There’s This Hole in My Cultural Tongue, or My Crisis of Ethnicity…

My mother has a few stories of her own to tell. My mother’s stories would be enough to give you lockjaw and twist your spleen. My mother’s stories are fetched far beyond any modern-day soap opera story line.

My mother’s stories are sad and true.

My mother was born in 1955 in Barcelona, Spain. For a few years, she lived in Caracas, Venezuela. For a few more years, she returned to Spain, and a few years after that, she relocated to Puerto Rico for about six months. Her siblings, who were still in Caracas, joined her there, and this is where they lived while waiting for their green cards. Their mother, my grandmother, had been in the States for quite some time trying to build a decent life-nest before they arrived. They all have stories: my mom, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncle.

But they aren’t stories any of them want to tell.

When my mother moved to the States, she was 14 years old, and she lived in New Jersey. She spoke no English, but she went to an American high school, went to every American class. And, yes, she did have to walk to school…in the snow. Back then, there was no such thing as ESL or English as a Second Language; it was FOF, or Fight or Flight. Perhaps it was SOS, or Sink or Swim. And she fought a good fight, kept abreast with each labored stroke because she learned how to speak English by watching Sesame Street and The Monkees, which explains her life-long crush on Davy Jones. She tells me that learning to speak English was one of her most difficult accomplishments--next only to raising me, that is.

My mother first married at age 19, married a Southern, roughneck boy. He was my father, and he is dead now and comes to me often in my dreams as if to make peace, but I digress, and he deserves a story all his own. No one ever told my mother that there was such a thing as birth control, so, at almost 20, my mother gave birth to me. Our birthdays are just over a month apart. I’m a Cancer; she’s a Leo, and sometimes, when she wants (or needs) to, she will eat me alive and spit me back out with a different perspective. My mother did a lot of growing up in a very short amount of time, and it was hard on her. I don’t blame her for anything, and I like to say that we have a great relationship, albeit a very long distance one. But this is not to say I don’t have a bone to shake at her, because I do.

Learning to speak English on her own was so traumatic for my mother that she made a secret vow to herself that her child would never suffer like that. Her child would only speak English, and this was a promise she refused to break. I understand where she’s coming from. I really do. But every single day, I wish I could speak Spanish. I feel like there’s a hole in my cultural tongue. It contributes to my crisis of ethnicity. And when you fill out as many job applications as I have been, it becomes a repetitive crisis. Ethnicity and race? Um, I dunno. As many things as I do know, I don’t know how to check off these little boxes. Do I check Hispanic (Non-Latino)? Do I check White, even though my father’s mother was American Indian? Can I just check Two or More races and leave the Ethnicity blank? I don’t speak Spanish, and I cannot prove my grandmother was Cherokee.

I’m without a community, but I certainly look and talk like your plain-old, average white girl.

And when I get a job making some money, I'm buying myself The Rosetta Stone software.