Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part II)

Without seeking the notoriety, I became the center of attention at my new school—the Colegio Salesiano, in Granada, Nicaragua. Out of a population of four hundred students, I was the only one who didn't speak Spanish like a native. In fact, my command of the language was so atrocious that during recess any outsider would be able to discern my location: I was the one in the middle of a roving circle of adolescent boys that fired questions at me and then laughed uproariously at my convoluted answers.

The fame was certainly not of the kind one seeks voluntarily.

After a week or so of merciless teasing, I started to dread going to school. The harsh and often cruel jokes that my Spanish elicited began to weigh my spirit down. Fortunately, my fifth-grade teacher, Señor Frank Arana, was most understanding of my plight as his only "foreign" student, allowing me to make mistakes he would never tolerate in the rest of my classmates. Señor Arana seemed to have complete faith in my ability to catch up, and this belief encouraged me to work hard to master the language as quickly as possible.

The key players in this quest proved to be my new extended family. In addition to my parents and two sisters, seven other relatives—my maternal grandmother, two unmarried great aunts, my mother's sister, and her husband and daughter—shared the same roof. We lived in a marvelously large colonial home that had plenty of room for everyone. With three generations to play and interact with in my free time—and exclusively in Spanish—my acquisition of the language was placed on an accelerated track.

Particularly vital during this transition stage were my great-aunts—Chintita and Hildita, as they preferred their nieces and nephews to call them. Brimming with wit and good humor, they turned Spanish into an adventure—a game in which I learned to gauge the effect my choice of words and phrasing had on people and of how this, in turn, affected the way I was perceived. My great-aunts also taught me how to turn the tables on those who teased me, and before long my responses to their obnoxious questions were making others laugh at the interrogators, rather than at me. And to my great relief, once I ceased being an easy target, the game ceased to be fun for my tormentors.

Thus, thanks to my great-aunts' coaching and my desire, once again, to blend in—as well as wanting to please Señor Arana—within six months of my arrival to Nicaragua I was speaking Spanish like a native.

From that point on, Spanish became my joy, my public and private treasure. I began to absorb the language with every pore of my being, and I assimilated into Nicaraguan culture to such an extent that before the conclusion of my first year there, the students who once laughed at me forgot that I had once been foreigner, an exotic type of "gringo" who looked exactly like them, as opposed to having blond hair and blue eyes. (In that era, before the emergence of ethnic minorities in the United States, all gringos were supposed to look like Brad Pitt.) Moreover, to my great satisfaction and pride, at the conclusion of eighth grade I received the award for top student in the literature class. I had competed against the very students who three years earlier had teased me mercilessly for my awkwardness of their native language and I was now outperforming them. That accomplishment made me fall completely in love with Spanish.

As a result, my identity shifted once again, in the opposite direction. I now lived in what once had been an alien world with both feet planted firmly on the ground; and I was absolutely loving every minute of the experience of moving away from my "Americaness" toward fully embracing my Nicaraguan heritage.