Present Tense
By Dewi Anggraeni
I put the phone down distractedly, drifting into semi consciousness, dulling the pain. I feel somehow detached from my body. I know I can't get to the class until it passes, so I just wait in helplessness.
"It is a very interesting story, but...". Wasn't it what they all said? Not quite. The one before that wrote back and said maybe I should try a publisher in Southeast Asia, since most of the characters in the story were Asians let them read it. If the story is about Europeans, let the Europeans read it. How parochial can one be?
The room is full and I wonder why so many people would want to cram themselves into this tiny place when it is so beautiful outside.
Doha, my Lebanese student, pushes in, stomach first, and claims the seat next to my bag. She always sits there, close to where I usually stand, ostensibly to be able to rush out if she feels sick.
I feel untypically closed in. Trying to surround myself with a buffer-zone of 'concentration on my present job', I feel as tense as a guitar string. Willing myself to take the roll, I look around and check the attendance. I tick seventeen names, but when I count heads there are eighteen. Once again I count the names that I ticked. Seventeen. I look around. Eighteen. Am I going crazy?
"How many of you are there?" I ask, exasperated.
Everyone starts to count heads. Eighteen.
"Then how come," I point to my roll-book, "I only ticked seventeen names on this roll?" God! Do I have to call all the names out loud and let them rise one by one? What with two preg nant women and four on workers' compensation for bad backs?
"Excuse me, teacher," Mara calls. Teacher, teacher! How many times do I have to tell them to call me by name?
"Teacher," she repeats, just to irk me further, it seems, "This my sista-Alo. She home alone, do nothing. Is orright she here?"
"Yes, okay," I say, relieved to know there is somebody else, that I am not going mad. "But please do not tell anyone about it. Mrs Moran will not be very pleased. Only people who are on this roll are allowed in this class".
I pick up the white board wiper and groan at the ink it leaves on my hand. Reaching into my bag to get a tissue, I catch my foot on the cord of my cassette-recorder and pull it off the table. Doha, becoming alert from imminent motherhood, grabs it and saves it from reaching the floor. I thank her profusely and reconnect it, then wipe my forehead, out of nervousness.
When I turn to the group again, they all laugh. I look at them, bewildered. What now?
"Madame", says Doha, "now you must wash your face".
In the washroom I recover a little. Nothing like cold water to bring you back to sobriety. I shouldn't have rung up before going to a class.
I return to the room, full of determination. Yoong, my oldest student, who's just arrived, is asking another Chinese speaking student, why I'm not there.
"Here I am!" I say cheerfully, knowing for sure she doesn't understand a single word. Yoong doesn't function in oral or aural English. Everything has to be written down. When this class started several weeks ago, she'd drive me insane by interrupting me and the other students, by saying, the only word she was able to say, it seems, "Write, write, write!" indicating with her pen to the board. Nobody was able to emit a second syllable in this class without Yoong saying, "write, write, write!" until I finally put my foot down and said, "No. No writing please. Listen". I pointed to my ears, then to hers. Fortunately for me, there are three other Chinese speakers in the group who sometimes help me explain to her.
Yoong looks expectantly at me. I remember then, that she asked her son to ring the night after the previous class, that she had left a container of Chinese medicine on the table. My husband took the call, and told me that the son had apparently rung the secretary of the school as well.
Being used to communicating with her, I begin to point at her bag then join my hands together to simulate a container, asking, "Did you get your medicine?"
The response was immediate. "Yeah, yeah, yeah! Thank you, thank you!"
So I smile happily and tick her name on the roll.
Yoong chatters away as one of the Chinese speakers and turns to me, "Yeah, yeah, yeah! Good teacher, good teacher!"
Calm down, lady. I didn't find it. The secretary must have done.
"What are you doing?" asks a woman on the cassette-recorder, "I'm playing football", answers a man. Silly question indeed. The woman must be blind if she can't see someone playing football. "Do you play football often?" asks the woman again. "Yes, I do. I play football whenever I can". Must be a grand final candidate.
"What is Lisa doing?"
"She's writing a letter to her grandparents".
"Does she write to..."
I can't stand this. This book was published, has been read by teachers and students of English as a Second Language all over the English speaking world and elsewhere. And what boring stuff it contains! In the meantime, my book, about a woman's battle to regain self-confidence in a world of apathetic people, has been rejected by eleven publishers, or was it twelve?
