by Ann Walker
“Do you need the conditioner too?”
I heard Gloria’s words through the water, and I leaned back, massaging the shampoo into my scalp.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“It’s just there,” she told me, and I spied it sitting next to the shampoo bottle. “So, how’s the first few days been?”
“Good.” I shot her a smile as I rinsed the shampoo out, not wanting to elaborate on all my worries and self-doubts. “It’s an adjustment, but I’m getting there.”
“Of course you are,” she agreed, nodding and smiling at me in a way that most grandmothers’s mastered. It was a nod and smile that boosted your confidence—and made you feel like you weren’t a total screw-up. “Everyone does.”
“So I’ve heard,” I muttered, shooting her a bright grin when she asked me to repeat that. “Nothing. Just… mumbling to myself.”
By the time I was ready to condition my dirty blonde locks, the water had gone from tepid to freezing, and it took everything in me not to bolt from the stall for my towel. I finished up as quick as I could, and Gloria handed everything to me as I stood shivering at the end of the concrete mat, skin littered in little bumps. She smiled, still unfazed by the fact that I was totally nude, and I tried not to snatch the towel from her hands. Wrapped in fluffy softness, a softness that smelled like home, I quickly dried myself off and grabbed my clothes. The showers weren’t far from our volunteer huts, and I had no qualms waiting until I was safely inside mine to get dressed.
Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones who decided on having a shower before dinner. Just as we stepped beyond the wooden fence, Grant cut in front of us, and I tried not to let my jaw drop. There he was, glorious and half-naked, a brown towel slung low around his waist. Gloria let out a wolf whistling, giggling as he flinched and dragged the towel up to mid-waist.
“Glad we have some eye candy again,” she teased, poking at his rock-solid midsection. He chuckled weakly, and I swore I saw his cheeks flush.
How had I not noticed how ripped he was? Had these muscles spontaneously formed once we arrived at the village, because I couldn’t remember him being so… chiseled.
Great. Yet another reason to drool over Grant the Engineer.
“Ladies,” he said, clearing his throat and clutching his shower gear to his side. “I didn’t know I wasn’t the only one showering…”
“I bet you stole all the hot water,” I tried, shooting him my best smile as Gloria laughed. He didn’t quite return the look with as much intensity as I would have liked. In fact, it looked like he was slowly folding in on himself, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was embarrassed to be caught like this—half-naked by a few equally unclothed women.
No, that couldn’t be it. No one with a body like that was shy about it. He’d let me drag those clothes off pretty damn quick when we were together…
“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” he insisted, backing away from us, eyes widening when he tripped over a rock. Once he was upright, he nodded back to the village. “Don’t want to be late for dinner.”
As I watched him scuttle off, a part of me felt vindicated. He’d caught me in an embarrassing situation yesterday, and now, apparently, it was my turn.
“You can’t tell me you don’t fancy that,” Gloria stated as we strolled alongside one another. She nodded to Grant’s distant figure, an eyebrow quirked. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, wishing she’d just let it go. She wasn’t here to play matchmaker—and I wasn’t here to fall in love.
“I… Well, we… I just…” I sputtered, my cheeks flaming at her skeptical look.
“Right. Just as I thought.”
My eyes narrowed at her, and she laughed, thrilled with her detective skills.
Crazy old bat.
Chapter Three
“So, elephant would be the direct object of the sentence,” I said, underlining the word on the chalkboard, the sound making my ears twitch. I hadn’t used a chalkboard for anything since grade school—even most high school classrooms I knew of had made the switch to whiteboards.
Oh, and they usually had a building for said classroom. You know… four walls, a door, some windows. Maybe there would be a class pet. My volunteer village definitely had a class pet, but the rest of the necessities were sorely lacking: my chalkboard had been set up near the local houses by the main road leading in to the village, and all the students sat on mismatched chairs. I didn’t even have a desk.
“Actually… Wait.” I paused, frowning, and looked at the sentence again. It was my first day of teaching the older children, and for some reason I’d opted to start on sentence structure and grammar. The little ones just sat around me and listened to me read for almost two hours that morning, my nerves not allowing for me to do much else. Unfortunately, I couldn’t grab a children’s fairytale book and read to my students who were over the age of twelve—it wouldn’t be fair to them. Even if I was only doing this for six months, I was part of the team that would prepare them for universities and real world careers.
I couldn’t let them down.
Shaking my head, I erased the line under elephant and replaced it with a squiggly line instead. “Sorry, that’s the indirect object.”
“I don’t understand the difference!”
The voice came from somewhere in the back, from a girl whose name I was still trying to remember. Overall, I had forty kids total. Forty kids who were my responsibility. At this point, on day seven in the village and day one as a teacher, I probably only had about ten names stored in my memory bank. How teachers managed to remember hundreds of names over the years, even recalling them long after their students graduated, was totally beyond me. I mean, sure, they were familiar names like Mike and Heather—kids here had names like Lumusi and Senanu.
