by David Yoon
Heads up, I say. I’m throwing a barbecue party, but I am intentionally not inviting you because the package will be present.
Aha, says Joy. The package
I just didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else.
Keep our stories straight, roger that, says Joy. Over and out
Then Saturday comes. I wake up later than usual, just before noon. I pad downstairs to hunt for milk and cereal in the kitchen. In the fridge sits a hulking silver bowl of marinating meat waiting to be grilled.
Brit begins peppering me with messages.
5pm, right? Ish?
What should I wear?
Sure I shouldn’t bring a dessert or anything?
Each message strikes my thick, stupid skull like a pebble slung by a shitty little magical imp that I can’t shake. My nerves jangle anew. Frankly, this feels dangerous. Too risky, frankly.
“Shut up with the franklys,” I shout to no one.
Mom gets home early from her a.m. shift at The Store. Dad stays at The Store, because—you guessed it—Dad has never missed a day of work at The Store for almost as long as me and Hanna have been alive. Mom puts on an apron, this freebie she got from the beer distributor with the mentally incongruous image of a bikini girl wearing a fuzzy hat and hugging a giant beer bottle, along with the words GRIZZLY BEER GRAB A COLD ONE.
“I beg you to not wear that,” I say.
Mom looks down at the bikini girl. “Why? It’s brand-new one. Miguel give me free.”
“Does it go inside out?”
Mom unties it, flips it over, and ties it again. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Your teacher coming tonight?”
“No.”
“Just friends?”
“Just friends,” I say. The words taste terrible.
Just friends just friends justfriendsjustfriendsjustfriends
“Help me,” says Mom, and when I slide the heavy cold hemisphere of meat out of the fridge, I realize that whatever happens next, I am responsible for.
I help set out the bowls and bowls of banchan: kimchi, lotus root, cucumber kimchi, acorn jelly, spinach, bean sprouts, potato salad, roasted anchovies, all that good stuff. A kaleidoscope of dishes, a feast in wait. While Mom chops stuff up, I carefully cover each banchan bowl with plastic wrap. Then I look up: it’s almost three o’clock.
How is it almost three o’clock?
“I haven’t showered yet,” I say to no one.
“Aigu, stink boy,” says Mom. “You so stink.”
Mom is trying to be funny, so I give her a little laugh just to be a good son. But panic is rising in me. People will be arriving soon. Brit will be arriving soon.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, and leap up the stairs.
I let the steam fill the shower. I don’t really wash. I just let the hot water run over my back for a long time. I start writing at the top of the glass shower door.
B-R-I-T
B-R-I-T
When I rinse the letters away with the showerhead, I realize that some finger oil has stuck to the glass so that when it fogs, her name is still slightly visible.
This means something. Brit Means something. This means that when I step out of this white fog, things will be different. Mom will see Brit—really see her—and Brit will be great, and they’ll make each other laugh. Later that night in bed, Mom will report her astonishing findings to Dad: Brit so nice, she having so big eyes, same like Joy. More better than Joy. Dad will grumble at first, but when he sees the light of realization in Mom’s eyes, he will relent.
American girl, they okay.
When Mom-n-Dad say American, they mean white. When they refer to themselves—or me—they say hanguksaram, or Korean. I never call myself just Korean. I call myself Korean-American, always leading first with Korean or Asian, then the silent hyphen, then ending with American. Never just American.
White people can describe themselves with just American. Only when pressed do they go into their ethnic heritage. Doesn’t seem fair that I have to forever explain my origin story with that silent hyphen, whereas white people don’t.
It’s complicated. But simple. Simplicated.
Brit Means refuses to call herself white, and uses European-American instead. Because Brit is wise and aware.
B-R-I-T
I turn the water off and hear voices.
Voices!
I scramble to dry off, run a hand through my hair, and get dressed. I hop downstairs. I’m still sweating from the hot shower. I can hear Mom has switched to Polite Guest English, the dialect she saves for non-Gathering visitors.
“No, why you bringing so expensive one? You don’t have to doing.”
