Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Bad Mexican
Nearly every award I have received in life has been at least partly due to my heritage. But what kind of Latina can’t speak Spanish?
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But in South Texas, you are either one or the other. Searching the classroom for an answer, I noticed my best friend, Melida, standing over by the brown kids. “I’m Hispanic,” I announced. The teacher nodded, and I joined the Mexicans. A few minutes later, a new teacher arrived and led us to another room, where she passed around a primer and asked us to read aloud. That’s when I realized the difference between the other students and me. Most of them spoke Spanish at home, so they stumbled over the strange English words, pronouncing “yes” like “jess” and “chair” like “share.” When my turn came to read, I sat up straight and said each word loud and clear. The teacher watched me curiously. After class ended, I told her that I wanted to be “where the smart kids are.” She agreed, and I joined the white class the following day.
For the next eight years, whenever anyone asked what color I was, I said white. It was clearly the way to be: Everyone on TV was white, the characters in my Highlights magazine were white, the singers on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 were white (or black). White people even populated my books: There were runaways who slept in imperial chambers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sweet Valley High twins who roared around California in convertibles, girls named Deenie who rubbed their Special Places with a washcloth until they got a Special Feeling. (I sat in the bathtub for hours, trying to find this Special Place. Was it that spot behind my elbow? Or just beneath my toe?)
True, I often wondered when their primos would burst onto the scene in their lowriders. And how come nobody ever ate barbacoa or cracked piñatas or shopped for empanadas at H-E-B? But I took no offense at these absences. White people’s stories just seemed worthier of being told. And so I grew closer to Grandma in Kansas because she resembled the feisty Jewish grandmothers in my books more than Abuelita, who lived on a ranch thirty miles out of town. I used to beg Grandma for stories about life on the prairie as she baked me vats of macaroni and cheese. She regaled me with the adventures of my great-great-uncle Jake, a hobo who saw America with his legs dangling over the edge of a freight train. When I wound up across the kitchen counter from Abuelita hand-rolling tortillas, however, I’d sit in silence—and not just because of the language barrier. I simply couldn’t fathom that she had anything interesting to say. I’d watch her flip the masa on the burner and wish she’d whip up something like Are-You-There-God-It’s-Me-Margaret’s grandma would. Like matzo ball soup. I’d never tried this dish before, but it sounded like mini-meatballs floating in cheese sauce.
I switched back to being Mexican my senior year of high school. I was thumbing through the college scholarship bin in the career center when my guidance counselor called me into her office and asked a familiar question: “What are you, Stephanie? Hispanic or white?”
Before I could respond, she offered that my SAT scores weren’t high enough for funding if I was considered white. If I was Hispanic, she predicted, doors would swing open. “Think about it,” she said.
I did for about three seconds, then changed the little W on my transcript to a big fat H. Suddenly, I qualified for dozens of additional scholarships. I applied for them all, and acceptance letters poured in. Not only was my freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin fully funded, but I received free tutoring, a faculty adviser, and a student mentor, plus invitations to myriad clubs and mixers. It was quite exciting—until I started meeting the other Latino scholarship recipients. Some were the children of migrant workers. A few had spent summers picking grapefruit themselves. Their skin was brown, and they had endured hardships because of it. I quickly realized that I had reaped the benefits of being a minority but none of the drawbacks. Guilt overwhelmed me. Should I give back the money I’d received? Transfer to a cheaper school? Or try to become that H emblazoned across my transcripts?
Mexifying myself was fun at first. I decorated my room with images of Frida Kahlo and the Virgen de Guadalupe. I taught English to Mexican kids and drank lots of margaritas. I changed my white-bread middle name (Ann) to my mother’s maiden name (Elizondo) and made everyone use it. I even got a Colombian boyfriend (bad idea).
Then a Chicano politics class inspired me to work as a minority recruiter at the office of admissions. Half of our student staff was Mexican; the other half black. I became the volunteer coordinator, which meant I cajoled scores of students out of bed on Saturday mornings to help us call promising minority high school seniors and lure them to our school. We then sent buses to fetch them to Austin, where our volunteers showed them around campus and played host for the night. The afternoon of the first arrival, our boss called me to the podium to pair up the “mentors” with the “mentees.” Not only did I butcher some of the black students’ names, but I couldn’t remotely pronounce Echeverría or Guillermoprieto. The auditorium was soon in a mild uproar. “Who you think you are, Miss?” someone shouted.
For a biracial, nothing is more humiliating than this: trying to be half of yourself while the other half keeps intervening—and getting caught. I tried to crack a joke about it. “A bad Mexican,” I replied. But my voice trembled.
Just then, my colleague Rosa tapped my shoulder. I had an urgent phone call, she whispered. After excusing myself to the audience, I hurried off the stage as Rosa resumed the matching. There was, of course, no phone call. Rosa had simply tried to save some dignity—our organization’s, and what remained of my own.
That was more than a decade ago. I’ve since made several attempts to learn Spanish, enrolling in classes and stockpiling workbooks. But I dread using it. My Spanish sounds like a failure to me, as though everything I manage to say is an admission of what more I cannot. What will Mexicans say when they hear it: “¿Tu mamá es mexicana? ¿Híjole, what happened to you?”
I decide to move to Mexico, to find out.
Copyright © 2008 Stephanie Elizondo Griest. From the forthcoming book Mexican Enough, by Stephanie Elizondo Griest, to be published by Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., N.Y. Printed by permission.
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