I sighed, sweat trailing down my back and face, and then cleared my throat. “Well, I…”
Ugh. I hate grammar. I wish I’d volunteered to make art with these kids. While I wasn’t much of an artist, at least art could be a little more clear-cut. Grammar rules were a challenge to explain to American kids, so it made sense that I struggled with children fluent in two languages, but only proficient in English conversationally.
“Well, okay, here’s how you can think about it,” I said, gripping the chalk so tight that it broke in my palm. As subtly as I could, I set the problem piece back by the board, looking around at the cluster of young faces waiting for an explanation. “Direct objects are what the sentence is referring to, so…”
In that moment, I panicked. Was that right? I’d spent all of yesterday going over the material I had planned to teach the kids today, but I couldn’t quite find my confidence just yet. So, with dozens of eyes on me, I went for the teaching aid book I’d left on top of an overturned wooden barrel. Jaw clenched, I scanned the paragraphs about the subject matter, my students’ whispers growing louder and louder with each passing second.
I ended up reading the paragraph straight from the textbook, hoping that might bring some clarity to the issue. However, when I asked if everyone understood what I said, I received nothing but a handful of blank stares in return.
I’d always thought teaching was easy.
“Okay,” I started, closing the book and nibbling my lower lip for a moment. “Okay, let me try to put it another way…”
There’d been a small part of me today that wondered just how much English the kids could understand. Maybe I should have started with something easier. The oldest student there was probably sixteen, but no one had briefed me on how much education they’d all had collectively. There were only a few shoddy records kept from previous teachers, and I made a note to ask the Canadian university kids who were here to work on science and math skills—hopefully they’d be able to give me some better insight into everyone’s level.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on who was judging the situation), the little alarm that was set up to mark the end of our lesson start screeching before I could fail miserably at explaining direct and indirect objects. As my
new students started to gather their belongings, which all consisted of navy school bags with the volunteer organization’s logo on it, plus some old notebooks and a pencil for each kid, I scrambled to keep control of the lesson.
“Try to break up some of the sentences like we talked about today,” I said as kids started drifting off, some toward the village center and others toward the housing. “We’ll go over all the ones you wrote down tomorrow so we’re all on the same page.”
A few shot me smiles as they departed, but unlike the under ten group, no one stayed around to talk to me after. The younger ones lingered, hugging me and chatting about the book we’d read, while the elders hurried off to do… whatever kids did in the village. So far, I’d seen them play and help. They’d play together, and they’d help their parents with just about anything: laundry, farm work, village chores, food preparation. Somehow, they were always busy. The only time I’d seen a child idle since I arrived was when the sun was highest and the heat the worst, and usually most people took a seat in the shade to wait it out.
I let out a deep breath, glad my first day was over. When I initially decided on this specific volunteer trip, I’d never considered the stress and nerves that went along with trying to impart wisdom on the younger generation. I’d thought the words would flow out of me, and that the lessons would just be… easy. Kids would understand what I was saying. English would be a fun subject to teach.
If today was any indication of the rest of trip, this was going to be a long six months.
My stomach gurgled as I erased the board. After I’d finished with the little ones in the morning, I’d completely forgotten to go grab something to eat. At the time, the stress must have suppressed my hunger, but now that my day was technically over, it was back with a ravenous vengeance.
Unfortunately for it, I wasn’t able to drag myself away from the lesson just yet. With all the kids gone from our makeshift classroom outdoors, I grabbed my teaching aid and sat down on a box a student had been using as a chair. I finally felt comfortable enough to wear my sunglasses, thinking it rude to do so in front of the class, and after shifting them into place, I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
Everyone who told me I’d get used to the heat was right. Even though I was still a sweaty mess, just one week in and I was already a little more comfortable with the stifling humidity.
Not much more comfortable, but it gave me hope that I’d get there eventually.
Even with the protective shades on, my eyes couldn’t relax as they scanned the words again. I should have headed for my hut, I was bound to walk away from this volunteer experience with permanent wrinkles etched around my eyes. The more I read over the paragraphs about the issue at hand, the more I realized my nerves had gotten the better of me.
Indirect and direct objects were easy. The simplest explanation came to my mind as I sat there, alone, and I was kicking myself for not seeing it sooner. Glaring, I tried a few practice sentences with my simplistic explanation in mind, and let out a sigh when I got each one right.
At least now I’d be able to explain something to my students tomorrow without sounding like a complete idiot.
“Well, isn’t this a strange sight?”
I looked up, a hand over my brow to further shield my eyes. Grant. I smiled as he approached, a bag slung over his shoulder and those classic aviators hiding his gaze. A ripple of surprise shot through me when he strolled right over, leaving behind the group of construction workers who were obviously following him back to the village from a day on the job. Each man was in an equal state of messiness, and Grant was no different. The familiar red dirt left smudges on his clothes and face, and the front of his shirt was soaked in sweat. I made a real effort not to stare at the way the fabric clung to the muscular body beneath.
At least it had been a productive day for one of us.
