A whole bunch of people towards the back of the room were now getting up to leave. But these teachers were not going to intimidate me. I wasn’t my father’s and mother’s son for nada-nothing. I wasn’t my two indigenous grandmothers’ grandson for nada-nothing either. I came from a long line of people…who’d lived through starvation, revolutions, and massacre.
“AND YOU!” I yelled into the microphone. “Over there in the back…who are getting up to leave…I’M GLAD THAT YOU’RE LEAVING! Because, obviously, you’re those bad teachers that I’m talking about! Hell, if you were good teachers you’d be happy with what I’m saying!” Three fourths of the teachers who’d been getting up to leave suddenly sat back down. I loved it. I was finally kicking ass, after all these years of getting my own ass kicked. “When I started school,” I continued, “I spoke no English. Spanish only. And we weren’t invited in to learn English in a nice, civilized way. No, we were screamed at. No joke. Yelled at, ‘No Spanish, English only,’ and then ridiculed, called names, and hit on the head or slapped across the face if we were ever caught speaking Spanish. AND SPANISH WAS ALL I KNEW! And on that first day of kindergarten, I needed to go to the bathroom, but the teacher yelled NO! So I peed all over myself, with pee running down my legs until it formed a puddle by my shoes, and all the kids sitting close to me looked at me in disgust, holding their noses, then at recess they let me have it with ridicule!
“THAT’S NOT RIGHT! Teachers and their arrogant ways pit us kids against each other! A STUDENTS AGAINST ALL OTHER KIDS! B students feeling good that they’re not C and D students. CONFRONTATION and WAR is what you teachers start instilling in kids from kindergarten on! ‘We need to study history so we don’t repeat it’ is a BUNCH OF BULL! Don’t you get it?” I said, wiping my eyes. “We keep repeating history because that’s what you teach—meanness, greed, and every man and woman out for themselves, without mercy!”
Now two whole tables of teachers got up and started to leave.
“SIT DOWN!” I barked. “You’re not dismissed! Class is still in session! Hell, I’m just getting started! You came to hear a writer talk, and now—by God—you’re going to hear A WRITER SPEAK!”
“I WILL NOT SIT DOWN and listen to any more insults!” yelled one teacher to me from about one third back in the room. “You’re just a spoiled, overpaid author and all of us here are underpaid and overworked teachers, every day working above and beyond duty!”
“I got $4,500 for my book that just got published!” I said. “It took me over three years to write it. After my agent’s fee, that’s less that $1,500 a year. I’m not complaining and saying that I’m underpaid. I’m happy! BIG HAPPY, that I got published! I think it’s an honor to be a writer, just as it is an honor to be a teacher, a person who can—”
“You just speak generalities! You’re not telling us anything specific!” she yelled, cutting me off.
“You want something specific,” I said. “Well, I specifically DON’T LIKE YOU! Because, if you had any heart and didn’t feel so guilty for being one of these abusive teachers, you wouldn’t take offense at what I’m saying! SO GO! LEAVE! You and all your other offended teachers.”
A couple of teachers applauded me, a few tables away from the people who were leaving. But the teacher who spoke, and about a dozen other teachers, left with a big ruckus, taking their book bags, coats, and purses.
Well, about 90 percent of all the other teachers stayed, and when I was through with my talk—about thirty minutes later—a good third of them were also wiping their eyes. When I closed, I got a standing ovation of such volume and magnitude that the walls of the huge room actually vibrated.
Teachers rushed to me. Karen and Sandy had to pull people away from me so that they could take me to our booth down the hall into another huge room so I could sign books. The number of people who got in line to have me sign my book was so long that it dwarfed the lines of all the other writers. And this room was full of other top-name New York publishers with their own writers, too.
Teachers kept asking me if I could come to their schools to give a talk, that I’d been so real, and reality was what their students needed above all else. Others asked if I’d written any books on education. I said, no, not yet, that Macho! was my first book.
