CHAPTER 23. MY EXILE BEGINS IN
LOUISIANA
Finally, the day of graduation arrived. I needed good grades because I had applied to more than ten American universities. I chose them not because I had any knowledge of them, but because their names seemed magical to me.
I loved smelling the envelopes with a North American aroma and reading the friendly letters that began with “Dear Jacob” and the message that they hoped to see me soon. Out of the ten I applied to, nine accepted me and now I had to decide on one.
Elena, who was not convinced that it was a good idea for me to leave, demanded that I look for the South because it was “drug-free” and “safer than the North.” The reputation that American students were consuming marijuana and engaging in more open sexuality had reached the tropics.
I chose Louisiana State University to learn the new language. After registering and paying the tui-tion, I would have to stay alone and barely speak any English in a place thousands of kilometers away from my homeland. I still remember the fear with which I entered the football stadium and made my way to the dormitories. I climbed to the second floor, memorizing my entrance phrase: “Hello, my name is Jacob Schirano, and I am from Costa Rica.” I entered and 83
looked at two Southerners. One of them gave me a glance as if a monkey had arrived from the Amazon jungle. The other, Steve, a descendant of the French in Louisiana known as Cajuns, was the complete opposite: James Dean or a contemporary Troy Donahue.
He smiled at me and welcomed me. The two faces of American life.
To my roommates, I was a Latino: a member of the Sharks gang from the movie West Side Story. Since I was not able to make any American friends and to socialize, I found two Central Americans who lived in my dormitory, one from Honduras and the other from El Salvador.
Carlos, the Honduran, was a keen observer of American culture and gave me the first rules of the game: Latinos couldn’t flirt with white women, we shouldn’t attend student dances, never set foot in fra-ternities, let alone go to Southern bars or nightclubs.
In the student cafeteria, we had to, like the Black students, but not with them, sit at separate tables.
The teachings continued. According to Carlos, Americans were obsessed with cleanliness. “Never, he told me, never forget to wear deodorant!” “When you shower, show that you use soap and also a good shampoo. Don’t dress flashy and especially not in strong colors like red or yellow. Only sissies dress like that,”
he added.
We shouldn’t, Horacio added, speak loudly, or make gestures. “Only Black people do that,” he said with 84
disdain. “You shouldn’t look directly into people’s eyes, and they hate it if you catcall women or even look at them for too long.” In terms of conversation, the most appropriate thing was to talk about the weather.
“Don’t touch people, don’t laugh too loudly, or get closer than half a meter,” Carlos intervened with a ruler to teach me the exact distance. “Regarding food, don’t open your mouth, don’t eat too much, don’t burp, spit, and horror of horrors! release gas,” Horacio concluded. “Southern food is heavy, they use a lot of oil and corn-derived products like grits for breakfast (which would become my first addiction), so you have to be careful,” he finished.
For a boy who had learned in Costa Rica to show himself as Latino as possible, the new situation couldn’t be more ironic. Now, I had to be as least Latino as possible.
One night, we did what we shouldn’t have. My two Central American buddies and I went to a bar in the area. We entered and only country music could be heard, a place full of what is known as rednecks.
The bar was packed, and we hadn’t even ordered a beer when, accidentally, I bumped into a Marine. My English had improved enough to apologize, but suddenly, the man pounced on me and started hitting me.
After several blows, I ran outside. The Marine chased after me and since I couldn’t say anything or plead for him to stop, he pulled out a knife from his pocket and cornered me in the parking lot. I had 85
nowhere to go. Just as he was about to stab me, like in a Western movie, his companion came out and stopped him. “It’s not worth going to jail for a ‘spic’,” he said. They both left, leaving me shaken and terrified.
My exile in Louisiana had just begun, and I realized that navigating this new world would be a challenge unlike anything I had ever faced before. But I was determined to make the most of this opportunity and carve out my own path in this foreign land and hadn’t left Costa Rica to end up in an even more conservative society. I made the decision that my destiny was in the North.