The week before Christmas was bittersweet for Apple Tree staff members. There was much to look forward to on the one hand--Christmas celebrations on the twenty-fourth, with classes replaced by all-day activities; parties in the afternoon which were "standing-room-only"; and a week of vacation to follow. And yet, the silver lining of the happy festivities quickly tarnished.
The first I learned of any problems brewing came mid-week when Grace Teacher asked to speak to James and me alone. "Ja-ka-ma," she intoned to the Korean teacher walking into the office at that moment: "Give me just a minute." If she couldn't let her bilingual co-worker within earshot, clearly things were serious.
"We need to pray for our school," Grace told us. "The director told me today that he spoke with the other director [the owner of the school] and asked for money to invest in our school. But the other director doesn't have anything to invest, so our director said he's gonna close the school by the end of December."
"You mean by the end of the week?" I questioned, wrinkling my brow in thought. With winter vacation cutting into the last week of the month, that meant Christmas Eve would effectively be December's end--a date which loomed just three days away.
"By Friday, yes," Grace confirmed. "I'm gonna talk with the other director today and ask what else can we do."
"Just let us know," James chimed somberly. "Let us know what you are gonna do and when we will get our pay and when we need to leave our apartments."
"If they make such a weighty decision [as this,]" I agreed with James as I walked the few steps to my desk, "they need to let us know."
That night I trudged downstairs and out into the cold by myself, barred from my usual habit of walking with my female Korean co-workers to the bus stop. James, I knew, was already eagerly awaiting his bus back to Byeongjeom, having taken the elevator with the remnants of our hagwon kids mere moments after the last bell. As the girls and I had gathered our things to leave, I had been dismissed to go on without them: They needed to wait for something unspoken but important, they insisted.
The day following their conversation, one of the women had disturbing news. "Friday will be my last day," Vicky informed us solemnly as she stood warming her hands by the blazing heater.
To this, James only smirked. "Mine, too," he scoffed, smiling playfully at her.
"I'm not kidding," she reiterated forcefully.
As he curved his mouth broadly again, James tossed his head back in mock arrogance. He shook his wide shoulders and allowed a soft ㅋㅋㅋ to escape his lips, the Korean version of LOL. If James had had his way, all four of us would have hung around Apple Tree ad infinitum. We were like a family in his eyes.
On the afternoon of December 24, as I was finishing cleaning up the mess I had made from my all-day pie-making class, Grace found me in the kitchen. "Teacher Jenny-fur," she began urgently. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" Dutifully, I left the evidence of my culinary pursuits on the table and followed her into the next room.
Sitting with our knees up to our chests in the pre-kinders' chairs, the story began to emerge: "For every $1,000 we bring in," Grace confessed, "we have to pay $3,000 to the teachers."
It was a startling figure, but not one I was entirely unprepared to hear. For months I had been crunching numbers in my tiny, dim apartment by myself, taking the amount of students I knew we had times the amount of money I knew each of them paid, to ultimately divide the money earned with the full-time staff sitting in our office. Each time I did this, I looked around the next day at the faces I had come to love so dearly and wondered why it was we had so many.
"Starting in January," Grace went on, doodling absently on her pad of paper, "we won't have the care teachers [teachers' aids] and there will be only me and one foreign teacher." As she said this, she wrote her name down and drew a blank box underneath it.
"The foreign teacher will have to start making their own lesson plans," she continued, listing other newly acquired responsibilities for the native speaker. "I still have to talk to James. I know he understands more Korean and he has an apartment in Seoul and he also has his PC bang. I want you to live here, so..." She looked up from her pen to penetrate my eyes as she began her next sentence. "Could you work with me?"
So the director had found a way to keep the school running, after all. It seemed that James’ little joke had indeed proven true.
"You want me to be this," I told her, pointing to the weighty box underneath her name. She had just spent several minutes outlining what would await me if I chose such a position: responsibility, a greater workload, and fewer opportunities to rest during the day. I sat contemplating her offer for a moment, then plunged in. "I think I can do that."
"Let's make it happen."
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