From the WAC Institute 2002
By Wendy Miyake
Leeward Community College
One day all women newscasters are going to get old,
my father says to me.
You will see that a painter can no longer
draw just one outline of their eyes. The wrinkles
fan out like ripples in a pond. The skin
falls so that their once mountain high cheekbones
erupt into growing volcanos on the sides of their mouths.
Everyone, except, Connie Chung.
Age has not escaped her completely
but her hair is still a girlish bob
and her eyes like one still bright with the future
in front of her.
I am going to be thirty in three weeks. Semester
upon semester I have sat in classrooms where we speak
Spanish, myself and these eighteen year olds.
I sit there as a traitor.
On the exterior, I look like them. I look like I drag
my ass to class at the very last moment,
running into the jeans that lie on the floor, the T-shirt
still draped over the lamp. Inside, I have already
put in five years in the real world. I contribute to
a 401K. I have stock options.
It is not much better as a teacher. In the classroom,
the adults think I am their daughter.
Why couldn’t you have brushed your hair? Are you really going
to wear that next time? Why aren’t you married?
And the young ones think you are one of them
and thus they think a high grade can be achieved without any effort.
This is all, of course, before I open my mouth.
My voice, the suppressed roar,
tells them everything my appearance
hides.
