A Modern Parable

Rosa was sitting two seats to my left, a beautiful Latina woman whose face glowed with a smile.  She was the outsider in more ways than one.  There were about forty of us huddled together in the basement of United Presbyterian Church.  Forty Protestants slumped into folded plastic chairs around small, circular tables.  Every other person in the room was caucasian.  Most were of retirement age and sported thin grey beards meant to connote dignity and wisdom.  The women wore a lot of make-up; the brave ones with brighter shades of lipstick - tiny flashes of the more risque.  A few had on colorful scarfs, worn in protest to the last dead days of winter.

In the middle of the table sat a small plate of chocolates, which most at the table had denied in order to maintain a Lenten discipline or their blood-sugar levels.  The chocolates seemed a bit extravagant.  I guessed that Rosa put them there, that they were her gift to this cadre of servants of the Word.  I took a small rectangle of milk chocolate and bit into the heart of the candy.  Then I took another wrapped in gold foil, unwrapped it quickly and indulged myself before the telling silences of those sitting around the table.  Then I turned to Claire.

Claire was sandwiched between Rosa and myself.  For ten minutes I had sat next to her and had heard not a single word or noise.  Turning to her, I could see she had the sanguine look of the gracefully aged, or it could just as easily have been the first sign of Alzheimer's.

"That's a great shirt you have there, Claire," I said pointing to the Wabash College t-shirt partly hidden beneath her knitted sweater.

Claire's face came alive.  "You know of Wabash."

"Oh yes.  I have just finished participating in a program at Wabash that lasted the two years.  It's a great school."

"My son goes there.  He's a junior."  Invigorated by attention, she shot back her own question, "And where do you live?"

"Oh, I'm from Zionsville, on the northside of Indianapolis.  But, now I live in Greencastle ..."  I paused to see if she would make the connection.  "That's where DePauw University is, just down the road from Crawfordsville," I continued, fully expecting the acrimony of rivalry to creep into the conversation.  But Claire's eyes remained light and warm.

"Do you like it there?"

"Yeah.  I do.  It's a sort of home-coming for me.  I went to school there.  What about you?  Have you grown up here in Bloomington?"

"Yes, I have.  Been a member of this church here for thirty-two."

"That's great."

"I like it."  As she says this, I notice Rosa leaning into our conversation.

"Hi, I'm Wes," I say, stretching my hand across Claire's plate, offering a distinctly American gesture.

"I'm Rosa."  She rolls her 'r', letting it fall into my ear in pieces.

"And are you from here," I ask her in my own form of Hoosier hospitality, inviting her to step forward with her history in her own way at her own pace.  If nothing else, we know how to be considerate, painfully so.  But before she can answer, Claire interrupts.

"She drives me around.  Gives me rides."

Rosa blushes, a warm blush of gratitude and love, not humiliation.  It is clear she considers it an honor to be a part of Claire's life.  And her community.

"I make the bean dip for today," she says motioning to a round tray conspicuously vibrant at the end of two long tables.

"Oh, that was good."  I am eager to make her feel welcome, eager to let her know that I know what it is like to be an outsider in this room.  "Is that a family recipe?"  The moment the question leaves my lips, I realize how quickly I've begun to jump to stereotypes, and my eyes fall to the ball of tinfoil I'm rolling between my thumb and forefinger.  But, thankfully, stereotypes are also lost in translation.

"No.  It's just refried beans ... two types.  I mix them together.  You know?"  She is searching to see if we are indeed communicating.  "I mix them together and put them on the platter.  Then, I make guacamole.  Then I put sour cream and taco seasoning."

I smile and take the next step.  "That's your secret ingredient, huh?"

"That's why it's orange.  Do you notice?"

Even if I didn't (and I didn't), I am compelled to agree, certain now that she has offered this food as a gesture of her love and respect.

"Then, I put cheese.  And also green and red peppers."

And I tell Rosa that I especially like the peppers.  This is not a lie, and I look over again at the beautiful, bright, crisp red and green, the red as red as the t-shirt under Claire's sweater.

"Did you make the guacamole?"

"Yes.  Do you like?"

"It's great.  I love guacamole.  In fact, I was thinking that I would just go ahead and take home the rest of that guacamole with the rest of those chips."

For a moment, this immigrant mother from Queretaro, Mexico and this replanted Hoosier from the suburbs of Indianapolis actually begin to find common ground.  I ask Rosa to tell me what she puts into her guacamole, assuming that in their culture there is still that close distinction between love and food and gifting that once was part of my own family's German heritage - a heritage that we have steadily been unbound from much to our own detriment.  We agree that it must begin with fresh avocados.  And, I tell her about the guacamole I used to order at El Cholo on Fair Oaks Avenue.  I list the ingredients as they appear in my mind - recalling the Latina women there working in their white blouses and flowing dresses:  avocado, lime, red onion, cilantro.  She is surprised I like cilantro ("Some people don't like").  Rosa tells me that it must have a bit of garlic, and I nod my head in total agreement.  And sometimes - she tells me - she adds serrano pepper.

"Something to turn up the heat?"

She smiles.  "Yes."

And in this room of Euro-Americans who have now successfully made the transition from poverty to wealth and from to exclusion to comfortable power, Rosa begins to tell me her family's story - of how she and her husband met in Mexico City, of how they traveled north some ten years ago in hopes of finding a better life for their four children, of how two of her boys have done very well here in America  and how one is even a 4.0 student here at Indiana University.  Pre-medicine she tells me, and proudly lifts a newspaper from her purse that tells the story of her two eldest children - a sophomore and freshman.

Sure enough, there they are:  Chuy Vidaurri-Rodriguez and his brother, Lalo.  They are smiling with their arms around one another, and at the top of the page the headline reads:  "Second Chances."  Rosa is just a proud mother, but she also has a cause.  By act of the Indiana House (Bill 1402) and Senate (Bill 590), Chuy and Lalo will no longer be considered state citizens.  Anxious to limit the resources provided for the "Undocumented," Chuy and Lalo will soon be paying over $30,000 a year to attend IU instead of just over $8,000.  And Rosa does not want her sons to lose their opportunity.

So she is ready to share with me or anyone else who will listen to this family plight and struggle.  This country has meant hope and life for her.  It has meant precisely what it meant to the Scottish and German and Irish and English peoples whose descendants now sit around Rosa quietly chatting about the common lamentations and minor joys of ministry.  This country has become both her vexation and her deepest comfort; her home of opportunities her old country could never afford even as she wistfully remembers the countryside south of Mexico City that clearly has such power over her heart, stealing her away to her childhood.  America has become - by act of complete abandonment - her home, for better and for worse, and she is as much concerned about this nation's future as the Presbyterian octogenarians who quibble over the "direction of our country."  Perhaps even more so.  She too is now part of its story and its relatively young history, of wave after wave of the dejected, the persecuted, the exploited, and the tired who have faced down their fears, counted their losses and made a bold leap of faith - entrusting their very families to a dream and to a nation that could just as easily turn on them as it might embrace them.

As I say my goodbye, I take one last look at the joy hidden in Rosa's face, and I wonder at the difference between those who dream and taste of rights beyond anything their forefathers and mothers could have imagined ... and those who have grown certain that such rights are something we determine and decide and dispense - choosing whom we shall or shall not include as neighbor.  And I consider the gift she has offered to us.  Unequivocal generosity, I would call it.  Kindness of which Christ spoke.

~Wes