LA MORENITA, Chapter 11

On the first day of school, Araceli came early to meet Mrs. Nelson. Mrs. Nelson was a tall, thick-waisted woman with blonde hair, freckles, blue-grey eyes, and a pleasant smile. The smile vanished when she looked up and saw a Mexican girl standing beside her desk. She said, “Are you sure you’re in the right class? I don’t have any children with Hispanic surnames on my
roster.”
Araceli wasn’t sure what a surname was, but she peeked over Mrs. Nelson’s shoulder at the class list. She saw her name and touched it with her finger. “There I am,” she said. “Araceli Schmidt.”
“What an unusual name,” Mrs. Nelson said. You don’t look German to me.”
Araceli smiled. “I’m going to be your best student!”
After that, it seemed to Araceli that Mrs. Nelson went out of her way to make Araceli’s time in her class punishing. Her favorite trick was to lecture the class about penmanship while holding up one of Araceli’s handwritten papers as a shining example of what not to do. This was
because Araceli’s handwriting was tiny, light, and hard to decipher; the handwriting of a child who had secrets locked inside. Also the handwriting of a child who received little praise or encouragement for her thoughts and ideas. It wounded Araceli every time Mrs. Nelson ridiculed her. This made her write even smaller.
One day, while not paying attention during a spelling lesson, Araceli was writing her deepest thoughts. “Secretos maravillosos,” she scribbled then underlined. “Yo soy una princesa,” she continued. “Mis padres son el rey y la reina de Mexico, donde viven en un gran palacio.” Underneath it, she wrote in English: “God is the king of the universe, and I am His daughter. Kids make fun of me, because they don’t know who I am. My brother, Jesus, says to not pay attention. They are ignorant, and they’ll be sorry someday. The other day, Jesus and I walked by the river. He walked on the water. He told me to join him, so I did. He smiled and
asked me if I knew why I didn’t sink. I said no. He said it was because I am a child of God, and my Father would never let anything bad happen to me.”
Just then, the sheet of paper was ripped out from underneath her hands. She looked up and saw a red-faced Mrs. Nelson. “Don’t you ever not pay attention in my class again!” she said. She held up the paper for all to see. “If you were trying to improve your handwriting, I could understand. But the chicken-scratch you’ve been doing here is deplorable.” She studied the paper again, then said, “I’d read it to the class, but I can’t make out a single word. Apparently, some of this is supposed to be in Spanish.” She looked again. “Oh, wait a minute. There’s a part here where you’re calling yourself a child of God. I find that interesting, because that’s the last thing I would call you.”
Araceli could hear the other children snickering.
“I want you to get one thing straight, young lady,” Mrs. Nelson continued. “The nexttime you do this in my class, I’ll have you expelled, and you won’t be able to get back into my class until your parents come down and talk to me about your deplorable behavior.”
Araceli went through the rest of the year trying to be as invisible in Mrs. Nelson’s class as possible. But every now and then, she would get excited about a lesson, forget her resolve to hide, and her hand would shoot up.
On a day in late May, Mrs. Nelson turned her smiling face to the class and asked for thedefinition of the first vocabulary word written on the board. When Araceli raised her hand, Mrs. Nelson saw only the hand and said, “Yes?”
Araceli said, “Yes, ma’am. Tardy means not arriving at the required time.”
“You forgot to state who the likely candidates for being tardy are.”
Araceli would not be thwarted. “People who don’t remember what time they are supposed to be somewhere or don’t refer to a clock to make sure they arrive on time are likely to be tardy,” she answered proudly.
Mrs. Nelson instantly fired back, “You forgot to mention that tardiness is an act, and you did not precisely describe that act.”
“Tardiness is the act of arriving late. It is when people are not on time.”
“You forgot to tell us some synonyms and antonyms of the word.”
“Delinquent,” Araceli said. “Overdue. Those are both synonyms. An antonym for tardy is punctual. Another one is prompt.”
Miss Nelson’s smile disappeared. After a long pause, she said, “I don’t know why you try so hard when you’re only going to spend the rest of your life picking fruit and having babies anyway.”
At recess, Araceli took some crayons and a piece of scrap paper outside and sat by herself under a tree in the schoolyard. She took the paper and smoothed it out on top of her notebook. She drew a big, red, fire-breathing she-devil with long blonde hair. Underneath it, she wrote,
“La maestra rubia.” A girl Araceli recognized as the one who used to call her reading group “Pee Pee, Snotty, and Mexie” approached her. “I know why Mrs. Nelson hates you,” the girl said. “Because you’re nothing but a Mexican peon!” The girl mispronounced the word peon, making it sound like “pee-on.” As Araceli stood, her notebook, paper, and crayons dropped to
the ground. She balled her hand up into a fist, the way she’d seen her father do, and punched the girl in the nose. The girl screamed and her nose bled as she ran into the school building, trying to
stanch the flow of blood with her fingers.
Fifteen minutes later, Araceli was suspended from school.