How to Say Water, and: Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana

Abstract

How to Say Water, and: Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana Su Cho (bio) How to Say Water Pucker your lips like a fish, your tonguea cautious eel, pushing its headto the roof of your mouth. Breathe through your nose as you practicethe silence of this exercise.Don’t bite yourself trying to make water with sounds of agreementfrom your chest. Yes, that mm—simultaneously creates a small gap between those tense lips.Tilt your head back, a fingeron your throat. Please, start from the top and try to followalong. I wish you could borrowmy body to say water. This is the easiest way I can help you say 물because I could never help my parentssay girl, ice cream, parfait. [End Page 85] Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana A is for apples shipped fresh off theBoat. At 2 pm we left math to go whereChildren are taughtDifferences betweenEnglish and English at home.For example, Sun-Ah who named herself SunnyGrabbed blue pills from a plastic bag,Held the medicine in her palm. Teachers called me in—Ibuprofen, I say. I am seven,Just learned the word because Sunny sputteredKorean that they’re painkillers.Look, English was my second language butMy tongue was new.Never had to teach me to curl my RsOr how to say girl, blueberries, raspberries. In second grade, IPlayed Peter Rabbit’s mother rabbit, still don’tQuite know how that happened or evenRemember what my lines were.Still, when the Chicago Field Museum unveiled SueThe T-Rex, I was Sue the dinosaur, before that, Sue who lived in an old shoe.Usually I said “Yes, like the T-Rex without the useless e at the end.”Versions of my selves in ESL exist but I was kept there, after proficiency.Who else could translate for the teachers, my parents, and Sunny’s parents?X was for xylophones, x-rays, and now xenophobia.Yes, that’s too on the nose, but things on your nose are hardest to see.Z is for a zero, zigzagging between classrooms to say she has a fever, she misses home. [End Page 86] Su Cho Su Cho received her MA in English Literature and MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. She is managing editor of Cream City Review after serving as editor-in-chief of Indiana Review. She is pursuing a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is an Advanced Opportunity Fellow. Her poems are forthcoming and/or found in Poetry, Colorado Review, Pleiades, the Journal, Crab Orchard Review, BOAAT, Thrush Poetry Review, PANK, Sugared Water, and elsewhere. Her essay “Cleaving Translation” was the winner of Sycamore Review’s 2019 Wabash Prize for Creative Nonfiction, selected by Kiese Laymon. Copyright © 2020 Middlebury College Publications