Saturday, October 4, 2003

After school on Thursday, I was sitting on a bench spending time with some students. A Salvadorean lady in her 30s comes to me and asks me some questions about a program that has recently been implemented at Jefferson. When I explained to her all I knew regarding the program, she remained seated next to me. For the next hour she shared with me some important aspects of her life.

She began telling me about her son “Ulysses”, a ten-year-old student I know as “Jose”. As most mothers would, she spoke greatness of her son. He helps her around the house, sweeping, mopping, throwing the trash, doing the dishes, doing laundry, and sometimes even cleaning the bathroom. Just as he is willing to do all that, he’s also willing to sit down with his father and take words of advice from him, hombre to hombrecito — man to little-man. She says that sometimes he lies about things, but then she gives him a rap about how at night his conscience will bother him for having lied to her. She says he comes to her afterwards, before the night comes, and tells her, “Mother, I need to speak to you. Please don’t get mad for what I’m about to tell you.” He sets the truth free at that point.

This mother who kept referring to herself as “Carmen” in the short stories she shared with me, also told me about how she came to live in the United States. She was 21 years old and had barely finished a career in accounting, I believe she said. At the time she was working as a shopkeeper. The pay was very little, her needs and aspiration were immense.

A friend of hers asked, “If I could get you the money you need to go to the United States, would you go?” She was excited to hear this, but then she asked, “It’s too much money! How would I be able to pay you?” Her friend said not to worry. She told her to get estimates and let her know how much money she needed.

It would take 1500 Colones — “mucho dinero en ese entonces”, a lot of money back then. She had the money, now she needed to say goodbye to her parents. Not an easy task. They opposed her departure. She left, nonetheless. She told them that she was making very little money as a shopkeeper, and that they couldn’t go on living as they did. She was doing this for them.

She entered Guatemala without the slightest problem. She had a passport. The hard thing would be traveling through Mexico, from one extreme of it to another, a more than 2000 miles distance, hiding from authorities because she would be traveling through Mexico illegally. She left her town on September of 1990. She arrived to USA 21 days later.

Her first job in the USA was working “encerrada” — meaning that she worked in a house as a housekeeper 24 hours per day, six or seven days per week. She made 90 dollars a week. Her brother, still in El Salvador taking care of her parents, told her not to worry about them, to first pay up the money she had borrowed to come to the USA.

She followed her brother’s advice. Sort of. Each time she was paid, she’d keep one dollar (her boss provided shelter and food), sent ten to her parents, and the rest would go to pay up the loan. It took eight months of this for her to finally pay up what she owed. She was so grateful to her friend for what she had done, that when she was done paying up, she asked, “What do I owe you as interest?” The friend said “Not a thing.”

These days Jose’s mother is a housewife. She has been married twelve years. Her life in the USA is much different than that she experienced at the beginning of her stay. She says she wishes her mother could come to the USA and see the life she’s living. She says her mother would be proud of her. Once a little girl who barely had enough money for food, now she’s well off living with a good man, and raising two great children. One of the two children, Jose-Ulysses, has for godmother of baptism the woman who lent his mother the 1500 Colones that brought her to United States.

Jose’s mother told me that she often tells her son to do well in school so that one day he becomes a man who has achieved a career: a short one, at least. She says that she’d love to see the day when people come to her son for advice, or help understanding something written in English, for example. She would love for her son to help people, to not forget where he has come from; she wouldn’t want him to be like those hispanics who say, “Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish” when in fact they do.

Jose is in the right path to become the man his mother would love to see him turn into. I said to her that she has evidently put a lot of effort into keeping him walking in a straight line. Jose is one of the best-behaved fifth graders at Jefferson. I added that if all goes well, one day he’ll look back and be thankful to her for having done all she has done to turn him into the man he has become. She smiled and said, “Ay, Dios quiera que asi sea” — “I hope it’s God’s desire for that to take place as you say.”

Jose has his own goals, however. The program recently implemented at Jefferson will allow 4th and 5th grade students to deposit money into a Washington Mutual’s savings account without incurring any fees. Jose will be participating in the program. He knows he’ll only be depositing some coins on Bank Days (Thursdays), but he’s certain that in due time he’ll have enough to buy a toy he’s been wanting for some time… a PlayStation II.

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