I turn off the cassette-recorder with a bit more gusto than called for. After some investigative questions to the students, I discover that five out of nineteen understand the difference between the first and second questions, while the rest can't see it for nuts.
The next half hour is laborious and tortuously exhausting. What idiot invented the difference between Present Simple and Present Continuous tenses in the English language? Why incorporate it in the tenses when it can easily be clarified by a simple adverb? Unbelievable.
Poor Doha. What's the matter with her? The baby must be moving too much, putting too much pressure on her back. She jumps each time somebody gives the wrong response to her partner's question. Yoong is becoming very irritated with her. Yoong never likes being told she is wrong. Whenever I correct her, she looks around and tries to catch the other Chinese speakers' eyes, then chatters busily to explain that I haven't made it clear to her that she had to say it in this way and that, much to the embar rassment of her friends. Now she looks sharply at Doha and tells her friends how she feels about this rude woman.
To prevent this from continuing, I stop the activity and give them some written work. Yoong begins writing happily, as if somebody had thrown her a security blanket. She is good at writ ten work.
I find myself using simpler and simpler sentences. I hate getting wrong answers, especially today.
The women finish their work at different times and invariably thrust their exercise books at me, though I keep refusing to see them until everyone has completed the work.
The time finally comes and I feel my neck tensing up antici pating poor results. Doha moves restlessly in her chair and asks if she can start. My attempts at self control only make me feel ridiculously happy at the correct answers to make up the re strained disappointment at the incorrect ones. I become intensely involved in the lesson. I must make them understand the differ ence between Present Simple and Present Continuous before the end of this session.
Doha becomes unbearably bossy. Now everyone is annoyed. Who does she think she is, their eyes say accusingly. I ignore all this, doggedly sticking to my task. I can't afford to be bogged down by trivial rivalry. So I sit down. I stand up. I gesture with my arms, my head, my legs. My whole body comes alive. I dance about.
Suddenly Doha reaches out to me. Her hand feels cold and moist on my arm. "Madame", she pleads, "Madame, doucement s'il vous plait! Take it easy!"
The room, the women, the table and chairs, could snap with a 'zingngngng...' when I suddenly collapse into my chair and laugh despairingly.
I am just zipping up my bag and looking around when I realize that Yoong is still standing there, as if waiting for something.
I look inquiringly. She returns the look.
"What's the matter, Yoong?" I finally ask, too tired to launch into body language.
She made a gesture of bad back. "My son," she says, patting her arching back.
"What happened to your son?" I ask, slightly shocked.
She repeats the performance, then adds, "Medicine, medicine! Thank you, thank you!"
"That's all right," I say, relieved. "I hope he gets better. Bye!"
Yoong grabs my arm as I am leaving the room, "Teacher, teacher! Medicine, medicine!"
Oh God. I look at her, incredulous, not at our previous misunderstanding, but at the fact that I still have to cope with the subsequent problem. Is there no rest?
"You didn't get the medicine?"
She makes a gesture of telephoning, pointing at me, nodding her head copiously.
Exasperated, I just look around, then walk around the room, looking on top of the mantelpiece, under the tables, the chairs, in the corners, and, inanely, inside my own bag.
"No," I say with a sad face, "Not there!"
Yoong becomes agitated. She repeats the telephoning gesture and pointing at me with added emphasis. Out of sheer helplessness I take her to the empty office and look in every cupboard and cabinet that is not locked, to show her it is not there either.
If I had a magic wand I'd make her disappear from my sight. She clings on to my arm, making accusing noises. I walk out of the place, desperately looking for someone to help me take her off my arm.
May Lee, the young Taiwanese student, is still standing waiting for her husband or boyfriend. I call out to her. She turns and walks toward us with a puzzled look. Before I have time to open my mouth, a string of Chinese words pour out of Yoong, with angry, accusing gestures addressed to me.
Once in the car, I start to laugh uncontrollably. Yoong is gesturing angrily toward me. I start the car.
Dewi Anggraeni was born in Jakarta and now lives in Melbourne. A former correspondent of the defunct Tempo weekly, she writes for The Jakarta Post, Forum Keadilan, and several other publications in Indonesia and Australia. She has three books published in Australia: two novels, The Root of All Evil (1987) and Parallel Forces (1988), and the third, a trilogy of novellas, Stories of Indian Pacific (1993).