I have stories, too.

It just occurred to me that I have stories, now, too. I used to love to listen to my mother tell stories about the people at her work. The residents and her co-workers alike—and they weren’t always easy to tell apart. Her co-workers were sometimes just as crazy as the residents with alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. She loved them all. She loved us all. And as we sat around the kitchen table after dinner doing the Word Power and the Jumble, she’d tell me stories about her people.

I always ran off at the mouth about my day and my dramas and she loved to listen. But now—just now—I’ve realized that I have people, too. Students and co-workers and stories to go with them. But she’s not here to tell them to. So I’ll have to write them down before I die and take them with me.

Like the way Alex and I pretend to flirt in front of his wife of 35 years who is never listening, which is perhaps a natural consequence of 35 years of marriage to a flirt. And how easily I confuse tall, thick-waisted Cuban men in their 40s like Dario and Lazaro. And Osmani, the chrystal-eyed mime and actor who could tell right away that I am a performer, too. And Tatiana & Valeriy K with their smooth kind faces, broad smiles and four beautiful daughters. And Andrei, also with dazzling blue eyes that used to be so thrilled as he awaited fatherhood, now vacant and sad since the miscarriage after the first trimester.

And Daysy who wept wordlessly at my desk during a break. I consoled her the way a woman consoles a woman—a touch on her arm, small murmurs from my throat and an open face that says, “It’s okay to cry. You just go ahead.” For 15 minutes we connected just as women, like friends, dropping the pretense of teacher-student, American-Cuban. Just women. And Vasyl, with three short fingers on one hand. He told me how it happened once and I hate it that I forgot. Something about fixing a machine in Siberia. And Nereyda who is 24, the same age as I was when I lived in Senegal. She’s so tall and chestnutty brown with gorgeous almond eyes. She has an enormous butt, which I hope every day is bigger than mine, that she somehow squeezes into stretchy pants—usually white. It looks less like she’s wearing pants and more like she’s been dipped into white chocolate.

And Nelea who blushes almost constantly, who I thought was 21, but is really 30. I was disappointed in myself when I realized that I treated her with more respect after I learned her age. Imagine—me—doling out agism despite perpetually feeling I’m at the receiving end of it. Since infancy I’ve been furious that no one would listen to me or ask me what my pre-verbal self thought! Of all the nerve!!!

These are my people. These are my stories. And I’m gonna tell them.

11/21/04