With an inviting smile that translates as ease in both our languages, Angélica, who is mature beyond her twenty-two years, settles into a seat beside me and her son's stroller. We live in apartment complexes on the same street, and we are about the same age. She was married at home with her family in Mexico and came to Durham with her husband to live and raise George, her one-year-old son. We pick up talking where we left off as if we were old friends, which would have been likely had we come from the same school or hometown. Instead we were brought together by a shared pursuit of language and learning at El Centro Hispano, where she is learning English and I help teach.
El Centro, a non-profit organization, provides services to Spanish-speaking immigrants. It coordinates community forums to resolve problems, distributes health information and resources and offers English classes for adults and child care and tutoring for children. Its dedicated staff facilitates a meeting place and offers advice and comfort for Hispanic immigrants and their families--some of whom have arrived in the United States recently while others have become more acclimated.
Our classes incorporated useful communication skills like how to mail packages to home countries or articulate a child's symptoms to a physician. I continually realized how significant the benefits of learning English are for the women, and how much their perceptions of tiny aspects of conversation may help them in unseen ways, as newspaper headlines, bills and signs in windows begin to acquire meaning.
In addition, bilingual education's numerous challenges, particularly in an adult setting became clear during the classes. I wanted to speak in Spanish so that the women understood the purposes of our lessons, at times almost forgetting that they were there to learn English not only through flashcards and vocabulary words, but perhaps more memorably through normal conversation. The balance between ensuring they understand what was said and at the same time encouraging their listening, processing and really trying to hear English is a delicate one. Regulating the pace of progress through class material is difficult as well, with women of various ages and language backgrounds. Methods of gauging their levels of comprehension like repetition can be misleading, as they may understand by seeing and listening to words, but not yet by forming them without a template. Answers emerge in later conversations--in puzzled looks, hesitant nods and elaborate stories told colorfully in English.
These conversations are at the crux of the classes at El Centro: The contact that emerges in the evolution of intersecting languages displays what the women have learned and more importantly, the purpose of their being there. I spoke with one of the women, also named Angélica, about her family and daily routine. She described her grind--rising very early in the morning, preparing her kids for school, cleaning, organizing, running errands and cooking throughout the day, all to wake up and do it again the next day. Her husband is rarely around to help or talk with her. Neither of his jobs is close to where they live, and between his multiple shifts and transportation time, he is not able to come home, sit down with his wife, describe his day and find out what she did, an ideal our American dream culture has imprinted on my brain.
Her husband comes home late, eats and sleeps. To Angélica, he does not see all she does every day to keep everything running, and he does not interact with their kids. She worries about this. She tires of her schedule each day; there is not time, opportunity or money to break out of the cycle yet, it seems. Her concerns are those of many stay-at-home moms. She's frustrated by the monotony, she feels there is little to be done, except continuing to try to help the kids with their homework, which is in English, and taking care of the house and bills. Coming to class with a group of women brings a sense of her doing something for herself and investing time in something that she wants to do, and may ultimately help her family's situation as the children get older and she may have more time to have a job.
I was grateful for many talks like this one, and that the women let me in on such a personal level. It made my everyday routine seem much less pressing than I made it in my mind and the reading I was rushing back to the library to do less relevant. I wanted to hear the rest of Angélica's story--how and why she came to Durham and if it has changed her picture of her Mexican home, how she sees herself and her own capabilities in light of living in the United States and working to become acclimated. I wanted to learn more about the process.
We seized upon the companionship that proved central to understanding one another; the chicken-egg question of conversation and friendship was less important than the results they produced. In class, the women were growing closer and discovering what they had in common. By being a part of their discussions about things like haircuts and changing diapers, I became a friend too. It mattered less that I was a Duke student--there for different reasons than they were--and more that we were trying to talk with one another. I learned with them.
Receiving a crocheted, yellow hat from Juanita--an older woman who had trouble understanding everything in class but came every day and tried--which she advised me to wear under my bike helmet as the morning rides grew colder, meant that she appreciated my being there. It made me very happy.
In the classroom where they are earnestly trying to learn the language that surrounds them, I repeatedly observed the commonalties of the women's experiences--but with each woman bringing her own level of English exposure and understanding. The women, primarily from Mexico but also from South America, demonstrated a willingness to be taught, to try speaking--as difficult as it was for them at times--to write everything down, to ask questions and be corrected.
They came together in wanting to celebrate in ways ranging from the traditional and familiar Latino to the newly-acquired Anglo: We had a baby shower for one of the women, complete with an elaborate spread of homemade delicacies, the instructor's birthday fiesta and an oft-rehearsed performance of American Halloween songs to sing for their kids, who were in costume in the day-care room next-door, eager to trick-or-treat around the halls of El Centro. The women's desire to participate happily and unquestioningly in class differentiated them from the students I am accustomed to at Duke--who analyze, doubt and critique whatever they are being instructed to process.
The women's devotion to learning English, each for her own reasons--the desire to be more a part of the community and her children's education, or perhaps to own something that is hers--emerged quietly in our classes. I have experienced that learning a new language is a formidable, continual task. I learned this while living and studying in Madrid. For a few months, I wanted to fall into my environment and be an understanding, understood visitor, if I could not somehow temporarily be a native. It is the sense of belonging--to people and to place--that I craved. As our perceptions of "native" evolve along with steady immigration, ideas of assimilation, community and identity become as abstract as language and its process.
Individually, the process translates as understanding one's surroundings and what goes on in inside them--however one may perceive it and with whatever accent and ideas one may approach a new home like Durham--as the women are doing by learning English and I did by spending time and learning with them. Being a part of the community is finding what it means; belonging to it seems to follow.
I am grateful to have belonged to this process with the women and hope to continue working with them--learning Spanish, the intricacies of motherhood and the real meaning of a bunch of women just sitting around talking.
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