Thursdays, Room 4B

In Poland I had a B2 certificate. I want to say this first, because when I arrived in Limerick I thought I would be fine, and then a man in a shop said something to me that I now know was "are you grand there or are you looking for something" and I understood zero of the words. Not one. It was like he was speaking through water. So after four months I went to the community centre. Thursdays, seven o'clock, room 4B, "English Conversation for Adults." Free. A sign on the door drawn in marker. Mrs Byrne was maybe seventy. She had been a primary teacher for forty years and she taught us like we were also seven, but in a way that was not insulting, if that makes sense. She was patient the way a wall is patient. There were nine of us. Two Brazilians, a Ukrainian couple, a Nigerian man who was a doctor at home and was working in a warehouse here, a Syrian woman who barely spoke the first month and then would not stop, me, and a Filipino nurse called Marites who was better than all of us and came anyway, I think for the company. The first week Mrs Byrne wrote on the board: "I will, yeah." She asked what it meant. "I will do it," said Ihor, the Ukrainian man. "No," said Mrs Byrne. "It means I will absolutely not do it. Ever." We all wrote this down like it was chemistry. That was the class. Not grammar. Grammar we all had. It was the other things. That "grand" is fine, and "grand" is also not fine, depending on the face. That "your man" is not my man, it is any man at all. That when someone says "sorry" when they walk past you they are not sorry, they are saying "I exist, excuse me for it." That "I'm after doing it" means I already did it, and this one nearly broke Adebayo, the doctor, who said, "But 'after' is future," and Mrs Byrne said, "Not here, love." She called all of us "love." Also "pet." Also once, when Ihor got something completely right, "you good thing."

In March she brought in a cake, no reason, and we sat in room 4B eating it off paper towels, and Adebayo told us he had passed his first exam to work as a doctor here, and the Syrian woman, Rania, said something long and fast and fluent about how her son had started at the secondary school and had come home saying "sound" about everything, and we all laughed, and I realised I had understood every word she said, and every word Mrs Byrne said, and that I no longer heard the water. Mrs Byrne retired in June. Actually retired, second time. The centre found someone new, younger, very nice, with a laptop. It's a good class. It is not the same class. Last week in the shop a man said to me, "Are you grand there?" and I said, "I am, yeah, just looking," and he said, "No bother," and I walked out into the rain and I thought, Mrs Byrne, you good thing.