Rant #2 By Jennifer M. Ortega NYC, May 10, 2010

My husband Curtis gives out grants through his family foundation, and occasionally he searches on the Internet to see where the foundation name comes up. Well, it came up the other day on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who reported RWJF and the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation both gave money to LATINA HEALTH PROJECT. Curtis couldn’t remember making the grant them but concluded the foundation gave the grant to Planned Parenthood and they re-granted the unrestricted gift to the Latina Health Project. It was just surprising to him, but not in a bad way, more like “oh, that’s were they applied the grant to, good”.

Then another family member says “I don’t know about Planned Parenthood anymore, on my last visit at the Hightstown clinic no one there spoke English, they all spoke Spanish.” I replied “well they’re suppose to able to speak English it’s a clinic in New Jersey” then my relative responded “Well, they don’t and when I told them I got woozy, when my blood is drawn, they didn’t understand me, so when I got dizzy, they scolded me and told me why didn’t I tell them, she replied I told you, I got woozy, then the aid, said oh that’s what woozy means it means dizzy” I remarked to my relative “you don’t speak spanglish?” “No” she replied indignantly

Then my relative said “well it doesn’t matter they closed down that clinc anyway.”
I had many feelings at once. What the hell they don’t speak English? Why are you going to a clinic in the first place? Umm you come from money. And of course it matters they closed the clinic, it served women and families for STD’s, Reproductive/Sex Education and other services women need to have a healthy life.

I am Chicano; I was born in South Texas, where my mother, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grand- parents were born. I can even prove it. Well, when I was seventeen years old I moved to NYC. I wanted to be part of the big apple, it was nothing like Texas, when I got to NY, I got my mother to emancipate me (not file me on her tax returns), I worked a whole bunch of jobs, established my NY state residency and applied to Hunter College (another sort of immigrant). In the process I formed a relationship with my boyfriend Curtis. He lived in New Jersey and I in New York. It was sort of a long distance relationship, but it worked for me because I was busy and he was a single parent. I didn’t’ need to see him everyday. I traveled with my friends, or my boyfriend, got involved in theater, went to graduate school, produced theater and then married Curtis. I also want to mention my boyfriend comes from a small WASP family, whom many consider TOP SHELF. It never really registers with me, I guess that’s why we get along so well, I only see him as person first, and not this top shelf status.
We dated for a really long time because well, I really never wanted to get married until I hit my thirties, anyhow, our families also had to get used to each other and I guess we had to learn each other’s rules and customs. I mean I do come from a large Mexican/American Chicano family and he comes from a WASP-y one, very different worlds but same inter-personal relationship problems as everyone else.

WASP have rules of conduct and Chicanos or let’s say my family have different rules of conduct. One WASP rule is you always have to call before you visit a family, you can’t just stop by or a WASP has the right not to receive you or much worse think you are ill-mannered person. In Texas where we drive long distances and towns are spread apart, it’s customary to stop unannounced and say hello. My parents and grand parents would do this all the time and their friends did too. We always had unexpected company and it was always a greeted with joy. I stopped by unannounced a couple of times to Curtis’s parents and siblings and well they were off put shall we say. Another WASP rule is you can’t bring guest to a party you were invited to unless you call the host and ask permission. Most of the time you just don’t invite a guest unless it’s guest is from out of town. With a Chicano family, we don’t have that rule, I mean we all have big families and are always toting a cousin or two with us. I remember getting invitations in the mail for parties and weddings and they were addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Ortega and family. That’s how we rolled with family, ten of us in two-door Grand Prix. There are a whole lot more differences and similarities but that’s for later. My entire family and in-laws are a tri-racial family and we have assumptions and prejudice of each other, we still need to work on.
In the end my body language conveyed a message to my family member that said, “watch what you say, or I’m going to be all over you” and I believe she reconsidered what she said, but I don’t really know, because we dropped the subject, when she said, “they closed that clinic down anyhow”. I guess the problem was solved for her, but in the end there is a community of women who don’t have local healthcare clinic they can go to and I didn’t do a very good job defending them.