Learning English and a New Life

I spent five months this year visiting a night school English class at Van Nuys High School. From February to June, I reported on the immigrants and refugees in Room 508: anonymous heroes, survivors and a few hustlers.

Raul was an ex-convict trying to support a family, a wary street kid who came from El Salvador to Los Angeles at age 15. Alone.

Zorel was a chemist working as a handyman, a Romanian refugee who tried to join the Army during the Gulf War in hopes of getting visas for his family.

Armando was a tailor from Mexico. He rode his bicycle six miles to class and back, alert for cars and thugs in the dark.

The class brought them together four nights a week. As I came to understand their world of work and self-sacrifice, I realized why they were tougher and more resourceful than most people: They were tougher on themselves.

In hundreds of classrooms like Room 508, the city remakes itself, slowly and painfully.

Many of the 40 students were Mexican and Central American family men, earning cash wages at jobs like parking cars and tending lawns. They worked, and lived, “off the books.” One of them, a man named Joaquin, paid $130 monthly rent to sleep on the floor of a garage.

His classmates included a jobless Korean businessman, a shy Cuban woman who had lived here for 22 years, and Mario, a talkative musician from Sicily.

“Here comes the loudmouth,” Raul muttered in Spanish when Mario bustled in.

Raul was 21: short, fierce, a faint mustache. The words “El Salvador up forever” were scrawled on his textbook. He scowled during class discussions, leaving the impression that he was having trouble keeping up. But in fact, he spoke rapid tough-guy English.

“Learned it on the street , man,” he said. “And in jail.”

Raul had fallen in with a ring of car thieves several years earlier. That ended the day police with dogs chased him down. After nine months in jail, he was deported as an illegal immigrant.

Raul slipped back into the U.S. and rejoined his wife and baby in the Valley. Using an alias, he found work in an electronics factory. He sat in class each night taking notes and leaning over to consult with me on verb conjugations.

“In a couple of years, my English will be so good I’ll say I was born here, and no one will ask for my papers,” he said. “How long do you think it will take for me to speak really good English?”

Others asked that question, including Armando, the bike-riding tailor, who loved books and music. He played guitar at a mid-semester party when the students took over a pizza parlor, sang Bob Dylan and Korean country songs and danced among empty tables.

Armando became a leader, admonishing disruptive students. When a silk-screen operator in class offered to make T-shirts for Room 508, Armando proposed the slogan “Learn or Die!”

Zorel, the 42-year-old chemist, found Los Angeles to be a never-ending marvel: “Here I feel like a young man again.”

He spent May awaiting a response to his application for political asylum. He denounced Romania with poetic zeal. He recalled being interrogated by secret police in a mental hospital and recognizing a battered fellow prisoner as an opera singer, who later died.

“They destroy this man,” he said. “They destroy the country. It was like a big jail.”

The semester ended without word from the INS. But Zorel’s handyman business prospered. He sent money to his family. He went to Vegas, got a hip haircut and bought his first American clothes. Official or not, he felt a sense of permanence.

“Maybe I think this begins the true life in America,” he said. “When somebody buys new clothes, maybe the new life is beginning.”

There were other signs of progress. Young, the melancholy Korean ex-businessman, found work in a liquor store. Joaquin moved out of the garage into an apartment.

Meanwhile, Raul was laid off. A lawyer gave him bad news: His criminal record disqualified him from a legalization program for Salvadorans.

“I’m not going back to El Salvador,” he said. “ . . . There will always be war, people killing each other, people dying of hunger. The people in the class think I’m a crook or something because I’m young. I’m serious about learning just like they are.”

Switching to English, he said: “I need another chance, man.”

At a loud party on the last night, the students ate and laughed and danced. Raul stood to one side behind a table heaped with food from half a dozen countries, watching.

I’m not sure whether Raul deserved another chance. But I met a lot of people in Room 508 who deserved more than they got.

Columnist Bill Boyarsky is on vacation. Today’s guest columnist is Sebastian Rotella, a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Edition of The Times.