“NO SE TE VAYA A OLVIDAR EL ESPAÑOL. CUANDO TENGAS TRABAJO, VAS A VER QUE TE VAN A PAGAR MÁS.”
Those are the words that I typically hear whenever the topic of retaining my Spanish fluency comes up between me and my ma. I’ve had a front row seat to an infinite number of her knowing lectures, and this is a common one. She insists that bilingual people have better incomes, and that I should graduate university with some sort of certification proving my capability in the language. I don’t doubt her, of course. Knowing more than one language is useful in the workplace, and besides, who would pass up the chance to earn more money?
When I decided this past summer that concentrating in Spanish didn’t sound too bad, I was admittedly searching blindly in the dark for direction. I didn’t know what I wanted, much like many other anxious teenagers being thrown into college life. And if I didn’t know what I wanted, then I would go with something safe, like Spanish. It fit nicely alongside International and Public Affairs (IAPA), and it made my ma happy, too, which was really the most important thing. As much as I was passionate about studying what I was interested in, I also wanted to satisfy her expectations.
Now that I’ve started my first semester at Brown, I’ve told many people that, in addition to IAPA, I intend to concentrate in Spanish. I’d noticed for many years prior that my Spanish-speaking skills were lacking. Whenever I went on vacations to Mexico, I would hover behind my younger sister, listening as she took the reins of conversations, rambling to family members and friends in an accent and with vocabulary far better than mine. During family gatherings, I spent my time reciting possible responses to possible questions so as to not stumble over my words in case anyone caught me off guard. Even at home, my Spanglish became increasingly more English than Spanish, and I would fall into the habit of ending conversations with my ma prematurely because I didn’t know how else to further express myself, a habit that came to define our oftentimes unstable relationship.
“VINE SOLITA HACE MÁS DE VEINTE AÑOS.”
My ma came from Mexico to this country over twenty years ago with a handbag and little else in terms of personal belongings. Her grandpa had been a laborer in the Bracero Program of 1942, which allowed many Mexican people to work in the United States due to wartime labor shortages. As a young girl in the small town of San Miguel Caltepantla, she would find photos of him on an orange orchard in Florida stashed away in an old trunk. American influence would continue to seep into her everyday life—whether it be through music discs her uncles brought home featuring artists like Michael Jackson and Queen, TV programs showcasing a very recognizable gray cat and brown mouse, or news stories carried through the radio.
She longed to see for herself the origins of these American products and to see the places in which her uncles worked to help maintain their family. And, more personally, she wished to work in America in order to be able to afford the basic necessities she never had. By the time she graduated high school, one of her uncles had offered to pay for her to go to a university, but ridden with self-doubt and fear of his money amounting to nothing, she told herself she would spend three, maybe five years working in the United States, and then come back, this time with money that belonged to her and no one else. So, on a Thursday she remembers very distinctly, she crossed the border on foot with false identification, arriving first at Laredo, Texas, then taking a bus to Dallas, and from there, arriving by flight to North Carolina, all by the next Monday.
As any reader of this can likely guess, she did not, in fact, only stay in the United States for a couple of years. Rather, it is in Hickory, North Carolina that she would give birth to my older brother, me, and finally, my younger sister. Spanish would become my siblings’and my first and only language, up until around when we turned four or five years old. And while my siblings and I worked hard at getting used to the uneven syllables of the English language, our ma worked tirelessly as a welder in order to provide us a childhood she never got to have herself.
“NO SÉ CÓMO DECIRLO.”
I don’t know how to say it. As the years have gone by, this sentence has become a staple in my conversations with my ma. I wonder what my ma feels when I say those words. Exasperation? Annoyance? Disappointment?
I don’t recall learning English ever being a hard process for me. I’m sure I struggled in the early stages. Who wouldn’t? It sounded totally different from the quick and seamlessly-flowing words of my native language. But by the time I finally made it to kindergarten, I remember being assigned the role of translator, conveying the words of my Spanish-speaking peers who otherwise wouldn’t be understood. It honestly felt sort of like magic, being able to switch between languages so seamlessly. I felt so capable. Outside of class, I read English books fervently, spending my time at recess sitting on a bench, flipping pages gingerly every few minutes. I would even write fictitious stories of my own, mimicking the authors whose words I so greedily consumed.
For the rest of elementary school and middle school, I became a stranger to the Spanish language, setting it aside in favor of English. I never took any Spanish classes, and I only spoke Spanish at home. Speaking Spanish became synonymous with the confines of our small trailer, and only during exchanges with my ma, not my siblings. And so emerged the fault between me and my native language.
