To My Dearest Roseanne- Chapter 24
"That pharyngitis must have rewired your brain or something," Emily remarked while eating chips.
"You haven't seen the best of me yet."
The girls were enjoying a 30-minute lunch break in the middle of the schoolwork. Dozens of students would pour out of the building and head over to a large shopping mall across the street to get stuff from KFC, McDonald's, and Subway. Some less demanding high schoolers would buy junk food in a stationery shop like Żabka (together with cartridges for vape pens). Even though they had thirty minutes to buy the food and eat it, they often returned late for classes, and with unopened bags packed with chicken wings and hamburgers. Just the smell drove everybody crazy.
But Emily, Natasha, and Isa had the tradition of spending lunch breaks at school. Empty corridors gave them much-needed peace and quiet to unwind, eat snacks, and chat away. Although Roseanne was a regular participant in these meet-ups, Cho already felt like an accomplished veteran. She enjoyed the company of the three girls who stuck to themselves and weren't keen on picking unnecessary fights with others.
"I know you're good at English, Roseanne, but not that good. I can't go past 'yes-no' questions, you know," Natasha said.
"English is easy, but you need to work on it in your free time as well. Watch YouTube videos that interest you, play a Netflix show with the original voice track, or listen to your favourite music while reading the lyrics. Some people also do that with novels and audiobooks. Every chance of practice is an opportunity to learn," Cho advised.
"Easier said than done." Natasha emptied her lunchbox and tossed it into the backpack. "I tried learning with apps, you know."
"Apps, won't do you any good. They expose your short-term memory to new vocab, but you don't learn anything because you don't use these words."
"You think so?"
"Yes, try speaking for 15 minutes a day instead. Just speak and don't get stressed about rules and grammar. Use the words you remember to construct sentences, and never try to translate stuff from Po language to English. Your language is inflectional while English operates on the pattern of subject-verb-object. In Po language it doesn't matter with which linguistic part you begin the sentence, the meaning stays the same. If you were to do this in English, you would get mumbo jumbo."
"Wait a minute! Your language? It's our language, Rosie, you know."
Cho's ears turned red at the thought she made such an obvious blunder.
"Sorry, you're right! My bad."
Natasha grabbed the lunchbox, fidgeted with it for a while, and tossed it again.
"Would you like to chat with me for these 15 minutes a day?" she asked.
"Me?!"
"I don't know anybody else who knows English as well as you, you know."
"Honestly, I'd be honoured!"
"It's not like Natasha is asking you to prom or something," Emily remarked.
***
During the economics lesson, the students were burdened with the intricacies of how to run their own shop. Isa asked about the difference between supply and demand, thus the teacher thrust herself into the whirlpool of convoluted explanations. Emily tried to make notes, but she was puzzled about something.
"Roseanne..." she whispered. "Last week I saw a huge explosion on the horizon. I think it was that power supply line everyone is talking about in the news."
"Really?" Cho wasn't keen on discussing the incident that led to her arrival.
"Yeah, the explosion was so powerful that it threw me off the bike! But I didn't want to just mention that. Before the explosion, I got into an argument with a shop assistant at a petrol station. She asked me something, and, to tell you the truth, I didn't know what to do."
"What do you mean?"
"She asked me if I wanted a receipt, bill, or invoice for gas. I have no idea which is which. Can you ask the teacher for me?"
"Why don't you do this yourself?"
"Uhm..." Emily frowned, "I don't want to sound stupid."
Somebody else would have shrugged over Emily's problem, but given Cho's gentleness, she genuinely felt sorry for Roseanne's friend. The girl smiled and wrapped her arm around Emily.
"You're not stupid if you are searching for answers, believe me."
Emily blushed a bit and nodded her head.
Cho looked around to ask the teacher, but the lady in question was still busy giving an explanation to Isa. In consequence, Cho got a pencil and started drawing something in Emily's notebook. She was working with complete precision and focus.
By the time Cho was finished, the teacher was already writing homework on the board. Emily received her notebook back with an elaborate diagram and notes inside.
"Always remember: An invoice seeks payment for goods or services provided, whereas a receipt serves as evidence that the payment for those goods or services has already been completed. An invoice precedes the payment, whereas a receipt follows it." Cho pointed to the graph.
Invoice is sent → Customer receives it as a bill → Payment is made → Receipt
Emily looked carefully at the graph and then at Cho.
