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Chapter 7: Little cotton pickerIn school, in the cotton fields, cruel `la burra' label haunts Nala
By Carmen Duarte Nala's excitement about school didn't last long. On her second day in class at the Mexican School in Duncan, Nala (my Mama's nickname) practiced her ABCs and pronounced words in English, but her mind also drifted to the life she'd left behind in San Antonio, N.M.
Nala was excused from class. She walked the mile to her family's house on the Foster farm and her heart skipped a beat when she saw her abuelos' buggy parked near the house. She ran and then slowed as she neared the house, thinking she needed to look very sick. She walked in and got a huge hug from her grandparents. ``Oh, Dolores, you have to let me take her with me. She can't go to school if she is sick,'' Nana Leonarda told her daughter. Tata Florentino smiled: ``Here comes the cow for her baby calf.'' Nana Leonarda and Nala were together once more, but briefly. On Sunday, she returned to Duncan and school the next day. The school year passed, and Nala learned slowly. It took her months to learn the ABCs and how to write her name. She learned a few spelling words, and her English improved. When second grade rolled around, Dolores had other plans for her daughter. She cited the gran susto of learning about her husband's death while pregnant with Nala to justify her actions. ``Nala, you're not learning anything,'' she told her 9-year-old daughter. ``Something is wrong with your brain.'' There it was again. That damn cruelty that made my Mama feel worthless. No one was there to protect her from her own mother and that ignorant belief of the gran susto. That belief would haunt Mama through a life of hard labor - hoeing, picking cotton and pecans, and cleaning motel rooms. She faced 70 years of labor. Hard labor. Menial labor. Piecework. Minimum wage. Or less. In the years to come, she would stoop and haul and clean and sweat so that her pollitos, as she lovingly called us, were fed and clothed. I don't know how she did it. For a time in the 1960s, her work supported my brother, four cousins and me. That's a lot of pollitos. If anyone deserves a spot in heaven, it is you, Mama.
Nala believed she was learning, but maybe her mother was right. She was la burra. Nala had heard it over and over and over again from the lips of her mother. Dolores began pulling Nala out of school more often and taking her to work in the cotton fields. Eventually, the fields won out over school. Nala worked long hours picking and piling the fluffy cotton in the rows, stabbing her tiny fingers on the dried husks. Dolores added Nala's cotton to the burlap sack slung over her shoulder. Dolores saw that Nala was a good worker, another child who could help with the family's finances. She began telling Nala that school was only for boys because they were the ones who needed better jobs to support their families once they married. Girls did not need school. Nala didn't argue. Her mother was telling her this, so it must be right. But why were her sisters allowed more schooling? She was not the only child in the fields. Many other Mexican families, especially the newer immigrants who owned no land, made the same hard choices for their children. Nala was good at the work, and before long she was given her own potato sack to fill. It took months to clear the fields, but they were picked clean when the Mexicans were through. My Mama can't drive by a cotton field today without criticizing the wastefulness of modern agriculture. Those machines just don't do it right. And, she argues, the machines took away the opportunity for people to make a very good living doing something enjoyable and healthful. Nala, you see, learned to love picking cotton. It didn't seem so bad. She loved being outdoors in the midst of the four winds. And finally, she was good at something in her mother's eyes. The following school year, her brother Florentino let it slip that Nala and other children were not being sent to school, and a truant officer was dispatched. One day, Nala was brought in directly from the fields. She was embarrassed - tossed into the classroom dirty and in her work clothes. She had missed a whole year, and Mrs. Haney was no longer there. She sat with her head hung low, longing to disappear. That was the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game between Nala and the truant officer. A lot of Mexican-American parents kept their children out of school when the picking was at its peak. The long-term benefits of an education often came second to a family's immediate needs. School was not an option for many of my relatives. The children could not stand up to their parents and say ``basta con esto (enough of this).'' They felt guilty seeing the poverty and hunger at home, knowing they could help. Many simply vowed, as my mother did, that their own children would never be forced to make such a choice. Nala was bounced from the field to the classroom and back. It went on for years, making it harder for Nala to learn. Her mother's words - la burra - seemed true when it came to reading. She did well in math, though. And she could memorize a spelling list. Nala plugged away when allowed to attend school, but more and more, she just picked cotton. The cracking and bleeding lessened as her hands hardened. Fortunately, her heart did not harden as well.
Next: Chapter 8: The Lunt family
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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