Standing under a tree in a small park opposite his workplace, Dr Gregorio Aquino PhD was trying to enjoy a lunchtime cigarette. It wasn't working. Besides the hundred other things on his mind, he couldn't help thinking the grass underfoot was suspiciously green for mid-August in southern Arizona. Three years into a drought, no less.
Taking one last futile drag, Gregorio flicked the half-smoked Marlboro into the grass, hoping whatever miracle fertilizer (or green spray paint) the mayor's office used on it wasn't flammable. Then, straightening his cerulean silk tie, he crossed the road and walked through the black iron gates of Archbishop Juan de Zumárraga Catholic Preparatory School.
Known as Zumárraga Prep to its friends, the school had been a cornerstone of a Vatican-funded initiative to turn San Toribio - a shantytown of 10,000 people on the northern fringe of the Sonoran Desert - into a functioning town fit for 100,000. Designed by a Slovenian architect with classical tastes, the four-story limestone behemoth's façade was crammed with saintly statuettes.
Seeing as certain Mayan dialects were more widely spoken than English in the town, all Zumárraga Prep's lessons were taught in Spanish. All, that is, bar the mandatory daily English classes, taught by overqualified expatriates like Gregorio. Hailing from Honduras, he'd done a ten-year stint as an interpreter at the United Nations HQ in New York before a religious awakening drove him to fly south.
That'd been a little over two years ago, and only now was the honeymoon coming to an end. As a teacher of twelfth graders, it had been Gregorio's experience that most of his students were approaching fluency by the time they reached his classroom. As such, his role was based more around shepherding them through finals than building vocabulary.
That was before Xiomara Qinallata came through his door. He'd first met the girl two weeks ago at the start of the new school, and he was still recovering from the shock. She quite simply spoke no English. In his colleagues' defense, the girl had only enrolled in eleventh grade back in February, but that caveat wouldn't help her come May.
To justify the expense of hiring PhDs to work as high school teachers, Zumárraga Prep insisted all students needed a C in English to graduate. While maintaining his perfect record for graduating students wasn't Gregorio's top priority -- he took genuine pleasure in just helping students improve their language skills - he wasn't about to give up his 100% streak without a fight.
Weaving his way round clusters of chattering teens scattered throughout the hallways, Gregorio reached his third-floor classroom in time to avoid the post-lunch stampede. No sooner was he in his seat than eighty-eight bells rang out at once. Within seconds, the door flew open and twenty-five schoolgirls flooded in.
Owing to an unlikely meeting of minds between education traditionalists and reformers, Zumárraga Prep was co-ed, but all lessons were strictly gender segregated. Thus, the school enjoyed all the academic perks of single-sex education without doing anything to stymie the rampant student fertility rate. The fact no one in this current group was eating for two made it quite the anomaly.
As per usual, Xiomara Qinallata was the last to shuffle in. The diminutive schoolgirl silently took her place in the middle of the front row. True to form, her uniform was immaculate. Where her classmates seemed to be competing over how much thigh they could expose before falling foul of the remarkably laidback faculty, her blue-and-black plaid skirt was at full length.
Due to her short stature, it stopped a little below her knees, its hem kissing the top of her white knee socks. Her sky-blue polo shirt was neatly tucked in, with a three-button placket which stopped just below her modest bust fully fastened. The school crest embroidered on her left breast -- a red crucifix flanked by two sheep rampant -- was covered by one of two thick black plaits.
Her distinguishing features went well beyond her modest dress. Compared to the predominantly mestizo girls around her, Xiomara was of distinctly indigenous heritage. Her symmetrical plaits framed a rosy brown face, dominated by an aquiline nose with broad nostrils. Her eyes, on the odd occasion she dared to look at him, were a deep shade of brown.
Rising from his seat, Gregorio raised a hand and the buzz of chatter died away. He went through the motions of explaining the day's assignment -- a writing exercise -- in Spanish before writing a summary in English on the whiteboard behind him. Thereafter, he spent the rest of the ninety-minute period grading other papers and patrolling for illicit use of translator apps.
To Xiomara's credit, he was yet to catch her trying to cheat. In fact, she made a very convincing show of being immersed in her work, despite her inability to complete it. After the bell, the girls filed past Gregorio's desk on their way out, placing their assignments in a pile. Not for the first time, Xiomara was last in line, strategically putting her paper face down.