“It’s for everybody.”
“What it is?”
“It’s a French fruit tart with a, um, crème pâtissière filling.”
“Oh, you French?”
“Haha, no, um.”
“Anyway, very very pretty. Thank you, okay?”
“You’re so welcome, and thank you for—”
“Should be put in refrigerator.”
I rush in. “I’ll do it.”
Mom nods at Brit. “Booleet? Bleet? I’m sorry.”
“Brit, that’s right,” says Brit.
“Hard to pronouncing,” says Mom as she heads out into the backyard with a tray.
“Hey,” I say to Brit.
“Hey,” says Brit to me.
And we execute a Standard Friend Hug. It’s the worst hug ever. I can feel Brit’s restraint. I can feel her being careful in front of Mom, who can still peer at us through the sliding glass.
Only then does my mind calm down enough to notice what Brit’s wearing. Not her usual jeans, or ironic tee shirt, but:
A dress.
An honest-to-god dress. A simple cotton thing, nothing fancy, but to me she looks beautiful enough to send a fleet of seamen off to their doom. It’s a dress for a grown-up dinner.
“You look amazing,” I say.
“Aa-aa,” says Brit, wagging a finger at the word amazing.
This is impossible, this urge to kiss her. I take a mental step back: here is Brit Means, standing in my kitchen, infusing it with her exotic scent.
“You look . . . beguiling,” I say.
Brit smiles at a nearby bronze figurine of a bronco bucking an astonished infant cowboy. “Your parents have super-weird taste.”
“I don’t even see it anymore.”
“Humanity’s greatest strength—and also the reason for its ultimate downfall—is its ability to normalize even the bizarre.”
“Brit Means, everybody.”
Brit takes a breath for courage. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s at The Store. He’s always there. But you get to meet Mom, so that’s a start.”
I touch her shoulder, then feel Mom’s eyes through the glass, and lean back to fake a more platonic posture. Just friends.
Brit shakes off some thought and powers up a bright smile. “I’m just happy to be here. With you. And Cowboy Baby. Really just Cowboy Baby.”
I want to hold her badly, like a boy who believes a hug can convince the world.
Brit keeps on smiling. “I’m dying to try this barbecue.”
The doorbell rings, and all the Apeys come wandering in: Q, Paul Olmo, Amelie Shim, Naima Gupta. Even Q’s smoking-hot sister, Evon, is here, wordlessly noting her surroundings like a trained assassin.
Q looks around, too, perhaps spotting what’s changed since he was last here. It feels strange having him over. I wish it didn’t. I wish it felt more like when I’m at Q’s house.
“Hi, Brit, hi, Frank,” shouts Naima Gupta.
Amelie Shim points at a four-foot-tall bronze statue of a giraffe wearing a pith helmet and
says, “This is like he’s dressed up for safari but what’s he gonna see like humans right because that would be ridiculous to have a giraffe go on safari to see other giraffes.”
“I think this is a genuine Wyatt Thomas original,” says Q.
“No,” I say.
“Shut up,” drawls Q, his eyes still on Amelie.
The glass door slides open and Mom pokes her head in. “Dinner not ready. You playing meanwhile.”
“We playing meanwhile,” whispers Amelie with a giggle. It’s okay because her parents have even worse accents than Mom-n-Dad.
We migrate to the backyard—all of us except Evon, who borrows my Grape-Escape™ purple charger so she can ignore the world with her phone on a couch—and Q unrolls a small duffel on the grass to reveal a serious badminton set.
Badminton, the sport of nerds.
It takes a while to set up; it takes a while to start playing. I toss glances at Brit every now and then; she catches them, then tosses them back underhand. We bring out a gentleness in each other. It’s a gentleness that glows unwavering even as the Apeys roll and holler around us and Mom barks for help over the sizzling grill cover, shaped like a hubcap to let the excess grease drain away.
“I’ll go help,” says Brit.
“I don’t want your dress getting splattered,” I counter.
“I don’t mind.”
