She wanted me to have friends, to move around in groups, but in some deeper manner which I have never understood she taught me to distrust people, to want to slip away and spend time alone. She hated me going to the movies on my own. Do you not have a friend, she would ask. In my first year at the university I did have a friend, who was studying economics, and who approached me one day and asked me to teach him English. His parents would pay, he said. I met him three times a week for lessons. His name was Jorge Canetto and he became important for me then because I fell in love with him and thought about him all the time. I loved how tall and strong he was, and how strangely blue his eyes were against the darkness of his hair and his skin. I loved the slow ease with which he smiled, the softness in him.

My mother noticed that I was happier, and asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told her that I did not. She laughed, as though the possibility caused her infinite mirth, and said I had, I had, she knew I had, and she would find out soon, someone would tell her the girl's name. Soon, she would know, she said. I told her again that I did not.

At five o'clock three days a week in an empty classroom in the university I taught Jorge English. A few times he came to the apartment and I gave him the lesson in the dining room, my mother hovering in the hallway. I taught him how to ask questions in the present tense, I made him learn vocabulary. And I listened for some clue that he might understand. That is the word they use here. Entender. To understand. There are other words too, but this one is still common. ?Entendes? you could ask and this would mean Do you? Are you? Will you?

Sometimes I became tense with worry that I might blurt it out, summon up the courage to ask him on the way out

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