Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (11 page)

We were to let her know our preference the following week. For me there was only one choice: to recite it to her privately. I did not want to get in front of the class and risk being laughed at because of my Mexican pronunciation. I knew I had a thick accent, not because I heard it myself, but because kids sometimes made fun of me when I spoke English. I could not take a chance of this happening in front of the whole class, even though I wanted to get the extra credit.

That afternoon after school, I took the bus home. On the way, I tried to memorize the lines of the Declaration of Independence, but I had trouble concentrating. I kept wondering what Mr. Sims told Roberto. When I got home and saw the
Carcachita,
I knew Roberto was already there. I rushed in. Papá, Mamá, and Roberto were sitting at the kitchen table. "What happened? Tell me!" I said excitedly.

"What do you think?" Roberto asked, trying to conceal his smile.

I glanced at Papá and Mamá. They were beaming. "You got a job!" I cried out.

"Yes. Mr. Sims offered me the janitorial job at Main Street School," he answered, grinning from ear to ear.

"It's a year-round job," Mamá said, looking at Papá.

Being careful with his back, Papá stood up slowly and hugged her gently. He then turned to Roberto and said, "Education pays off,
mi'jo.
I am proud of you. Too bad your Mamá and I didn't have the opportunity to go to school."

"But you've taught us a lot, Papá," I answered. I had not seen Papá that happy for weeks.

After supper, I sat at the table to do my homework. I was so excited about Roberto's new job that it was difficult to focus. But I was determined to memorize the lines from the Declaration of Independence and recite them perfectly, without forgetting a single word. I took the text and broke it down, line by line. I looked up in the dictionary the words I did not know:
self-evident, endowed, inalienable,
and
pursuit.
I added them to the list of English words I kept in my new, black pocket note pad. I had gotten in the habit of writing down a different English word and its definition every day and memorizing it. After I looked up the meaning of the words, I wrote the entire text in my note pad in tiny letters: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I went over the first line many times until I memorized it. My plan was to memorize at least one line a day so that I could recite it on Friday of the following week.

On Wednesday after school, Roberto drove to El Camino Junior High to pick me up so that I could help him clean Main Street School. It was starting to rain. When we arrived at the school, we headed down to the basement to the janitor's room to get the cleaning cart. It held a large cloth trash bag, a dust broom, a sponge, and toilet supplies. As we entered the first classroom we were to clean, it brought back memories. It was the same room I had been in in the first grade, when I had Miss Scalapino. Everything looked the same except that the desks and chairs seemed a lot smaller. I sat down at the teacher's desk, took out my pocket note pad, and read the second and third lines I needed to memorize: "that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I went over to the cart, picked up the wet sponge, and began wiping the blackboard as I recited the lines in my head. Thunder and lightning interrupted my concentration. I looked out the window. It was pouring rain. Through the reflection on the windowpane, I could see Roberto behind me dust-mopping the floor.

By Friday, I had memorized the introductory lines to the Declaration of Independence and could recite them with relative ease. Only the word
inalienable
caused me problems. I had trouble saying it, so I broke it into syllables and repeated each sound slowly, followed by the whole word. On my way to school on the bus, I took out the black note pad from my shirt pocket, closed my eyes, and practiced saying "in-a-li-en-a-ble" silently to myself. The kid sitting next to me gave me a puzzled look and asked, "Are you trying to say something?"

His question took me by surprise. "No," I answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you keep moving your lips."

A bit embarrassed, I told him what I was doing. I don't think he believed me because he stared at the note pad I was holding in my hand, mumbled, and changed seats.

The school day started out just right. In the morning, Mr. Milo returned the math exams to the class and asked us to rearrange our seats according to our scores. I sat in the first seat in the first row. This was definitely a good sign. I even looked forward to my recitation in Miss Ehlis's class that afternoon.

At one o'clock, right after lunch, I was the first one in Miss Ehlis's classroom. I sat at my desk and went over the recitation in my mind one last time: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I checked the text in my note pad to make sure I had not forgotten anything. It was perfect. Feeling confident, I placed the note pad inside the desk and waited for the class to start.

After the bell rang and everyone was seated, Miss Ehlis began to take roll. She was interrupted by a knock at the door. When she opened it, I could see Mr. Denevi, the principal, and a man standing behind him. The instant I saw the green uniform, I panicked. I wanted to run, but my legs would not move. I began to tremble and could feel my heart pounding against my chest as though it wanted to escape too. Miss Ehlis and the immigration officer walked up to me. Putting her right hand on my shoulder, and looking up at the officer, she said sadly, "This is him." My eyes clouded. I stood up and followed the immigration officer out of the classroom and into his car marked "Border Patrol." I sat in the front seat as the officer drove down Broadway to Santa Maria High School to pick up Roberto.

