by Marie G. Lee
O-Ma was busy studying the directions Bong had given, and she came to the conclusion that they were incomprehensible. Abogee pulled over to the side of the road, grumbling, but I saw that he was squinting at the Korean writing too. He finally steered Lou down the one street that went through town, and soon we saw a cracked sign that said IRONGATE APARTMENTS, where Bong had arranged for us to rent his old place.
Abogee shut off the car and got out. He did a few stretching exercises; I could see half-moons of sweat underneath his arms.
I was wondering why he was standing in the rain, but far be it that I should say anything.
Abogee buttoned the top buttons of his shirt, tucked the tails into his pants, cleared his throat, and farted. Young and I rolled our eyes at each other. No matter how many times we tell him that farting out loud is considered gross, he just starts in with this “If we were in Korea” bit. Let me tell you, if half his “if we were in Korea” stories are true, I don’t think I’d ever want to go there.
“Chan, you come with me,” he said in Korean, the very first words he’d spoken to me since we’d left.
I looked up at him. What did he need me for?
“Hurry! You heard me.”
I clambered out of Lou. My shirt was plastered to my back. I tented it out and shook it.
We went together through a door marked OFFICE and found ourselves in a tiny, dark room. No one was there, so we sat down on chairs next to a dusty plastic fern and a wall calendar that said COMPLIMENTS OF YOUR INSURANCE AGENT, JOE NYGAARD.
The door swung open and a man lumbered in.
“Can I help you?” He was fat and bald and eying us suspiciously.
Abogee rose with a smile and extended his hand.
“I Bong Kim brudder,” he said.
The man looked at the hand, but made no move to shake it. Finally Abogee took it back.
The man had beads of sweat on his upper lip; it looked the way water beads up on your car when you use Turtle Wax. I imagined him Turtle Waxing his lip, and I suddenly snorted.
“What’s so funny?” the man said. Abogee glared at me. I coughed.
“I Bong Kim brudder,” Abogee said again, a little more loudly.
“I can’t understand a freakin’ word you said.” The man turned to me. “Hey, kid, he not speak English or something?”
“Of course he does!” I said. What a jerk.
Abogee put his hand on my arm and squeezed—hard enough to make it hurt. “I didn’t give you permission to speak,” he said.
I shut up, surprised.
“Mister,” Abogee said, smiling again. “I try to tell you, I Bong Kim brud-der. You know, Bong-Ho Kim live here?”
The man squinted at Abogee. His bald head seemed to grow shinier and his cheeks puffed like Alien was going to come out of them.
“So you here to pay the money?” he growled. “The money, you know? Moolah, bread, dinero?”
“Yes, yes,” Abogee said, grinning and nodding. “I pay rent.”
Through the window I could see the car. Young in the back, O-Ma in the front. Both motionless as statues.
“So, where is it?” The man leaned his two hammy arms on the desk.
“Want to see room, first,” Abogee said, smiling a little less.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Your brother left us without a trace—including the two months’ rent he owes me.”
It suddenly dawned on me what Bong had done. “Uh, Abogee,” I said. He shook his head violently and turned away from me.
“How much rent?” Abogee asked.
The man dug in a file cabinet and pulled out a sheet, while mumbling to himself, “I can’t believe I let him slide. He kept saying he was gettin’ money from Korea. In just a little while, please mister, just hold off a little while. Yah, right.
“Seven … hundred … fifty … dollars plus two … hundred in key money.” He pronounced each digit slowly, one at a time. Abogee seemed to catch them slowly too, one at a time.
Abogee reached into a pocket and pulled out a fat envelope. He counted out nine hundred-dollar bills and a fifty.
“Abogee,” I said. He gave me a warning look.
I had to do something, but I didn’t know what.
“Abogee, that’s Bong’s rent money,” I blurted in Korean.
Abogee’s lips tightened.
“Quiet!” he hissed. He handed the bills to the man.
