. Local ignorance, more than an islander's pride, caused Efrain to launch his one-man campaign to edify the educators of Holyoke. This year not enough teachers signed up for the tour, and Holyokers mainly interested in a vacation, including a number of Puerto Ricans, filled the vacancies. Among others on the tour were the assistant superintendent (a native Holyoker of Irish descent who spoke fluent Spanish), several teachers, and the Zajacs—Chris, Billy, and their son. Kate stayed behind with Chris's mother.

  The bus had just dropped the group at their hotel in San Juan, in the tourist quarter, when Chris said to Billy, "It's nice, but I couldn't live here." She felt silly saying that, as if Billy might decide to move to Puerto Rico, but the need for reassurance doesn't follow logic.

  Billy laughed. "That's because you couldn't live anywhere but Holyoke."

  "Well, maybe when all our friends and relatives are dead," Chris said, still feeling a little silly but comforted.

  The next morning, on the way to Easter Mass, Chris told the Puerto Rican taxi driver that she came from a place where a lot of Puerto Ricans had settled. The driver said, "People go there to be on welfare. They don't want to work," and for a moment she felt as if she really were at home. But the heat, the tropical breezes, the palm trees, the musty smell in the hotel room, all made her feel too far from home. She missed her daughter. She kept comparing what she saw to things back home, as tourists do and immigrants must. She had a hard time relaxing. The second day, during the tour of old San Juan, inside the second oldest church in the western hemisphere, Chris separated herself briefly from the company and, kneeling in a pew, prayed that everyone get safely through this trip and that they have a safe flight home. After that, she felt readier to enjoy the holiday.

  Efrain was the sort of tour guide who makes it easy to learn something. The story of the island's colonization reminded Chris of her unit on the American Revolution. "I think they should have a San Juan Tea Party." She felt worn out from the last weeks of school, and she skipped the trip to the city of Ponce. But San Juan was too hot for snoozing, and a lot of the American tourists around the hotel pool spoke rudely to the Puerto Rican waiters, so she felt uncomfortable hanging around there. "I've got to get out of my little cocoon," she kept saying to herself.

  They took a trip around the island. At a seaside restaurant on a cliff, looking out the window at the rolling blue Atlantic, Chris said, "Thank God." She'd begun to think she didn't like Puerto Rico, because she didn't really care for what she'd seen of hot San Juan. They stopped in Cayey to visit some of Felipe's relatives. The conversation didn't go beyond pleasantries, but just to be behind the private walls of another culture, in a living room as neat and cozy as her own, felt like enlightenment.

  The best part of the trip for Chris was the visit to the mountain town of Comerio. Efrain had gotten the island's school authorities to provide the transportation. A school bus picked up the group at the hotel in San Juan. The bus bounced along into the mountains, Chris, sunglasses perched in her hair, bobbing in her seat like a posting horseback rider. "No wonder my kids are bouncing off the walls when they come in to me."

  An official from the Puerto Rican Department of Instruction was on board. He identified himself as a "curriculum advisor." ("Oh," thought Chris, "a coffee-drinking job.") She changed seats so she could talk to the official. Maybe he could tell her something about the fate of Alejandro, which was, in a way, what she'd come here to find out. She told the official about the handsome little boy. "What will happen to him?" she asked.

  The official said that Alejandro's new classmates might shun him for a while, but would probably accept him once he had his Spanish back. Returning Puerto Rican children created problems, the official said. Many needed bilingual programs in reverse, to relearn Spanish. Some were known as calientes—"hot ones"—and posed the threat of infecting classmates with mainland ways. Other children teased repatriated kids sometimes, calling them "newyorquinos" and "new-yorricans." Chris looked off into the middle distance. Poor Alejandro. But anyway, she told herself, the girls would like him.

  About a dozen people rode on the bus into the mountains. Hundreds welcomed them when they arrived in Comerio. The town describes itself accurately as montaña en flor— "mountain in bloom." Banners hung across the streets around Comerio's village square: WELCOME TO TEACHERS FROM HOLYOKE. The place amazed Chris. Craning her neck at the bus window, she saw green hillsides rising at impossible-looking angles on all sides above the buildings of the town. From the windows and doorways around the square many curious faces peered at the bus. A throng of citizens stood in the shade in a corner of the square. A grade school band in red uniforms struck up the Marine Corps hymn, hitting many sour notes on the way from Montezuma. (Was some gentle irony intended in the choice of music?) "This is their first semester, and they are learning," explained one of the speakers. There were many speakers. Too many for Chris.

  The dignitaries, the uniformed chiefs of police and the fire department among them, sat out in the square in a row of folding chairs, removing their hats now and then to mop their brows. Another row of folding chairs, also in the blazing mountain sunshine, awaited the honored guests. The local priest, a local school principal, Comerio's mayor, and Holyoke's assistant superintendent, Tim Barrett (who had brought gifts of T-shirts that said, "Holyoke, Birthplace of Volleyball"), all took turns at the podium. Chris sat in the sun, listening. Her face started growing ruddy at once. She could feel it—instant sunburn.

  Politicians everywhere like to talk, Chris thought. That one now returning to the microphone for a second time, for instance—he had many counterparts in Holyoke. Each speaker, when finished, headed for the shade, Chris noticed. She looked around. Most of the other honored guests had fled for the shade, too. Only she and another Holyoke teacher remained out in the sun. She would not get up and follow the others. The comerieños might think her a rude gringo if she did. She would see this through,
even though most of the speeches were in Spanish.

  Later, Chris asked Tim Barrett to translate. Tim said the mayor had spoken yearningly of the prospect of a highway that would bring new jobs to Comerio and with them perhaps an end to the shuttling of children between Comerio and Holyoke. That was a good speech, Chris thought.

  The day's schedule had already slipped, and now their hosts debated a new change in plans. Why didn't they hurry up? She'd like to see the schools. Nobody around here seemed to keep schedules. "Me and my precious schedules," she thought. "I've got to lighten up. Chill out, Mrs. Zajac, as my kids say." Finally, back on the bus. The road was narrow, twisty, winding upward. The driver honked at every turn. Chris clutched the handrail on the seat in front of her. "I'm glad I went to church on Easter Sunday." At last they arrived at an elementary school, a collection of red and yellow barracks-like buildings up on a breezy, lofty mountaintop. Evidently, the wealthier comerienos lived up here. "It's just like Holyoke," said Billy to Chris. "The higher the ground, the more money."

  The school was in recess. Again, banners hung everywhere: WELCOME TO OUR SCHOOL. DISTINGUISHED GUESTS, WE FEEL HONORED. PEOPLE FROM HOLYOKE, WELCOME. Chris checked out the playground first. Standing in grass near a swing set, she gazed out across the peaks of the Cordillera Central, every imaginable hue of green before her, the colors shifting with the fluttering of two-sided yagrumo leaves across the peaks and valleys, and a brisk wind in her face. "Mr. Barrett," she said to the assistant superintendent, "can we do something about improving the view from the Kelly School playground?"

  Tim Barrett gazed out at the shimmering mountains, too. "We'll need some earth-moving equipment."