by John Jeng
visit her. She wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Finally, Tabitha uttered a noncommittal ‘yes.’
“Next week. You must come to my house. Go pack your things. I drive car to pick you up!” said Mrs. Ishida, grasping Tabitha's hand with both of hers. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Tabitha relented.
“Wow, it is very exciting! I’m thrilled you will teach me the native English every day!”
After Mrs. Ishida swaggered away, Tabitha stood frozen in the café’s small parking lot feeling the wind knocked out of her. She heaved. Go on a diet? Lose weight? Tabitha had struggled with her weight since she was a teenager. What did Mrs. Ishida, who was probably not even 100 pounds, know about weight? She didn’t care that Mrs. Ishida had meant well. Each comment about her weight was uncalled for. Tabitha had lost her job because she couldn’t abide being insulted, much less being pitied.
Back at Iwai Girls’ School, her students had referred to her as ‘Miss Piggy’ when they thought she couldn’t hear. She told the Japanese teachers, and their attitude was ‘so what?’ They didn’t want to get involved because they talked behind her back, too. For six months, they had made her life miserable.
The last straw came during a class when she’d been teaching comparative and superlative adjective stems. Tabitha had been enunciating the words, “Big, bigger, biggest. Heavy, heavier, heaviest,” for the class to repeat. Then a brash ninth-grader asked, “By the way, Tabasa-sensei, what do they call you?”
“What do you mean?”
“In America, do people call you the big, bigger, or biggest?” There was a chorus of laughter, and Tabitha froze.
Tabitha had ballooned in weight during her college days. The memory from over ten years ago resurfaced like a sepia photograph. How the first time she was away from home, the Freshman 15 had stolen into her life and followed her everywhere like an insidious shadow. The bulk of it came from stress. Not enough time. Not enough sleep. She wasn’t a naturally gifted learner, and there was too much information to take in. But what she lacked in book smarts, she made up for in passion and effort. She maintained her GPA only by spending the bulk her time outside of classes studying, changing her lifestyle into a sedentary one. It also didn’t help that the ubiquitous fast food chains were open 24 hours; the promise of quick sustenance tempted her so she could continue burning the midnight oil. She let herself go, feeling justified that her fast food addiction had so far allowed her to pass her classes with distinction. Her roommate Siobhan had been so worried that Tabitha was wasting her college experience, studying in their apartment or the campus library, she used to coax Tabitha to join her at the local British pub.
“You’ve got to branch out more, Tabby. You can’t stay in our flat every weekend.” Siobhan wheedled in her practiced British accent. “Honestly, what’s the point of university if you never go off campus?”
“But I’m not beautiful like you are,” Tabitha had protested. “I don’t belong in a bar.”
“That’s not true!” Siobhan assured. “You’ve just got to have a little faith. You never know if today’s the day you meet someone.” Siobhan was the only person who could persuade her, and every Friday, Tabitha found herself at the pub with her roommate.
Siobhan had no problem getting guys to buy her drinks. She was a theater major, a talented conversationalist who endeavored to include Tabitha. She insisted that Tabitha was a great cook (untrue) and had a 4.0 GPA (true). But if Siobhan was the light that drew college men to approach like moths, Tabitha repelled them as though she were selling something very unpleasant. Guys didn’t care about Tabitha’s grades. They would trade a few perfunctory remarks with Tabitha, but before long, they’d leave her alone to read the class materials she’d brought in her purse.
No one approached Tabitha after Siobhan left. The male patrons who came to scan their prospects at the counter averted their eyes as soon as they saw her, quickening their pace before anyone could call out to them. Usually, Tabitha pretended not to care and left after Siobhan. But one time, she stayed up late, engrossed in a novel for her comparative literature class. The bartender, a grizzled-hair woman who wore an eyepatch, came from behind the counter to sit down next to her.
“Honestly, sweetheart, what are you still doing here?” The bartender’s words cracked like a whip, a little brusque and impatient. Even though no one had come to the counter since Siobhan left, Tabitha still looked over her head to make sure no one was behind her. No one. The middle-aged bartender whom she’d never spoken to outside of drink orders was asking her.