“Polite fight,” shouts Naima Gupta. Naima shouts a lot.
“Brit,” says Q. “Get a racquet and get on my team.”
Brit gives me a look, Are you gonna be okay? and I respond with a nod: Go play. I stand next to Mom and help keep the meat moving.
“She should be wearing tee shirt, not dress,” murmurs Mom.
“She probably just wanted to be a little fancy for her first KBBQ,” I murmur back. The K in KBBQ stands for Korean. As does the K in K-pop, K-fashion, or K-dramas. There’s of course no such thing as ABBQ, A-pop, A-fashion, or A-dramas.
“Anyway,” says Mom. “Dress is pretty.”
I glance up at Brit. Mom thinks your dress is pretty, I want to yell.
Doesn’t that count for something? It must count for something.
Q serves, smashing the shuttlecock into a white laser blur. Brit catches a tricky return from Amelie, and Q flicks his racquet and sends it rocketing down. Paul dives for the save setup; Amelie smashes it to the ground.
“That one’s for Totec,” shouts Paul Olmo, high-fiving Amelie but missing. Totec was the name of his doomed mage.
In the end Paul and Amelie win. Q ducks the net to give Paul a crushing hug. “Good game, man,” says Q.
“I was wrong to swap out those gems,” says Paul Olmo into Q’s shoulder. “I understand that now.”
“You’re all right,” says Q.
“Dinner ready!” yells Mom. Then, quietly: “Why she not here yet?”
I shoot Mom a look: Who?
But I know she means Joy. “Oh, she can’t make it. It’s her turn to teach a rotating seminar webcast about 3D printing techniques using nonrigid biomorphic materials.”
I read somewhere that ultra-specific lies make the best lies, and it turns out to be true.
“Oh,” says Mom, frowning. She examines me for a moment, perhaps wondering if me and Joy are having a spat. She shrugs it off, puts on a smile, and yells again.
“Dinner ready!”
In an instant we’re all devouring food. To my horror, Mom offers forks only to Paul Olmo, Naima Gupta, and finally Brit Means. They all smile politely and demonstrate that yes, as hard as it may be to believe, they can use chopsticks just fine. I know this sort of well-intentioned ignorance is no biggie to Paul Olmo and Naima Gupta, who have awkward immigrant stories of their own. And Mom already knows Q and Evon—who has emerged to feed—can use chopsticks, despite their wacky African-Americanness.
But I feel bad for Brit, whose immigrant stories have most likely been washed away like surf erasing sandwriting. She may call herself European-American, but to most of the world she’s just white. As a member of the majority, she belongs everywhere. As the product of a long, mixed-up heritage, she belongs nowhere.
Right now I can feel her wanting to fit in. She picks up rice from her bowl like See? I can do it, but then drops it, perhaps from nerves. A little crestfallen look twitches her brow. So I pick up some rice, then drop it too.
“Crap,” I say, cleaning up my mess.
I find Q giving me a look like What a gentleman.
Brit stands up. “Anyone want more to drink?”
“I get it,” says Mom.
“No, please, you relax,” says Brit. “You’ve made this amaz—this stupendous feast.”
Brit winks at me and I’m a little starstruck.
“Hear hear,” says Paul Olmo.
“Thank you, Mrs. Li,” says Evon with uncharacteristic charm.
Brit fills everyone’s glasses from a pitcher of cold barley tea.
“Thank you, Booleet,” says Mom.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Li,” says Brit. “What’s your first name, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I freeze. This is all Brit’s family talking right here. Most kids, never mind Korean kids, never ask about the first name of the adults in their lives.
“Eun-hee,” says Mom. “English name is Diane.”
“Your names are so pretty,” says Brit, and holy shit does Mom actually blush a shade. This is pristine territory Brit has discovered. And I was there to see it happen.
The doorbell rings, and I feel a squirt of bile in my gut. I know who it is even before she opens the door.
“Hello?” says Joy Song.
“Aigu,” says Mom, scooting away to the entryway. “You late.”