And Karen, she now couldn’t do enough for me. She kept bringing me water, snacks to eat, stroking me on the arm and shoulder, and asking me if I needed anything to give me the strength to keep autographing books. I signed books for well over three hours. And Sandy, when I was done, came up and gave me a big abrazo-hug, kissing me on the cheek.
“I just knew you could do it!” she said, beaming. “After reading your bio, I just knew that anyone who’d gone through so much for so long to get published had to have a floodgate holding back all that you needed to say. You did great! In fact, we ran out of your books. And the LA Times and the Long Beach newspaper are here to interview you.”
“You mean my book is going to get reviewed?” I asked all excitedly.
“Yes, that, too, I’m sure. But right now they’re here to do a feature story on you. That’s even better than a review. It will reach people beyond those who read the book review section. You’re on your way,” she added. “Congratulations!” she said, hugging me once again.
Boy-oh-boy, I was flying!
The two interviews were done in the lobby and I had my photo taken too. Then that evening, I was alone in the bar of our hotel having a beer when a man came up to me and said, “Are you the writer who told Gladys Marsh that you specifically didn’t like her in front of the whole convention?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was exhausted. Really tired. And this man looked like a pretty physical-type guy in his forties who probably had played football and still lifted weights. And hell, he might also just happen to be that woman’s best friend or husband. But what the hell, I’d done what I’d done and so there was no backing down now. I got off my bar stool, so he couldn’t take a swing at me while I was a sitting duck.
“Yes,” I said, taking up ground. “I did say that to a woman teacher, but I don’t know if her name is Gladys whatever-you-said or not.”
His powerful-looking face suddenly broke into a huge grin and he put out his right hand. “Let me shake your hand and buy you a beer! Hell, I’m part of the teachers’ union and that woman is one of the most self-centered, abusive people I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. Always complaining about her paycheck and long hours, but never having any suggestions for helping the kids or improving the system.”
We shook hands and he pat me real hard on the back.
“Great job!” he said. “Great job! But tell me, why is it we’ve never heard of you before? Obviously, you’re a gifted speaker and writer, from everything that I’ve been hearing from everyone who heard you speak and is now reading your book.”
And it was true—all afternoon and evening, I’d been seeing people here and there reading my book, and they’d tell me that my book was excellent and that I’d given the best talk that they’d heard in years. My God, what a great feeling this was after so many years of rejection. Man, so much had happened to me since I’d driven up this morning from Oceanside. Suddenly, I felt completely drained.
“I’d like to take a rain check on that beer, if you don’t mind,” I said. “It’s been a big day for me. I need to go to my room.”
“Okay,” he said, grinning. “Have a good rest. I just wanted to shake the hand of the man who finally spoke up to that ballbuster. Hell, I’ve known Gladys for fifteen years and no one has ever had the guts to put her in her place.”
“Goodnight,” I said.
“Goodnight,” he answered. “But I have one question to ask you,” he added. “Did you really have two hundred and sixty rejections before you were published, or was that a publicity stunt?”
I took a deep breath. “No,” I said, “it’s no stunt. It’s real.”
He looked at me in silence for a long time, then said, “But surely there must hav
e been at least one teacher who helped you along the way. It couldn’t have all been negative.”
I took in another deep breath, thought a moment, then shrugged.
He nodded. “Okay, but think about what I said,” he said. “And before your next talk—because I’m sure you are going to become a frequent speaker on the circuit, the way people are responding to you—it would help us immensely if you could also tell us about any good experiences that you might have had.
“Wake-up talks are good, but we also need to know about those teachers who had a constructive influence on you. Believe me, most of my teachers are smart enough and honest enough to admit what’s wrong with our system, so we also need to know what works. Congratulations,” he said, extending his hand out to me again, “I admire your perseverance, and if you could tell us how you acquired this perseverance, that in itself would help us tremendously.”
