The Year Of Uh

by Jud Widing

  Oh, wait a second.

  She pointed once again, and came at her question from a more direct angle. “Crabshoe?”

  “Aaaaaah,” the group all said as one. They closed in to a loose huddle, nodded silently for a moment, then turned back to Nur. “Crabshoe,” the nearest one repeated with a smile.

  Returning his smile, Nur turned back to Deirdre, certain she could feel her brain relaxing as she reracked the groaning weight of SPEAKING ENGLISH and flopped into the cozy beanbag of Seychellois Creole (a metaphor that didn’t quite work, but worked well enough for her taxed, jetlagged mind, thanks very much).

  Her brain went boi-oi-oi-oingggg as it snapped back to attention. Deirdre was gone.

  Nur glanced left, right, and for some reason, up. No Deirdre.

  “Did you see where my sister went?” she asked her new indeterminately Asian friends (she’d really have to get a more specific lock on their provenance butnotrightnow) in Seychellois Creole. She knew they wouldn’t understand, but, hell, she hadn’t thought to work that one out in English. Upon reflection this was a rather grievous and fundamental oversight.

  The guy who had parroted “Crabshoe” back to Nur looked genuinely concerned. “Dangsin-eun hangug-eo malhabnikka?” he asked. “O Italiano? Oder Deutsch? Yàome zhōngwén? O Español?”

  “Français?” Nur prompted hopefully. She didn’t know much of any French, but she could potentially struggle her way through.

  The guy shrugged.

  Five languages this guy knows, and none of them are useful! Which was a casually chauvinistic thing to think, but now was hardly the time to be confronting personal demons: a sisterly demon was putting more and more distance between them with each passing moment.

  Nur pointed to where Deirdre had been standing, made a little walking gesture with her first and second fingers, and shrugged.

  “Ili Rossii?” the polyglot dumb-dumb continued. “Of Afrikaans?”

  SEVEN LANGUAGES! One of them being Afrikaans, which Nur didn’t know. This was humiliating.

  Nur pointed more forcefully to where Deirdre had been standing, made a very stern little walking gesture with her first and second fingers, and shrugged violently.

  Comprehension lit the guy’s face. Finally! He pointed back up the street, to the northeast, and arced his hand hard to the right. Around the corner.

  See? Was that so hard? was what she thought. What she said was “thanks”, in English, because she knew that one. She took off at a sprint before the guy had time to reply.

  The street down which Deirdre had wandered was called Fairfield. Nur dashed along this glorified alley, emerging onto Newbury. This was smaller than Comm Ave, packed with people wandering amongst the boutique-y storefronts running the length of the street.

  Left, right, but this time not up. Still no Deirdre.

  Nur imagined returning back to Uncle Dr. Bernard alone, having to look into those frozen eyes and tell him that she lost Deirdre on their first ramble through the city…

  Imagination shrank from the task. It was too much. She just wouldn’t return home until she found her sister, and that was that.

  Ah! She has her phone! I’ll just call her and oh curses. With the ‘plan’ they had, which wasn’t much of a plan at all, the De Dernberg’s phones were little more than rectangular flashlights without a Wi-Fi network. Even then, calls were out of the question – all they could do was text. To communicate, they’d both have to be on a-

  “Stupid!” she shouted at her sister, who she spotted halfway up the block, just wandering. Gratifyingly, her sister turned and looked – with mischief on her face. Nur stormed over to her, which took longer than she’d have liked, as she tried to storm politely around strolling couples. She had a lot she wanted to say, but it turned out she was in a non-verbal mood, because when she finally reached Deirdre she slapped her hard on the cheek.

  Neither said anything as they walked back to the T. As the train rocketed through the underground portion of their journey, Nur sat in a chair, while Deirdre stood with her back to her sister, facing the window.

  The train being lit and the tunnel being not-so-lit, Nur spotted her sister’s face in reflection against the window. It was a soft face, slouched and wrinkled. An old, sad face.

