In the summer after my freshman year I took a landscaping job at Martin O'Boyle Landscaping in Bloomfield, N.J. It was a good job and a difficult one. Everyday I'd wake up and then go down to the lot where all of the trucks and equipment were kept. At about 8:30, after punching our time cards in the office and loading our trucks up with trimmers, rakes, garbage barrels, blowers and shovels, all of the crews would leave for their first job sites of the day.
There were three others guys in my crew, all of whom were Brazilian. Our crew chief, a black man in his early thirties named Robby, was the only other one who spoke English. He had lived in America for about 10 years, and spoke so flawlessly that it took me a few days to realize that he had not been born here. He was energetic and skillful at his work, and personable and polite with the clients, most of whom knew him by name. When he told me that he had learned English and become the head of a work crew within a few months of coming to America and going to work for O'Boyle, I didn't doubt it.
Robby was always avidly conversational with me. He told me about growing up with his numerous siblings near Sao Paolo. He told me about meeting his wife in Brazil and bringing her to America to make a better life. He gushed with pride when he told me about their seven-year-old son, Robby Jr., and how he was going to be a football star at Bloomfield High School. Robby told me how much he had grown to like American football since moving to the states. I told him that I had played at Glen Ridge High School in the neighboring town, and that it was a great game.
I never knew what to say when he asked me about Duke, though. He told me that he hoped his son could go to college. He thought that it was a great thing that I was getting an education, learning about myself and about the world, about how I might improve both. I didn't know how to explain to him that after a year there, I no longer felt that way. That the things I was learning there weren't making me better for myself or for the world. I thought about phrasing my problem with Duke in terms of racial or economic injustice--terms that Robby might understand. But I knew that that wouldn't have been correct; it wouldn't have been nearly complete. So I merely said that I didn't like the school very much, and left it at that.
On one of the last days of the summer, one of the other two members of our crew, Sylvio, accidentally broke a limb off of a tomato plant in a man's vegetable garden as he tried to clean up the hedge trimmings that had fallen around it. The owner of the plant came outside and yelled at Sylvio--he ordered him to fix it, and called him an idiot.
Robby, seeing that Sylvio didn't understand, came over and tried to placate the owner--apologizing profusely, trying to fix the broken limb, offering to bring out a new plant from the greenhouse. The man wouldn't hear it, and continued his tantrum while Robby knelt by the tomato plant.
"Excuse me," I said, stepping in, "Is there a problem here?" He was surprised at my tone and replied "Yeah, he broke my plant," pointing at Sylvio and then at the plant. Then, as if realizing himself, he asked "Who the hell are you?" I replied that Sylvio didn't speak English very well, and that he should talk to me if he had a problem with him. He began ranting again about the broken plant, about Sylvio being an idiot. I interrupted: "It was an accident. It's a hard job, and accidents happen. If you want, we can try to come back with a new plant for you. But don't stand here and try to make my friend feel small." He responded by telling me not to give him "that 'hard job' bull- - - -," and that he knew my boss Marty and would be calling him about me. I gave him my name. Then we finished cleaning up and headed back to the yard for the end of the day.
On the ride back, Robby and the others were jovial, even celebratory. "Don't mess with Matt," Robby joked, slapping my back. But I felt sad. Aside from being worried about getting fired, I felt that there was something more that I should have said. Something about the little bourgeois fortune that the man had slapped together for himself. Something about his readiness to take a man's dignity because his skin was a few shades darker, he did not speak English and his worth as a person was a few notches below his own on the ladder in his mind.
Marty was on the telephone when Robby and I went down to the office to clock out. "He's a good kid," we heard him say. "He used to be an athlete. I mean, he goes to Duke for Christ's sake."
Matt Stevenson is a Trinity senior. His column appears every third Friday.
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