Sorta Like a Rock Star(15)

“I dream to fly in beautiful fat rotund air balloon so hair will blow warmest behind my ear.”

“That’s damn good, Sun. Rotund is very good. I’d like to fly in a beautiful fat rotund air balloon too. That would be truly killer.”

As I listen to the dreams of all the Korean women present, Father Chee smiles at me so that I can see every one of his teeth. I can tell he really really digs me, in a non-sexual good-guy priest sorta way. Maybe he wishes I were his daughter, because he’s not allowed to make a daughter for himself. He would be a cool dad.

The KDFCs love it when I praise their English, and you can tell that they really dig expressing themselves in my class too, which is pretty cool. I’m having a good time listening to their dreams, but then suddenly everyone has spoken and The Korean Divas for Christ are lining up in two rows by the altar—songbooks in hand—so eagerly, because they pretty much come for the soul singing. FC and I know that they like singing better than learning English, which is why we invented this awesome alternative class in the first place.

“Shall we?” Father Chee says, offering his arm like a frickin’ gentleman.

Just like always, he walks me arm-in-arm to the front of the church, as if he were about to give me away on my wedding day.

When I am in position, Father Chee bows to me once, and then takes his place at the old beat-up piano to my left, opening his songbook to the number we always start with.

“Okay, ladies,” I say. “What do we need to work on this week?”

Back when I first started teaching, I let each one of The Korean Divas for Christ choose an English language name the way my Spanish teacher let us pick Spanish names back in Spanish I. (I went with Juanita.) After I started English the fun way, I had each one of The KDFCs take the name of a famous R & B singer.

Hye Min—who goes by Tina—raises her hand, so I nod in her direction. She says, “A selling the word.”

“That’s right, Tina. You need to sell the frickin’ words. And how do we do that, ladies?”

Front-and-center Kyung Ah—aka Diana—raises her hand, and when I nod at her, she says, “Hips and the hands.”

“It’s all about the hips and hands. And?”

A back row exceptionally tall woman named Sueng Hee—we call her Beyoncé—yells out “Shoulder dips!” without my calling on her, which sorta pisses me off, because I find her outburst threatening to my authority, but I appreciate the unbridled enthusiasm, so I let it slide.

“Shoulder dips. And?”

The oldest KDFC, a wrinkly grandmother we know as Ella, waves at me, so I point at her.

“The souls clap,” she says.

“The super-duper soul clap. That’s right,” I say, and then start clapping slowly, soulfully.

All of The KDFCs follow suit, because they are all frickin’ pros.

So I add a shoulder dip and a step to the right—clap!

The KDFCs don’t miss a beat and move with me.

Shoulder dip, and a step to the left—clap!

We repeat this for a few times, and then I yell, “Work those hips, ladies! Work what God gave you—meaning yo’ apple-bottom booties!”

So we all let our booties snap with our heads.

Left—slide—clap!

Right—slide—clap!

When we are nice and warmed up, I yell, “Hit those keys, Chee!”

Father starts playing piano, and then The KDFCs are rocking “You Can’t Hurry Love” by The Supremes. The way they sing sounds very staccato, because they are Korean and don’t know English all that well, but they sell the song with the moves I gave them, and I have to say that I am proud of these chippies today, because they are sorta rocking my socks off.

Before we all got so damn good at soul singing, Father had the church buy us twenty copies of The Supremes Complete Songbook and then—using Korean-English dictionaries—the Korean Divas for Christ and I translated all the songs, writing the Korean under the English, so that my students would know what the hell they were singing. Then we worked on pronunciation, and then finally, selling the songs onstage.

I didn’t know that Father Chee could play piano when I thought up the singing-to-learn-English idea, but on the day that we were first going to start singing, the piano magically showed up in the church. When I asked him where the piano came from, Father Chee said that God had put it there. When I asked him who was going to play the piano, Chee said God would play through Father Chee’s fingers. Maybe some corny hooey to you, but I like the way Chee keeps God magical, sorta like Santa Claus when you are a kid. More priests should take this approach, because there is a frickin’ reason why Santa is more popular than Jesus nowadays.

I take The KDFCs through “I Hear a Symphony,” “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “Baby Love,” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and a few other classics, before we make the power circle, which is when all the women put arms around each other’s shoulders so that we are all linked up in a super-powerful woman circle, and then I yell some empowering hooey I made up a while back.

“What are we?” I yell.

“Strong!” The KDFCs yell back.

“Who are we?”

“The Korean Divas for Christ!”

“Who loves us?”

“JC!”