Tacos Are for English Class

The remarkable Aurora I mentioned in an earlier post has had a tough life. Her husband is dead, she's raised six children and now has... have I lost count? Eleven grandchildren? She walks her way to work each day. No car, no use for the bus, even showing up drenched one rainy morning because, as she explained, her umbrella is a piece of crap. She has wild tales to tell of coyotes and quicksand in Arizona, which I have to follow intently, sifting through her rapid Spanish for the words I recognize and cognates I can understand, while carefully watching her facial expressions for clues to help me grasp her remarkable past.

Aurora was elated to learn that I might be teaching an ESL class after school, insisting that this would be the year she would learn English. When that did not come to be, I promised her we could have classes anyway, any time she wanted, in my office. This Monday, I made good on that promise for the first time and Aurora brought me, of course, tacos de papa con huevo... a favorite of mine, potato and egg breakfast tacos, in handmade flour tortillas.

It's hard for me to imagine this woman, rising early, knowing she must work late, seeing that her littlest granddaughter gets ready for school, patting out balls of tortilla dough, rolling them flat and toasting them over the stove, finally packing up the finished tacos in paper towels and foil and walking her way to work to see me. It's humbling, frankly.

Aurora sat and ate with me, although only half of a taco since she said she had already eaten a large breakfast. She lamented not bringing any chile, but proudly told me that she had made the tortillas by hand. The tacos were delicious, as my office-mate, Amanda, attested later on when she ate hers. It took an enourmous amount of willpower not to eat the tacos leftover for Amanda, but I persisted and shared. My kindergarten teacher would be so proud.

After tacos, Aurora and I pored over paper, scratching phrases in English and Spanish and practicing pronunciation. Phrases like, "I have six children, three boys and three girls" require drilling. Hardest is the pronunciation of girls, which to Aurora's ear sounds like "gros" which is what she writes on her paper to help her pronunciation. I laugh and tell her that this means something else entirely... It will not be without a lot of hard work that Aurora learns English this year, or that I learn Spanish, but she is already, undoubtedly, one of the best parts of my day.