Identity wheedling

I’m not usually in the teacher’s room for cleaning time. I have my own fish to fry and desks to casually lean against and rain to contemplate in the English room. I’ve trained those students so well that they don’t even snap to attention when I rattle the key and open the door. Instead they lazily go to the whiteboard, pick up markers, and start doodling. Then, when Green Tea Sensei pops her head in to ask us a question or ask for some late homework, we all look around with our scared eyes and elbow each other, and I pretend like I’m doing something besides talking to Kanako about the latest Harry Potter movie. But today the PTA is setting up for a combo Christmas party/farewell party for our German exchange student, and so I leisurely ate my lunch and watched the students empty the teacher’s garbage cans and halfheartedly sweep between our desks. Then, one of the vice-vice principals lifted the top off the shredder and three boys rushed over with garbage sacks and they filled them to the brim. I’ve occasionally seen the tail-end of this operation, and it always amazes me that we shred three full Peaquah-sized bags of paper in a day.

After cleaning time we were requested to make a visit to the Superhero class where we accidentally sprang on them the fact that they have English listening winter homework. “Surprise!” I yelled and everyone laughed. “Come and do it with us!” we sang, because DEBATE SEASON is over and I’m having a hard time trudging to my car everyday past the students who are now back at clubs. “Please,” Gonzo Sensei said, “don’t tell them it was my idea. Or they’ll just think I’m the dragon lady telling them what to do.” But it slipped out that it wasn’t our idea, exactly, to assign them 12 listening exercises, that we were just the medium to alleviate their madness. “Please don’t wait until the night before and listen for three hours,” I said. And when I asked, “do you understand?” as we stepped off the stage and out the door, the Superhero class sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “yes!” so loudly they had enough sound for themselves and enough to share with 1-2, The Class Who Never Speaks.

Back in the teacher’s room the students are lined up behind O Sensei’s desk, waiting for her to cut and paste and check off their names for grammar assignments. One girl with a birthmark the shape and color of a black eye gives me a three-fingered wave. Two boys lean over O Sensei’s desk and stare at me. “Oh!” they say. “Hi boys,” I say, and they do a bobble-headed bow. I think the students aren’t quite sure where I live–in the teacher’s room, in the small closet off the English room, in the 1-1 classroom, and so it’s a surprise to see me in the halls, on my way to the bathroom, getting my shoes after school. It’s as though I’m a partially invisible ghost who wanders through the halls mostly undetected unless you’re looking right at me, and then I’m quite surprising, like “oh, I forgot you lived here”.

I’m racked with regret that I didn’t take the five minutes in the Superhero class to congratulate the debate team for their 4th place at All-Kyushu. I spent that stressful, weepy day with them, and I’ve been sifting through my thoughts with a pinch in an email, a pound in my journal, and I’m just not quite ready to explain more than that. When I stop crying when I go home and can watch the track and field team without a nostalgic buzzer going off in my head, then I will write, dear Internet, about the three students who have forever welded themselves to my heart. Until then, you can know my heart has been turned into a gold star, and I wear it on my sleeve, so proud am I of how much they worked and what our teamwork accomplished. I’m in the throes of planning a debate closing ceremony complete with certificates and pictures and three hand-written letters, and maybe then I can express to them that this is my best memory of Japan, that they’re the first students to make me cry, that I’m so sorry the dark late nights and dictionary conversations are over. But most of all that I found out at the Saturday tournament that Ryosuke likes a second year girl, but now we no longer have the time together or the joking relationship for me to wheedle her identity out of him.