Lessons

by Stephanie J. Cleary

El conserje en UPS me está enseñando español. I tried to write that line all by myself, but after several variations of, “¿Cómo se dice…’teach,’ like you are teaching me?” Francisco was as lost trying to answer as I was to ask.

He pointed his blunt callused finger at my computer screen and said, “Escribe.” I minimized the Excel spreadsheet I was working on and opened an English-to-Spanish translator. When two options for “janitor” came up, conserje and portero, I asked him if there was a difference. Our focus shifted from the screen and back to each other, and then we played an impromptu game of charades. This happens often.

When he demonstrated the subtle difference between conserje and portero, he first mimicked himself, but with great big movements. In the hallway outside my office, he pantomimed sweeping the floor - like he really had to put his back into it, mopping the hallway at a breakneck speed, then pretending to spray my face with imaginary cleaner and buffing my forehead. Then he bowed himself backwards a few feet and did the same motions in a much smaller way, like a mouse going about the business of cleaning while avoiding the watchful eye of a nearby cat.

I didn’t understand the significance of the difference. He went through the play again, then, as the second character, he tipped his hat to me. That was it. That little gesture was the key. Conseje is a cleaning person, portero is more like a doorman. I think.
I’m sure it was quite a spectacle. Francisco is barely as tall as I am. We wear the same shoe size. I know, because he nagged me for weeks to get him a pair of combat boots like the ones I wore to work in winter, “Stephanie, cuando you bring me las botas?” We probably even weigh within twenty-five pounds of each other, but we are so different.
He is built for work, his arms are thick with muscle and his chest is barreled. He reminds me of my bulldog, or an old boxer who quit jogging but still lifts weights. Every day, he wears the same thing to work - blue tee with the logo for the janitorial company he works for, faded black jeans, and my old Army boots. I wear a dress to work, and bought my shoes at Von Maur.

A black baseball hat with the same company logo as his shirt covers a mop of thick dark hair peppered with grey and white. I use salon conditioner and an anti-frizz balm in my professionally dyed blonde hair. There are two different face-washes in my shower caddy, while Francisco’s face is pockmarked and wrinkled, but most of the lines on it look like they were earned with laughter. His eyes are always on the verge of smiling. Twenty-five years my senior, he is nearly sixty now, and married. I’d bet a dollar that he did alright with the ladies when he was younger.

I wanted to look back at the computer screen and search deeper for the true difference between the words, but Francisco says that is cheating. He told me when he came to America nobody told him how to understand English with a computer. He had a book his friend gave him with some common phrases, but that was it.

We keep a notepad with translations we have figured out between us in the top drawer of my desk. There are alternating lines of text. After his A/C went out last week, I wrote “Espero que tu acondicionador de aire es fijo. Su super caliente,” in curvy print. His line, “Wash your car. It’s very dirty,” is written in all caps, pen pushed hard into the paper, and slanted to the right.
After this session, I recorded my new information. In blue ink, my neat printing reads, “Un mexicano amigo mío me está enseñando español.”