Reaching Out (13 page)

My father did not allow my siblings and me to associate with kids who got into trouble. He used to say, "
Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.
" Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you who you are. When Laura introduced me to her good friend Emily Bernabé, I knew that Emily would become a friend of mine too. Like Laura, she was a year behind me in college and was majoring in Spanish, and unlike most of the students at Santa Clara, she had a part-time job, lived at home, and commuted to school. We did not see each other on campus often, but when we did, we talked about our families.

Her maternal grandparents, Margarito and Luz Cardona, left the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, in 1920 with their five children and traveled by train to El Paso, Texas, and settled in Redwood City, California. They came to the United States to work and seek a better life for their children. Being the oldest child, Emily's mother, Juanita, had to drop out of the eighth grade to help her parents support the family. She eventually married and had two children: Gilbert and Emily,
Gilbert was four years older than Emily. In the early 1950s Emily's mother became a single parent and struggled to make ends meet, working in the Del Monte Cannery and Stokeley's Packing House in San José. She often worked two and three jobs during the summer months so Emily and her brother could attend Catholic schools.

One Friday, Emily and I talked about painful experiences we had in grammar school. I told her how I had failed first grade because I did not know English well enough and how I was teased because of my accent, and how Roberto and I were not allowed to speak Spanish in school, even though it was the only language we knew.

Emily told me that she was never allowed to speak Spanish in school either. Her mother spoke English as well as Spanish, so Emily knew English when she started school. However, she felt hurt and insulted whenever kids pointed out the dark color of her skin. I told her that my mother thought that people who had prejudices were ignorant and blinded by the devil. Emily and I agreed—ignorance was the devil.

Emily invited Laura and me to her house for dinner that weekend. Saturday afternoon, she picked us up in front of McLaughlin Hall in her old blue Volkswagen and drove us to her house, which was about ten minutes from the university.

"I am so glad to see you again, Laura.
Bien
venidos," Juanita said, welcoming us. It's so nice meet you, Panchito."

"I am glad to meet you too, Mrs. Bernabé."

She had curly, short black hair, a round face, brown sparkly eyes, and a small, wide nose. Her gentleness reminded me of my mother's warmth. The small living room was sparsely furnished and neat, with family pictures on the walls. We sat at the kitchen table and ate my favorite meal: refried beans, rice,
came
con
chile,
and freshly made flour tortillas. From the corner of my eye, I saw a
molcajete,
a stone mortar, on the kitchen counter. On the wall above it hung a Mexican calendar. I felt right at home.

I visited Emily and her mother several times after that, and each time I felt as if I were with my own family.

I saw Rafael Hernández for the first time one afternoon on my way to class. He was in the corridor on the second floor of McLaughlin Hall emptying a trash can into a cleaning cart, which held a trash hag, a sponge, and toilet supplies. It reminded me of the cart I used when I cleaned the gas company in Santa Maria. "Hello," I said. He grinned and nodded. He had coppery skin, brilliant dark eyes, high cheekbones, and thick, straight black hair. After that day, we exchanged greetings every time we saw each other, but we did not meet until one Sunday morning at the Mission Church.

I was attending Mass when I spotted him sitting a few pews in front of me. After the service ended, I went up to him and introduced myself. He recognized me but seemed tense and reserved. When I spoke in Spanish and told him that my father was from the state of Jalisco in Mexico, his eyes lit up.

"Nuestros padres son paisanos,
" he said, smiling. Our fathers are fellow countrymen. "My father was born in Lagos de Moreno."

We strolled through the Mission Gardens, talking in Spanish about our families and work. He said that he had recently started working as a janitor at Santa Clara after having worked in the fields, picking fruits and vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley and Salinas. When I told him that I too had worked in the fields and as a janitor, he was surprised. The lines etched on his brow became more pronounced. "How did you manage to go to college?" he asked.

"I got some scholarships and loans. And my family has made many sacrifices for me to be here."