“Um, well…” Tabitha gulped. She checked the wall clock—still an hour before closing time. “What do you mean?” She was woozy from the vermouth the bartender kept refreshing for her—Siobhan had somehow managed to charge all of Tabitha’s drinks on someone else’s tab.
“I mean, you come here with your friend every Friday until she finds someone to leave the bar with, but today, you just stayed on. I’ve never seen you exchange more than a few words with anyone, so it seems like you just come here to read.”
“B-but I…My roommate Siobhan said I should go out more… hic!” Tabitha covered her mouth with a napkin. Heat was rising to her temples and she was starting to feel dizzy. She realized then that the bartender had been silently judging her all night.
“Maybe she did, but every time I see you, your friend talks to every guy like she’s Scheherazade or something while you brush off every guy she points in your direction. You don’t talk, and no one talks to you. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“What does it tell me?”
“That this is no place for a big girl like you, and frankly, sweetheart, you’re killing my business by reading here.”
“B-but I-I…”
“Why come here to read? Can you even concentrate after so many drinks?” said the bartender, lifting the book out of Tabitha’s hands. “Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar? Good god, you know how to pick a depressing book written by a loony. Your tab’s been paid already, so go on home. I don’t want to catch you reading here again.”
Tabitha’s throat was as dry as the martinis she’d been putting away all night. She couldn’t even muster a riposte to defend Sylvia Plath. The words “big girl” kept reverberating in her memory of that night. She had run out of the pub as fast as she could into a torrential rainstorm. After getting soaked on the way back to her apartment, she had woken up the next morning, feverish and suffering a splitting headache. There was a glass of water on her nightstand and a note scrawled with the words, I’ve straightened things out with the pub. The water will help. I’m sorry I left you alone, Tabby. Siobhan’s a’s weren’t fully closed at the top, resembling u’s instead. Since then, Tabitha became wary of talking to strangers, afraid that they would silently judge her, too.
All eyes focused on Tabitha now in front of the classroom. She sniffed and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. She needed a minute to catch her breath. Just one minute. The class of fifteen-year-old girls devolved into chaotic bickering, split between indignation and indifference.
“Tabasa-sensei’s crying, you idiot!”
“Come on, you didn’t think that was funny?”
“No! What the hell did you say that for?”
“Lay off, okay? It was just a joke.”
Tabitha didn’t know what they were saying. The class buzzed like a colony of bees until the din of their argument summoned a homeroom teacher. He bellowed at the class to silence them and declared the rest of the period silent self-study. He also must’ve noticed how Tabitha’s mascara had smeared across her face where she’d tried to wipe her tears, because, at that moment, he was looking daggers at her.
Afterward, the teachers quietly investigated the incident, but they never asked Tabitha to explain why she’d reacted the way she did. All the company wanted to know was the bottom line. The teachers had reported the students didn’t get along well with Tabitha because for one, Tabitha couldn't speak Japanese. For another, Tabitha was KY, a Japanese express
ion for socially inept. Her recruiter came to Iwai to scold her for crying in front of the students—a sign that she wasn’t suited for teaching.
That was two months ago. Although Tabitha had asked to be transferred to another school, that didn’t happen. Her recruiter kept giving her the runaround before the emails turned nasty. In the end, Tabitha understood that the company had run out her probationary period to buy time before terminating and replacing her in one fell swoop.
Tabitha’s blood boiled as she stood in the chilly parking lot recalling her humiliation. The tiger inside her was roaring again. She cursed herself for not looking for another job. She still taught at Iwai each day hoping she could keep her job if she planned every lesson and continued working diligently like she had been doing since day one. But the company didn’t know or didn’t care. After the news of Tabitha’s breakdown spread through the school, there was no going back. All respect that the students had for their American English teacher was gone when the anonymously uploaded video called, “Miss Piggy English Teacher” went viral.
She remembered the way the other teachers gave her the cold shoulder in the staff room, the way students laughed behind her back, and the stiff emails and negative performance reviews from her company. Coming to Japan hadn’t worked out for