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University of Florida “English as a Second Language” Taylor Mott-Smith Honors Thesis Project ENG4970 First Reader: Uwem Akpan Second Reader: Camille Bordas April 24th, 2019 English as a Second Language By Taylor Mott-Smith My mother called me twice last night. The first time was to warn me about fluoride; she read online that it could cause infertility. I told her not to worry, that I didn’t think they put fluoride in the water in England. She mumbled something about the European Union and hung up. The second time she called me was very late into the night. Calls at this hour weren’t that uncommon for her — she often forgot about the time difference. She was breathing hard when I picked up. I heard the full static rush of exhale, the clipped whine of inhale. I’d been awake already, luckily. My boyfriend, Conner, had just left. “Mom?” Wheezing. “Mom? Could you relax a minute and tell me what’s going on?” “I’m having a panic attack! God’s sake, can’t you tell?” More wheezing. “Just breathe, Mom, just breathe. Do you want me to do the count? One, two, three… out. One, two, three—” “I don’t need the count. Just give me a second.” I did. I listened as she steadied herself over the phone, across the ocean, leaning against her kitchen cabinet. She might’ve smoothed the hair down over her rollers. “Winnie,” she said. “I think your father is stalking me.” 1 “Okay. Why do you think that?” Over the past few years, I’d developed a strategy for handling my mother’s paranoiac episodes. Speak clearly and calmly. Avoid tones of nonchalance or irritation. Ask questions, but don’t interrogate. Let her feel credible. “Well, for starters, I saw him at the end of the driveway this morning,” she said. “This morning? You’re sure it was Dad?” “Yes, yes, he was looking in the mailbox. He opened it and looked into it for a second and walked off.” “Why do you think Dad would do that?” “I’ll tell you why. He wants to see if I have a new man in my life. He can’t stand the thought of me being happy with another man.” It was then that I realized this might be a long phone call. I pinched the phone between my neck and shoulder while I searched for some pajamas. I noticed Conner had forgotten his watch on top of the dresser again. It was a gift from his father, a “rite of manhood,” he’d said, but he was always leaving it here. Sometimes I thought he ought to wear it at all times. “What else Mom? Just the driveway this morning? Why were you out of breath when you called me just now?” “Someone tripped the motion sensor lights outside. I looked out the window and saw the bushes rustling like someone had just jumped into them to hide.” “You sure it wasn’t just a squirrel, Mom?” 2 Occasionally I tried to introduce some rationality into the conversation. It rarely paid off. “It wasn’t a squirrel-sized rustle, Winnifred!” I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. I’d forgotten to take my pills earlier. I asked my mother if she remembered her own dose today. “I’ve been off those for weeks. You should really stop them, too—Jennifer, that coworker I told you about? She was telling me about these essential oils, like lavender, chamomile, mint, you know. They cure anxiety and they’re all-natural, so they don’t have any of those chemicals that pharmaceutical companies put in their drugs to make them addictive. It’s homeopathic, Winnie—do you know what homeopathic means? —” I let my mom talk herself out. You had to do that with her. This is how she calmed herself down. She would never admit to needing professional therapy. She was one of those people that call psychiatrists “shrinks.” I took a sip of water and swallowed my Lexapro, a double dose for the one I missed earlier. When I woke the next morning, I would feel an inner jittery-ness, like my muscles were a horde of hamsters bound by tendons. Then, the incessant yawning, yawns that collided into one another and made my eyes water. The alternative to these side effects was the inability to stand in front of my classroom of Chinese preteens and teach them English. An inability, in the worst of cases, to pry myself from my bed in the morning. After only three months, I’d have to leave Cambridge, with its fuzzy green lawns and looming gothic spires, its overcast afternoons reading at the banks of the river Cam or getting tea with Juliette. Conner, the shadow of his jaw in my bedroom’s orange light. Love. Instead, I’d be back in Florida, most likely. With Mom, until something else came along. 3 “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go off your medicine without talking to your doctor,” I said as soon as she’d paused for a moment. “It’s my body. I can tell if something is working.” “I think the medicine was working okay, Mom. Please talk to your doctor soon.” “Alright, alright, I will. Because you asked.” “Thanks.” I heard her sigh and wondered if I should keep talking. “Just make sure all the windows and doors are locked, okay? It’s a safe neighborhood. You’ll be fine.” “It was safe five years ago when you were still here, I don’t know if it is now. I should’ve bought that security system, the one that young man tried to sell me the other day. I told you about him, didn’t I? He seemed sweet. Tall… Well. How are things in Cambridge? Have you met anyone?” I hadn’t told her about Conner. I wasn’t really planning on telling her anytime soon. She was just beginning to get her bearings on the internet, and I didn’t think Conner would be amused to receive a rogue Facebook friend request from his new girlfriend’s mom. I chose to ignore that part of her question. “Things are going well. I finally learned all my students’ names and how to pronounce them. They’re good students, you know. Very smart, very engaged. They ask good questions. We’re on the future tense right now.” 4 “That’s good to hear, sweetie. I hope you’ll call me if you’re ever feeling lonely over there. Or come home and visit, at least for the holidays.” “I’m not lonely. I mean, I have Juliette. She’s a good friend. Things are going well.” “I know, sweetie, I’m glad to hear it. I just want you to know you can always call.” “Thanks, Mom. I actually think I should be getting to bed soon though. I have class tomorrow morning.” “Oh shoot. I forgot. It must be pretty late over there. Go get some rest. I love you.” “I love you too. Goodnight.” I hung up the phone. It was just past three. My alarm would go off in four hours. One of my students had given me this paper lantern thing that I hang over the light in my room. The light was too bright before, and fluorescent light like that had a way of making cheap surroundings look even cheaper. Conner bumped the lantern with his head earlier that night and made a rip in the side. Some of that cheap white light was leaking through now, grimacing. I’d have to tape it shut in the morning. Fawcett College is over one hundred years old. It is composed of three red brick buildings, each three stories high, which surround a central lawn. Two of these buildings are dormitories, which house a diverse population, including graduate students, burly rugby hunks, and Chinese foreign-exchange kids. South of Dormitory A, there is a small orchard of plum trees and another lawn with two soccer goals. Located in the third building are administrative offices, 5 the dining hall, a reading/recreation room, laundry facilities, and classrooms. It’s in this building that I teach English as a Second Language for a company called Anglex, from nine to three. There are sixteen students in my classroom. They each have a folded cardstock name placard on their desk. I embarrassed myself rather frequently in the beginning of the year by bungling their names. I tried my best, but I’d stumble over the unfamiliar phonemes, like zh and xi. I suppose I could blame my insular upbringings. Back home in Florida, I hadn’t met a single person of east-Asian descent until I was in high school. A few of my students go by nicknames that are easier to pronounce. One of my students is called “Ben Ben,” which means “Clumsy-Clumsy” in Mandarin. True to his name, on the first day of class last May, he walked in with the upper-left half of his body in a cast. He had broken his collarbone playing soccer after class — a beloved pastime for my students. I had often watched them from the window as they ran out to the north lawn and fetch the weathered soccer ball from wherever it had last landed in the bushes. It was not the sport as it was meant to be played; rather, it was a carefree approximation, a sort of playground game involving soccer’s equipment, if not its rules and regulations.

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