My mom was struggling to find the words. “¿Como se dice? How do you say.. ahhh… “
Then my friend asked my mother, “How long have you been here? And you don’t speak English?”
Wait, I thought to myself, I remembered a conversation I had with my friend prior to introducing her to my mother. She was telling me how her parents were angry at being inconvenienced by government telephone menus that are in Spanish. And then I realized that it wasn’t her parents, it was her. She was the one that was angry at being forced to navigate Spanish speakers in public spaces.
In the car going home my mom asked, “Gayle, what’s wrong with your friend? She don’t like Mexicans?”
“Mom,” I said, “No one likes Mexicans. Mexicans are always breaking the rules. They come here illegally, they live too many people in a house, and they don’t speak English. Heck, mom, YOU don’t like Mexicans. You didn’t teach me Spanish. Why?Because you didn’t want me to be a Mexican. So now I’m confused, and I don’t know who I am.”
My mom sometimes complained about her Mexican coworkers, as if she wasn’t Mexican. She would say, “Those stupid Mexicans are so heavy in the bottom.” Which meant that she thought they were lazy. Now, that might sound overly critical and contradictory, but you have to remember that many immigrants are critical of the next immigrants who come.
Mom’s work was factory work. She made tools and toilet parts for the biggest toilet parts company in the country. Getting that job was not easy for her. She had to go through a test to show she could be on the line and not get the parts confused. Knowing what you were doing on the line was important. My aunt, who worked at the same company years earlier, got her hand mangled in a machine and never worked in a factory again. I remembered my mother praying to God every night to pass that test. When she passed it she was so proud and grateful, and I don’t remember her ever missing a day of work.
I was a latchkey kid, and my mom came home hours after me. I remember when she gave me the house key on the large metal ring and told me not to lose it. It was exciting to have that kind of responsibility for the house before my parents came home. I watched a lot of TV… creature feature on channel 7 every day at 3 p.m. On the weekends, Mom’s favorite leisure activity was cleaning house while listening to the music of Julio Iglesias. When she got done for the day she would sit on her recliner in the living room with her cup of ice cream, as happy as could be. When she retired her beautiful coffee-colored fingers were gnarled and twisted from arthritis and a long life of hard work.
I thought Mom was good at speaking English. She had immigrated as a young adult and she did a good job of assimilating. But some people thought she was hard to understand. My own children told me they often didn’t understand her, and she could never could say their names right.
We moved from Chicago to Franklin Park, Illinois, when I was one year old. It was a near-west suburb of mostly Polish and Italian immigrants. People assumed I was Polish or Italian, and I didn’t correct them. I felt the social cues that my nationality was better left unsaid.
Today Franklin Park is majority Mexican. If you have been paying close attention to the news, Franklin Park might sound familiar. Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were not the first people to be murdered by ICE. Mexican father Silverio Villegas González had just dropped his children off at school when he was shot and killed in his car by an ICE agent last September. Silverio was an undocumented immigrant, and so was my mom. He took his kids to a school in Franklin Park, and so did my mom. When I first heard of his death on the radio, my heart sank. Instantly I related to his children waiting at home for their parent to return. I was that child.
The Spanish language has become a polarizing topic. Some are patriotic because they celebrate Spanish speakers, while others are patriotic because they want to restrict Spanish speakers. We just witnessed the recent spectacle of having two Super Bowl halftime shows because of songs being sung in Spanish. The consequences of speaking Spanish are high right now and could land a brown-skinned person in detention whether or not they’re a U.S. citizen.
As my mom and I drove out of my friends driveway, I could see a bumper sticker on her car. It was the word “Coexist” spelled out with multiple cultural symbols of some of the major religions of the world. Ironically, the thing that drew my friend and I together was ideology and discussing politics. Do I think she hates Mexicans? No, I don’t. But I also don’t think she loves Mexicans, or loves them without conditions. It has been over 10 years since that incident when she had been rude to my mom. A lot has changed since then, and hopefully my friend’s opinion about the Spanish language has evolved.
My oldest son speaks a little Spanish and I am proud to say he organizes ICE Out Marches in White Plains, New York. He told me that when he shares his heritage with his Mexican colleagues and friends he is warmly embraced and accepted as one of them. If you look at my oldest son, you would say he looks so tall, so white, so Aryan. But when I look at him, I see the shape of my Mexican Grandfather’s face.
Gayle Richardson is a Macomb mom.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of TSPR or its license holder, Western Illinois University.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.