By October I’ve learned that Bea runs on apples and cigarettes. Dressed in pink and blue patterned leggings, a tan zip-up sweater and Converse high-tops adorned with the Union Jack, she power-walks around the school with spunk of colleagues who are half her age. She takes breaks only to excuse herself to the school yard for the brief but regular smoke. Her apples are eaten while walking, or while giving direction to the many colleagues who often seek her knowledge or instruction. I too often stop her in the hallway, “Where are the fifth graders today?” “Having an assembly in the gym. Just there.” She points into the distance with a hand that holds a half-eaten fruit.
By December I’ve learned that Bea, though she isn’t the principal, essentially runs the school at which we both work. We are sitting in the now-familiar staff room, except that tonight our desks are laden with szalon cukor (a Hungarian Christmas candy), midnight blue tablecloths and glasses of champagne. Teachers sit and chat while the scent of paprika and stuffed cabbage fills the air and the principal distributes Christmas gifts—brand new blue and red pens for everyone on staff, which are always appreciated as all official documentation and record keeping is done with pen (BLUE pen) and paper in Hungary. I sit at a table with Bea, who can translate the principal’s holiday message and the Christmas poem recitations with ease. When another teacher describes her favorite Christmas candy, the white chocolate and coconut Rafaello, Bea immediately reaches to open her desk drawer, where she just happens to have one for me to sample. I laugh, but no one else seems surprised at this Mary-Poppins-like readiness. When she leaves our table momentarily, her husband, Feri, who also works at the school and doesn’t know a word of English, fills her champagne glass to the brim with the remainder of his own. Then he winks at me.
It’s May—somehow it is May already—and by now I have learned that Bea doesn’t stop giving. The eagerness and generosity with which she met us in August has not declined or decreased. My roommate Bekah and I are at Bea’s house with Feri and their four-year-old daughter, Mira. In accordance with her character, Bea gives us a tour with an overall attitude of humility. “I know,” she begins when we marvel at her neatly arranged flower garden, “but you see, we couldn’t afford any of this if we didn’t have my parents. And Feri made Mira’s playground with leftover wood from the school desks!” Feri smiles proudly at his name and says something in Hungarian. Bea laughs and turns to Bekah and me, “He is always making me laugh. If you could understand him you would know he is very funny.” We nod because we take Bea’s word for everything, because we have been doing this all year, ever since we signed our lease and opened bank accounts with her guidance, scribbling our names on un-readable documents for days. Perhaps this is why she sometimes looks at me as though she is unsure of what I really think. Because I have never said no, the way you never say no to someone you always view with respect and admiration. I worry that sometimes she doubts if we are happy and having a good time.
Later, we are sitting in a sunlit attic. Bea’s four-year old is playing alternately with Bekah’s and my hair. Frustrated by the fact that we spend our time speaking in a language she cannot understand, Mira imitates us. “Somebody, somebody, somebody” she says, trying to wind a hair elastic around my finished braid, “somebody, somebody…” I know that one day, Mira will speak excellent English, thanks to the influence of Bea, a self-proclaimed Anglophile. In the attic, we sit and pour over photos of a twenty-four-year-old Bea in London. We listen to her stories of her young years there. It’s strange to hear older adults rave about the being the age you are now, and I am always unsure how to respond. A massage therapist I tutor recently told me, “Twenty-four was my best age. I wish I could always be twenty-four.” Bea, similarly, remembers her nannying years in London with a far-off expression. “Even now, I can close my eyes and tell you how many steps it was to the end of my street.” She explains how when she returned to Hungary, she got off the bus a stop away from her workplace, so as to give herself time to reminisce, often tearfully, about a life abroad that no one else could relate to or understand.
After a lunch of hearty stew and Hungarian fruit brandy, we hike up the hills behind Bea’s house. Mira hangs cherries on her ears and belly-giggles. Feri winks at us, and Bea smiles, explaining again that the people with real money live farther up in the hills, and how she never thought she would be lucky enough to live here. I want to tell her I never thought I would be lucky enough to know someone like her, but I know my words will fall short, just as they fall short now, and decades from now, if I ever find myself explaining to someone why twenty-four was my best year.
Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak (’11) lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she spends the vast majority of her time teaching English Language Arts. You may also find her at barre exercise classes or playing (and losing) at bar trivia. She continues to be inspired by the energy and diversity of New York City and the beauty of that certain slant of light.