  Anger, Nur would have expected. But the depth of agony in those eyes, translucent against the rushing dark of the tunnel, unnerved her. Her sister was a mystery, one she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to solve.

  The train emerged from the tunnel, and sunlight obliterated the reflection. Now Nur could only see the back of her sister’s head. So she thought about other things.

  CHAPTER 4

  Class began the next day. Nur had pushed for a few days of acclimation, to settle their jetlag and collect their bearings. It wasn’t as though staying with their Uncle for a few extra days would cost their parents anything, right?

  Probably right, but parental injunction trumped youthful common sense, and so they flew in the day before classes began. Which, thanks to Crabshoe’s very open enrollment, was a Wednesday.

  Nur and Deirdre hadn’t exchanged a single word since the slap the day before, and they saw no reason to break their streak of silence. They quietly sauntered up the steps of the ever-coy 264 Comm Ave, continued up a creaking wooden staircase to the second floor, and broke off to enter their respective classrooms (helpfully identified by pieces of primary color construction paper tacked to the doorframes; a great system for everyone who wasn’t colorblind). Green for Deirdre, red for Nur. It was with great frustration that Nur realized her class was the beginner’s course; Deirdre had placed into one class higher. She must have been studying English back in Seychelles, damnit!

  That’s cheating, Nur thought, heedless of that thought’s absurdity.

  The classroom beyond the red paper was small, with twenty-some chairs pressed against the walls, forming a long, hooking horseshoe, with all eyes pointed towards the open center. Nur stepped in and turned to see a well-smudged whiteboard taking up nearly every inch of the fourth wall that wasn’t absent, i.e. a door.

  “WELCOME” was scrawled across the top of the white board. She knew that word in English, at least.

  Turning back to the room, she scanned the motley crew of aspirant English-speakers. Perhaps the class hadn’t yet filled out, though the analog clock on the wall insisted that it was 8:58 AM, and class began at 9:00. So, then, maybe the only other people in this class were: a short little blonde woman who was probably from Eastern Europe; a tall, bureaucrat-looking guy with even darker skin than Nur; an older Indian woman who Nur slightly resented straight away because she looked amazing, and it was early on a Wednesday so she had no call for looking that good; a youngish guy with greasy hair who was such an Italian stereotype Nur suspected he might have been exiled for crimes against national pride; and the…uh…indeterminately Asian guy Nur had…erm…“spoken to” yesterday.

  He looked up, this Asian guy, and smiled. Nur smiled back.

  His smile only growing wider, he pointed to his side. Made a little walking gesture with his fingers. Shrugged.

  Nur choked back a chuckle. There wasn’t really any reason to, other than the room was dead silent, and for some reason the prospect of slicing the quiet with a giggle had faux-pas written all over it (though perhaps not in those words).

  How best to signal to this guy that she found Deirdre? She considered the ‘thumbs up’ approach, which she knew was highly American, but she also knew that ‘thumbs up’ was an offensive gesture in some cultures. She just didn’t know which cultures. Not that it would have helped if she had; she didn’t know which was this guy’s culture.

  Baffled, Nur settled for raising her arms above her head and touching the tips of her fingers together, making a wide-based pyramid. She wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, and fortunately, neither did this g
uy. They both chuckled at this. Without thinking about it, Nur walked over to the guy and sat down right next to him.

  After a brief moment, the laughter passed, but their eyes lingered.

  SLAM.

  All eyes snapped to the door, so recently slammed. An egg of a woman with a blonde bob and blobby body surveyed the scant faces in the classroom with legs wide and arms akimbo. She looked like a fairy-tale witch who had been run ragged by round-the-clock gingerbread oven flashbacks, and yet…Nur immediately admired her. She was possessed of an undeniable confidence that shouted to the world, I’m going my way, and you’re welcome to tag along, but you’re just as welcome to go fly a kite.

  The woman looked directly at Nur and rapped herself hard on sternum with a gnarled, ringed pointer finger. Bmp bmp. “My name is Tuppence Crabshoe,” she over-enunciated. “Welcome.”

