Andrew

17

In Broken English

It had been a long night at the supermarket, and the store had passed through my hands. The skin had stretched tightly over my fingers, which broke through the layers of plastered food as I sat in the break room chair. I was a cashier.
I was wise enough to save the cookies for my last break. My new friend sat in the chair opposite my own, head bowed under layers of oppression. I still had fourteen and a half minutes left in my break after finishing my cookies. What the hell?

“How are you, Felipe?” I asked. His head rose. “Hi.”

Still buried in oppression, his hunched back made his dirty uniform seem even dirtier. Even mine was still passingly clean after a long 6 hours at a grocery store. “You work in the kitchen?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said, and his tiny eyes looked at me. There was little future

that they could see. “How long have you worked here?” “Six year…before that, I no here…” he told me. His broken English was not the only broken thing about him. He wouldn’t have to talk to the customers in the kitchen… especially the wealthy, well-educated all-American ones.

He was not a young man, maybe in his 50s or even 60s. “Do you have kids?” “Yeah…they 3…eh…3 them…eh………” “Do you speak Spanish?” I asked. “Hablas Español?” “Sí.” “Bueno…aprendí un poquito en escuela…” “You learn…in the school?” he asked. “Yes,” I said.
For some reason, he kept talking with me in English, as if he couldn’t understand how someone like me could possibly understand his language. “So, how many kids do you have?” I asked. “Cuatro,” he said. “Four…eh…three in school, one no. He have job, like me. He twenty-four.

I eleven.”
He clearly didn’t know his numbers very well.
“How old are your other kids?” I asked. He looked confused again. “How…?” “Old,” I said. “You know…age.” “No…they no have job. They have school…

They zero. One is twenty-four. I eleven…”

He repeated this several more times before I realized. Not age. Money. Dollars per hour. He had to think about money a lot more than age. For me, it was the opposite. I was seventeen, but, in his terms, I was eight and a half.

“He better than me, no?” Felipe laughed. He was a proud father. I guess that was one thing that sort of pride was the same for both our peoples. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things in the world: he didn’t come to this country for himself.

He came for his children.