Elly did not sleep well. She doubted Connor did either, what with her tossing and turning and wheezing and coughing and climbing in and out of bed and rooting around in the bathroom cabinet for Nyquil or some nasal spray so she could breathe. That was before it dawned on her that he kept such things in the kitchen cupboard.
She stopped trying to get to sleep when morning finally became inevitable. Twenty minutes in the shower barely cleared out her sinuses. She slouched into the kitchen in her yukata. “Here,” she croaked, handing Connor the hairbrush. Her vocal cords were not cooperating either.
“How are you feeling?” he asked as he combed her hair.
“I’m not dead yet,” she grumbled.
“Are you going to make it to your classes?”
“I’ll sit quietly at the back of the room and scowl at Uncle when he
calls on me. I have to give an exam in 101, so that’s not a problem. And 201 lab—” She groaned. “What about lab?” She clutched at his sleeve. “Teach lab with me. I know. I ruined your sleep. I used up all the hot water. I’m a terrible person. But please?”
Connor laughed. “Not a problem. Eddie owes me a swap or two.” A hot breakfast and another Tylenol left her feeling almost human.
The feeling didn’t last long. The postnasal faucet started dripping around nine. Her sinuses were throbbing by ten. And her lack of sleep caught up with her before eleven. At noon she picked up the 101 tests at the JKHB copy center and walked home in the miserable heat.
She unzipped her backpack and took out her notebook. “Here,” she said, tearing out a page, “I wrote down the 201 verb forms for this week.” She went into the kitchen. “What do you take for colds? My sinuses are killing me.”
Connor searched through the cupboard and handed her a box of Comtrex. “Works like a charm. I should do an endorsement.”
She swallowed two tablets and sat down at the table. He was right. A few minutes later she felt wonderful. Because she was sound asleep.
“Elly?” Connor said.
“Uhnnn—” she replied. “Stop it,” she said, slapping at his arm.
“Wake up.”
She groggily lifted her head and picked up the Comtrex box. “May cause drowsiness,” she read. “May?”
“I never noticed.”
“You weigh fifty pounds more than me!” she wailed.
“C’mon, get up,” Connor said. “Up, up, up.”
She got to her feet and swayed like a sapling in a stiff breeze. Connor scooped her up in his arms. She nestled her cheek against his shirt. “You’re right. This is much better.”
He set her down on the bed and took off her blouse and slacks. “You know,” she murmured, “I really should be enjoying this more.” Connor kissed the crown of her head and tucked her in. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, shutting her eyes even as she spoke. “I have to give my 101 test. It’s in my backpack.”
When he returned to the bedroom, she was fast asleep. He turned off the light and drew the curtains and closed the door behind him.
Connor got to the classroom in the JKHB just as the previous class let out. As the students filed in—among them he recognized Mark from the night before—their eyes (except for Mark’s) registered surprise.
A girl asked, “Where’s McKenzie Sensei?”
Connor said, “She couldn’t make it in today.”
She turned to the girl in the next aisle. “Who’s he?” Mark leaned into the conversation and whispered something. The bell rang. Connor stood up and the students jumped to their feet as well. He almost took a step backward in surprise. He nodded and said, “Konnichi wa.”
“Konnichi wa!” they chorused in return. They even bowed right.
Elly wasn’t kidding about imposing the discipline of a Japanese high school classroom. He’d donned a sports jacket to lend some air of authority to his brief elevation in rank. Still, he felt underdressed. He handed out the exams. For the rest of the hour he reviewed his notes on Jakobsonian semiotics, glancing up now and then to check on their progress.
Four students remained when the bell rang. He gave them another five minutes and then hurried them along as the next class filed in.
Back in the Writing Center, he gave Atsuko a call and explained the situation. “You attended Eikaiwa classes in Japan, didn’t you? It’s pretty much the same thing, except in Japanese.”
“Yeah, I guess I can do that. It sounds like fun.”
“You know where the Writing Center is, right? Down the hall from Elly’s office. Could you meet me here around ten to four?”
She could and she did.
He reviewed the grammar points with her as they walked over. “Sheez, this is grade school stuff,” Atsuko said.
