Don’t tell Gonzo Sensei that sometimes we got off topic and talked about the names of the Harry Potter characters. Don’t tell her you asked me to re-cap the seventh book, which won’t be released in Japan until this summer. Don’t tell her I asked if you were dating anyone and it came out that Ryosuke likes a girl. These things can be our secrets.
You’re outside my window now, running in track and field club. Several students are dragging a tire across the arena for soccer drills, but you, Kasumi, run right past them. You’re back in the red and white track and field jacket with KURUME written across the back. You have your hair pulled into a bun at the back of your neck and it bounces as you jog. Is it creepy I now watch you like this? That I know what you’re doing now because I know you’re not with me in the English room going over affirmative arguments? That I can recognize Ryosuke by the back of his hedgehog hair? That I felt vindicated when I asked Ryosuke if he was glad debate was over and he said, “no, debate was fun. Track and field is work.”
I think you know you were first and second in your class this term. That you, Kasumi, slowly crept up the ranks and overtook the poor student who wasn’t in debate and therefore should have been studying. I like to think I had a small part in that; that you aced your debate exam because of me. What was the extra push you needed all along that you only go this term?
You, Ryosuke, are always number one in your class. It’s been this way since the beginning. And yet you pal around with the other two boys who are occasionally accused of cheating; when did you find time to study for biology? English grammar? Math? Your English mind reminds me of a computer, and the way you use your dictionary’s voice to ask questions makes it seem even more mechanical. Should a man pay for a woman when they go on a date? Are they still going out? How do you know if you’re in love? You can’t come right out and ask us these questions, so you use your dictionary instead. We all laugh at the voice. It gets to the point where everyday we ask, “what’s today’s sentence?” You’re a high school boy in a room full of girls. The sentences are always questions.
The final debate made all three of you cry. Ryosuke, you couldn’t pull yourself together. I patted your arm and smiled at you and did all the things a young female teacher can do. I even took you outside and left you between the strangely green bush and the chainlink smoker’s fence. I didn’t want to leave you there alone because we had a bond, you and I, we worked the closest together, and I felt like I was abandoning you, since after every round you and I sat down and went through your rebuttal point-by-point, and I like to think together we developed a short-hand, an ability to speak clearly to each other even though we were speaking in your second language. But I couldn’t stay out there with you because I could tell it embarrassed you to cry in front of me. You kept wiping your tears away furiously with your fist. There are some things a boy has to go through alone.
It was a lot easier with you girls because I could hug you. I pretended to punch Ryosuke on the side of the head, I ruffled his hair, I squeezed his arm, but I couldn’t decently press myself up against him the way I did with you Mio when we won the semi-final round; so carelessly we crashed into a table. We would smile at each other, and I like to think we were both pleased in the same way. In a shy, “did you see what I did?” kind of way. I’m still struggling with how to express myself to a 17-year-old boy. You think, debate team, that you have problems expressing yourselves. I have had 18 years of practice dealing with brothers, and so far a chuck on the arm is what I’ve come up with.
I thought I wouldn’t be nervous on the day of the meet. I thought we could waltz in there and I’d be happy if we won a single match. But then I saw the other teams in their uniforms, with their handwritten notes, and I realized they weren’t geniuses or foreigners or English wizards. They were just other students who happened to live in a far-away town, and they cut their hair and carried their bags the same way you three did. Only the three of you had the cool shoes: Mio’s puffy hi-tops, Ryosuke’s black shoes and green laces, Kasumi’s polka dots. You would have looked more professional in your black leather school shoes, but then we wouldn’t have seen the smirks from the judges or gotten the thumbs up after we won matches. “Awesome shoes,” our ALT friends would say. Even after we lost I kept thinking about your shoes, and I even made you do the hockey pockey on the train so I could finagle a picture of them. Ryosuke taking my advice to use an example in his final rebuttal; Kasumi’s polka dot shoes–why has my mind catalogued these as important, and yet I can’t remember why we were laughing two Friday’s ago or why Ryosuke did gymnastics on our chairs when I went to the bathroom?
There has been some crying on my part in the privacy of my apartment. Two and a half months of practice and so far I’ve cried about you three times. I know we can’t keep up debate–you’re almost third-year students, and that means nothing but studying. You’d gotten so good you could play on par with me, and I had native English on my side; we’d hit the glass ceiling. But I keep trying to figure out what’s making me cry; why I feel so broken-hearted.
I’ve put a lot of things on hold for Japan–my logical thinking, my arguing, my opinions–but in debate all of that came bubbling forth and you didn’t seem to mind. You didn’t bat an eye. Of all the perceptions people have of me in Japan–that I’m friendly, funny, a good ALT–I think only the three of you have seen the person I was before I came K-town. You liked me for my ideas and not my funny faces. We had so many hours of serious talk, of idea volleying, of one-on-one practice. That is why when I say this is my best memory of Japan I say it not just because I got close to you three, but because when you, Ryosuke, took my advice to give examples in your rebuttal, and then Gonzo Sensei came over to say the example was the strongest point, that it won you the match, you looked at me so incredulously, like all this time I’d been hiding what a smart person I was, but you’d found out my secret. And you weren’t going to forget it.