My surprise stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t made eye contact with me or Gloria since the little shower run-in a few days earlier. When I realized he’d been avoiding me, it wasn’t surprise that pulsed through me, it was anger. We’d had sex, for god’s sake. I’d already seen him naked, and yet now he was shy? At the time, it’d felt like my only friend in the village was abandoning me, but I’d quickly realized that was an overly dramatic reaction.
But still, a part of me was happy to see him smile at me again, not just in my general direction. I stretched my legs out, all the muscles sore from my boost in physical activity lately, then dug my toes in the loose earth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I kept my tone light, airy, non-confrontational. I’d been snippy with him before when he rescued me from the warthog, unfairly at that, and I hadn’t been happy with the results.
“Well, you don’t see many chalkboards out in the open,” he mused, setting his bag down when he came to a stop a few feet from me. He then reached for the rag around his neck and wiped his face, doing nothing but smearing the dirt even more across his handsome features. I tried my best not to stare. “Decided to do an outdoor lesson today? Not enough humidity inside?”
“What inside?” I asked, gesturing to the village center behind me, and then to the local homes behind him. “Do you see an actual school anywhere?”
He stared down at me for a moment; his arms crossed, and then shook his head. “So there’s… you do all your teaching outside?”
“I’m not the only one,” I insisted, wiping my chalky hands on my shorts before standing up. “Math and science are taught outside too… I just wish I’d asked them to do it under a tree, or something. We could have done with the shade.”
“Yeah, won’t argue with you there.”
“I thought it’d be nice to be close to their homes,” I added, my eyes traveling up and down his body. He was absolutely filthy—probably due for another shower. “Maybe I’ll move things around tomorrow.”
“Was this your first day?”
I bit back a snarky comment. He would have known it was my first day if he hadn’t been pointedly ignoring me, but I guess I should have been happy he was back to talking to me again. I didn't want him to hold my hand through this, but some interaction would be nice. “Yup.”
“And?”
“And… teaching is hard,” I told him, my shoulders dropping a little at the omission. “Not as easy as I thought it’d be at all.”
“Nothing ever is,” he chuckled, turning back to give the chalkboard a look. “Well, despite the lack of an actual classroom, it looks very professional out here. Very scholarly.”
I rolled my eyes, struggling not to grin. “Thanks.”
“We broke ground today on the new well,” Grant carried on, jumping right into the next topic before either of us could even take a breath. “Been digging since this morning.”
I gestured to the dirt on his clothes. “I assumed as much.”
Sort of. To be perfectly frank, I hadn’t exactly looked all that much into his schedule either.
“We’ve been doing a lot with the planning that a colleague of mine left off with the villagers over the past few days,” he told me, watching me. I could almost see those eyes beneath the shades. “If I’ve been a little distant, I… It’s because I’ve had a lot to focus on.”
My eyebrows shot up, surprised that he’d even noticed the shift in our dynamics. “Oh.”
“I mean, maybe it was just me thinking that,” he rambled, clearing his throat and taking a few steps back. “I’ve felt a little disconnected from everyone while me and my team got things ready to break ground, so I just thought I’d, I don’t know—”
“I think it’s really awesome you broke ground today,” I interjected in an effort to spare him what I now knew was an unnecessary apology. “That’s great news.”
He smiled, almost looking relieved. “Yeah, everyone’s pretty excited to get the project going.”
“I bet.” Before I could say anything else, my stomach let out an angry roar, furious for being denied food since this morning, and I suddenly f
elt a little dizzy. “I skipped my lunch break.”
Concern flashed across his face, and he took me gently by the arm as he started walking toward the village center. “Not good, Clara.”
“Okay, it’s not that dire,” I sighed, rolling my eyes at him. We’d left our things behind in his haste, and I made a mental note to go back for them, salivating as the scent of roasted meats filled my nostrils.
“Not eating or drinking in this heat can put you out of commission for days,” he told me. A few of the villagers watched us as we passed, but no one stared. At this point, I was finally starting to feel like I lived here—again, only sort of.
“Yeah, I get that, but I just—”
“I didn’t get much to eat today either,” he told me, cutting me off swiftly. “I’m surprised I’m even standing. Let’s do a late lunch.”
I glanced up at him, trying to decide how I felt about him taking charge. However, before I could come to that conclusion, my eyes landed on the communal table loaded with warmed breads and shaved beef, and all thoughts that did not revolve around food fled my mind. No school musings. No direct object worries. No heat concerns. Nothing but food and Grant—a pretty amazing combination, if I do say so myself.
Chapter Four
All I had to do was blink and two months had gone by.
Two months of teaching, cooking, exploring, and laughing. Two months of building my confidence and building my students’ English skills.
Two months of steadily growing feelings for a fellow volunteer.
Stretching upward, I blinked in the dim lighting of my hut, the thick curtains drawn over the windows to keep the morning sun out. Outside, I could hear the hustle and bustle of Grant’s fellow workers, who usually swung by to pick him up on their way to the building site. On top of working on a well system, they’d started construction on a number of buildings in the vacant areas around the village. No one knew what they were for as of yet, but Gloria and I both noticed the excited buzz from the locals whenever someone mentioned them.