“Now, you show us room, yes?” Abogee said.
The man turned to me. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“We need to rent a place,” I muttered. I let my hair fall in front of my face, as if that would shield me from what was going on.
“Hell, no!” he bellowed. “I ain’t renting to no more sneaks. I got what’s owed and I ain’t making the same mistake twice. You two better go before I get really mad.” He made stabbing gestures at the door.
“What’s going on?” Abogee asked. “Why is he so mad? Did you insult him?”
“He doesn’t have any rooms,” I explained lamely. “He can’t rent to us.”
“What? I just gave him almost a thousand dollars.’”
“That was for rent Bong owed. I was trying to tell you.”
“I’m gonna count to ten.” The man narrowed his eyes.
“One.”
“Abogee, we’d better go.” I put a hand on his elbow. He pulled away.
“Mister, what going on here?” he said. “Why no rent to us? I wanna my money back.”
“Two. Three …”
“I no leave until I get money back.” Abogee sat back down on the chair, all one hundred pounds of him.
“Seven. Eight. Nine …”
I had a sensation of being lifted and then being forced to walk on my tippy-toes out the door. I felt a shove in my back and went flying. Luckily I had time to turn around and catch Abogee on the rebound, as he bounced off a shrub.
“And stay out, chinks!” the guy yelled, before going back into the office. The lock clicked behind him.
five
The Hell Motel was the one motel in town. It was actually the Hello Motel, but the O on the neon sign was flickering, almost out. We were the only people there except for the office lady, who looked like she was over a hundred years old.
She gave us a key and we went into the room, which I bet hadn’t been opened for several centuries.
At least the shower worked. I felt a thousand times better after standing in there and letting the hot water beat on my back. I was a little leery of the stained, scratchy-looking towels, so I just let myself drip-dry for a bit before changing back into my clothes.
When I came out, O-Ma and Abogee were facing each other but not speaking. Young was sitting a little off to the side, on some lumpy thing that was supposed to be a couch, so I joined her.
“We have to find a place immediately,” Abogee informed O-Ma. “We don’t have the money to stay in hotels like this.”
“You shouldn’t have given the money to that man,” O-Ma said. “We can’t keep covering for Bong’s irresponsible debts.” Her voice was soft, but it seemed to slice through the gloom.
There is something about parents fighting. It’s unwatchable. Young must have been thinking the same thing, because she switched on the TV. We stared at the flickering tube as if our lives depended on it. “It is my duty to help my brother,” I heard Abogee say.
“Then why don’t you just send all of our money to your brother, so he can continue to waste it?” O-Ma’s voice ratcheted tighter.
Young stiffened beside me. On the screen, someone was getting blown up.
“You, you—shut up!”
Young and I whirled around and stared at Abogee. His eyes were wild, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to hit O-Ma. When his hand moved, Young sucked in her breath.
At the sound, O-Ma and Abogee turned to look at us, like they’d forgotten we were there.
Abogee’s face froze, then began to collapse the slightest bit, like ice cream about to slide of
f a cone. But then he pulled his old face back on so fast, I couldn’t exactly be sure what I had seen.
“Not in front of the children,” O-Ma murmured. She sounded broken.
Young turned her face away from me and hid it under her hair, but not before I saw a tear slide down her nose.
It’s weird how, when you’re a kid, you think your parents can do anything: they have an answer for all your questions, they always have everything under control.
Especially Abogee. He always seemed so sure, like if he said “Jump,” you’d say “How high?” But he doesn’t know everything. I never realized how bad his English is. Back in L.A., Abogee got the Korean suppliers to give us their best stuff for the lowest prices—and he didn’t take anyone’s crap. So why did he have to smile so much while that guy was chewing us out today?
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered to Young.
I tried to ignore the cold feeling creeping up my gut, that maybe O-Ma and Abogee did not have everything under control, that maybe they didn’t know what to do any more than Young and I did.
six
When the sun filtered through the ratty curtains, it took me a few seconds to remember where we were: the Hell Motel.