"Wait there, Miss Qinallata," said Gregorio as the diminutive schoolgirl made a beeline for the exit. She froze accordingly, "Please close the door and retake your seat. We need to talk."
It took a few seconds for the startled teenager to move. Doing as instructed, she shuffled back to her desk, her head slightly bowed.
"I know you have a class to get to, so I'll keep this brief," began Gregorio, "We need to do something about your grades, Miss Qinallata."
Xiomara simply nodded. She looked to have been expecting this very conversation.
"I understand you've not been with us long, and God willing, you may even be fine by Easter. However, for both our sakes, it's not a chance I'm prepared to take."
"What can I do, though?" asked the schoolgirl quietly, finally lifting her head.
"Give up a couple of hours after school for, let's say, three days a week until Thanksgiving, and I'm confident that diploma will be as good as good as yours."
Xiomara pinched the top button of her polo as she considered her response. Despite the F staining her report card, Gregorio could understand any apprehension. Assuming her file wasn't lying about her being Peruvian, she might well have already finished high school once.
Whilst hardly the worst situation for an illegal immigrant to land in, getting stuck in school uniform for another year or more was probably the last thing she'd planned on when plotting her journey north.
"How soon would we start?" she asked eventually.
"This afternoon, unless you have plans."
She paused, as if trying to dream up some prior engagement, then sighed: "Where should I go?"
"Just meet me here after the bell."
Nodding, Xiomara glanced up at the clock on the wall behind Gregorio's desk and scrambled out the classroom without so much as a goodbye. Beyond the door, she had to push her way through a scrum of twelfth-grade boys who'd been waiting to enter. The ensuing lesson gave Gregorio time to ponder whether he'd made the right decision himself, extending his working week by six hours.
The inaugural tutorial got off to a slightly nervy start when it took Xiomara fifteen minutes to make the five-minute walk to meet him. Gregorio was happy to blame the tsunami of polo-shirted youth the final bell always unleashed and let her tardiness go unquestioned.
As he led the way upstairs, he resisted adopting the chatty demeanor he often took with students after hours. Not that she seemed overly interested in shooting the breeze, trundling along a few steps behind him.
The venue for the tutorial was one of the dozens of unused classrooms on Zumárraga Prep's fourth floor. Dusting down two possibly never-before-used desks with a shirt sleeve, Gregorio pushed them together end-to-end. Then, teacher and student sat down face-to-face, and the Honduran explained his plan to focus on getting her conversational English up to scratch.
Thus, two out of three sessions were entirely aural in nature. Had anyone walked in on them, they could've been forgiven for thinking the two were simply chatting, if not for Gregorio constantly steering the conversation towards topics based on holes in her vocab. Despite the often-banal subject matter, Xiomara attended without fail and Gregorio gradually got to know her better.
She confirmed her family's indigenous heritage - Aymara to be precise - and how her parents had moved to a Lima barriada from the Bolivian border shortly before her birth. Her dad was a dockworker, or rather had been until a falling shipping container had its say. The insurance pay-out had paid for the seventeen-year-old Xiomara's journey to the States, but she stopped short of revealing how she'd wound up in San Toribio.
Gregorio tried his best to reciprocate, at first with anecdotes from his UN days. When Xiomara's knowledge of global geopolitics proved wanting, he tried to think of vaguely relatable moments from his exceedingly comfortable upbringing in Tegucigalpa. However, some irrational sense of obligation to return the trust she'd seemingly shown him sent him down an unlikely path.
So it was that Xiomara Qinallata, an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl he'd known for literally weeks, become the first person in San Toribio to hear about his estranged Brazilian wife, Sachiko. As far as his colleagues (and priest) knew, he was an eligible bachelor in his mid-thirties. Outside New York state, only assorted federal agencies knew otherwise.
As August gave way to September, the fruits of four additional lessons' worth of tuition per week started to blossom. As October loomed, Gregorio found himself scribbling out the minus symbol he'd instinctively drawn next to the E on Xiomara's latest piece of homework.
The day after he marked an assignment of hers E+ for the first time, Vice-Principal Tancredo paid him a lunchtime visit. That afternoon, he made his way to the fourth floor with a heavy heart.
"Good afternoon, Dr Aquino," said Xiomara as he entered the classroom, beaming at him from behind the desks she'd already rearranged.
