Her name was An, and somewhere during the course of my stay, she mentioned that she was Vietnamese. She kept hesitating, swallowing, and saying "um," as she struggled with her English, and I think she thought she was harder to understand than she was. She was being too hard on herself.
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| Image by Teece Aronin |
She was about to cut my hair at a chain haircut place where they don't do much more than just that. I had a stylebook in my hands. My hair was very short, and the style in the book, medium-long.
I climbed into the chair and pointed to the photograph. I explained that I wanted to grow my hair out until it could be styled like the picture in the book, but that, in the meantime, I wanted it cut in a way that wouldn't ruin my goal.
She misunderstood and froze on the spot. She thought I wanted her to make me look like that immediately. She glanced from my bewildered reflection in the mirror to the photo in the book and back to my bewildered reflection. She looked stricken, as though wondering how she was going to break the news that my request was impossible. I explained again, more slowly, and this time she exhaled, saying quickly, as though it were one word, "OhthankGod."
There seemed to be a big personality and a dry sense of humor tucked inside her bright, attractive noggin that she felt too self-conscious to unfurl. But again, her English was better than she seemed to think - her spoken English, anyway; I can't know what her comprehension was except that she seemed to understand me just fine after I slowed my speech.
Once we established that I didn't expect her to extract a longer hairstyle through my very roots, she smiled, calmed down a bit, and chatted more. It was mostly about the haircut, little about me personally, and nothing about herself. When she finished her work, she passed me a hand mirror and swiveled the chair so I could see my vastly improved head from all angles. And her shaky nerves seemed to return.
"I love it," I said, smiling at her reflection. "It's perfect."
She exhaled another long breath, her palm moving to her heart. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"I worry that I did not understand what you want."
I turned to look up at her, the flesh-and-blood her, not just the reflection over the workstation.
"An, I could never do what you did. I could never go to another country where the language was so different from mine and earn a living. I don't think I'd ever find my way. Your English isn't bad at all. I have great respect for you."
Then she smiled, a broad smile built on complete understanding and immense relief, and with no need for scraped-up words.
