Small World

"Maybe you saw me," he says with a sly grin, "and thought, 'Look at that ugly Mexican man.' "

“Would I ever say that?!” I protest, smiling back, and he shakes his head with a quiet, “no.” But he doesn’t mind the reminder and maybe reassurance. He knows, maybe wonders, how he looks to someone like me, and really, he hasn’t known me that long. I suppose, once upon a time, I might have seen the Virgen medallions, the earrings and muscle t-shirts, the cockeyed ballcaps that cover close-cropped hair. But I see what I know, that he’s a sweet kid, and really, they all are, at least to me.

Some of that is the power of being la maestra, or even an older-than-they-are woman. The power of culture. And what a powerful culture, considering that this boy, and so many others of my acquaintance, either had no real mother or no mothering for years, but he’d still never dream, never dare, of being anything but polite to me. But it’s more than politeness at this point, there’s something shared that accelerates connections--like in the foxholes. If only foxholes sheltered babies and an impossible American dream.

He's fascinated that we were once before at the same place at the same time, though talk about how the other half lives. A year ago last summer I was hustling through a Disney family vacation; he was chopping vegetables in a centralized Disney kitchen. Both of us spent some time at Downtown Disney, a mall-ish entertainment complex. One of us blew a $400 paycheck all in one night there—do I have to say it was not me?—but maybe we did pass in the crowds.

And now we’re here, life being strange, the world being small. Who knows what will happen next. Something good, I hope (against hope, with fingers crossed). A thousand miles from Florida, we're nowhere he ever would have dreamed of when he was slaving for the Mouse. And the baby! Already a father. He still talks about Downtown Disney with a teenager's gleam in his eye, but I bet anything he’d love to have that paycheck back.