Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer

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СКАЧАТЬ young trackers who can find your suitcases and move the car before daylight,” said another voice. The room was now full of men and women. Someone reached over behind them, put another blanket on them and hugged them both. “You are home and you are safe now. No one can touch you here. So, here you will stay.”

      “But, our children,” said the woman. “They are on the next flight.”

      “I will send them an emissary,” said the man. “They will be safe in his hands.” And then he added, “I hope. . . .”

      1

      When the letter arrived that would change her life, Jo was so busy she simply gave it a cursory glance and tossed it back on her desk. By the end of the night it was lost under a pile of Slossen literacy tests and English as a Second Language booklets. In fact, had Jo not needed to delve deeply into these reading assessment tools, digging for clues on how to help her students conquer the English language, the letter might have remained lost for weeks, like some forgotten artifact sifting down into a mound on which a new generation has built its own version of a city. After all, Jo was building knowledge into her students, and in that quest she was completely immersed. At the moment the envelope arrived, she was concentrating on the knotty problem of how to explain the letter c to a class of new English language learners, some of whom had perfect sound/symbol correlations in their birth languages.

      “So, Professora Josefina,” said Nilka, a pensive, thirty-something Guatemalan, currently toiling as a maid, but capable of so much more. “You are saying that c is both s and k in sound, but this poor little letter has no voice of its own?”

      “Yes, yes, that’s it,” agreed Jo.

      “So, then,” pursued Nilka, “why not retire it? Let the other letters do their work. It would be so much more easy to read. When someone does not do their share, we let them go. It is not like in some countries where the más viejos—the oldest of the old—have no pension and must work on and on when they no longer can serve. Why must c remain on the job—on the page?”

      Jo looked down at her teacher’s guide. No help there. “I don’t know, Nilka,” she confessed. “We are kind of stuck with c. It is—well, it is . . . like a—ummm—chameleon. It changes color, depending on its surroundings. When it is—well, say, on the beach in Puerto Rico with the soft trade winds blowing, relaxing with its fun friends like the i and the e, then it is soft and relaxed, like it was ‘sipping cider’—you see?—c-i-d-e-r—cider. But, if it’s in downtown Santo Domingo, struggling next to tough vowels like a and i, like being stuck in traffic on a street like Avenida Bolivar, with truck drivers pounding on their horns, taxi drivers banging up on the sidewalks, passing each other at the risk of everyone’s life and limb, buses shouldering everyone else out, while motorcycles zip everywhere like so many mosquitos, and then! Then! The fruit truck in front of you suddenly stops and the driver squeezes out and blocks the street, and every horn goes berserk. I mean, crazy—loco! Then the c is hard and tough, like a k sound in cane or clutch.”

      “Ahhh,” said the whole class, shaking their heads in agreement, “like a chameleon.”

      “It is ever hiding, ever changing,” pursued Jo. “But you can see the clues in the company it keeps: soft like an s with i and e, hard like a k with a and o and the consonants.”

      Gratified, Jo watched her class of seven dutifully scratch that mystifying information into their notebooks.

      Josefina Archer, known to all and sundry as Jo, was 29 years old, a former community organizer before she received God’s call to help poor people become something even greater than simply middle class. As in everything she did, she had pursued her early career change with diligence and, after seminary training in Boston both in Spanish and English at the Center for Urban Ministerial Education, she returned to her home town of Richfield, New Jersey, called to pastor a small new Spanish church development at David Brainerd Presbyterian Church of Richfield, or “David B,” as the parishioners called it.

      Coming back to Richfield after three years away had been quite interesting. Everyone in the Spanish community still regarded Jo as their community organizer, even though they kept correcting themselves to call her Reverenda now, but Jo didn’t mind, because she found that working in such a helping dimension to her ministry was natural for her. The literacy and second language learning center at David B was a natural gift to Richfield’s Hispanic community—an extension of what she had developed when she was still Richfield’s Hispanic community organizer. But, now, instead of being in charge, she was just the director of one of its centers. The search for a new organizer was still grinding along, but she treated the interim director of the Hispanic office, a younger woman from Costa Rica, with deference and support. With Jo’s center, another on Second Street in a small mission there run by a charismatic and beloved Mexican minister named Mercedes Del Rio, another at the local Richfield State College, another in Richfield State Penitentiary, and a few others at notable places, this program was thriving.

      Here at David B, Jo had recruited the clergy couple who pastored the English congregation, Pastors Ron and Toni Bright, to help her. She also attracted an interested parishioner of the Brights—one Lawrence Fennelman, who Jo feared was more interested in her than in the program—and to her delight, her own dad, James Archer, who was semiretired and had a wonderful touch with the students. She had also enlisted her stepmom, Lea, who was always willing to try anything, but she was so brusque and quick to closure that everybody got discouraged. Easy does it works with adult learners.

      Well, obviously, c was plenty to chew on and ingest for one night, so Jo decided to pause there and see how this had sunk in. “Okay,” she swept the room with a challenging glance, “so how sharp do you think you are? Think you can handle a few drills?”

      “I think I got it,” announced Nilka.

      “I don’t know if I got it,” warned Nilka’s mom, who always knitted through the entire session.

      “I think she got it,” chuckled Raul, making the traditional Hispanic gesture of pursing both lips and pointing them in Nilka’s direction.

      “All right, then, let’s see,” said Jo. “C-i-t-y”—what is it?”

      “Kitty,” said Nilka’s mom hopefully—like downtown Santo Domingo, hhaarrdd!”

      “No, Mama,” said Nilka. “It is soft—it is with the i—the iiiiii! You see?” Mama obviously didn’t see.

      Oh, oh, thought Jo, my illustration overpowered my content—teaching is impossible! “Look, forget, the example,” said Jo quickly to the six other puzzled faces confronting her. “Just go with the vowels—hard vowels, soft vowels. Just like Nilka said.”

      “Bowels?” said Nilka’s mother.

      “I think we’ve had enough for tonight,” groaned Jo. “We’ll pick this up again next week. Oh, and you’re all doing so well,” she added swiftly. “Don’t worry about getting this, right off the bat. It’s hard for everybody. But, you’re all doing just fine. Just fine! We’ll keep at it until everybody’s got it.”

      “Thank you, Profesora Josefina,” said Nilka, and everybody joined in. Nilka’s mother gathered up her knitting and off they all went as Jo sat back in her chair and puffed out a great sigh.

      “How’s it going, JoJo?” asked her dad, leaning into the room. “All done for the night?”

      “Yes, and done in by the elusive c.”

      Dad chuckled. СКАЧАТЬ