Scene- [Rivera sitting in the cemetery and Roadreeguess is visiting his grandma's grave]
Roadreeguess- Hola!
Rivera- Hola amiga! I need help. I need to come up with a lie. If I go home my parents are going to whip me.
Roadreeguess- What's going on?
Rivera- This guy comes up to me and said that he doesn't like Mexicans because they steal. I hit this guy because he hit my ear. Am I going to get expelled? I dislike being here, they check my hair for lice. They mostly do it to the migrant workers' children. She then puts on top of my head a large jar of what looks like Vaseline and made me take off all my clothes. I'm getting tired of the embarrassment just because I'm from a different country. You know what the school administer told me? He said that “they could care less if I expel him... they need him in the fields” (94).
Roadreeguess- That's why I'm glad I'm an adult now. I remember those school days. Back then the kids around me were freaked out over the first day of school. When my parents left, I remained curious about my surroundings to see I'm finally in the public life. I noticed my teacher couldn't even pronounce my name right. That's when my culture started to tarnish.
Rivera- I wonder if I never was patriotic towards my culture would I still be safe in school?
Roadreeguess- We have an advantage. We are both bilingual and so that means we have 2 ways of being individualized. We have private identity and then we assimilate and absorb until it turns into public identity. We have both social and political advantages. I lost something and gain something. And the pros and cons list can go on for eternity.
Rivera- What are you doing in the cemetery?
Roadreeguess- I'm visiting my grandma. my grandma would mock me when my Spanish started to get worse. But I still used to sit with her and even though I was silent I liked her intimate utterances. Intimate because it was a family loved one. When I speak English, it's a cue to public life. But the strange thing is when I saw my grandma dead, she looked like she was out in public. There were many people who were not impressed with the way I started to forget Spanish. The lady in the Mexican food store gave me the look of judgment. My uncle would throw lame jokes about it. The reason why I don't speak good Spanish anymore is because it all started out when the nun came over one day to talk to my parents about my bad English. She told them that it's best to stop speaking Spanish in front of me and start speaking in English. Didn't the nun know by their replies that they don't know English either? What a disaster. I'm put in a different mood when I speak Spanish. I'm more excited because it's easier to express myself. I can't help that this language got deep-rooted in my childhood brain. Whatever language you grow up with, it'll stick to you the best. So I'm glad you're standing up for our culture.
Rivera- Slowly I'll make my way up until I can change the law stating people from out of state can fish around the cemetery.
[Both look at each other then jump into the cemetery river with knives. They can't fish but who said anything about knifing? It's the new Mexican version of fishing]
Question- How much would it have to take to give up your own culture?
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