"You are so lucky to have those opportunities here," he said, "it's a lot more difficult in Mexico,"

When we arrived at my dormitory, he pointed out that he lived only two blocks away, in a small house. From that day on, we chatted a few minutes every time we ran into each other.

He was born and raised in Paredones, a tiny village near Guadalajara, Mexico. When his father died, he dropped out of school and took a job to help his widowed mother make ends meet. Rafael and his mother took a long bus ride every day to go to work for a wealthy rancher. She worked as a maid and be as a ranch hand. Eventually, Rafael got married and started his own family. He had two children, a boy and a girl. When he lost his job and his wife became gravely ill, he decided to leave his wife and two children under his mother's care and head for the United States, hoping to find work to pay for his wife's medical expenses and support his family. He
took a bus to Juárez and, with the help of a
coyote,
crossed the border to El Paso. From there he made his way to the San Joaquin Valley, to Salinas, and then to Santa Clara.

Several weeks after we first met, he invited me to his home, which was a rented room in a small white wooden house located on a corner street. He said he had something to tell me and a gift to give me. The entrance was on the south end of the white wooden structure. "
Aquí tiene
su casa," he said, welcoming me and offering a wooden chair for me to sit on. The room had no windows and a sweaty and salty odor. In the back corner was a small kitchen table. On top of it were an electric hot plate and two dented pots and a pan. Underneath it was an aluminum washbasin, a stack of canned foods, soft drinks, and a box of macaroni. A calendar with a picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe hung above his cot, which was pushed against the wall. A wooden crate full of books and magazines with a Del Monte label on it was next to his bed. He sat on a three-legged wooden stool, to the right of the entrance. As usual, he wore khaki pants and a blue long-sleeve cotton shirt, slightly open at the neck, "I am glad you came. I couldn't leave without saying goodbye to you."

"Leaving, why?" I was shocked and disappointed.

"I am going back to Paredones. I miss my family and my country. I've been sending money home every month to pay the doctor and, thank God, my wife has recovered. Life is too hard for us in this country. There are people here who think
that we Mexicans are no more than animals. In Texas I saw signs in restaurants that said, 'No Mexicans or Dogs Allowed.' It's humiliating."

"Yes, it is." His words reminded me of Diaz, a labor contractor I had known. He tried to force a
bracero
to pull a plow like an ox, and when he refused, the contractor had him deported back to Mexico.

"But we endure for the sake of our children," he said, with a spark in his eyes. He crossed himself three times and added: "And thanks to the Virgen de Guadalupe and the good Jesuit priests at Santa Clara, I am now able to return home and be with my family."

I was happy for him and glad his wife was fine now but sad to see him go. He stood up, went to the Del Monte box and picked up a worn book, and handed it to me as a gift.

"Thank you very much," I said, glancing at the title,
La patria perdida,
wondering why the author named it
The Lost Homeland.

"A good friend of mine gave me this novel and begged me not to come to the United States. She said her father died in the desert trying to cross the border, and she didn't want me to have the same fate. The author lived in San Antonio, Texas, a few years. And while he lived there, he experienced discrimination and, like me, he missed his homeland. He wrote about this in his novel, so when you read it, think of me.

"I will. It's a great gift. Thanks again," I said. We said
goodbye and promised each other to keep in touch. I never saw or heard from him again, but I felt grateful for having known him. He helped me to better understand my father's own yearning for his homeland and his long-held dream of returning to Mexico with our whole family.

I returned to Santa Clara in the fall to begin my third year in college. I had spent the summer in Santa Maria living with my family, missing my father, but keeping busy by working full-time for the Southern Counties Gas Company doing odd jobs: cleaning the yard, helping in the warehouse, and painting gas meters in various locations, from Lompoc in the south to Paso Robles in the north. On weekends I worked with my brother doing janitorial work for the Santa Maria Window Cleaners. Unlike my two previous years, I began my junior year without having to borrow money to attend school. I applied for and got a prefect job, which paid for my room and board, and received scholarships from Santa Clara that covered tuition. I continued working on campus as a research assistant and reader for Dr. Hardman de Bautista and as a language lab monitor.

