Free Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan

learned meant the ruler for some sinner’s outstretched hands. Her hard eyes focused directly on me. “The language of this classroom is English. This is America. We will only speak English in class and on the school grounds.” The warning hung ominously in the silent, crackling air. She didn’t need to say what we brownfaces knew: If I hear Spanish, you’re in trouble.
    As we burst from the confines of the room for our first recess, I searched for that tough whose foot I had stomped on the way in. But surprise! He was not in our class. This puzzled me, because I had thought there was only one first grade.
    I found him out on the school grounds, though. Or rather, he found me. When he saw me, he swaggered across the playground tailed by a ragtag bunch of boys like odds and ends of torn cloth tied to a kite. One of the boys from my class whispered to me in English with an accent that sounded normal—only Anglos really had accents. “Oh, oh! Chango, the third-grader. Don’t let his size fool you. He can beat up guys twice as big.” With which my classmate suddenly remembered something he had to do across the way by the water fountain.
    “
¡Ojos largos!
” Chango shouted at me. I looked up in surprise. Not so much for the meaning of the words, which was “big eyes,” but for his audacity in not only speaking Spanish against the nun’s orders, but shouting it in complete disregard of our jailers in black robes.
    “Yes?”I said in English like an obedient student. I was afraid he would see my pounding heart bumping the cloth of my shirt.
    Chango and his friends formed a semicircle in front of me. He placed his hands on his hips and thrust his challenging face at me, his words in the forbidden language. “Let’s see you do that again.”
    “What?” I said in English, even though I knew what.
    “And talk in Spanish,” he hissed at me. “None of your highfalutin Anglo.”
    Warily I looked around to see if any of the nuns were nearby. “
¿Qué?
” I repeated when I saw that the coast was clear.
    “You stepped on my foot, big eyes. And your big eyes are going to get it for that.”
    I shook my head urgently. “Not me,” I said in all innocence. “It must have been somebody else.”
    But he knew better. In answer, he thrust a foot out and flicked his head at it in invitation. I stood my ground as if I didn’t understand, and one of his orderlies laughed and hissed, “
¡Gallina!
”
    The accusation angered me. I didn’t like being called chicken but a glance at the five of them waiting for me to do something did wonders for my self-restraint.
    Then Chango swaggered forward, his arms out low like a wrestler’s. He figured I was going to be easy, but I hadn’t grown up with older cousins for nothing. When he feinted an arm at me, I stood my ground. At the next feint, I grabbed him with both hands, one on his wrist, the other at his elbow, and tripped him over my leg that snapped out like a jack-knife. He landed flat on his behind, his face changing from surprise to anger and then to caution, all in an instant.
    His cronies looked down at him for the order to jump me, but he ignored them. He bounced up immediately to showthat it hadn’t hurt or perhaps had been an accident and snarled, “Do that again.”
    I did. This time his look of surprise shaded into one of respect. His subordinates looked at each other in wonder and bewilderment. “He’s only a first-grader,” one of them said. “Just think how tough he’s going to be when he’s older.”
    Meanwhile I was praying that Chango wouldn’t ask me to do it a third time. I had a premonition that I had used up all of my luck. Somebody heard my prayer, because Chango looked up from the dirt and extended a hand. Was it an offer of friendship, or did he just want me to pull him to his feet?
    To show that I was a good sport, I reached down. Instead of a shake or a tug up, he pulled me down so I sprawled alongside him. Everybody laughed.
    “That’s