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ne night, Nozaki and I sit on the stairs that lead from his law office on ground level to his apartment above and we talk about our respective jobs. Nozaki’s black cat saunters by, pauses by her master, then arches her back, hisses and storms past me, her neko nose high and haughty in the air. She is only jealous, Nozaki says when I ask if it’s something I said. I am pleased by this, that there is something for Miss Kitty to be jealous about, but also just a little stung. No cat has ever rejected me before. I ask Nozaki about the cases he worked on today and he says they are too boring to talk about. He asks me about my job at the ABC School and when I tell him I like it, no, that I love this job, he raises his eyebrows, says, Marilyn-sensei is a teacher for adults. I ask him what he means by that and he says he thinks I am too smart to teach babies, that the job is too simple for an intelligent woman to enjoy for long. I am flattered, I say, but you are wrong about this. I love working at the ABC School, love teaching the toddlers songs like “I’m Mad at You,” love working out puzzles with teenagers, creating treasure hunts that take them all over town. I love getting tiny glimpses into the lives of the adult students. One day a woman, taking English classes to prepare for her first trip abroad, tells me about the most difficult time in her life, a time when her children were small and her husband was never home. She speaks of her husband’s “accidents ” in those days. Only later do I realize by “accidents” she means “affairs.” O ................................................................................ 68 I love the routines of the school, the way repetition provides relief from the chaos in my head. I love the simplicity of the classroom, which provides a respite from a life now dominated by men. I love the books we use, the pictures that pose questions in rhyme: Can you feel the wind? Can you touch the stars? Can you see their lovely light? Can you see the moon in the afternoon? Can you touch the stars at night? We use a program at the ABC School that relies on a quick review of vocabulary through flashcards. As the instructor, I am supposed to add more difficult words to the pile each week and then, through flashcards, ask students to review easier ones in quick succession to reinforce what they already know. Most of the cards are easy to figure out. Pictures of oranges and apples and bananas in the pile labeled fruit. A living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom in pictures called rooms of a house. Or pictures delineating those troublesome little particles such as on and under , all of which have the words written on the back as a teacher’s cheat sheet. A few of the cards, though, are missing those answers on the back. They leave me wondering what the makers of the system had in mind. In a pile of cards labeled nouns, for instance, is a picture of a girl holding a pencil in the air, close to her ear. Every time I see the card, I go blank as to what the cue is supposed to be, and I find myself giggling as I tell the kids to repeat after me, You have a pencil in your ear, I say. Please repeat. You have a pencil in your ear, they say straight-faced, in unison. I wonder if they’re being polite or are just happily unaware. I love the mystery of why a woman has a pencil in her ear. And I love working late into the night at the ABC School, making birthday cards for the children after all the classes are done, after all the other teachers have gone. I love cutting out construction paper constellations of suns and moons and stars and placing these papery worlds onto the walls, next to flash cards with questions written in big black block letters, the kind too clear for anyone to misread: When is your birthday? Do you like cats? Can fish fly? I love wondering, Can fish fly? It seems possible. Anything seems possible. I look at Nozaki and wonder how to tell him this. I DO, I...
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