I moved into Walsh Hall, room 102, which was adjacent to Father John Shanks's residence. My new roommate, James Clark, was a graduate student preparing to become a high school teacher. He was small and thin and had a narrow face,
short brown hair parted to the side, and a sweet, high-pitched voice. He was meticulously clean and neat. Nothing of his was ever out of place. Every day he went to bed at eleven and got up at six a.m. On Sunday mornings he often went home, right after eight o'clock Mass, to visit his family in Healdsburg. Like Smokey, he was a sports fanatic. He regularly listened to baseball games on the radio and commented on every player. When a fielder made an error, James shouted at him and wigwagged his arms, making him look like a fragile windmill. As prefects, he and I shared duties, enforcing dorm rules, but we did not socialize together. We saw each other in the evenings and sometimes on weekends, but hardly ever when sports games were broadcast on the radio.

Besides having a different roommate and an additional job that year, I entered my junior year under a new class schedule called the Santa Clara Plan, which was a switch from the semester system to a modified quarter system. Juniors and seniors took only three five-unit classes. This new plan made it easier for me to concentrate on fewer subjects at a time and to get more involved in Sodality.

As a member of Sodality, I decided to participate in the Amigos Anonymous Cell, which was one of three cells I could join in the organization. I helped prepare college students to work in the poorer areas of Mexico during the summer by tutoring them in the Spanish language and culture. Periodically, Sodalists broke into smaller cells to discuss vanous contemporary issues. I attended a cell meeting on the topic of interfaith marriages one Wednesday afternoon. The discussion had already started when I entered the meeting room. There were about eleven students in the group, most of them male seniors, sitting around a worn wooden rectangular table. I pulled out a chair and sat behind a student who was sitting at one end of the table. As usual, I kept quiet and listened. I did not feel comfortable speaking in groups, especially in English. Students calmly discussed the pros and cons of marrying someone from a different religious faith. There was general agreement that it would be preferable to marry someone who had the same religious beliefs.

The relaxed discussion turned into a heated debate about interracial marriages and prejudice, which brought painful memories. Roberto's girlfriend in high school had not been allowed by her parents to date him because he was Mexican. I remembered the sorrow and humiliation in his face when he first told me about it.

"There's discrimination in our society," one student argued, "I am glad President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination."

"Laws can't end discrimination," another student countered.

"Of course not, but laws can control harmful acts."

"Not always—look at what happened to Michael Schwerner this past summer. He was killed by the Ku Klux Klan because he got involved in the civil rights movement.
He was helping Mississippi blacks to register to vote. Besides, what is lawful is not always right. For example, slavery was legal in our country for many years. Was it right?"

"Are you saying that the Civil Rights Act is not a good thing?"

"No, what I am saying is that we sometimes make bad laws."

He turned red, looked down, cleared his throat, and said, "I don't have any prejudices, but it bothers me a lot when we do things for fun and people get upset." He went on to describe how some college students had chased down a couple of Mexican high school kids and jokingly threatened to cut off their long hair. They were accused of being prejudiced. "They were just having a good time," he added.

I could not believe my ears. I glanced around. Some students frowned; others raised their eyebrows and shook their heads.

Joe, a tall and gangly senior, stood up and said, "Let's be honest here. I don't think any of US thinks it's a good idea to have interracial marriages. I wouldn't want my sister or daughter to marry a Mexican..."

I telt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. I tuned out immediately. I tightened my lips, stood up, and stormed out of the room. Halfway down the halt, I heard Joe running behind me, yelling, "Frank, Frank, wait. I'm sorry." I stopped and faced him. "I am very sorry," he said frantically. "I didn't know you were Mexican."

"You should feel sorry for yourself." I glared at him. "You're the one who has the problem." I raised my voice and repeated, "You should feel sorry for yourself." He looked stunned and confused. I turned around and walked off.