When I was 10, Daddy took me to get my first pair of glasses. He usually left this kind of thing to my mom, but she was hospitalized at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson. A note from the school nurse said I should get my eyes checked by an optometrist. Since the optometrist only came to Morenci once a month, Daddy was forced to overcome his distaste for medical appointments.
The optometrist rented a room in the Morenci Hotel so it would be the first time I got to go upstairs into one of the rooms. I’d been to the library often to check out books but it was tucked away in a corner of the first floor of the hotel with a separate entrance. I’d been in the lobby of the hotel with Mama to pay our water and gas bill in one of the offices on the ground floor but it was always a fast transaction so I didn’t have a chance to really see it.
The exterior of the hotel looked grandiose. Built in the early days of Morenci’s founding, the mining company had spared no expense to build luxurious accommodations for visiting mining dignitaries. By the time of our visit to the optometrist, however, it was over 50 years old. Mexicans and Mexican Americans did not usually go beyond the first floor. I don’t know if it was because we were banned or if it was a place we felt we didn’t belong. Whatever the reason, I didn’t question it on that day because I was anxious to see the second floor. I’d heard from my classmates about ghosts who dwelled there.
The elaborate oak reception desk in the lobby impressed me as did the uniformed man behind it as he peered down at me. My dad asked him where we could find the optometrist. The man directed us to a room up the staircase on the second floor. I ran my hand over a well- worn oak bannister as we climbed the carpeted stairs. A shiver of fear ran down my spine with each step because I didn’t know what to expect and thought maybe I would see a ghost.
The optometrist had set up his equipment inside the hotel room. Large and black, the machines frightened me because I didn’t know their use. Maybe whatever he did with it would hurt. I wanted to say to my dad, “Let’s go home.” But the school nurse said I needed to be checked and I knew Daddy wouldn’t listen to me. I gulped and went in ahead of him. He hesitated before entering the room. I thought that the instruments intimidated him too, not knowing that it was the optometrist that caused his reaction.
I sat down in the chair the optometrist pointed out to me after he introduced himself as Dr. Greenbaum. He explained what he would do and he started the exam. It wasn’t as scary as I thought. All I had to do was look through one of the machines that had lenses in it and tell him which one was better as he flicked the lenses. When the exam was over, he showed me the frames he had available. A pair of frames gleamed like iridescent green pearls and I didn’t bother looking at the others. I tried them on and thought they made me look glamorous. I expected my dad to say “no” like my mom certainly would have, but he didn’t say a thing. He asked, “How much,” and paid the man in cash.
We left the hotel and after we got in our car, Daddy told me he thought he recognized the optometrist as the principal at the Mexican school he’d attended in Duncan. “That man came to me on my fifteenth birthday and told me I didn’t have to go to school anymore.”
“But why, Daddy? Didn’t you have to go to school until you graduated from high school?”
“Because that’s how things were in those days, mi’ja,” he said. “It was a farming town with most of the land owned by the Mormones. They had a special school for us with an outhouse and a spigot outside where we got our drinking water.”
I tried to imagine that kind of school because in Morenci we all went to the same schools, although I knew that the lower classes in each grade had all Chicanitos in them. But still we didn’t have a separate school.
My dad had a distant look in his eyes and he didn’t start the car right away. I knew if I didn’t say anything, he might tell me more about what bothered him. “He was the principal of that school. He said the same thing to all the Mexicanos in our school when they turned fifteen. They didn’t want us in the high school. It was for gringos.”
I couldn’t resist asking why he hadn’t argued with the principal. After all, my dad was a decorated hero in WWII and he had started the union with nine other men.
“There was no arguing with the principal. He would have beat me like he did other kids who stood up to him.”
“You didn’t say anything to him?”
“No, but I punched him and knocked him out.”
I laughed imaging the optometrist on the floor. “What did you do next? Weren’t you afraid he’d get up and hit you?”
“No, he didn’t have power over me anymore. I walked out and didn’t look back.” Daddy started the car and we drove home in silence.
A week before the optometrist was due back for his monthly visit, a postcard appeared in our mailbox informing my parents that the glasses were available for pickup. I usually picked up the mail after school every day. Mama gave me the combination, a responsibility I took seriously, so it was with trepidation that I tore up the postcard and threw it in the trashcan. All week long I was anxious about how to tell my father. I finally rationalized that I could save my dad another visit to the hotel if I picked up the glasses by myself. After all they were already paid for.
The real reason was that I was afraid for my father if the optometrist recognized him as the boy who’d punched him out. I thought he might hurt my dad or have him arrested. I decided not to take a chance so I went to pick up the glasses after school. The green pearlescent frames looked as fantastic on me as I thought they would. The only problem was that I couldn’t see very well. I signed a paper that I’d picked them up, received a lesson on how to clean them and store them in their case. I stumbled out of the room and down the stairs before I took them off the so I could see.
As expected, the first thing my mom asked when she came home from the hospital was to see the glasses. With dread, I fished them out of the case to show her. Sure enough she said, “Why did you get such a shocking green color? Didn’t they have a tortoise brown pair to match your eyes?”
I told her I liked the color and put them back in the case. “Well, aren’t you going to wear them?” she said.
“The nurse told me I only have to wear them to see the blackboard in school.” A little lie I would have to confess to Father Santismas the next time I went to confession. I didn’t want to tell her the truth.
To this day, I don’t know if the optometrist really was the principal who told my dad he could leave school. Maybe he only looked like him. Or maybe he was and recognized my father as the boy who punched him out and got back at him by giving me the wrong prescription. Either way, the green glasses looked captivating in their case whenever I opened it to polish them.
Elena Díaz Bjorkquist ©2015
Thank you for your wonderful story! I loved it and did not know the stories. I did know about the Mexican School in Duncan, AZ. My father-in-law, J.J. Clark was principal of this school at one time and my mother-in-law taught Music in the “regular/white school. I think this was in the late 1920 so Mr. Clark may have been the guy your dad punched out, as well he should.
Thank you so much,
Sandra Stanton Cotey Clark
What a very real story. Love the straightforward voice. I hear many stories of this area, but most told from adult perspective. Thank you.