By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–Our Kentucky cousin, Harry Jacobson-Beyer, whom I like to call the “Ishmaelite” for reasons to be explained, is determined to learn Spanish, notwithstanding his Kentucky accent, which is something between a twang and a drawl. To that end, with his wife, Sherry, he has traveled to various locations in Spain, South America and Central America, attending classes, living with families, drinking in the cultures.
I wondered how our city of San Diego could add to his Spanish immersion.
Carol Davis, the San Diego-based theatre critic for San Diego Jewish World, with her recent review of Kita y Fernanda, now being presented through October 21 by the Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company provided an answer. She explained that the play by Tanya Saracho and co-directed by Seema Sueko and Robert Castro alternated between Spanish and English, with enough of both languages to make the plot clear to people who are monolingual. However, for those who speak both languages, the play is doubly rewarding.
So, realizing this would be perfect for my cousins–and figuring that as someone who had learned and forgotten most of his French long ago, I’d nevertheless pick up some of the Spanish–we decided to go to the production which was playing at the 10th Avenue Theatre, near San Diego’s version of a street called Broadway.
We arrived early enough to climb two flights of stairs to view an art exhibit by abstract painter Gerald Montoya, an exhibit somewhat ambiguously called “Elevation.” Was the title referring to the third-story of the old building where his temporary gallery filled the place of Mo’olelo’s rehearsal space? Or perhaps it was an allusion to the effect his riotous colors have on otherwise drab surfaces?
In the writing style known as “stream of consciousness” a writer puts down anything that comes into his or her head and then just goes with it. Montoya’s painting style is something like that. He uses colorful paints, seemingly at random, until some pattern emerges that pleases him. Curator Rick Pyles told us that Montoya turns the canvas this way and that because he has no idea as he paints whether one side or the other will eventually be the top or the bottom, left or right. Knowing that viewers may disagree with his decision, anyway, he doesn’t sign the canvas on the front, he signs it on the back — so the purchaser can hang it whichever way is appealing. One large creation dominated the back wall; to me it looked something like an orange Central American isthmus set against the blue sea. Ah, well, perhaps, said Pyles kindly, but the creation started as a drop cloth.
If you look out the window of the gallery you can make out a special chimney serving the “church lofts” building next door. According to Pyles, even as swallows return to San Juan Capistrano about the same time every year, so do southward migrating vaux swifts stop at the church lofts building. At the peak of the migration there may be as many as a thousand of the birds diving in and around the chimney. There will be a viewing party from the gallery on Wednesday night, October 17. Pyles says ornithologists believe that long before the building next store was erected, there must have been a grove of trees favored by the vaux swifts. Somehow that location became rooted in the flock’s memory.
This was fascinating to me, but the time had arrived to take our seats in the theatre two stories below. The gist of the story of Kita y Fernanda is that Kita (Cynthia Bastidas) and Fernanda (Gabriela Trigo) see each other at a demonstration in Chicago against repressive U.S. immigration policies. But though they are both flooded with memories of their lives in Texas growing up together, they don’t speak to each other. There’s too great a gap between them. Fernanda’s mother, Doña Silvia (Melba Novoa), hired Kita’s mother, Concha (Olivia Espinosa) as a live-in maid after she and Kita had been smuggled across the U.S. – Mexico border. As a child, Fernanda, in a superior social position, described herself as “best friends” with Kita, but whereas she had run of the whole house, Kita stayed with her mother in a small room next to the laundry room.
Both mothers were trapped. Silvia’s husband, though rich, was nearly always absent, preferring to spend his time with his mistress in Mexico rather than with his family. Silvia didn’t speak much English, and was frightened of a world where she could not communicate. Concha didn’t speak English either, so both women were dependent on their daughters to interpret for them the new, unsafe world. Like most immigrant children, Kita and Fernanda learned and adapted to their new country quickly.
Kita and Fernanda had acqaintances who pulled them apart– both played by the talented Espinosa, who also portrayed Concha. One friend, Jessica, is an Anglo cheerleader, who is impressed that one of the most popular boys in school is fond of Fernanda, and who wants Fernanda’s family to join the country club– where, by the way, people don’t speak Spanish. The other is Chela, an alienated, pot-smoking Chicana, who wants Kita to come with her to California and get away from the class-conscious, stultifying atmosphere of Texas.
As the drama unfolded, there were indeed scenes in English and scenes in Spanish, and some scenes in which sentences alternated between the two languages. I was a little puzzled by the dynamics of one of the most powerful scenes, when neither of the girls was available to answer the door, and both Silvia and Concha were too frightened to do so. Even without language, I could understand the emotion.
On the way home, Harry, Sherry and I agreed that although the story was told about Mexicans who migrated to the United States, it could have easily been adapted to immigrants of any nationality and any generation. There have been numerous stories, books, plays and movies about immigrant Jewish families, in which the parents spoke only Yiddish while the children, through schooling and exposure to contemporaries, were able to soak up the English language and American culture. About the only kinds of immigrants who don’t have similar language-based problems are the vaux swifts, swallows and other migratory species.
That evening, joined by my wife Nancy, the four of us went to the Casa de Reyes in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, where we met two people whom the Jacobson-Beyers had been friendly with in Louisville: Ross and Susan Moore, the latter now the deputy director of the county library system and the former engaged in public relations for Orchestra Nova. Their migration across the country clearly has been a success.
For me, as the biographer of Louis Rose, the Casa de Reyes (formerly the Casa de Pico when the space was known as the Bazaar del Mundo) is a special place because back in 1850 it was the site of the Commercial Hotel and Saloon, the first business operated by Rose, who as San Diego’s first Jewish settler was another successful immigrant. Although Louis was from Germany, he had a good working knowledge of Spanish and English and made a success of himself here.
Our waiter’s name was Gabriel, a young man with a good command of English, who had grown up in Tijuana. His attentive service along with margaritas, burritos, cerveza, and tacos complemented our cross-border, multi-cultural theme.
I mentioned that I refer to the Jacobson-Beyers as the Ishmaelites, and the reason lies in another cross-border story. In Genesis, we read that Joseph was sold by his jealous brothers to a nomadic group of people known as the Ishmaelites, who later crossed the border into Egypt to sell him into slavery there.
Joseph, of course, had been Jacob’s favorite son. And the Ishmaelites were his buyers. Therefore, saying “Jacobson-Beyer” is the same as saying “Ishmaelite.” Unknowingly, they were the facilitators of Joseph becoming, under Pharaoh, a powerful ruler of Egypt — an example of an extremely successful immigrant.
*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com