When I first took the position at the high school, the principal told me several stories about Quinn Cooper Barnes, including her passion for teaching adult immigrants English. The first winter she lived here, in addition to teaching at the one-room schoolhouse, she taught adults during the evenings. That act of service had fostered a commitment to provide immigrants a safe place to learn or improve their English language skills that had carried on for decades. My principal had asked if I would be willing to teach one evening a week. I knew what volunteer meant. Working for no money.
Still, I was happy to do it. Every Wednesday evening in my classroom, I spent time with whoever showed up to practice their reading and writing. Instead of a lecture or lesson, I taught them individually.
Tonight, I had only two students, Mrs. Lin and Mr. Rodriguez. Both in their fifties, her native tongue was Chinese and his Spanish. Among the three of us, we communicated as well as we could. As a matter of fact, I suspected the two of them were talking outside of class, too. They were both single, and I’d heard Mr. Rodriguez ask in his best English if she’d like to have a cup of coffee or a drink after class. She’d agreed, beaming and giving me a small wave before ducking out the door to accompany him into the parking lot.
This evening, I had them working on writing a letter in English to someone they needed to communicate with for practical reasons. I wanted our time to be useful as well as a learning opportunity. Often, they had a reason for needing to communicate with a company or person. I’d begun to see that this was one of the primary stressors about living in a country where you didn’t speak the language fluently. They couldn’t ask their doctors specific questions, for example. Mrs. Lin was writing a list of things she wanted to discuss with her physician at her upcoming appointment. Mr. Rodriguez was working on a letter to his granddaughter who had moved away last year and was coming to visit soon. “I’ll tell her about all of things we will do when she comes here,” he said to me as he picked up his pencil. I had them use pencil so I could give them corrections and they could rewrite whatever they needed to.
They were working away, so I went back to my desk and pulled out a stack of essays from my tenth-grade class. I chose the first one, an essay by Jerome, one of my favorite students. He was a talented musician as well as a mathlete, but he also had a gift for understanding complex literary themes. Small and shy, he sat in the front with the rest of the serious students and shot furtive glances at Shelley Stevens, who had no idea of his giant crush.
From my vantage point at the front of the room, on any given day of the week, my students revealed themselves to me. They didn’t think so. My hormonally challenged students thought they kept their thoughts and emotions hidden, but I could see it all. The crushes, the feuds, the mean girls, and the jocks who pretended they didn’t care for fiction but sometimes grew misty-eyed when we were reading together from a story or novel. They were good at hiding things, but not from me. I’d been them not so long ago. The boy with the crush on a girl way out of his league or swallowing a knot in my throat while reading something particularly moving.
Now, Mrs. Lin asked me if I could help her figure out the word for what sounded like gee-aye-sing to my English-speaking ears. However, I could see from her writing that she’d translated the Chinese spelling from symbols to juéjīng.
“The time of life when it ends,” Mrs. Lin said.
“What ends?” I asked.
“The…blood…you know…woman blood…no more.”
I had a bad feeling about where this was going. Already warm, I told her I would look it up on my computer.
Ah, yes, thank you, Google Translate, I thought. Juéjīng meant menopause. The tips of my ears grew hot, but I told her nonetheless, spelling it for her on a piece of paper.
She seemed oblivious to my embarrassment, smiling broadly before writing the word down on her list.
Mr. Rodriguez was busy scribbling away while taking breaks to look up words in his Spanish-to-English dictionary.
I went back to my essays, hoping Mrs. Lin would not ask me anything more about the womanly experience. If she asked me to translate vaginal dryness, I was out.
Fortunately, the rest of the night passed without further incident. At eight, I told them it was time to go home and that I looked forward to seeing them next week.
“I’ll have a letter from Sophia by then, yes?” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I have hope.”
“I hope so too.” I perched on the side of my desk and watched as Mr. Rodriguez helped Mrs. Lin with her coat. “Tonight we have wine,” he said to me with a happy smile on his face.
“Have fun,” I said. “Practice your English with each other.”
“It is all we have between us,” Mrs. Lin said. “Good practice.”
After they were gone, I tidied up my desk and turned off my computer. Tomorrow would be here soon enough. My head wound stung still, and it was everything I could do not to press on it with my fingers.
When I arrived home, I noticed a light under Jamie’s front door. She was home already? Often she was still at the inn this time of night. I sometimes heard her coming into the building around nine. I didn’t love that she parked out back and walked in alone after dark. But what was I to do? Offer my assistance by meeting her at her car when she returned back to the apartment building? I would do it if she asked, but she wouldn’t.
* * *
I don’t know what got into me as I drove home later that evening, but I decided I wanted to share with my friends the truth about my dad. For some reason, it felt important. I’d isolated myself too much. My friends were loyal, and they would still care about me if I told them about my background. So I sent a group text and asked Huck and Breck to meet me at the grill.
An hour later, the two of them, looking stunned, assured me that nothing from my past could ever make them change their minds about me.
“We’re your friends,” Breck said. “No matter what.”
“I feel ashamed,” I said. “So I’ve kept it from you. That and how bad it was growing up.”
“We’re here if you ever want to talk about it,” Huck said. “Turns out talking is actually good for you. Stormi has taught me that.”
“Past trauma can control your life if you let it,” Breck said. “But friends and the women we love can help you through.”
The women we love. I wanted someone to love. An image of Jamie standing over me on the running trail ran through my mind. Was there a chance with her? Would she consider a real date? I wasn’t sure, but I’d never know if I never asked. I put that idea aside and focused my attention on my friends. Tomorrow was another day.