Memories of a Mexican Boy Growing Up in El Paso: Señorita Brown

By Daniel Acosta

Memories of a Mexican Boy Growing Up in El Paso:

  Señorita Brown

 Señorita Brown was a middle-aged spinster when I first met her as my nineth-grade Spanish teacher at Austin High School in the fall of 1959.  I always ask myself why I took four years of Spanish with her when I had other choices of teachers who were considerably less demanding than her quest for excellence and perfection in the learning of Spanish by her students.  In the beginning, my illogical reason for choosing her was that her classroom was the best one at AHS in terms of physical layout.  It was a spacious and open classroom with sunny-bright large windows which looked out to a tiny patch of grass and an array of small green shrubs. A student could daydream by looking west at the dirt-brown Franklin Mountains looming above the city.   It was situated as a corner room at the end of a long corridor, which ran north to south down the main floor of the school, away from the traffic, noise, and chaos of rowdy and rude teenagers who fortunately reached their lockers and classrooms before they could approach Señorita Brown's secretly hidden gem. 

She was not that attractive, but she had a presence that demanded one's attention and generated fear and intimidation when you walked into her classroom for the first time.   You knew instantly that she was a special and unique teacher.  On that first day of class, she stood in the middle of the classroom and purposely turned sideways so you could see her profile and prominent nose.  She told the class that she was very proud of her Roman, aquiline nose, referencing those nasal features of historically famous Romans, notably, members of the Caesar family.  As a corollary to her nose, she revealed that her hands had webbed fingers, holding her hands high up in the air so the class could see the thin, transparent membranous skin between the fingers.  However, her somewhat inelegant attire detracted a bit from her commanding presence in the classroom:  bulky and witchlike shoes with large square heels (like those worn by the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz) and loose-fitting skirts that fell below her knees and covered part of her strong-looking legs with bulging calves.  But, but...I was simply in awe of this sophisticated and refreshingly outspoken woman.

Senñrita Brown was my only teacher at AHS who introduced her students to cultural and artistic activities, such as leading the class to afterschool visits to the El Paso Museum of Art and highlighting the many countries that she had visited with her sister during the summer.  I remember to this day Senorita Brown's commentaries on Goya and El Greco when the class visited the museum, especially her observations on how El Greco painted the hands of his subjects with exquisitely long fingers. She used at least one class period to present travel slides on her journeys to such countries as Egypt and Spain.  One amusing tale that I remember was her description of meeting the son of the founder of Folger's Coffee on a sea cruise to South America and hearing her giddy comments on his distinguished and dignified appearance and manners.  She informed the class that to be cultivated and courteous to others should be traits that all of us should acquire.

But there were moments when I experienced the wrath of Señorita Brown.  I had been elected President of the National Spanish Honor Society, and she proudly gave me her neatly handwritten list of the Society members and their phone numbers and told me to copy the list for my use and return it promptly the following day.  I forgot and the next day in class she immediately went into a 5-minute tirade about my lack of responsibility and so on and so on.  I whispered holy shit to the girl sitting in front of me and asked when she would stop.  This sweet girl who I rarely talked to after class was supportive and said it would blow over.  She was right.

During my formative years as a teenager, I read constantly without much advice or guidance from my teachers.  At the El Paso Public Library, I gravitated towards the classics, starting with the letter A and working my way down the alphabet—Austen, Balzac, Conrad, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Dumas, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hardy, Hugo, Kafka, Lewis, London, Melville, Montaigne, Maugham, Orwell, Steinbeck, Swift, Tolstoy, Twain, Zola, and several others.  However, Señorita Brown noticed my library books and challenged me often about my readings, which opened me up to other authors not known to me.

--Danny (she innocently asked me one day), who was the author of the "Lady of the       Camellias", the fils or pere?

Because I had read Balzac's "Pere Goriot", at least I knew the French word for father and guessed the other one meant to be the son.  I had read "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas but did not know that he had a son who also was a novelist.  I took an educated guess and replied "fils".  She slyly smiled and continued with our Spanish lesson for the day.  I now had to read the son’s novel. 

Another example of Señorita Brown testing my reading repertoire was when she took a select group of her best students to a luncheon meeting with a Juarez group of businessmen and city leaders across the international border.  After lunch she took us to a small mercado to stroll around the booths and engage in Spanish chit-chat with the vendors to work on our speaking skills.  At one of the book stalls, she found a Spanish translation of one of A.J. Cronin's novels.

--Danny, what is the English translation of the Spanish word for "fortaleza", besides       fortress? 

I had read Cronin’s “The Keys of the Kingdom” and saw on the book’s cover that he had written “The Citadel” earlier in his career.  I quickly responded, "The Citadel".  I so happened to have read The Keys of the Kingdom in the summer before school started.  Here is another book I had to read immediately before she would ask me questions about the plot.  I was beginning to realize that I was not really that smart but that I had a knack for facts, data, and good recall of my readings.  Later in life I would use those skills to get through graduate school and earn a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology.

 She often invited the class to her home for talks by noted professionals, and one particularly stimulating talk was given by the architect of the Chapel at the Loretta Academy, a private prep school in El Paso for girls from around the country and world.  The Chapel reminded me somewhat of the Sidney Opera House with its walls like sails.  It was the first time I had seen an expert using 2x2 slides to present a seminar to an audience, something I would do many times as a scientist at national and international conferences. 

 At that gathering at her home, I casually walked through her living room and noticed her collection of books; she saw what I was doing and said I should read Edith Hamilton's "The Greek Way".  Because of her suggestion, I became enthralled with the Greek playwrights and read many of the plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes.  These plays and the writings of Edith Hamilton led me to the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Homer and on to the Romans and their writings. 

Señorita Brown awakened my pride in what it meant to be a Mexican in a city where whites dominated politics, the business world, and the educational system, even though the population of El Paso had significantly more people of Mexican heritage than people of an Anglo background.  I had grown up, refusing to speak Spanish at home or at school, believing that I would be accepted more by my white classmates and teachers. There was always the tension of my not speaking Spanish well and I tried to hide that inadequacy from my teachers and my classmates.  But no one growing up in Texas with a Mexican background can hide his true heritage from Anglos even though I was fair-skinned and was not as brown as my Mexican classmates. 

Throughout my grade school and high school years I did not have any Mexican teachers to serve as role models.  In essence, she became my unrecognized mentor.    It took me a lifetime to grasp the spell that she had over me throughout my education and my long career as a professor, scientist, and administrator.  Through her influence, I enjoy reading literature, history, and nonfiction; in my retirement her inspiration has led me to write personal narratives on growing up on the border.  Señorita Brown was the hidden gem at Austin High School.

Dan Acosta is a second-generation Mexican American, whose grandparents emigrated from Mexico. He is a former professor, research scientist, and administrator. He started writing two years ago when he retired at 74 and lives in Austin. He plans to write about his experiences as a Mexican boy trying to make it in white America.