Angelica

            “Good morning…Pase... (come in)…” Angelica greets me with her lovely broad smile as I let myself in through the lower back door of her two-story split-level home.  I am only 5 feet 4 inches tall and I tower over Angelica.  She is short and stocky with shoulder length dark hair and black eyes that sparkle when she smiles.  Each Monday morning I drive the 3 miles from my house to tutor her in English.  When I walk in,  I am enveloped in her warm Mexican hospitality that reminds me why I do this.

            Angelica or “Angie” as she calls herself with Americans, lives in a quiet lower middle class neighborhood with neat small houses  The lower level is a finished basement where she used to have a children's day care. There are built in shelves everywhere still full of toys, many of which she gladly loaned me when Noah, my great nephew, came to visit recently.   The room is nicely carpeted and painted.  There is a table and two chairs and a whiteboard against one wall. This has become our English classroom.  She and her family bought this house two years ago after 10 years of renting apartments all around Asheville.  They came to the U.S. when the children were still in elementary school. While the children speak English like natives, her husband is fluent enough to work as a mechanic. But Angelica has lagged behind in English. taking care of the family, working nights at hotels and motels as a cleaning woman interacting mostly with Spanish speaking people.  She knows that to get a better job she has to improve her English.  Hers is the American immigrant story that you hear so often but it is not one I knew firsthand.

            “How is your family?” I ask each week, to which she often replies “fine... fine.”  She immediately counters with, “How is your mother?  And your grandson?”  Family is the most important thing and we’ve learned quite a bit about each other in 13 months.  I get her to tell me whatever is on her mind in English although sometimes in her enthusiasm and desire to communicate she will launch into Spanish.  I, of course, can understand her perfectly.  But I have to force myself to insist “ say it in English” even though I’d love to just sit and chat in Spanish.  Telling me things in English slows her down but does not discourage her searching to find the right words.  These “teaching moments” when I explain new vocabulary that she jots down in her notebook, make me feel useful.

            Mornings are quiet at Angelica’s house as her husband, Angel is at work at the service department of the VW dealer.  Their driveway is full of cars her husband fixes for private clients in the evenings and on weekends to earn extra money. Her daughter Viridiana, who is 23, is at her office job and younger son Jose is sleeping in after working late hours as a chef at the popular Stone Ridge Tavern.  She has confided to me how much she would love her children to start community college but there is no money for that.  Angelica is a cleaning maid at the Western North Carolina Health Services Clinic where she works part time in the afternoons.  A close-knit family with the adult children living at home and helping their parents as most Hispanics do, they are the hard working and committed to making a better life in the United States.

            Once we have “checked up” on each other's families, I can move on to the lesson planned for the day using the materials from the Literacy Council.  Angelica is nearly always prepared with her homework and has become so comfortable with me that she asks many questions.  For her, each new thing she learns is taking a step closer to understanding American culture.  And she genuinely gets excited when she learns something new. Last week in our unit on celebrations she found out  that it is an American custom to send thank you notes when people give you a gift especially for weddings and graduations.  She was amazed and told me "we never do that in Mexico."

            During our year together I have learned about her childhood in a suburb of Mexico City going to work when she was 14 in a neighborhood bakery handing over all her earnings to her mother.  Married at a young age, there were difficulties with a husband who drank too much and whom she couldn’t always rely on. When they moved to the U.S., she told me, the drinking stopped and her husband began working hard to make ends meet. Our textbook units and new vocabulary lead to many personal reminiscences like recounting the difficult pregnancy and birth of her son Jose. Or she has shared about the hard times when her husband was diagnosed with cancer and out of work for many months. When she talks about her house and the neighborhood where she now lives I learned that when they bought the house the neighbors were parking in their driveway and using their fenced in back yard for their dogs. They resented having to give this up and took their time about moving cars and dogs even though the house had been sold.  I suspect they simply chose to ignore Angelica's family because they are Mexicans in a white neighborhood.  As Mexican immigrants they walk a fine line between what legal rights they have and how much they want to draw attention to themselves.  Americans aren’t always understanding or patient with foreigners and Mexicans live with many stereotypes.

            The weeks go by quickly and Angelica has made progress scoring higher this year on the Literacy exam and graduating to an Intermediate High level of language learning. Recently she told me excitedly that her work schedule had changed to afternoons from night work which means she now gets to interact more with English speakers and not just with the other maintenance workers who who are all Hispanic.  "I can practice more," she tells me with excitement.

              I took the training course to be a Literacy Council Volunteer ESL tutor when we moved to Asheville 3 years ago  because I craved  having some interaction with foreigners and particularly Hispanics.   I was born and raised in Latin America and I miss the warmth of Latin people and their culture. It is a side of me most people wouldn’t understand, but being comfortable with Latin culture,  is part of who I am. I have never shared with Angelica the fact that my father was an American diplomat in Mexico City for 3 years and my parents lived in a  large modern home behind high walls and tall wooden gate. with a complete staff of household help including chauffeur and gardener.  I visited there numerous times before I was married.  Ironically Art and I were even married for a second time in that very elegant house with some of my parents high society Mexican friends attending whom we didn't even know.  But that is a whole other story from many years ago.
              Right now knowing her and helping Angelica learn English keeps me going back for more.  I love being her maestra but I have also gained an insight in what it means to be a Mexican immigrant in the United States today. It is not an easy life.