The Night Before the Test

At a quarter past eleven, Lucia was still sitting at her kitchen table in Winnipeg, surrounded by paper.

There were practice tests. There were lists of vocabulary on yellow sticky notes. There were three pens, one of which no longer worked, and a cup of chamomile tea that had gone cold two hours earlier. On her laptop, a recording was playing for the fourth time: a conversation between two people discussing whether a community centre should build a new swimming pool.

Tomorrow at nine o'clock, Lucia had her English test.

It was not the first time. Two years ago, when she had arrived in Canada, she had taken the same test and passed easily for her permanent residence. But now she needed something different. To get her nursing licence in Manitoba, she needed a high score in every section: listening, reading, writing and speaking. Last time, her speaking score had been one point too low.

One point. She had missed her dream by one point, and for eight months since then she had been working as a health care aide, doing half of the work she had done for fifteen years as a nurse, for a third of the pay.

She pressed pause on the recording and put her head in her hands.