Difficult

Santiago is serious and formal, as many people are for their first visits. He wants to do things right. 

He wears a gray and black windbreaker, and clasps his substantial hands together on the table between us. His hair is thick and curly, youthful, like his face. He has been awake since the previous night, working in the kitchen at IHOP. 

People come to the literacy center with varying commands of English. Some meet the opening question of “What would you like to work on today?” with a visible mingling of confusion and embarrassment; others, like Santiago, understand perfectly, but have to work hard to speak. 

He haltingly explains, brow furrowed, hands working, that he has been having a hard time at work; that the previous week, while tying up a to-go bag of pancakes, he noticed a small tear in the bag. He stuck a post-it note to this effect next to the tear, but because of its illegibility, the host snatched the bag and sent pancakes scattering across the floor. 

Santiago got reamed out by his manager. His disappointment, in telling me so, is visible. 

“Difficult,” he says, shaking his head, exhaling. He wants help with pronunciation, writing, expression. He doesn’t want these things to happen anymore. 

After work, at 6am, he takes the bus to a class at the local language school. Then, he gets on another bus and comes here, to the library. 

As we talk, I periodically ask him about words, expressions, phrases. 

“Do you know what that ‘-ing’ means, at the end of a word?” 

He nods. “Present-progressive,” he recites. 

He and his sister came here together, when she was 16 and he 18. She is currently studying biology at Cal Berkeley. The difference between them, he labors to explain, is that she grew up living at their Grandfather’s, in a part of the country with better schools that taught English. 

“My school—” he says, shaking his head. 

We practice the ends-of-words, the kinds of hard-consonant sounds that don’t come naturally to many Spanish speakers—bag, save, stiff. 

He strains to create the V sound, activating his facial muscles in unfamiliar ways, pressing his upper teeth into his lower lip, pushing the air through. 

“Vvvvvvvv,” he emits, hands on the table, eyes periodically looking back and forth, somewhere between self-conscious and resolved. In a few hours, he will be back at work, with more bags to tie.