Native Tongue (Creative Non-Fiction)

I speak English. Well, at least I thought I did. I realize, however, that grammar class has a way of taking something you know so well you could play it on the piano with no hands and twisting it into something like calculus. Before this semester, I assumed language fluency came through intuition. I thought I shouldn't have to hesitate when communicating or aspirating, or whatever it is that my native tongue should do on its own.

Grades, standardized test scores, teacher's praise, they all mean absolutely nothing now. Anxiety began dripping from my heart to my stomach again as I recalled my failed quiz attempts. I don't fail English. I get an "F" in algebra and everyone has a good laugh over it. I get an "F" in English, and it feels like I had an affair with a geometry problem. The only constant in my life has been strolling through English classes, tipping my hat to the professor, and smiling at my "A". Failing grammar feels like ignoring phone calls from my most intimate friend.

Don't get me wrong, I know nouns. I know adjectives. I even know adverbs and semicolons. Ha. I see Tom is getting to know his adjectives a bit better. The lazy, awkward, burly kid with "happy" stamped to his drool-stained cheek. Only ten minutes go by, and Tom's asleep again. I wonder if I should poke him.

"Anna"

"Uh...yeah?"

"What's the purpose of the pedestal?"

A flush of red splashed my cheeks. It felt like standing in front of 1,000 people and forgetting your name. I used to be the one staring at the struggling kid wondering why he didn't just blurt out the answer already. Now, all eyes were on me. I wanted to yell, "No! This isn't how it looks. I-I know English. It's my thing. I swear." But nothing came out. The silence could have made a feather bed uncomfortable. My brain sucked in the noise that the silence had scared off, making any intelligible answer impossible to find. "Shoulder shrug. That's all I can do," I thought. As if united by some invisible rope, the students' hands flew up with the motion of my shoulders.

I couldn't even hear the correct answer over the self-deprecating voices bouncing off the empty cave walls I call my brain. "I need a tutor? In English?" The thought seemed foreign and vulnerable. "I need help. I admit it. I cannot do this on my own." I felt like a member of Grammar Failures Anonymous. I glanced down at the basic sentences scrawled in my notebook. "Peter kicked the ball". The subject verbed the direct object. Simple enough. Next. "Mary caught hold of the soccer ball, which caused her to jump for joy at having rescued her team from humiliating defeat." Hmm... I'll go ahead and skip that one.

I speak English, I write English, I read English. I even breathe English. But dissecting English and dissecting a cow's eye will make me equally pallid.