Border Street: English seen as the ticket to a better life
By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published October 19, 2006 at midnight
The 32-year-old fast-food worker of Border Street, continuing his ongoing process of "a Mexican trying to be an American," takes a construction job. This is largely a matter of economics. From $9 an hour to $14. Now a laborer, he can no longer claim the title of manager, but he considers this no great loss since he longer has to deal with customers, either. "Less stress," he says.
His pursuit of a new life in his new country - ambivalent as that country may be about his illegal presence - takes him to English classes twice a week. He joins his fast- food-worker wife whose desire to master the English language with its chameleon vowel sounds and silent letters and hair-raising homonyms so overwhelms her ability that the frustration - the clenched fists, the furrowed brow - appears to border on physical pain.
She heard about the classes through a friend. It's practically free, the friend says. You pay for the books. So, the fast-food-worker wife and her husband sign up along with 636 other adults in an aging building with narrow hallways and bad lighting in another part of town. It is unlikely they would have found the place alone. The nonprofit organization does not advertise.
It's the tenor of the times, the director explains. Last year, it offered 30 English as a Second Language classes in 10 different places, morning, afternoon and night. More than 900 adults enrolled, two-thirds of whom completed at least 12 hours of class. More than 250 advanced to the next level.
The director, the child of a Mexican immigrant, bites her tongue to keep from singing from the rooftops because she wants her students to be safe, because, she says, "I don't want to be a target for the Minutemen."
The fast-food-turned-construction worker and his fast-food-worker wife sign up for the evening classes, and as it happens, the first big snowstorm of the year hits on a school night. The construction worker and his wife look out the window of their home, past the snow-frosted rose bush, into the cold hush that has descended upon Border Street. Let's go, they say.
It takes a half-hour to make the 15-minute drive and on the way the wife looks out the window and sighs.
It's so beautiful, she says. It didn't snow in our town in Mexico.
It did, her husband says.
Not like this, she says.
No, he says, looking out his window, not like this.
A lot of Mexicans will have work tomorrow, she says, smiling. "They could make $15 an hour shoveling snow," she says. "They're cheering right now." Only the most experienced among them knows better than to get his hopes up. The Colorado sun can cheat them out of work before lunchtime.
Look, no one is here, the wife says as they park. But, students arrive all evening, noses red, snow melting on their coats. The construction worker heads to his advanced class. She and their two children walk into a beginning class.
Hello, her teacher calls out. Eleven people are already seated. A North American map is pinned to a wall. A poster offers helpful sentences. "I have a question." "I don't understand." "Can you help me?"
The teacher speaks no Spanish. After class, the wife will laugh and say that she doesn't understand half of what's going on, "but it's good. It's good she only speaks English because then I learn more."
The teacher hands out copies of a story to read aloud. "Excuse me, teacher," the fast- food-worker wife says, pointing to a fellow student. "Do you have another copy for she?"
Her 11-year-old son spends the next two hours wandering back and forth between his parents' classes. He says he's glad they are studying "because that way if someone talks to them in English, they can talk back."
There is among the adult students a largely unspoken truth, says the school director. The parents know their children soon will become more educated than they; they will outpace them and the parents, without further English instruction, will be forced to rely upon their children to negotiate the larger world. The parents know that such a situation cannot be good.
Down the hall, the construction worker sits with eight other men and one woman. One wall in this room is papered with student goals. "I will speak English to people everywhere." "I will listen to the radio in English every day." "One day I will write a letter."
The construction worker goes to the board to write a description of a Vietnamese character in his workbook. So is wearing a extra large stripe shirt, black shoes and black pans.
Oh, he groans with each correction. An. Striped. Pants. He whispers the words to himself.
The family is in good spirits on the way home. I need to do this, the wife says. She often works the cash register at the restaurant. I need it for my work, she says.
I don't, the construction worker says. "Everyone I work with speaks Spanish." They laugh. Better English means I find a better job, he says.
They have family in Mexico, but are not planning to return. If any of their brothers or sisters or cousins were to ask, "Should we go live in the United States, too," the construction worker and his wife would say yes. Yes, without hesitation. Yes, absolutely.
The wife looks out at the city. The trees along Cherry Creek bow and shimmer in the snow. She turns back in her seat. A job paying $50 a week there pays $50 a day here, she says. It pays more than that, her husband says. Yes, she says, nodding. More. And as long as that's true, she says, there will be reason to come.
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