ESL princess

It’s a horrible thing to wake up tired, to attempt to rationalize an extra three minutes of rest, and the first thoughts of the day to be along the lines of “how long until I can get some real sleep?” That was this morning, that is every morning of mine during tax season. That was eighteen hours ago, I’ve finally made it into my driveway, minutes away from bed. My mood would border on ecstatic, that is if I wasn’t tired to the point of numb.

Turn the knob slowly, quietly, so close to the end. Down the hall, last door on the left, open that door slowly too, as Christine would already be in bed. She works long hours too, but her agency has the decency to cease work early on Friday afternoons. An empty wine glass and a book on her night stand, sound asleep with a half smile on her face. I pause for a moment to admire her beauty, exhaustion replaced by contentment as I undress and climb into bed with her. I smile to myself as I wrap my arms around her and settle into comfort, feeling reassured that sometimes life wasn’t so bad.

Christine stirred slightly, and snuggled into my arms, “how was your day?”
“Long, yours?” I say with the relaxation I had been so craving all day.
“It was nice, you’ll never guess who I ran into at the grocery,” more asleep than awake.
“Who’s that?” I ask, not caring in the least, so very happy to be in bed.

“That girl you used to see in college, Sylvia,” she smiles in a teasing fashion. With decent reason too, I’d dated Sylvia back when she was college roommates with Christine, Sylvia was beautiful and a lot of fun besides, but one night at her apartment she introduced me to Christine, and I knew that I had just met the girl I was to spend the rest of my life with. Christine still loves to tease me about Sylvia. I was too tired to put up a fuss tonight.
“Oh yea? What’s new with her?” I asked, again not caring much.
“She just got engaged.”
“I didn’t know she was really seeing anyone.”
“Apparently it was fairly sudden, you knew she took a job teaching ESL at that center off Franklin?”
“Right yea, what’s that have to do with engaged?”

“Well, apparently she had this student from Korea, you know how that area is mostly East African?”
“Yea, I guess I read something about there being a small Korean neighborhood randomly over there, but what’s that have to do with Syl?”
“Shhh, I’m telling you. So Sylvia has this student from Korea, and his English is already pretty solid, much better than the rest of her students, and they get along really well right from the start. He’s like her star pupil, which is funny to say, seeing as she’s 25 and he’s maybe thirty or just under. Anyway, he politely asks her out to coffee after class, and they end up talking for like five hours at the Korean coffee shop over by Zipp’s.”
“Jeez” I murmur, as content to be in bed as I can ever remember being, more asleep than awake..
“Right? So anyway, they go out again for coffee the next night, and for dinner the night after. They are just hitting it off perfectly, and she’s really starting to be a little smitten for this student of hers, which is a problem because though they’re both adults he’s still her student, and there are rules at this ESL school and all that.”
“Sylvia used the word smitten?” I tease.
“Well no, shut up, that’s not the point,” a little more animated now, “as I was saying, they are just hitting it off famously and somewhere after desert he grasps her hands, looks deeps into her eyes and tells her in his broken English that he loves her.”

“Ha, I bet that threw her for a loop.” She used to be such a drama queen sometimes.
“That’s what I said, but she said she looked deep into his dark brown eyes and realized that she loved him too. Three dates, can you imagine? She used to be such a player, always with a couple guys lined up to take her out, and another couple from out of town always visiting.”
“That’s wild.” I say.
“Right? That’s not even the wild party yet.” Really excited now, there’s no way she’s going to let me sleep until we finish this story of Sylvia and her ESL lover.
“What more could there be?”
“So this student of hers goes on to tell her that he loves her, and he’d rather die than spend another day without her as his wife, yada yada, he asks her to marry him and she says yes.”
“Wow, that’s something.” Sarcasm.
“That’s nothing. So she accepts this Korean guy’s proposal, and they’re both laughing and crying and carrying on and the whole restaurant is going crazy cause they’re both so happy, right?”
“right…”
“So the Korean guy then goes on to tell her that they have to leave immediately to go back to Korea to tell everyone and make the arrangements, and how its going to be such a big deal to his people. His People. This is where things get a little strange.”

“What about this hasn’t been a little strange so far?” I ask, slightly annoyed now.

“It turns out this Korean ESL student of hers is the crowned prince of South Korea, next in line for the throne,” Christine exclaims, wide awake and now out of breath, “he was in the states to learn English and gain an appreciation for our culture, he took Sylvia’s ESL class just to the experience life as a common Korean immigrant in America.”

Silence.

“Christine,” I whisper into the silence, “I’m sorry for not taking you seriously when you used to whine about what a princess Sylvia used to be back in college.”

Anonymous Pregnant Woman

I liked being an anonymous pregnant woman in public. However much I suffered from loneliness and fear in my own world, when I stepped out into the street, I was just a pregnant woman like any other you might find in a magazine. Being pregnant made me feel invincible, powerful; like a protected species.

There was a game I liked to play when I went on walks. Head up, I looked neither left nor right. With complete steadiness and total disregard for the traffic around me, I would step off the curb and onto the street without looking, confident that nobody would hit me.

Even if a car happened to collide with my body and kill it, so what? I would have died in honor and been doubly missed, like a valiant warrior fallen in battle and destined for an afterlife in Valhall. Because of pregnancy, my death would have been more meaningful than that of any other pedestrian. My life would have had more value somehow.

Headlines would read, “Expectant young mother fallen, life cut short” or something of that nature and people would say in passing, “How sad? Isn’t that sad? She had so much to look forward to.” It’s true. People take it real hard when a pregnant woman dies. Any pregnant woman.

So I would step off the curb and, staring straight ahead, listen to the delicious sounds of squealing tires and apologies shouted out in panic. No one ever even so much as honked at me. It felt good.

I could have been any pregnant woman out of a magazine, with a flush on my cheek and new clothes blossoming out over my stomach. All I had to be was a body, a passageway from the past to the future. Could have been anyone, or no one, even.