The circle 3-1 takes me home from soccer. It's a long bus route, but it means I don't have to get up and switch to the subway. I just get to lounge there and read.
She sat down beside me and giggled, belaying the fact that she was anywhere from 39 to 46 years old. She asked me to help her with a translation problem. "What does this mean?" She was pointing at 'intellectual suicide'. The article was a religious pamphlet about what it means for a woman to submit to marriage. The context was 'Submission does not equal intellectual suicide.' So I explained it to her.
"Oh," she giggled. "English is made so different than Korean."
She asked me to explain why there was an arrow from the word 'submission' to this exact picture:
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| The pamphlet did not include the text explaining the maneuver. |
"I have studied for ten years at bla bla bla. Do you know bla bla bla?"
I told her I didn't.
"I am intermediate four years. I ask the manager to take advanced classes but he say no."
"You must be working hard," I tell her. "I'm sure you'll get to advanced one day."
She eyed me for a moment and began rummaging around in her purse. Out came a silver locket. Her fingernails worked in to pop it open and I played at sneaking a look over her shoulder. She quickly turned it away from me, jealous of the first glance. She studied it for a moment and then turned it.
"This is my teacher."
The locket was the size of an oblong quarter. Inside was just about the bare minimum of a face. The ears, most of his hair and some of the chin had been hacked off so that the rest could fit inside. It was a man's face and I'd say he was twenty-three to twenty-eight.
"This is my teacher," she told me. She was misty eyed.
"How long has he been your teacher?"
"One year," she told me. "He left Korea. He is going to be a lawyer."
"Ah, when did he leave Korea?"
"Seven years ago."
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.
.
.
.
I said that he must have been a very good teacher. She held the locket a ways from her face and for a moment I was not there with her. It was just the two of them.
"I study English so I can go to America and meet him."
I told her that he would certainly be surprised. She smiled.
"People say I am very unique studying seven years for him."
I agreed. I told her she was very unique and then it was suddenly her stop and she was jamming the locket back in her purse and scrambling for the doors. "Thank you," she said. "You are a handsome guy."
Now do I end this by saying that I sat back and basked in how lucky I am, or do I tell you I worried that she was snapping a cell phone picture of me through the bus window? Because both are true.