"Thank you, my saviour! I have no idea what happened to you today, but you are so bright!"
"I'm not bright, just a tiny bit braver."
***
"I'm so in the ass again."
Roseanne's plans for the day were thwarted in an instant. The girl barely left the block of flats when a red Skoda that remembered the times of the Berlin Wall halted in front of her with screeching tyres. Roseanne immediately recognised the car and its owner.
Aunt Lydia was one of the two aunties that graced Roseanne's childhood, and of the two, she was the one that Roseanne wasn't particularly fond of. Lydia was Robert's older sister, but she was a total contradiction of her sibling. At the age of 45, she's been through four relationships, never married, but had one grown-up child, she also loved to eat a lot (that's why there was a lot of her around), but most importantly, she couldn't help herself and talk away all the time. There was the constant air of chatter let out by her voluminous lungs through the voice box. That last factor always puts Roseanne off when interacting with Lydia.
"As soon as your dad called me, I jumped into my car and drove all the way up here from Szczecin." Lydia began her never-ending monologue.
Roseanne always thought that Szczecin is a faraway land inaccessible to mortals where all the damned souls go to after death.
While driving through the streets of Bydgoszcz like a maniac, Lydia continued her wordy babble. The aunt explained how Roseanne's father was worried and told her to check on his family members, especially in view of the fact that Liz is in a hospital. At this point, Lydia realised she didn't know where she's going because she knew nothing about the hospital Liz was in. The aunt asked Roseanne for directions and proceeded to recall countless memories back from the days when she and Robert were little children: Lydia wanted to borrow a plastic shovel from a colleague in kindergarten, but they refused so she beat him up and rammed his face into a sandbox; Robert, on the other hand, wanted to go poop, but kindergarten caretakers were so busy chatting with themselves that they ignored him. As a result, Robert took care of business in the bushes, but the poop actually fell onto his underwear, so he was walking all dirty for the rest of the day. Then, their grandma...
The stream of embarrassing stories uttered by Aunt Lydia seemed like a heavenly punishment for Roseanne. She had to endure this ordeal all the way to the hospital while visiting mom, and en route back home.
Even Liz was a little shocked to see her sister-in-law, but she tried to handle the encounter in a calm and graceful manner. She called Robert the moment Lydia left with Roseanne under her enormous, sweaty arm.
"We need to go shopping, right? We need to buy something," Lydia said while running a red light.
"Auntie, I always go to the supermarket on my own, it's not a problem for me."
"You should see my son, I mean your cousin! Behaving behind the wheel like a lunatic. He rushes to the store, throws everything into a trolley without getting any bags, and then jams everything into his trunk. That's just plain sloppiness."
For some reason, Roseanne got struck with the thought that her aunt and cousin obtained their licences by mastering the basics of driving in GTA games. Either this or they found their permits in a packet of crisps.
"This Szwererowo district is kinda crowded. Like that city in India. I saw it on TV. I think it was called Bangladesh." Lydia was turning the wheel, as if it were the wheel of fortune from a gameshow.
"You mean, Mumbai."
"Yeah, whatever they call it."
Without warning, Lydia hit the brakes and Skoda skidded a few metres across the asphalt. Thankfully, Roseanne had buckled her seatbelt, so nothing bad happened to her. It took her a few moments to realise her aunt nearly ran over Cho, who was standing frozen in front of the bumper.
"Damn it!" Roseanne shouted, getting out of the car, "Cho, are you okay?"
Cho nodded slightly, but she was even more shocked by the fact Roseanne was in the car that almost rammed into her. Both girls looked at the driver's seat. Behind the windshield, Lydia was as pale as a ghost. The aunt initially assumed she was seeing double, but her vision was perfectly clear. She saw two Roseannes on the street. How was that even possible? she asked herself. The horrific answer suddenly hit the annoying relative.
"IT'S... IT'S ATTACK OF THE CLONES!"
Lydia put it in reverse and floored it. Skoda backed out with burning rubber until it disappeared behind the turning.
"I think it will be a while till we see my aunt again," Roseanne whispered because of embarrassment.
"Should we be worried about her?"
"No, she is probably on her way to Szczecin now. If she tells my dad she saw us, he won't believe her anyway."
"If you say so."
"And how was your second day at school?"
"Fairly positive, thank you very much. What about you?"
"My day was a mistake."
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