  And then Tuppence said something else that Nur couldn’t understand. She cocked her eyebrow as hard as she could, because somehow she hadn’t thought to learn “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” in English either. Yet she had “I’m sorry, breakfast ends at 10:00AM” down cold. Hindsight!

  The guy turned to her and pointed to Tuppence. Stating the obvious, he said “Tuppence.” He pointed to himself and ooooh I get it. “Hyun-Woo,” he purred through a knowing smile. Rather than point at Nur, Hyun-Woo let his hand flop backwards, so his fingers (tiny fingers, Nur couldn’t help but notice) curled gently from his upturned palm, a cross between clutching an invisible apple and baby’s first come hither. It was a charmingly idiotic gesture.

  “Nur,” she told him, and only him. Whoops. “Ah, Nur,” she repeated for the rest of the room.

  A wicked grin slice across Tuppence’s face. Now she was a fairy-tale witch, for certain. “Welcome, Ahnur!” she bellowed with good cheer.

  “Welcome, Ahnur!” the rest of the class repeated.

  Nur shook her head. “Ah…no.” What is the English word for ‘only’, or ‘just’? She didn’t know it. Instead, she straightened her hand and gave a quick karate chop downwards. “Nur.”

  “Ahnonur?” Tuppence ventured with the glee of mock discovery. “Welcome Ahnonur!”

  “Welcome, Ahnonur!” The class echoed.

  What the hell was happening? Am I being bullied by my teacher? Nur sighed and shrugged. Tuppence had to know Nur’s real name – she ran the school! At least, it was named after her! She must have gotten an attendance roster, right? So why was she trying to make Nur look like a fool? She was embarrassed by her name anyway. Why was this person making it worse?

  Visions of The Crabshoe School For The Language Of English as an oasis of pleasant conversation nestled into the screaming muteness of passive-aggressive family and incomprehensible strangers popped like methane bubbles in a tar pit. This place would be no different than the world outside. Perhaps slightly worse, because here she was being evaluated…by somebody who had something against her already? Or something like that? What had she done, that’s all she wanted to know. And she couldn’t know, until she learned.

  Well, there was her incentive. Learn English, and she could figure out what Tuppence Crabshoe’s problem was. As a bonus, she could perhaps ask her Uncle Dr. Bernard was his problem was too! Say, English was going to be very useful in working out why everybody here was always angry all the time!

  Sure, she’d be Ahnonur. For now. But the day would come when she could set the record straight, in English. This she solemnly swore to herself.

  Note to self: learn English swear words. If you’re gonna do it, Nur reflected, do it right.

  Class began.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was great that Nur had some internal impetus to master English, but she hardly needed one. She had more than her fair share of external ones.

  Nur De Dernberg was born and raised on Seychelles, an island (well, 115 islands actually, but who’s counting) nation floating in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa. Specifically, Nur lived on Mahé, the largest of the Seychellois islands, on which was situated the capital of Seychelles, Victoria. Nur didn’t live in Victoria, but she often told people that she did, because nobody had ever heard of the town from which she hailed. This was a trick that worked perfectly well back home, but Nur would spend her year in America having mixed feelings about the fact that nobody here seemed to have ever heard about Seychelles at all.

  Then again, she wasn’t mingling with the sorts of people who would have, e.g. people who were on first-name terms with the proprietors of offshore tax havens. Seychelles did a mighty trade in tourism – specifically on Mahé, where tourism was the largest industry – and most of those tourists were sickeningly wealthy. Not so sickening that Nur wouldn’t take their money when they palmed her an inordinately large sum for ferrying their bag up to their room, of course. Just sickening enough that she would grimace at their vainglory from the windowless break room.

  The De Dernberg Towers were a luxury resort with history. One assumes, at least. The only piece of its history with which Nur was familiar was that in the fall of 2000, as the tech bubble was at its burstiest, the last member of the founding De Dernberg clan decided that tourism in this economy was a chump’s game. So he cashed out and left the country to pursue a career in real estate. D’oh.

