Dr. Oh
The first day of class, Summer term, Elly walked into room 2047 in the Jesse Knight Humanities Building, Japanese 301. She stopped and stared in amazement. The classroom was thronged with men, and she knew half of them on sight. This wasn’t so much a Japanese class as a missionary reunion. The first thing a returned missionary did at BYU was pick up his advanced language credits. Still, she felt as if she’d walked into a flippin’ missionary zone conference.
She was even thinking things like flippin’.
Melanie had already arrived, and was surrounded by a small flock of admirers, mostly guys from other missions who didn’t know she was just good ol’ Sister Crandall. Melanie was talking to a lanky, familiar-looking guy with short brown hair and bright blue Paul Newman eyes.
“Chalmers Ch r !” Elly practically shrieked.
Greg Chalmers looked around. His face lit up in a welcoming smile. “Hey, Packard Shimai! Hisashiburi!”
She managed not to shake his hand, and gave him a vigorous hug instead. He said, “I meant to tell you before I left, but sorry about Eliason. If I knew she was going to become unglued like that—”
“It’s okay. It wasn’t really her fault. Really. That ex-boyfriend of hers, though, is dead meat if he ever crosses my path.” She whacked him on the shoulder. “You know how it is, Ch r . Shikata ga nai. I survived.”
“And how is Eliason these days?”
“Still hates men, last time I checked.”
“I figured that. So what are you doing in this class? You’re pera-pera. You’re going to wreck the curve.”
“I can speak fine but I’m not so good at reading. Uncle says I’ve got to learn my kanji.”
“Uncle? That’s right. Oh Sensei is your uncle.”
On cue, Professor Oh strode into the room. He was a perpetually jovial man, a tad shorter than Elly and thin as a stick. “A bamboo shoot wearing glasses and a grin,” as Elly’s mother put it.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Too many tall gaijin in here!”
Anybody not at a desk found one.
“Konnichi wa!” Oh Sensei said with a bow.
“Konnichi wa!” the class echoed.
“Japanese 301,” Oh Sensei announced. “If you’re here to add the class, we have, let’s see, four slots left. Thanks to the wonderful complexities of the Japanese language, 221 is a prerequisite, even if you are an RM.” He took note of Elly’s presence and added, “Except if you attended elementary school in Japan.”
Elly rolled her eyes.
“Two midterms, weekly quizzes. I don’t grade on attendance, but if I call on you for a reading and you’re not here, batsu!” He sliced the air with an invisible samurai sword.
That elicited a laugh.
“You think I joke? You write kanji many times! Wax on! Wax off!”
Someone asked, “What about extra credit assignments?”
“Extra credit? Hmmm.” He tapped the end of his mechanical pencil against his chin. “Okay, you get engaged to my niece, automatic A.”
“Uncle!” Elly exploded in Japanese.
The expression of pretend-innocence on her uncle’s face said, What? What? Elly realized that he hadn’t mentioned her name. Oh, for dumb. The boy at the desk in front of her (because even at twenty-one they all looked like boys to her) turned around and smiled shyly.
She said tersely in Japanese, “Forget it. I’m twenty-three.” Being honest about her age had its uses.
They started the first reading. Oh Sensei paused before the bell to take care of adds and drops. At the beginning of the second hour, everybody had to stand up and introduce themselves—where they were from, what mission they’d gone to. They were all returned missionaries.
When it was Elly’s turn she said, “I lived in Hiratsuka and Yokohama until I was nine, but I mostly grew up in Salt Lake and Provo. I went on a mission to Osaka. Melanie was my first senpai,” she added, nodding at her roommate.
“Yeah,” Melanie said, “that’s why she speaks Japanese so well.”
Elly went to sit down. “Ah, ah, ah,” Uncle said, “you didn’t say when you got off your mission.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Can anybody beat that?” Nobody could. “The greenie award goes to Eri!”
Everybody applauded.
Melanie met her roommate at the end of the aisle after the bell rang. “You’ve got the next period free, don’t you? Let’s do lunch.”
“Erichan,” her uncle said.
She was convinced he didn’t pronounce the L on purpose. And why her parents had given her a first name with an L in it was a matter she’d have to bring up with them one of these days. They’d done the same thing with her sister. Though it was the diminutive chan that really bugged her.
“Don’t call me that in front of everybody,” she said under her breath.
“Oh. Sorry. Eri Sensei.”
Elly rolled her eyes.
Uncle said, picking up his papers, “Come to my office.” He started toward the door.
“What about?”
“So many questions, so little time, my little niece.”
From her half-inch advantage in height, Elly gave her uncle an exasperated look. But family was family. She got Melanie’s attention. “I have to go with Uncle,” she said. “I shouldn’t be long.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you at the Cougareat.”
His office was two flights up and down the hall. Uncle asked, “How are Sam and Emily?”
“Emily wants to get an apartment in Sannomiya, closer to the Kobe University campus. At least that’s what she and Mom were fighting about when I was there. Sam has spent less time in Japan than any of us, but all he does is speak Japanese. Mom makes him speak English at home.”
“How old is he now? Eleven, twelve?”
“Eleven. You should put him in one of your language acquisition studies.”
“Speaking of which, did you ever meet Connor McKenzie? He was in Osaka Spring term helping your Uncle Nobuo with that big translation contract for the SDF. I thought you might have run into each other.”
