I was going to try another church to see if they talked about Jesus any differently, but then I met Father Chee—and instantly, I knew that I had found my priest for life. Word. FC rocks, just like JC.
Inside Father Chee’s church, there is a small room where you can hang your coat, which is where I park Donna’s bike, and then there is the sanctuary. A big crucifix hangs front and center over a little altar and a simple podium. The walls are cinder blocks painted puke yellow, and there are no windows and no pews, but only long white lightbulbs in the ceiling—the kind that look like lightsabers—and rows of flesh-colored fold-up chairs, which are currently occupied by a dozen or so Korean women, all of whom jump up and start smiling just as soon as I walk into the church.
I don’t want to brag, but I’m sorta like a rock star to these people.
The first thing that happens whenever I enter The Korean Catholic Church:
Every single one of The KDFCs gives me a big old hug and then they speak their homework sentence in English. I give them a prompt at the end of each class, which I copy down a dozen or so times because I don’t have access to a photocopy machine. Father Chee usually explains the prompt in Korean, which is sorta like cheating, but it’s also good because we want The KDFCs to do the assignment so that their English will improve and they can start branching out into America and whatnot.
Last week they all failed to do the assignment correctly.
I had asked them to state what they would most like to do in the world and to describe how doing it would make them feel, using one killer adjective. But all of these kind-hearted women—every single one—said what they would like to do for their husband or their children or their parents.
“I would like to buy a big house for my son or daughter.”
“I would like to buy my husband an expensive car.”
“I would like to send my nice parents to Hawaii.”
So I failed them all and told The KDFCs that they had to use better adjectives and say what they wanted for themselves, because having dreams for yourself is totally American, and if they were going to live in America, they needed to think like American women.
So I say, “Na Yung, did you do your homework?”
“Yes, Amber,” Na Yung says.
“And?”
Na Yung, who is old enough to be my mom, gets all nervous whenever she is speaking English around me, which is why I called on her first, so she can get it over with and relax.
“I would like see live handsome movie star in Hollywood—like delicious men I see in photo American magazine.”
“Nice job,” I tell Na Yung. “Very American! Good pronunciation and delicious is truly a killer adjective! A-plus. How about you, Sun?”
“I dream to fly in beautiful fat rotund air balloon so hair will blow warmest behind my ear.”
“That’s damn good, Sun. Rotund is very good. I’d like to fly in a beautiful fat rotund air balloon too. That would be truly killer.”
As I listen to the dreams of all the Korean women present, Father Chee smiles at me so that I can see every one of his teeth. I can tell he really really digs me, in a non-sexual good-guy priest sorta way. Maybe he wishes I were his daughter, because he’s not allowed to make a daughter for himself. He would be a cool dad.
The KDFCs love it when I praise their English, and you can tell that they really dig expressing themselves in my class too, which is pretty cool. I’m having a good time listening to their dreams, but then suddenly everyone has spoken and The Korean Divas for Christ are lining up in two rows by the altar—songbooks in hand—so eagerly, because they pretty much come for the soul singing. FC and I know that they like singing better than learning English, which is why we invented this awesome alternative class in the first place.
“Shall we?” Father Chee says, offering his arm like a frickin’ gentleman.
Just like always, he walks me arm-in-arm to the front of the church, as if he were about to give me away on my wedding day.
When I am in position, Father Chee bows to me once, and then takes his place at the old beat-up piano to my left, opening his songbook to the number we always start with.
“Okay, ladies,” I say. “What do we need to work on this week?”
Back when I first started teaching, I let each one of The Korean Divas for Christ choose an English language name the way my Spanish teacher let us pick Spanish names back in Spanish I. (I went with Juanita.) After I started English the fun way, I had each one of The KDFCs take the name of a famous R & B singer.
Hye Min—who goes by Tina—raises her hand, so I nod in her direction. She says, “A selling the word.”
“That’s right, Tina. You need to sell the frickin’ words. And how do we do that, ladies?”
Front-and-center Kyung Ah—aka Diana—raises her hand, and when I nod at her, she says, “Hips and the hands.”