The stories in
The Circuit,
like other stories I have written, are semiautobiographical. They are based on my childhood experiences of growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. The inspiration for writing them comes from my teachers and the community of my childhood.

When I started school, I did not know a word of English; I knew only Spanish. In fact, I failed my first year of school because I did not know English well enough. I had no self-confidence in English until I met Mr. Lema, a wonderful sixth-grade teacher whom I describe in the collection's title story, "The Circuit." I enrolled in his class after having missed the first two months of school because I was helping my family pick grapes and cotton. I was far behind other children in class but, thanks to Mr. Lema, I made good progress. During the lunch hour, he gave me extra help.

Although I did not speak English well and Mr. Lema did not speak Spanish, we managed to communicate with each other. He valued my Mexican cultural background and my native language while he taught me English. At times it was frustrating for both of us, but he never lost his patience with me. He never made me feel inadequate or inferior because of my poor English-language skills.

Miss Bell, my sophomore English teacher, was also very influential. From her I learned to appreciate literature and the art of writing. She regularly assigned our class to write narrative accounts of personal experiences. Even though I had difficulty expressing myself, I enjoyed writing about my migrant childhood. In one of my essays, she commented that the experiences I wrote about were very moving and that my writing showed promise. She then had me read
The Grapes of Wrath.
It was difficult for me, but I could not put it down. It was one of the first literary works to which I could relate. The more I read it, the more I appreciated the value and power of language to move hearts and minds.

After graduating from Santa Maria High School, I received several scholarships to attend Santa Clara University, where I discovered that my migrant experiences were both an obstacle and a blessing. They were an obstacle to the extent that I did not have the privileged social, economic, and educational experiences most of my classmates enjoyed. However, they were a blessing because they served as a constant reminder of how fortunate I was to be in college. Those experiences convinced me that I should do everything within my power to forge ahead in my studies and not give up. I compare my situation then to a man who is drowning. A man who is drowning uses the water, the very substance that threatens his life, to save himself. So I used poverty and those experiences that initially pulled me down to boost myself up. Whenever I felt discouraged, I would write about my childhood.

Upon graduating from Santa Clara University, I received a graduate fellowship to Columbia University in New York, where I met Andrés Iduarte, a Mexican professor and writer who became my thesis advisor. Following his advice to publish my work, I gathered the notes I had taken over the years and wrote "
Cajas de cartón
" (Cardboard Boxes), which was published in a New York Spanish-language literary magazine. Translated into English under the title "The Circuit," it was published in the
Arizona Quarterly
and received the Arizona Quarterly Annual Award for best story.

For the next several years, I continued my efforts to write more short stories, but teaching and administrative responsibilities left me little time for writing. Then I applied for and received a sabbatical for 1995. I devoted the entire year to researching and writing
The Circuit.

In writing these stories, I relied heavily on my childhood recollections, but I also did a lot of background research. I interviewed my mother; my older brother, Roberto; and other relatives. I looked through photographs and family documents, and I listened to
corridos,
Mexican ballads, that I had heard as a child. I also went to different places in the San Joaquin Valley where we had lived in migrant labor camps: Bakersfield, Fowler, Selma, Corcoran, Five Points. I visited museums in those towns and read through newspapers from that era. Unfortunately, I found little or no information or documentation in those sources about migrant farm workers. I was disappointed, but it convinced me even more that I should write this book. As I gathered material, I began to recall other experiences I had forgotten with the passage of time. Looking back at those childhood memories from an adult point of view, I made a series of discoveries about myself in relation to my family, my community, and our society. I gained a deeper sense of purpose and meaning as an educator and as a writer.

My greatest challenge was to write about my childhood experiences from the point of view of the child and to make them accessible to both children and adults. I wanted readers to hear the child's voice, to see through his eyes, and to feel through his heart.

Why did I write these stories? I wrote them to chronicle part of my family's history but, more importantly, to voice the experiences of a large sector of our society that has been frequently ignored. Through my writing I hope to give readers an insight into the lives of migrant farm workers and their children whose back-breaking labor of picking fruits and vegetables puts food on our tables. Their courage and struggles, hopes and dreams for a better life for their children and their children's children give meaning to the term "American dream." Their story
is
the American story.

—F.J.

From Francisco Jiménez's acceptance speech for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction, 1998