I got up, took another shower, and waited for everyone else. I always like getting up early; maybe it’s because everyone else is asleep and I feel like I rule the world.
While I waited, I flipped through the Iron River phone book. I checked APARTMENTS. The Irongate Apartments were followed by another listing, the Stover Houses. For a small town, this place had a lot of apartment houses.
“O-Ma, Abogee, there’s another apartment-house complex here,” I said, before thinking that some people might like to sleep.
Abogee’s eyes were hooded with fatigue. He looked like a lizard waking up. He sighed, looked at his watch as if we had some important appointments to keep, and said, “We might as well go see it.”
* * *
We found the Stover Houses in the middle of town, catty-corner to the public library.
“Look, Young,” I said. “We’ll be able to walk to the library.” Young is the one who likes books. I’m the one who can’t live without Sports Illustrated.
“I like this,” she said, looking up at the brick building, which had an enormous porch with all sorts of plants on it.
Abogee went in by himself. I’m sure he’s convinced I did something to screw up or jinx that last visit. Last night I’d heard him murmuring to O-Ma something about how I’d spoken out of turn, how I don’t respect my elders, how I’m starting to turn wild. That’s me, Chan Kim, wild man.
Of course he didn’t say a thing about Bong, who’d gotten us into this mess in the first place. O-Ma didn’t argue with him too much. I think she was pretty tired.
Abogee came out.
“No places here,” he said.
“How could that be?” I said. “The sign says ‘Rooms to let.’”
“She said it’s full.” There was a warning note in his voice. I bit my tongue, although I had my suspicions that maybe our fat buddy had phoned up Mrs. Stover Houses and told her not to take us. Or maybe Mrs. Stover didn’t like Koreans.
The scaredy-gut feeling clawed at me again.
Where would we go? Would we end up in rags, driving Lou endlessly through town as we scrounged for our dinner in garbage cans? Might we become Iron River’s first homeless people?
“Abogee, what’ll we do?” I blurted.
“Quiet! I’m trying to think.” His forehead was slashed with creases.
We all stood. The silence in our conversation was punctuated only by the twittering of birds.
“We should try chamber of commerce,” O-Ma said finally, clearly and brightly in English.
“Huh! What that gonna do?” Abogee challenged her.
“They know where businesses are,” O-Ma reasoned. I was surprised to see her turn around and walk into the Stover Houses without even pretending to wait for Abogee’s approval.
She came back out and pointed in the direction of the library. “On Main Street; we can walk. Mrs. Stover said okay to keep car here.”
Abogee grumbled, but he led the way.
I noticed, as we passed the library, that it didn’t have one little streak of graffiti on it. Not a one. This town was like a movie set.
The chamber of commerce looked like an advertising hut. Banners for the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs adorned the desk, where a lady sat expectantly. A poster on the wall touted a summer boat show up at some Whatchamagoober Lake. On another wall hung a framed etching of what looked like the Grand Canyon but was labeled STEAM SHOVEL MINE, 1898.
“Hello,” the lady said. “Can I help you?”
Abogee was about to say something, but O-Ma gracefully inserted herself.
“Hello, I am Ok-Hee Kim and this is my family. We are new here, and we need place to live for a while.”
The lady was wearing those glasses with the tiny lenses that made it seem like you needed tiny eyes to look through them. She smiled. Her smile seemed kind.
“Have you tried the Irongate Apartments or the Stover Houses?” she asked. “Both are very nice.”
“Oh yes, they very nice,” O-Ma said. “But we look for something little bit cheaper and maybe less like hotel, you know?”
“Oh, of course,” the lady said, opening up a small box of index cards. “Mrs. Evie Knutson has been looking for someone to rent the top floor of her house for some time since her husband died. Let me copy down the address for you.”
