Chismosa Bitch

Some infants get more than a first language. These lucky ones inherit first languages. I was one of these newborns. Upon bringing me home from the hospital to our home in Santa Maria, my parents set to work raising me under a bilingual roof. Words and palabras ushered me into double consciousness, acclimating me to yanqui and tapatío pronunciations of my name. Dad spoke “Myriam” estilo gabacho, so that it nearly rhymed with librarian. Mom shouted me Hispanically, turning me into the size between large and small.

¡Medium!

Mom, a short Mexican named La Bebé, me dio Español. When caldo burned my tongue, she sang, “Sana sana colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.” Dad, a bearded Chicano named Bob, gave me English. When caldo burned my tongue, he said, “Go get a Band-Aid.”

Until Mom and Dad sent me to nursery school, I thought the whole world was like us. I believed everyone could engage in the verbal Double Dutch my family played. Spanish. English. English. Spanish. Español. Español. Inglés. Olé. Oil of Olay. Nunca se me ocurrió que hay mucha gente que habla un solo idioma y que esa ignorancia les da orgullo monolingüe, xenofóbico, y racista. Escuincles babosos.

My nursery school operated across the street from a cemetery stuffed with “pioneers.” Their descendants credited them with “discovering” and “settling” our community, but these stiffs didn’t rely on living ambassadors to remind us of their ongoing power. These skeletons had figured out how to make us say their names. With streets, schools, and parks christened after them, the names Cook, Miller, Fesler, Stowell, and Rice hung in the air. Monuments erected in their honor reminded us that these land-grabbers had fashioned our once-Mexican state in their Anglo-Saxon self-image.

Don Pío Pico was the last Mexican politician appointed to rule Alta California. Pico governed briefly in 1832 and again from 1845 until 1846, when the United States military invaded and began an occupation that continues to this day. Pico, an Afro-Mestizo who never learned English, understood what lay on the political, and linguistic, horizon. About the “settlers,” he wrote, “Shall these incursions go on unchecked, until we shall become strangers in our own land?”

The answer is sí, sí, y otra vez sí. 

The descendants of the Anglo thieves who jacked California mangled our town’s Hispanic moniker. They barked “Santa”...