Free When in French by Lauren Collins Page B

start his senior year. At the security checkpoint, an agent asked him to empty his pockets. When he handed over a stack of flash cards, the agent called in a supervisor.
    â€œDo you know who did 9/11?” she asked.
    â€œOsama bin Laden,” George answered.
    She asked him if he knew what language Osama bin Laden spoke.
    â€œArabic.”
    â€œSo do you see why these cards are suspicious?”
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    O UR EDUCATION PERPETUATED the presumption of immobility, the map dot as lodestar. We took Spanish because it was theoretically useful in speaking to immigrants, which we never considered becoming.
    One
profesora
’s pedagogical method consisted of sitting on a stool and announcing that she would be willing to field anyquestions. The room would often remain silent. This was an interrogation no one wanted to conduct. It was said that the
profesora
herself planted the tiny notes that proliferated, like fungi, in the crevices of the classroom’s desks. Unfolded, they reportedly read, in English, “Ask Señora if she’s pregnant.”
    Another
profesora
had been a fixture at the school since many of my friends’ parents were students. During the summer she could be seen on the porch of her house, which overlooked the beach’s main drag, surveilling the action from a rocker. Each Monday she began class in the same manner.
    â€œÂ¿Qué hicieron el fin de semana?” she would ask.
    â€œHabía una fiesta,” somebody would reply.
    â€œQué interessssante,” she would purr, clapping her hands, delighting in her success in extracting the weekend scoop under the guise of practicing the imperfect versus the preterite.
    â€œÂ¿Y qué pasó a la fiesta?”
    â€œJosh
beso
’d Deanna.”
    â€œÂ¿Es verdad?”
    The
fin-de-semana
scuttlebutt would degenerate into a doubly substandard Spanglish and stretch until Friday. Atrocious pronunciation, accidental and deliberate, was indulged and even considered cute, especially for boys, especially for boy athletes, as foreign languages were thought to be a vaguely effeminate business. Failing to assimilate them was almost a form of good citizenship. We said “sacapuntas” a lot. We averaged a tense a year.
    At Christmas the señora assigned us a holiday-themed art project, accompanied by an original composition. An array of half-baked handicrafts accumulated on her windowsill: ice-cream-cone Christmas trees, ragweed wreaths, droopy-faced elves fashioned out of bleach jugs.
    The Friday before school let out for the holidays, a seniornamed Jon—an avid sailor, with rimless glasses and a grizzled ponytail—showed up carrying a lumpy brown papier-mâché figure. With paws and a stripe on its back, it appeared to be some sort of rodent. (We later learned that it had originally been an art-class prairie dog, repurposed for the occasion.) On the top of its misshapen head, Jon had placed a miniature Santa hat.
    Jon took his place in front of the class, clearing his throat. In a sonorous voice, he began to read:
    E L C ASTOR DE N AVIDAD
    Sentado, sonriendo, girando
    Yo soy caliente y mojado.
    Necesito el madero
    Que Santa trae por la chimenea.
    THE CHRISTMAS BEAVER
    Sitting, smiling, gyrating
    I am hot and wet.
    I need the wood
    That Santa brings down the chimney.
    â€œÂ¡Qué poema!” the señora cheered, breaking into rapturous applause. “¡Muy bueno!”
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    W HEN THE TIME CAME to think about college, I decided to apply to Princeton. It was an impulse: I liked the photograph on the front of the brochure, of a bicycle propped attitudinally against some arches. I knew that it would please mygrandmother, who lived nearby. (She was less excited by the link to John Zurn, who had matriculated there in 1942—his tenure was interrupted by the war—than she was by the lingering scent of Brooke Shields.) New Jersey, to me,