The Complete Beginner

The young woman waiting for me in the hallway looked up fearfully as I approached. The clipboard I was carrying with the interview sheet on it obviously made her nervous: she could not take her eyes off it. Sitting down across from her, I smiled, and she tried to smile back, but it was a vain effort. She was far too nervous. A good-looking man approached us and said something to the woman in rapid Italian. She looked up at him and nodded, her lips compressed, her hands clenched in her lap -- but she made no answer. The man gave her an exasperated look, turned on his well-shod heel, and went to wait in the adjoining lobby.

"Let's see, you're Alessia, is that right?"

She stared at me in horrified confusion. I tried again.

"I'm probably saying it wrong," I ventured, pronouncing her name again as best I could. She suddenly realized what I was saying and nodded vigorously.

"Alessia," she breathed, turning her name into poetry.

"That's a pretty name," I told her. Again, she looked up at me in complete ignorance.

"Have you been in Japan long?" I asked her, as gently and slowly as I could. I knew that I must sound patronizing, but I had to speak slowly: Alessia's English obviously wasn't up to much.

"Japan," she whispered, nodding.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

Alessia stared at me helplessly, dismay written all over her face. I could see her nose and eyes beginning to redden ever so slightly. She shook her head and bit her bottom lip.

"Where are you from?" I asked slowly.

"Italy," she managed to say. I decided not to attempt to find out where in Italy; Alessia could probably speak some English, but she was in such a state of nerves that there was no way she would be able to manage this until she relaxed.

The good-looking man had been watching our interview from the lobby with growing impatience. I quickly wrote Complete beginner on Alessia's file -- she had already failed the most basic preliminary written test -- and the man got up to join us.

"How did she do?" he asked me in fluent English, frowning at Alessia, who would not meet his eyes.

"She'll need to start in our complete beginners' class," I told him.

Letting out a strangled sound, the man made an exasperated gesture, his face incredulous. He turned in fury toward Alessia, but he didn't need to say anything: she was already crying. Staring resolutely down at her lap, she sat huddled and wretched, the tears dropping heavily onto her still-clenched hands.

I steered the man away from her. "Everyone has to start somewhere," I said.

"But this is ridiculous! Complete beginner -- pah!" The man threw his hands up in irritation.

"She was nervous. It's hard to speak a foreign language when you're nervous," I pointed out, wishing I could add And the fact that you're an asshole isn't helping a bit.

The man rolled his eyes and gave me a dark look. "Nervous!" he spat out. "She has had English classes before! She should not be a complete beginner!"

I pitied Alessia from the bottom of my heart. Newly married to this awful man, she had been in Japan for almost two weeks and did not know a soul.

"When is the complete beginners' class?" the man snarled, glancing at his wife in exasperation.

"I'm teaching one this afternoon," I said, "and there are others if that one isn't convenient."

I watched as Alessia and her husband went to sign her up for the complete beginners' class. My class had already met once and they seemed like a nice bunch, but I had real misgivings about Alessia joining them. Italian students often did not blend in with our largely Japanese student body. In one class, I'd had a lively, sophisticated 40-something bank employee from Rome with five timid high school students and two deadly boring businessmen, and in another I'd had a jokey, quirky gay lad from Brindisi with a handful of over-worked engineering students. The Italian students had never really felt comfortable, and I failed to establish a relaxed atmosphere condusive to learning in either class. Although a few teachers with Italian-Japanese mixes reported good experiences, this had not been the norm. And poor Alessia was already doubly an outsider: she couldn't speak English or Japanese. I could picture Alessia as a permanent onlooker in my complete beginners class, watching wistfully as the mainly middle-aged ladies bonded, trading amusing asides in Japanese to cover their embarrassment and insecurity -- and completely ignoring her.

Sure enough, Alessia ended up in my class that very afternoon. As I took roll, I watched the ladies sizing her up. They took in her rather gauche clothes, her stiffened posture and red, swollen face. I saw two women trading surreptitious looks, their eyes flickering in her direction.

Then something amazing happened.

Every woman in that room took to Alessia. It was as if an injured baby animal had landed in their midst, and they, as mother hens, made an unspoken pact to protect and nurture her. They took turns sitting at her table, gently and adroitly drew her out of her shell, and clearly delighted in being able to understand the few things she finally managed to say. In no time this tearful, miserable young woman had been transformed into a happy, giggling girl.

Mrs Fujita found out that Alessia was from a small town in Northern Italy. Keiko Tanaka reported that Alessia had gotten married in a church that was five hundred years old and had promised to bring her wedding pictures to the class to show them. Tiny Mrs Sakamoto invited her to lunch with them before the next class met, in a week's time.

When she left the classroom, Alessia was speaking in English. Short little sentences, but English, nevertheless.

"Buy this in Roma!" I heard her telling Mrs Fujita, holding up her leather handbag.

"Ooh, shopping in Roma! Lucky, lucky!" chirped Mrs Fujita. "Very nice, pretty bag! Expensive?"

"Not much money!" Alessia confided laughingly.

Her husband, waiting for her, looked at her in amazement.

"She was just nervous," I told him. "Her English will pick up in no time."

And wonderfully enough, it did.