“I know, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Li,” says Joy.
“Shoes off,” says Mom.
Joy realizes she’s rushed halfway into the house in her boots, and now must backtrack. “Shit.”
“Frankie-ya, Joy here,” yells Mom. Then, to Joy: “You sit next to Frank.”
I can hear it. Everyone can hear it. Mom has switched from Polite Guest English to Family Casual, just for Joy. Brit glances at the door, then at me, oblivious. What in God’s hipster beard is Joy Song doing here? I close my eyes and will a hole to open up and swallow me.
Before any hole can appear, Joy takes a breathless seat next to me. Everyone scoots their chairs to make room.
“Hey, everybody,” says Joy. She quivers like a beetle has just snuck up her sleeve.
“Do you guys know Joy?” I say to the crystal salt and pepper shakers, which are purely decorative and never actually used. The shakers say nothing.
“I know Joy,” says Q. I shoot him a look. He looks back at me with naked fear.
“I know Joy,” says Brit.
I can feel the world tilting—tables and chairs sliding to one side of the room, trees outside groaning with the increasing angle. When Brit showed up to The Store, it felt like two worlds colliding. Now she’s here in my house, meeting Joy, and it feels like a third planet has joined in.
Mom slams the world level again by plonking a plate before Joy. “You eating.”
I dare a quick glance: What the fuck, dude?
Joy looks back with helpless eyes. It’s not my fault.
Are the Apeys staring at us? No—they’re all back to happily devouring their food. Evon finishes, excuses herself, and disappears behind a high-backed lounge chair.
“Oh,” says Brit to Joy, realizing something. “Are you one of the Gathering friends?”
“Yeah,” says Joy. “I’ve known this bozo since we were little.”
“Brit means it, mothafucka,” says Brit with a quiet smile.
Joy smirks. “That was me, ha.”
“That’s incredible that you’ve been such good friends for so long,” says Brit.
“We’re not like friends-friends, though,” says Joy, and it’s the wrong thing to say, but she can’t close her stupid mouth fast enough to trap the words. So she keeps going, especially now that Mom is examining her performance. “We’re like family friends, like family-family. Anyway, I guess you could say we’re really close.”
This seems to satisfy Mom, who smiles and waddles out of the room with two kitchen trash bags.
Joy has just misted the room with bullfart, and I’m so convinced Brit can smell it that I want to facepalm the table to see how high I can send the plates. Instead, I stomp on her foot.
“Wow,” cries Joy to no one. She tries to stomp me back but only hits bare hardwood. “Wow, this tastes amazing,” she shouts.
This is getting stupid quick. I have to break up this table. I point at Q. “Is it time?”
Q springs to attention. He digs in his bag and produces a small game console.
“Time for Let’s Heart Dancing?” he says.
Everyone groans, but once Q has it set up and is dancing in his strange—but infectious—blind shaman style, people can’t help but join in. Brit grabs a controller and begins punching the air with her elbows. She glances at me, and I want nothing more than to be her dancing partner in a vectorized video game world of our own. But a jab in my ribs jolts me out of my dreaming.
“Your fuckin’ mom called my fuckin’ mom,” hisses Joy. “She’s all, Frankie invite you too, right? What the fuck was I fuckin’ supposed to do?”
“Fuckin’ pretend you were sick or some shit!” I hiss back.
“Fuck you, like I had a fuckin’ choice!”
“Go Brit, go Brit,” shouts Naima Gupta over the thudding music.
“You need to evac in five,” I whisper. “I’m fuckin’ trying to do something here.”
“What the fuck do I say?” says Joy. “I can’t just eat and run.”
“SAT study. Go.”
I get up, grab a controller, and dance with Brit. We face the screen and move in sync. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Joy bowing to Mom with both hands on her thighs, the picture of meek apology. She’s doing it: expressing regret for having to leave early, adamantly refusing leftovers, impressing upon Mom the urgency and importance of not keeping her fictional SAT study buddy waiting, gracefully berating her own lack of planning and rudeness.