I nodded. I could see that this man was absolutely right; what I’d given was a wake-up talk and there was a lot more that I still needed to learn—not just about public speaking—but writing, too.
But my God, my wounds were all still so fresh that it was very hard for me to remember any good experiences that I might have ever had at school.
“Thank you,” I said to him, and I left the bar and started across the lobby. I was feeling pretty woozy. It was a good thing that I’d accepted the hotel room that Karen had offered me. I could never have made it home. I just didn’t know what had come over me when I’d looked out at that sea of English teachers. It was like my heart and soul had leaped forward with so much hate and rage that I’d instantly wanted to kill! To scalp! To massacre! And I’d been fearless, completely trusting my instincts just like I did when I wrote. It was truly a good thing that I’d found writing as my outlet or I was sure I would have become a mass murderer, killing all those heartless, racist teachers who’d beat us Mexican kids down since kindergarten with the complete blessing of our one-sided, dark-ages educational system.
Shit, by the third grade, I’d been so terror-stricken of school, that I’d become a regular bed wetter. I thanked mi mama that she’d known how to put me to bed with prayer and song, and that she’d bought a rubber mat to put over my mattress, giving me enough hope and encouragement so I could go on. And I thanked mi papa who’d always said to me that we, los Indios, the Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and give fertilizer or they’d die. But weeds, indigenous plants, you gave them nada-nothing; hell, you even poisoned them and put concrete over them, and those weeds would still break the concrete, reaching for the sunlight of God. “That’s the power of our people,” my father would tell me, “we’re the weeds, LAS YERBAS DE TODO EL MUNDO!”
By the time I’d crossed the lobby and gotten in the elevator, I was so tired I was ready to drop. Hell, I’d never spoken in public before. I hadn’t been on the debate team in school. Wow, I’d never had any idea that public speaking could be so tough. In my room, I undressed, cracked open the window, got in bed, and thanked Papito Dios for having gifted me another wonderful day in Paraíso.
This was also what my old Yaqui Indian grandmother, Doña Guadalupe, had taught me to do each night: to give thanks to God at the end of each day, for every day was, indeed, a paradise given to us by the Almighty. Stardust was what we humans really were, my old grandmother had always explained to me, coming to this planeta as Walking Stars just as Jesus had come to do Papito Dios’ will on this tierra firma.
I went to sleep feeling very good because I knew that I’d done my best with all my heart and soul. I didn’t feel the least bit bad about how I’d gotten in those teachers’ faces and told them what I really thought. After all, hadn’t Jesus gotten mad at the money lenders on the temple steps?
But also, I could now understand very clearly that that man from the teachers’ union had been right and there was still a lot that I had to learn. Who were those schoolteachers who had helped me? And what was it in my life that had given me the heart…the guts…to go on and on and never give up, no matter what!
CHAPTER two
Dreaming, I slept in my large, spacious hotel room. Dreaming of all the different waters that had gone slipping, sliding under the bridge on which I’d been living mi vida. A bridge bridging my Indian and European roots, a bridge bridging my Mexican and American cultures, a bridge bridging my indigenous beliefs and Catholic–Christian upbringing, a bridge bridging my first few years of life in the barrio and then my life on our rancho grande, then that whole big world outside of our gates. I slept, feeling so warm and snug underneath the covers of the big hotel bed in Long Beach, the Pacific Ocean slapping the seashore quietly in the near distance as I dreamed…remembering back, like in a faraway, foggy dream, that yes, there really had once been a very special teacher who’d helped me along my way. He’d been a substitute teacher and he’d only been with us for two or three days, but my God, he’d touched my very soul in that short time.
I now remembered very clearly that I’d been in the seventh grade. I’d been going to the Army Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California, about four miles south of our rancho grande. Originally, I’d started school in Oceanside in an old public grammar school that no longer exists. This school had been located just west of the present Oceanside High School. For five years, I went to public school, but I’d been having such a difficult time that my mother had finally spoken to our priest and it was decided that I’d be sent to Catholic school, thinking that I’d get more personal attention. But it hadn’t helped. By the sixth grade, I was still two grade levels behind in reading. This was when it was suggested to my parents by our insurance broker, Jack Thill, that I should be put in our local military school where I’d be taught discipline, and with enough discipline, I would surely learn to read.