The image of a dark-haired gaijin standing on the Nakamozu Nankai station platform popped into her head. The brief look that had sparked between them. She shook her head to clear away the memory.
Her uncle interpreted it as a no. “It was a thought.” They stopped in front of his office while he unlocked the door.
“Wait a minute, this isn’t something Mom put you up to, is it? Did you tell this guy about me too?”
“I don’t know if your name ever specifically came up.” Uncle shrugged. “Hey, all I’m saying is that he’s a nice guy.” He dumped his books on the desk. His office wasn’t all that big to begin with, and made all the more cramped by a pair of filing cabinets and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining each wall.
“Is he even at BYU anymore?”
“He’s in the master’s program, linguistics.”
“Oh. Whatever. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“What? Oh, no. Have you ever thought about teaching, Elly?”
“Teaching? Well, I have thought about it.”
“Good. I’d like you to take over a section of 101. It’s Monday through Friday, two to four.”
“Japanese 101? You want me to teach a class?”
“Sure. Right now, your Japanese is more up-to-date than anybody else’s on the staff.”
“But I don’t know how to teach!”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to teach? You’ve done nothing for the last year and a half but teach! You taught Eikaiwa, didn’t you? Church English classes? Language is language. Look, the lesson plan is outlined section by section, hour by hour.” He handed her a three-ring binder. “Here are Noriko’s notes.”
“Who’s Noriko? Why can’t she teach the class?”
“Noriko’s having a baby. Stay a chapter ahead of the class and you’ll do fine. In a pinch just keep on speaking Japanese. They won’t understand you anyway.”
“Well—”
“I’ll do the first week with you. You’ll be the student teacher. You’ll get the hang of it by then. It’ll be easy. You’ll see.”
Easy for him to say. “Oh women,” her mother maintained, “are the samurai in the family. The men provide the comic relief.” Elly took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay? Only okay? Say ‘Okay!’ Exclamation points!! It’ll be fun, you’ll see. Room number 3090, two o’clock.”
She was sure she would see, all right. She wasn’t sure what.
Elly got an employment authorization form and faculty schedule card from the dean’s secretary. She descended to the basement floor of the JKHB where the TAs had their so-called offices. Room 1054, Asian Languages, was a squashed box of a classroom partitioned into a maze of tiny cubicles. She found Noriko’s carrel, placed her books on the narrow shelf, and sat down. Then lowered the chair a good six inches. She pulled out the yellow faculty schedule card and examined it.
Office hours. It made her feel so— grown up. When was the best time to have office hours? Probably right after class, four to five. Then home for dinner. That had a very white-collar feel to it. She filled in the boxes, went back out to the hall where the schedule cards were fastened to the corkboard next to the door, and replaced Noriko’s card with her own.
She remembered the time and hurried over to the Wilkinson Center. The cafeteria at the Cougareat was packed. During the summer, every department on campus ran a camp: music camps, sports camps, computer camps. Roving packs of teenagers outnumbered college students. The scene was kind of creepy—it gave her flashbacks to high school. “Over here,” Melanie called to her, waving.
The guy she was sharing the table with wasn’t happy to see Elly walk up. She’d have to get used to being the spoiler. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No matter,” Melanie said in Japanese. “You can tell me all about it.”
Elly got sweet and sour over rice at the Chinese concession. When she returned to the table, the boy had left.
“What happened to your boyfriend?”
“Him? Puh-leez, an opportunist.” Mel lowered her voice and said in a fake baritone, “Hey, mind if I sit here? By the way, what’s your major?” She finished her strawberry yogurt and licked the plastic spoon. “It finally dawned on him—I measure their IQ by how long it takes—that he wasn’t going to get my undivided attention.”
“Not on my account—”
“Girl, if I wanted him to stay, he would have stayed. I didn’t want.”
Elly laughed. “You’re so ruthless, Mel. If a boy paid that much attention to me, I’d feel obligated to jump into his arms.”
Melanie shook her head. “It’s a buyer’s market, Elly. Like in Japanese baseball, you never swing at the first pitch.”
“Or the second, third, forth, fifth, sixth.”
“Nine innings, that’s twenty-seven at bats. Either way, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. You should hang out in the Asian Collection at the library. All the RMs do there is hit on the Japanese girls. And vice versa.”
“Not once they find out I’m really American and twenty-three.”
“So bat your pretty brown eyes at the grad students. They’ve got a steeper earnings curve. What did your uncle want?”
“He asked me if I knew some old student of his.” Elly shook her head in disbelief. “It was like he was trying to set me up. McKenzie-something. Nobody that I know.”
“That’s what he wanted to talk to you about?”
“No, no, no. One of the Nihongo TAs is having a baby. He wants me to teach a section of 101.”
“Really? You’ll be a great sensei. Hey, that means if I visit you during office hours, you’ll have to help me with my 301 homework.” Melanie grinned. “Any rules against dating your students? Maybe your uncle’s still trying to set you up.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. But any boy taking 101 is probably a freshman. And eighteen is so young.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Well, it’s a thought.”
“Not a thought I’m having.”
Melanie laughed. “I swear, Elly, your uncle’s got the right idea. If you don’t hire yourself a go-between soon, you’ll never get yourself hitched.”