I didn’t really like speaking Spanish in front of people other than my family. I felt like I was putting on a performance, like I was doing something unnatural. I would pay attention to the looks my family received when we walked into stores conversing in our native tongue. I remember being afraid we were “too loud,” even though another family could be reciting our conversations word for word and decibel for decibel in English and it’d be seen as totally normal. Despite not being fully aware of this prejudice, I internalized that prickly feeling of unwanted attention, building up an ugly, buried catalog of shame and embarrassment with regard to Spanish.
As I became more aware of my deteriorating Spanish skills in high school, that catalog finally surfaced, exploding unapologetically before me. I vividly remember a day in freshman year where we had to practice student-led conferences showcasing all the work we’d done for the semester, which would be presented for our parents. Since I knew my mom wouldn’t like a presentation entirely spoken in English, I joined the Spanish-speaking group without thinking. And as soon as it became my turn to present, I froze, my heart racing like it had decided to run a marathon all of a sudden. I realized then that I didn’t have nearly enough words in my vocabulary to present in Spanish, not without inserting multiple English words. But who joined the Spanish group just to end up speaking Spanglish? I thought that was dumb. I felt dumb. With every sentence that I butchered, I shrank further into myself, my posture worsening and my eyes becoming glued to the floor, so that by the end of my presentation I was nothing but a mumbling mess, my face glowing with uncomfortable heat. I was mortified.
But I did nothing to change. Despite all of these warning signs before me, despite all of them pointing to a very deep-rooted problem, I turned a blind eye. If things had gotten to be this bad, then I couldn’t fathom attempting to change. I was afraid of what that would mean—admitting that I had become incapable? When Spanish was literally my first language? Such thoughts filled me with such shame that I refused to take any action.
“¿QUÉ ME PASA?”
On the second day of my HISP 0650 class at Brown, I didn’t say a single word during our class discussion. I mean, this isn’t really atypical of me, if I’m being honest. I’ve always been an anxious person, and sometimes I would just rather hear what other people have to say. But what made this incident so disturbing to me was why I didn’t speak up.
The class was titled “Advanced Spanish Through Literature & Film”—I loved literature, and I loved film. I had a lot to say, in fact. But no matter how much I wanted to, I just could not bring myself to raise my hand and speak up. As I sat there, taking note of my peers’ advanced vocabulary, missing out on cultural context—who even was Don Quijote?—and scrambling to comprehend every word that came out of my instructor’s mouth, a restless feeling gnawed at me from within. My vision became unfocused, and I felt sick to my stomach. Yet again, I felt like I was a stranger, putting on this performance of knowing Spanish when the truth was I had neglected the language for years.
As I walked out of that classroom, trudging along the seven-minute walk back to my dorm, I dwelled on how I felt. Wetness prickled my eyes, causing my nose to run even in the hot and humid weather. It’s not that I was too intimidated to speak. It’s not even really that I was too scared to speak. I was ashamed. For the first time in years, I had been confronted with the consequences of my passivity. I couldn’t even share what I genuinely wanted to share—that’s how bad it had gotten.
And as I immediately thought to tell my ma what had just happened, I became aware of a feeling even more important: I had failed her. My ma, who crossed the southern border by foot with only a handbag to her name, who worked relentlessly to fuel my dreams, who gave me the joy of my very first words. Spanish wasn’t just another language to me; it wasn’t just another bullet point to add to my resume for work. Spanish was a gift from my ma, a daily reminder of the life she had left behind and one of the strongest bonds connecting us. Without Spanish, I had no relationship with her. How could I have ever dismissed that?
“TE QUIERO.”
I’ve always been hypersensitive to the meaning of words in Spanish despite not having the biggest vocabulary—they’ve always carried a heavier weight of meaning. The worst arguments I’ve had with my ma have been mostly in Spanish, and I personally think that being on the receiving end of curse words in Spanish feels way worse than curse words in English. I’ve said “I love you” to many people in English, while in Spanish, I can barely even muster up the courage to simply say “te quiero.”
And I think that sums up the essence of my point. Spanish—or any other language, for that matter—is not just a compilation of words, nor is it just the different shapes of syllables formed by the tongue. Rather, Spanish is a story to be shared, a culmination of lives and experiences and human connection. To me, Spanish is a representation of everything that my ma has done to raise me in a world full of opportunities and joys to be experienced.
I said that one of my intended concentrations was Spanish. But I sort of lied. The real title of that concentration is “Hispanic Literatures and Cultures.” Yet again, that reinforces the notion that Spanish cannot be stripped from its rich history, especially that of its speakers. Needless to say, I am not going to be concentrating in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures just for the sake of finding employment or making more money. Rather, after years of studying and improving and becoming a better person than I was before, I will honor all my ma has sacrificed for me and my siblings.