On my first day of military school, I was terror-stricken. My older brother Joseph, who’d died when I was nine years old, had gone to this school and my parents told me that Joseph had loved it, but I didn’t believe them, because, within the first few minutes of my first day, I was already in deep trouble. Living in Southern California, I’d never worn woolen clothes before. My uniform was made of wool and made me itch so much that I couldn’t stand still when they told us to line up, stand at attention, keep our eyes to the front, and stop fidgeting. And my God, I’d thought the nuns were bad where I’d gone to parochial school for three years, but this military school was far worse.
A fellow cadet, not much older than me, put his face in my face and yelled at me to stop fidgeting, that I wasn’t a girl, that I was now a cadet of the Army Navy Academy and that I had to stand up tall, pull my shoulders back, keep my eyes to the front, and keep still. I was so terrified that I was ready to pee. I was short so how could I ever stand up tall? And my uniform was making my skin itch so much that I couldn’t, for the life of me, stop fidgeting. Still my fellow cadet continued to shout at me right in my face. And his mouth was huge and full of big white teeth.
Within days, I came to realize that this was how cadets got promoted into being corporals and sergeants: by intimidating us other cadets with their in-your-face-shouting. I also came to realize that these cadets, that the school officials put in charge of us new recruits, truly enjoyed their power. In fact, I could now see that some of them had the same little, sneaky smiles on their faces when they shouted at us that I’d seen on the meanest public-school teachers and Catholic nuns.
My mother saved me again, just as she had saved me when she’d bought that rubber mat and put it on my bed so I wouldn’t ruin another mattress. She bought some silky material—when I told her about my uniform itching—and she hand-sewed the silky material into the back and front of my shirt and the thighs of my pants. I loved mi mama, and she promised to never tell anyone about the baby-blue material that she’d sewed into my uniform, just as she’d promised to never tell anyone about the rubber mat that was on my bed.
I’d been going to the Army Navy Academy for about six months and this morning when I arrived, I figured
that it was all going to be the same old routine until we were assembled, lined up, and marched into English class. Our regular English teacher, Captain Moses, wasn’t present. At the front of our room was a man we’d never seen before. He wasn’t in uniform. He wore regular civilian clothes and he was short and blond, looked very muscular, and had a huge smile.
“Good morning!” he said to us in a big happy-sounding voice. After we took our seats, he pointed to a large poster that he’d pinned on the wall of someone skiing in the mountains.
“My name is Mr. Swift and I’m your substitute teacher,” he said. “Mr. Moses, from what I understand, is home sick. My wife and I are from Colorado…where we were…ski bums! That’s why we are substitute teachers. We moved to Southern California earlier this year to become surf bums, and this is why we will continue to be substitute teachers. I met my wife, Jody, at the University of Boulder, at Boulder, Colorado. She was a track star. I bet that even today, she could give your best sprinters at this school a run for their money in the hundred-yard dash. I’ve never been able to beat her, and I’m pretty fast myself.”
Smiling one of the biggest smiles that I’d ever seen, he now glanced around the classroom, giving each of us personal acknowledgment. This teacher seemed so different from all of our other teachers. He didn’t look tired. He just seemed to be bursting with vitality and happiness. “Jody and I were married,” he said, sitting on the front part of his desk, “right after college. We both love sports. In Colorado, we loved skiing and here in Southern California, we love to get up at daybreak and hit the surf before coming to school. There’s no feeling in all the world like coming down a slope in the Rockies, going forty, fifty miles an hour, except for feeling the wind and spray flying past your face when you catch a good wave. We both love speed! We plan to build a sailboat with our own hands, have two-point-five children, and sail around the world.”