“I...no.” I don’t tell her I’m not even sure what those are.
She turns away, leading me toward a table. “That’s too bad,” she says again. I appear to be a deep disappointment to her even though we’ve only just met. She gives me a stack of photocopied pages from a book. “I’m Betsy, by the way,” she says.
I am tempted to answer, Ross? But I don’t.
My first student is a man named Florencio who sits across from me looking nervous. I use the word man loosely, because he looks nearly as young as I am, and he’s slight. His hands are rough, full of scars and with a dry patch on each index finger. Betsy tells me most of the students who come to learn English at the library are the same guys who wait for work by the overpass near the highway that runs through the next town over. But I have a hard time squaring that with Florencio’s dark blue jeans with the white stitching and his fresh haircut, which looks just like the one a bunch of the guys in my school have—short on the sides, spiky in front. I squint at him to make sure I don’t actually know him from school. This seems to make him more nervous.
“Hello, Florencio,” I say, following Betsy’s instructions to speak to the students only in English. “I am Luisa.”
He smiles and nods. He looks unsure.
“Have you done any ESL classes before?”
He smiles nervously, his eyes blank.
I side-eye Betsy. She’s sitting down with a student several tables away, and there are three other tutor-student pairs between me and her.
I drop my voice lower and ask again, this time in Spanish. Hearing me speak a language he understands makes Florencio’s eyes light up, and he raises his voice an octave as he responds. This is his first ESL class. He arrived in the US only two months ago. He is staying with his cousin, and he already has a full-time job working for a landscaper. I want to ask him how old he is, but he doesn’t volunteer the information, and it seems rude to ask.
I quickly switch back to the sheet that Betsy gave me. Introduction Games, it says. I skim the instructions and realize it’s an activity for a large group. I flip to the next one. It’s called Name Game. It’s also for a group, but I think Florencio and I can pull this off. I explain the rules to him. I cheat and explain them in Spanish, but insist we do the game in English.
“I’ll start,” I say. “My name is Luisa and I like to read books.”
He smiles. “Me name is Florencio,” he says, sounding each syllable out slowly. “I like me home.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But what do you like to do?”
“I like me home,” he repeats, his grin wide and earnest.
Tuesday nights become part of my routine. Fall progresses, and soon I can’t see the trees through the big, round window, because it’s dark even when we start. I shift from T-shirts and cut-up jeans to bulky sweaters and tights under my pants. Florencio comes every week with his sheet filled out, his homework done as if I have the power to fail him, or even grade him. I am humbled by the responsibility. I try to make the connection—if he’s trying so hard, maybe I should try too. One day he shows up with a black eye, but when I ask about it, he mutters something about a lawn mower and raps his knuckle on the handout to change the subject.
He learns quickly. He misses some classes, and when he does, I sit with another student. The following week he apologizes and explains that his work ran late, too late for English class. Although I teach others, none have Florencio’s ease with the language, the delight that sparkles in his eyes when he understands a hard-to-translate saying or makes a connection to something he learned before. He tells me stories about deciphering billboards and understanding an entire interview on the radio his boss was playing in the truck on the way to a job.
“Ahora tu,” he says, then catches himself. “You story.”
I let my mind wander over the events of my week. Amanda having a fight with Josh in the hall. Ms. Scofield calling me in for a progress meeting. It all feels impossibly small, not a thing worth his invitation.
Instead, I tell him the story of the curandero, how he knew we’d cross the border on a Tuesday. Florencio’s eyes get wide and serious. “Magic is real,” he says. Then he lets himself slip into Spanish to say, “Some people can touch it easier than others.”
In November, Ms. Scofield sits with me and picks out a list of colleges to which I should apply. My grades haven’t gotten better, but she says I can supplement my application with the volunteer work I’m doing, highlight my SAT scores and explain my extenuating circumstances. She lets that hang there, the only time she’s ever nodded at the elephant in the corner. I want to shake her, shake the optimism right out of her, the deeply American way she believes, in her marrow, that everything can work out. She doesn’t understand that it doesn’t always work out, not for people like me, not for the men at ESL, not for Florencio. She doesn’t get that grades don’t matter when you don’t have nine simple digits to write on your applications, when your passport is the wrong color, when you’re not eligible for in-state tuition or scholarships or loans, when your mother cleans hotel rooms for a living, which doesn’t leave a lot for books and board.
I don’t say any of these things. I take her printed list and fold it neatly before putting it in my pocket. I’ll throw it away in the hall when
