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 Weathered
Accent On the Root

Zhanna Rohalska

    The wrinkled light green dollar bills were lying on the table. They needed to be spent, wasted or given away. She could not bear seeing money on her table anymore, it was diminishing her in her own eyes. How could she dedicate more and more of her precious and unbounded time to this really pragmatic and down-to-earth idea of making money? It was not her nature, she was a social human being and she wanted to communicate with people rather than talking business with them all the time. Or maybe it was just her Russian Slavic slovenly blood talking in her.
    Russian and nobody else. Yes, at least it was her answer to those who wondered which country she was from. If she said “Ukraine”, there was a very tiny chance that some of the people actually knew such a country existed. So, generalizing by using “Russia” in her reply, she was securing herself from tedious and cliché explanations such as: “Oh, yes, you are right, it used to be a part of Soviet Union but now it has its own independence and the official language is Ukrainian, though Russian still prevails for sure”. And so on, and so far... She likes when people grant her with the privilege of not reciting her background ode over and over again. But unfortunately the opposite happens all the time because her accent is still present in its pristine form and stands out wherever and whenever it is possible. Maybe if she tried harder she would get rid of it. There are all kinds of courses: online and live ones which help one to lose one’s native accent. For her it was similar or at least close to undergoing a sex change surgery (she would never even consider such a type of procedure). Her accent was one of those not numerous things, which composed her fragile and susceptible to even minor spitefulness national identity. It was a big deed and a great achievement of a strong-willed individual in this modern globalization-infected world to preserve your true native roots. But again it was not a big deal, if you did not have it at the very beginning or if you lost it either on purpose or by the unlucky circumstances such as being really gifted with languages and adopting local pronunciation.
    Well, her level of English was actually cryopreserved in its primary phase of development for an indefinite period of time. Her grammar was better than that of some local people and that is the fundamental factor by which people judge of your intelligence. So, she felt completely comfortable and confident expressing herself most of the times. Unless she was in a situation where her foreign background could expose her to sly tricks of businesses preying on those who were fresh off the boat. Let us say, you are buying a new cell phone and are talking over the terms of the annual contract and a sales representative takes advantage of you in some way because you did not hear or misunderstood some phrase. And that is exactly how you wind up tied up and stuck with the company for two years instead of a desired one.
     The accent though was a big advantage and attraction for men. It sounded so exotic and estrange for them that they would call her up just in order to hear her beautiful highly accented voice. When she was getting angry, her English suddenly would become all messed up and she would forget the simplest grammar axioms and formulas. And that is when a lot of her adversaries used a good chance of mocking her and criticizing her English in such a way winning the verbal fight in no time because after reaching the peak of anger she would grow mute and speechless. That was a weakness of hers, which not a lot people were aware of since it would take time to discover it. On the other side, when being affectionate, she would use certain Ukrainian words understandable only to her and him (surely being translated prior to usage). One of those words was “malenkyi” which meant “little, tiny” in Ukrainian. She would whisper it while rubbing the hair of her boy-friend at the time with a deeply built-in and heavily accumulated motherly instinct, which was begging to be channeled in a right direction. This word was part of her baggage, which she was carrying from one relationship into another just inserting a different first name each time. Some things in life are unchangeable as they say. At first it was difficult and tiring for her to remember to use a new name of a lover, she would always stumble and close her mouth right on time in order not to blip out the wrong one. Especially it was hard in the middle of the night when everything was piled up among the sheets: words, legs, smells and emotions. She would gasp for air and a chance of repeating the past but the reality was ungrateful and she had to adapt to a “moving on” script of New York dating scene.
    Once she even answered the job ad where women with strong accents were in demand. But she never got any response. Maybe her accent was gradually fading away and becoming not so striking as before?

    As you probably can guess she was a language person and was earning her daily bread and butter teaching languages to all hungry and thirsty of knowledge. Thanks God, she chose the right path and entered the Faculty of Foreign Languages. So, now operating fluently with three languages: English, Russian and Ukrainian she did not have to worry about tomorrow and even about preparing herself to her lessons. She would never invest any time into reading her teaching materials before meeting with a student even for the first couple of lectures. It was one of those inner hard to explain principles she would set for herself. She was improvising and looking up chapters while the student was absorbingly writing or pronouncing a new word with his eyes sunk downwards. In short, she was cheating on her professionalism status. But risk was an essential part of her life, so she had to add a bit of challenge into her job, otherwise she would get too bored and then what would she do? Boredom in her vision was a dooming element for everything in her world.
     At first she would stick only to teaching Russian/Ukrainian but later, realizing that there were not a lot of Polish tutors in New York, started putting one more ad: “Painless Polish with a Professional Tutor”. Besides this, she tried instructing French but it did not work out because of the huge competition formed by the wide availability of native French speakers. The first and vital priority of any tutor was the fact if he or she was a native speaker of the language he or she taught. I completely agree with this choice of primary requirement- I would never take language classes from somebody for whom the tongue of his instruction was not native. Everybody is chasing purity and authenticity in this second-hand recycled and pretentious world. But it is easy to pretend. Even our heroine pretended that Polish was her second speaking language when in reality it was not even close to that. In this case, however, in opposition to the previously described teaching negligence, she had to do a decent amount of preparing for her lessons because she did not want to lose the client. That’s why she would diligently rent Polish books and movies from the library and limit her service only to beginners and intermediate students. Once she met a man who aggressively self-taught himself Polish just in order to read the private correspondence of Chopin. He was doubtlessly at an advanced level and she had to admit awkwardly her inability to give him the knowledge he would need at this moment. She stoically and with the fading dignity in voice recommended him to find a native Polish speaker for the purpose of teaching him.
     Sometimes during the sessions she would watch herself from above as if she were a spirit or a person with depersonalization disorder. The fact that she was teaching and that somebody was listening to her attentively and trustfully made her shiver with spasmodic strangled laugh. It was so surreal and fragile: she was admiring her own patience and articulation. She was almost enamorated with her own reflection as if looking into the clear water of a forest pond. She was always very friendly and supportive, she knew that even one wrong look or too criticizing of a remark and there would probably be no student any more. Though appearance in general did not matter a lot. Only once she had an unfortunate encounter with a potential student who made a fast and bitter remark that she did not look like a teacher. Saying this, he stepped away from her looking with suspicion and restless doubt in his eyes. Maybe he expected a frowning woman with dyed black hair, in glasses and in a strict business outfit. Our character was a complete opposite of that image: straight natural untrimmed hair, T-shirt with a trendy logo on it and Puma sneakers. The way a normal person enjoying his or her early twenties should look. She did not want to burden herself with any extra teaching luggage except for textbooks, which quite often she tended not to bring to the lessons as well. What she usually would do was that she would lend them around one by one to her students and then explain to others the reason of not having her manual by giving it to another of them. There was one special textbook, which was weighing probably up to 10 Lb. The girl would make all believable excuses only to be able to leave it behind. All the time while teaching she felt like passing a test in front of herself. She could do this for a long while but it was not challenging and creative enough since she was just guiding the people along the book and not producing anything new or planting any provocative and rebellious ideas in their minds.
    She was filled with all the angst and frustration that took roots in her foreign background and a feeling of rootless existence. She was trying to divert her miserable haunting thoughts by cheering herself up looking at the amount of green wrinkled bills piling up on her table. But eventually they just started making her sick and shaky. She was in physical pain. Who could teach HER how to lead a Painless Life?
    From now on she would always tell her students that she could not make their lives easier but she could always teach them painless Polish or Russian for a reasonable price.



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