Mrs. Knutson’s house turned out to be exactly across the street from the library. Hers was a large, slightly dilapidated place. The lawn was overgrown with weeds that were choking the ROOM FOR RENT sign.
“You get car,” O-Ma said to us. “I go talk to Mrs. Knutson.”
We drove our bucket of bolts into an alley in order to reach the driveway in the back of the house. Through the screen door, O-Ma’s voice tinkled gently, like wind chimes.
We knocked, and a warbly voice told us to come in. O-Ma was sitting at a table talking to an elderly lady whose white hair was tucked in a neat bun. She looked like Grandma Moses.
“What a lovely family!” she gushed, extending her hand to Abogee. He looked bewildered and took her hand very gently, as if she were handing him a baby bird.
“You have a lovely daughter and a very handsome boy,” she said to O-Ma, who smiled. She gave Young and me each a butterscotch candy.
The next thing I knew, I was lugging the Buddha and our boxes up a flight of lopsided stairs. Upstairs there were two rooms, a big one and a small one. Abogee started throwing Young’s and my stuff in the small one, which smelled faintly of mothballs.
“There’s a room in the attic,” he said. “Mrs. Knutson said it’s drafty, but Chan, you can sleep up there, if you want.”
Young and I peered closer at the room before us. I could almost touch the opposite walls if I spread my arms. There were shelves already built on one wall. I couldn’t help wondering if Mrs. Knutson used it as a closet. We looked at each other again and then went to search for the attic.
There was a rope hanging from the ceiling, and when I pulled on it, a door with stairs built into it emerged. It was like a reverse trapdoor.
“Cool,” said Young as I unfolded the stairs.
The attic was unfinished: on half of it, insulation covered the boards like a carpet of pink cotton candy. The other half was clear, but looked like it hadn’t been swept out since the Civil War. Shadows of miscellaneous junk lurked ominously in the corners.
“Don’t feel like you have to sleep up here,” Young said.
Actually, I was thinking that this place might be decent, relatively speaking. I had a sudden hunger for my own space.
“I’ll try my luck here, Sis.”
I would have made a good monk: I have very few possessions. I carried my stuff up in one trip, piled it on an old overstuffed chair, and swept out the floor with a broom and dustpan that Mrs. Knutson gave me. O-Ma came up later
with some oil soap, saying she wanted to make sure it was really clean, since I’d be sleeping on it. We didn’t have beds. O-Ma and Abogee had decided that we would just bring all our quilts and sleep Korean style, maybe buy furniture later.
“This isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked. She smoothed the hair falling into my eyes just the way she’d smoothed the bedding a few minutes ago.
I suddenly wanted to tell O-Ma how proud I was about how she had handled everything today. But as always, when I want to say something nice, something totally stupid and whiny comes out.
“I wish we had our own place.”
“So do I. But don’t you think this is a nice way to get started? Mrs. Knutson seems so kind.”
“But we don’t even have a kitchen.”
“Mrs. Knutson has a nice one, downstairs.”
“You’re going to share?”
“We’ll work something out,” O-Ma said.
“You’re good at working things out,” I said, relieved that I finally said something positive.
“I think I’ll try to learn to cook more American food,” she said determinedly. “Now, you be good and help your father, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. O-Ma crept down the stairs and pushed them back up. The springs snapped the door tightly back into place, and the room went black.
I lay in the warm blanket of darkness, smelling the faint scent of oil soap. Our future was outside, leaning black and heavy against the house. It scared me, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
seven
The next day O-Ma took us to register for school. We went in Lou, because the school was on the edge of town. That was the problem with Iron River: since there was nothing other than prairie out here, it seemed the town thought it might as well spread out.
Iron River High School was actually in an imposing building. It had columns outside the front door like the Parthenon, and a huge lawn that some poor soul had obviously taken a good deal of care in mowing. There was also a track, a football field, and tennis courts.
