You’ve heard this story before, but it bears repeating.When I was in the second grade, my speaking of the English language apparently stunk or was not up to the standards demanded by the Dominican nuns at Saint Rita’s Parochial School in the South Bronx, across the street from P.S. 18 and the Patterson Projects in a neighborhood full of Irish, Italian, and Jewish families that would soon escape to places like the North Bronx, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Long Island. I hear even New Jersey and Staten Island. Ostensibly, it was to move on up to the good times, but we knew that it was to get away from the invasion of colored people that moved in next door in the first of many public housing projects to come to the South Bronx (we have to live somewhere). 

Back to my story that’s been burned into my head for nearly sixty-eight, sixty-nine, or seventy years. It was the second grade for sure, and I don’t remember the name of the nun (I’ll call her Sister Mary David Jesus for this story), but I do remember her being sort of nice for a nun. I don’t remember her beating us with a nightstick; I mean ruler (those big, long, thick momma jammas that would make you piss on yourself at the sight and threat of them alone). I remember her telling my parents at one of those parent-teacher events that my mother and father attended, so it must have been important, considering my father worked two jobs and there were siblings at home. In explaining the state of my education, I clearly remember being told that I could do better if I learned to speak English like an American. You know the language of true Americans because English was the master race language. I’m sure she didn’t say “master race.” I must have heard her wrong. No, she was probably trying to explain to my parents that learning the lingo would push me far versus just speaking Spanish, which would be useless in the United States of America. 

Sure there may be some fellow students who spoke Italian, or Polish, or even Gaelic (called Irish by those who live there) at home with their family but that’s okay because they are already true Americans at heart versus all those Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and the occasional Cuban who would sail into New York Harbor on the SS Marine Tiger or land at LaGuardia Airport in search of a Dream like so many others before them (they just wanted to get rich like everyone else) and they spoke Spanish, the language of those conquerors from across the Atlantic Ocean in Europe, Spain, the country that like so many other European countries invaded, smashed, beat, cut, shot, raped, subjugated, trounced, converted in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, their way through the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America and yes, plenty of lands across the America that would come to be the United States of America just like every other European country because that’s what they did and England was just one of the many so the idea that they alone had a monopoly on language always kind of made me laugh because their version of a language and the version of the language of Sister Mary David Jesus are nowhere near the same. 

What she should have said to my parents was “Here in New York City, specifically The Bronx, we speak something else, our version of English, American” the language that over time would absorb words/slang collected from everyone who came to these shores including not only Europeans but also Africans, Middle Easterners, Russians, Chinese, French from Haiti, Japanese, I mean I’m talking everyone from every part of the world and in time, she should know that it became a thing to know more than one language, that it would be a premium that could get you more money in a job, allow you to learn about people from all over the world. Travel would become a thing that would open a whole new world for everyone like my father who was born in Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States and also an American Citizen since 1917, who joined the army and posted to Panama during World War Two (have you ever been to Panama Sister Mary David Jesus? I bet not). My mother was from the Dominican Republic and came to New York City bringing with her language, culture, and a history of a dictatorship supported and kept in place by that same American foreign policy that kept so many other countries in the Caribbean and the other countries south of the Rio Grande in chains and corruption so excuse me if we don’t bow down to your American version of English. Yeah, that’s so limiting, so myopic, so narrow-minded. 

But, my parents, being or trying to be good Americans in the America of the fifties, caved in and stopped speaking Spanish to me so that by the time I graduated from Saint Rita’s, I was only speaking a version of New York/South Bronx American, and while I struggled over the years to try learning Spanish again in High School and Community College only to be shamed by some teachers and bilingual speaking born in the U.S.A. smart-ass that “You should be ashamed of yourself” that you can’t or won’t learn to speak, the Mother Tongue (qué bruto eres), you know the tongue that was imposed on us not unlike the English language was imposed on us except I was born in this here U.S. of A. and for me this is the language, American, that I have grown up with and that I use every day to write, speak, exhale, inhale, so even if I only know a few Spanish words but understand many more and have over the years picked-up some words in French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Yiddish, German, slang from all across this country and world, I’m okay with who I am today, I’ve traveled to Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, Japan and can call many folk from around the world my friends (can you Sister Mary David Jesus?), I am the American who has no problem absorbing every culture that washes over me because in my heart I truly believe that’s what makes me a true American.