“These are mostly students who haven’t been on missions. You speak English better than they will ever speak Japanese.”
The classroom in the MARB was shaped like a small amphitheater. Connor wrote “Japanese 201 Lab” on the blackboard. A dozen students had already arrived and were sitting in the front tier. Connor confirmed that they were 201 students. Elly relegated the lab rats to the upper rows.
The 201 students were already asking Atsuko questions. She didn’t understand many of the English grammar terms and deferred to Connor for technical explanations. The lab rats filed in as the bell rang. “Hora,” one said. “We’ve got a new sensei!”
That caught Atsuko’s attention. “Hey, I’m not a sensei.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Good grief, thought Connor. Too many RMs spoke Japanese the same way they spoke English. Because most Japanese were so impressed that they could speak the language at all, they never got corrected.
“Because I speak Japanese way better than you,” Atsuko shot back in Kansai-ben, rolling her R’s like a heavy in a gangster film.
That provoked a hoot. “You from Osaka?”
“That’s right. Where’d you go on your mission?”
“Fukuoka.”
“Ha! Southerners. They don’t even speak real Japanese down there!”
Atsuko wasn’t exactly elevating the level of discourse in the room. Connor thought it’d be a good idea if they got back to the task at hand. He cleared his throat. “McKenzie Sensei is a bit under the weather today, so Atsuko and I will be conducting the lab.”
He glanced at the first item on the sheet, formed an interrogative, and posed it to Atsuko, and then to the first student in the row. Atsuko soon caught on. They ran down the verb patterns as they went around the front tier, with Atsuko correcting the students’ mistakes with varying degrees of pretend outrage and teasing. One kid—Kevin was his name—kept missing on a stopped consonant (itte-imasu/ite-imasu). She perched in front of him and tormented the poor boy until he got it right. She rewarded him with a smile that turned his mortification into a blush.
It runs in the family, Connor thought. He said aloud, “Any questions?”
One of the lab rats raised his hand and asked, “You married?” as the guy next to him punched him in the arm.
“To Connor?” Atsuko laughed. “No,” she rattled on in Japanese, “he’s like a brother to me. We kind of adopted him, after all.”
“Atsuko is McKenzie Sensei’s cousin,” Connor explained.
“No kidding,” Atsuko said, raising her right arm to the square. “She’s like a big sister to me.” She laughed again. “I guess you and Elly can’t be my brother and my sister. How about half brother? Yeah, that’d work.”
Connor doubted that even the lab rats understood Atsuko’s play on words.
He worked at the Center until seven. When he got home, Elly was sitting in bed in her pajamas, reading her Linguistics 330 text. He sat on the bed next to her and put his hand on her forehead. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
She whispered, “I slept till past four. I’m feeling better. I know I don’t sound like it. How did lab go?”
“It reminded me why I never liked teaching Eikaiwa. Atsuko did okay once she slowed herself down to the level of a 201 student. Still, this ability to launch into conversation in a crowd of relative strangers is one that never fails to impress me. Especially with the intent of teaching something. It isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“Darn right. So why do you make more than me?”
“I’m a grad student. Drag your education on long enough and you can make the big bucks like me. The hard part was keeping Atsuko from flirting with the lab rats. The pubescent female wanders into the den and the young males perk right up.”
“She do any of her yakuza imitations?”
“She used some language I don’t think your uncle would wish spoken in polite company.”
“Yeah, but I bet she’ll keep ’em coming back for more. I’ll have to bring her along if attendance ever flags. Where are the exams?”
Connor retrieved the manuscript box. “You sure trained them well.”
“Desh , desh ?” She grinned. “Too bad they don’t do the same thing in the 300 classes. Those RMs could use a bit of humility.”
“If you’re going for the high school experience, how about uniforms?”
She gave him a stern expression. “Don’t tell me you have a thing for girls in sailor uniforms.”
“I do not have a thing for girls in sailor uniforms. I’m just saying that if you wanted to make it an authentic experience—”
“The only time I ever wore a sailor uniform was the study abroad I did with Atsuko when I was fifteen. She thought about it for a minute. “You know, I probably do have a picture somewhere—”
Connor said, “I’m taking the Fifth.”