  The Ramatoulaye family was all too happy to buy the De Dernbergs out; they had faith that tourism would recover before they knew it, and more to the point they didn’t know what else they could do for a living. So they pinched pennies and tightened belts and took out loans and became the proud proprietors of the De Dernberg Towers.

  …yes. The De Dernberg Towers is what the hotel was called, and the De Dernberg Towers it would remain, because after the dust had settled from the great penny/belt/loan maelstrom, the Ramatoulayes didn’t have enough money to rebrand. It wasn’t just about changing the signage, though they couldn’t even afford to do that. The De Dernberg Towers were a know entity in certain circles (the sorts of circles who have animal mask orgies on a weeknight), and there’d need to be a concerted effort to inform said circles that the putative Ramatoulaye Heights was the same great product in a cool new package.

  But alas, the coffers were empty. Meanwhile the De Dernberg Towers still trumpeted their status as “a family-run business since 1832” on every website, business card and little cardboard soapbar box. The Ramatoulayes didn’t feel like having to explain to everyone who asked - and when your patrons were entitled, understated racists (the Ramatoulaye family certainly didn’t look Teutonic) as theirs’ were, people would ask – that management had changed hands but they just didn’t have the money to update the signage and no you can’t leverage that into a discount blah blah blah. Much cheaper and easier, then, to legally change their last name to “De Dernberg”.

  Nur was only three years old when this happened, and being told of the change was one of her first memories. Nur Ramatoulaye was a strange name, but it had a certain ring to that she’d always enjoyed. Nur De Dernberg was just plain dumb, and she knew it even then. She cried for what felt like weeks, and she likes to imagine that her sister, who would be born the following year, was given the stupid and pointless name of “Deirdre De Dernberg” simply so Nur wouldn’t feel so alone.

  Perplexingly, some of the extended Ramatoulaye clan began changing their last names. It certainly wasn’t for euphonic reasons (exhibit A; Uncle Dr. Bernard De Dernberg). There was another reason for Nur to learn English: she wanted to ask her Uncle what in the blazes was going through his mind.

  There had never been any discussion in the De Dernberg nee Ramatoulaye household about what Nur and Deirdre would be doing with their lives. They would be taking over the “family” business, and that was that. Nur was to be administrative, but obnoxiously, Deidre was given more or less free reign to choose her own destiny. She settled for wanting to be the head chef of the hotel. Best as Nur could determine, this decision was reach
ed arbitrarily.

  At any rate; the plan had always been for the sisters to visit their Uncle in America and learn English. The plan had not originally been “wait until 2016 to make the journey”, but those coffers had been really empty.

  Better late than never though; the time had finally arrived for Nur and Deirdre to come to America and learn the language common to a large majority of their patrons. They had a year in which to learn said language. Crabshoe’s School wasn’t exactly expensive, but it wasn’t cheap, either. One year for two kids was all the De Dernbergs could afford. Woe to the child who failed to get a firm handle on English after one year.

  So said the atmosphere in which the trip was discussed by her family. Nur had never been entirely clear on what sorts of woe would befall the prodigal daughter, but she had no interest in finding out. Grounding a young woman is easy enough, when she lives in a building with concierges and security cameras.

  Three hundred and sixty-four days, Nur thought to herself as she tromped down the wooden staircase and out the front door of the school. The sun was just starting to dip behind the cityscape, and the breeze promised a pleasantly crisp evening. But Nur found little comfort in the urban idyll. Three hundred and sixty-four days to master the language and preserve any semblance of a normal life at home…and all I’ve managed today is ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. At this rate, what could she reasonably expect to be saying this time next year? Maybe she would be able to chat about the weather with some greater specificity than hot/light, cold/dark, but she had very little confidence that she would be able to field guest complaints regarding poorly folded bath towels, or whatever the heck those people found to grouse about.

  She felt a bump behind her, and didn’t need to turn to know it was Deirdre. With arms folded and brow sloped, the young De Dernberg was leaning into the “sulky teen” image so hard that she went straight through and out the other side, into the realm of “disgruntled mime”.