The Language Barrier

                I can’t understand anyone with even the slightest accent.  Much to Walt’s dismay, this has caused me to turn off such epic movies as Snatch, Terminator, and any James Bond movie featuring Daniel Craig.  Thick accents don’t sound like English to me. 

                The best nail salon in town is tucked away in a corner of Wal-Mart.  The husband and wife who own it are Vietnamese.  Walt and I went to a ballet for Valentine’s Day this year, and I wanted a manicure to go with my dressy outfit.  The woman who works the nail salon is nearly impossible for me to understand, and I gladly waited for the man to finish with his customer.

                Eventually he ushered me into the small salon.  Gesturing toward the wall of nail polish, he implied that I could pick a color for my fingernail tips.  I chose a dark red.

                He clucked his tongue and took the bottle from me, replacing it in the nail polish rack.

                Alright, I thought, no red.  I walked back toward the wall to choose another color.  The small man took me by the wrist.  He pointed to a piece of cardboard on the counter by his station.  The cardboard held various colors of long fake fingernails.  He pointed to a similar shade of red.

                “Okay,” I said.  “But, I want just the tips.  And, I need them to be short.”

                He nodded vigorously, “Yes, yes.  Tips.  Short, square-round, you say.”

                “Okay,” I agreed again, wondering why we weren’t yet seated at the nail station.

                “These hold color better.  See her nails?” he pointed to the girl whose nails his wife was working on.  I looked at her nails, noticed her knuckle tattoos, and looked away.

                “Yes, I want them to look like hers.”

                “No.  She come back all the time.  Her nails not hold color.  You pick this,” he pointed again to the cardboard.

                Holy crow, I thought.  Should I just leave now?  This could be excruciating.  Maybe he’ll just get frustrated with me and not talk at all; he’s got to get tired of talking to customers all day every day.  I’ll give him a break.

                I decided against bolting from the scene and sat down across from him at his nail station.  He pulled my hands toward him, beneath the desk light.

                “Whoa!” he said, feigning that my engagement ring blinded him and shielding his eyes.  “Pretty,” he said.

                I laughed politely, “Thanks.”  He clipped, filed, and cleaned my nails in preparation for the fake tips’ attachment.

                “So, what you do?” he asked. 

                “I’m a student,” I said. 

                “What you study?”

                “English,” I told him, “I’m going to be a writer.”

                “Oh!” he said.  “You write my story!” 

                Oh gosh, I thought.  I don’t think this is going to be a nod-and-smile-my-way-through-it kind of story.  I focused all of my attention on the man.  “What’s your story?” I asked.

                “I come from Vietnam when I was nineteen,” he began.

                His mother sent him away so he could create a better life in America.  He crammed into a tiny motor boat with dozens of other people.  There was no room for anything but people on the boat, he had only a picture of his mother with him.  Their boat left from the coast of Vietnam under the cloak of darkness.  Soldiers patrolled constantly and were commanded to shoot anyone trying to leave the country, no excuses, no explanations.

                The men in the boat used the clothes they were wearing as sails to get the small boat far enough from shore to start the motor to lessen the risk of being caught by the soldiers on shore.

                “Longest hour of my life,” he said.  “Only one in ten people who try to escape actually survive.  The ocean is so cold, and so many people want us dead.”

                He bent down to pick up the case of acrylic nails by his feet.  Behind him I noticed pictures that I hadn’t thought much about before.  In collage-style frames sat pictures of his son’s and daughter’s birthdays complete with lit candles and party hats.  Another frame held a collage of the family smiling from beneath Mickey Mouse hats and large sunglasses in front of Cinderella’s castle.  He sat up and I looked away from the photos, pretending to study my nails.

                I’m such a girl in that everything makes me cry these days, so I held my breath for a second.  He continued his story, a story whose details I’d kill to remember.

                He concluded, “I never see my mother again.  She wanted better life for me, so she send me away.  She stay there with rest of family.  We talk on phone and I send her pictures of family,” he gestured to the framed photos behind him.  “But, I never see her again.”

                A woman draped in a tent’s worth of zebra print with a mouthful of Bubbilicious clicked her nails on the counter next to us, “Are you open on Sundays?” she smacked.

                “We open every day,” he said.  “Every single day,” he repeated, quieter the second time.

                The self-checkout lanes spoke to the customers, and the babies in the carts of overwhelmed mothers screamed.  At that moment, it dawned on me that I hadn’t even noticed the man’s accent.  I’d hung on to his every word through his hour-long life story, and I hadn’t faked my rapt attention once.                

Inspiration

Blogging has been challenging for me this semester. Although I can talk your ear off in person, I feel like I’m running out of written words. Between business writing at work, blogging, journaling for one writing class, writing poems weekly for another class, creating text responses and fiction exercises for yet another class, and working on my MFA manuscript (20 pages at a time), recently, I’ve felt like I’m running out of words. This is not a good feeling for someone who hopes to do this for a living.

Luckily, I had the pleasure of attending the YC Faculty Reading on Thursday evening. One of the coolest things about this series of readings is that in the end of the event, the students/community members/attendees get to ask questions of the writers. The faculty reading always brings the largest audience because, quite frankly, they rock. Each writer on staff is currently teaching, publishing, and still touring for readings on a regular basis. They’re a great group of role models.

It’s a funny thing, gathering a group of writers. If listened to individually, we’d undoubtedly be treated as patients of multiple personality disorders. Every writer that I’ve heard read or had a conversation with has referred to the “voices” that he or she hears. The “voices” are what make them write. The writing for the “voices” keeps them sane and balanced in life.

While I sat in the audience thinking about the readings I’d just heard and whether “voices” ever speak to me, Walt unexpectedly raised his hand to ask a question. Not only does he hate it when I drag him to literary events, he doesn’t particularly like reading, so I stared in shock at his raised hand. One of my instructors called on him and smiled at me.

Walt specifically addressed my professor who’d published one book in June and one in August of this year.

“How many things are you usually working on at once?” he asked. The panel of writers nodded, great question, especially for a book hater.

“I’m usually working on at least four different things at once,” said Laraine. “Obviously,” she said, “not all of those things I’m working on make it to completion or are even worth completing. But, I have to write them anyway.”

Instant inspiration.

I failed miserably with the juggling kit that I got for Christmas in third grade, and I can rarely read more than one book at a time. This passion of mine is going to be a challenge. But what passion isn’t worth that challenge?