case to Sr. Miriam Emmanuel, the English teacher. It showed in her soft, sympathetic eyes.
As it happened, Sister Miriam had descended to earth to redeem me. She offered me a tutorial after classes two days of the five-day school week for 40 minutes each session, exactly as long as the regular class period. She walked me through the operating logic of the language to give me a sense of its struc- ture. She read to me with an authentic voice, had me read to her in turn, then sat down with me to talk about what we had read. Every new word provoked an exciting impulse for discovery, and every freshly turned phrase and deftly crafted sentence raised a compelling challenge for emulation. It was in Sister Miriam’s tutorial, no doubt, that I began to develop not only an ear for English prose, but also, in time, a critical appreciation of it and the confidence to try my own hand at stringing English words together with any serious purpose.
Before St. James, I only had known Tonsuya Elementary, a public school where education was free for children of the barrio.
My first big test—as well as Sister Miriam’s surely, for her own reputation was inescapably staked on it—came in my second year. She prodded me to enter a contest open to all high-school students at St. James for “the best meaning of success in no more than 25 words.” While, indeed, I may have ingratiated myself into contention by putting my entry in the standard
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