It's Girls Like You, Mickey

by Patti Kim

  The boys sitting nearby say, “Oooooooh.” They laugh, punching one another’s arms.

  I catwalk over to the trash, take my chocolate pudding cup off my tray, and dump the rest of my lunch. There’s an unopened pudding just sitting there in the bin, so I quickly grab that and strut out of the cafeteria, feeling sorry for insulting Dumbo ’cause I love Dumbo, and Frankie Doo-Doo ain’t good enough to be likened to Dumbo, who’s taught me to love what’s different about me and use whatever holds me down to lift me up.

  I stash my two pudding cups in my backpack and walk down the hall like I got a pair of wings. Like I just won the Little Miss Tiara pageant and I’m doing my victory lap. The noise coming out of the cafeteria? That’s wild applause.

  Twenty minutes to kill. I got nowhere to go. I stop at the bulletin board where signup sheets are posted for organizing the winter dance, joining the Spanish club, trying out for cheerleading, and SGA nominations. I go through the list of nominations, looking for my name ’cause you never know. Someone might could’ve nominated me. Hope don’t ever run dry in my heart. Looks like Nawsia and Tammy nominated Sydney Stevenson to run for president. Looks like Cookie Monster nominated Tinkie Winkie. My name’s not on the list. If I had a friend who nominated me, oh boy oh boy, that’d be like winning the Powerball jackpot of friends.

  I walk to the end of the hall. I grab the railing and go up the stairs like it’s my mountain to climb. I’m fording streams. I’m following my rainbow. Then I hear whimpering. It sounds like Sabrina when she ain’t feeling good. Sabrina’s my oldest cat. I got three cats and a dog. Sabrina’s got a long list of health problems. It makes me crazy sad to hear Ma say that kind of misery needs putting out.

  I stop and bend down to look between the steps. There in the corner under the staircase sits a balled-up pill bug. I know the top of that head.

  “There you are!” I call out through the steps.

  I hurry down the stairs, plop myself down next to her, and say, “I’ve been looking for you. My name’s Mickey. I’m your science partner. Remember?”

  The girl’s pressing her face into her kneecaps. Her arms are tight around her legs. Her sneakers are brand-spanking-new, whiter than fresh marshmallows. A rainbow, embroidered on the side, ends with BEST FRIEND in gold letters. Her double-knotted laces look plump like noodles, and instead of crisscross, she got them strung all lined up like a white picket fence. I’m shocked I didn’t notice her shoes during science class ’cause they scream, Look at me.

  “I like your sneakers,” I say.

  She’s quiet. At least she don’t sound like a sick cat no more.

  I open my backpack, pull out two chocolate puddings, and ask, “Want one?”

  No answer, but she does turn her head a little, peeking through her hair, which is acting like one of them bead curtains.

  I’m trying to remember how to say hi in Korean. Ok taught me, but I can’t remember it exact. Something like onion-hi-say-yo-yo?

  “Here,” I say, and hold up a pudding cup. “Go on. Take it. Bell’s about to ring. Food ain’t allowed in the classrooms, so eat up. It’s good stuff.”

  I tap the cup against her fingers, but she don’t take it.

  “Fine,” I say, and put it upside down on the top of her head.

  I peel off my lid and take a lick of the pudding. Sun Joo’s watching me, wearing that cup on her head like a mini top hat.

  I dip two fingers into the pudding, scoop out a blob, smear a horseshoe mustache on my face, and do my best Mr. Fox, saying, “What’s your name? Is it Moon? Is it Sun? Is it Joo?”

  Pudding’s dripping off my chin. She cracks a smile. I see her teeth through her curtain of hair. The cup on her head slides off, and like a pro, she catches it in her hand.

  “Good catch,” I say, and lick off some of the mustache. I wipe the rest with my daddy’s tie.

  She’s holding her head up. With her chin pressed on her knees, she checks out the pudding cup. She peels back the lid nice and slow, sniffs it, takes a lick, and says, “Chocolate.”

  “Yeah, it’s chocolate pudding,” I say, and squeeze my cup so a blob rises to the top. I slurp it up.

  She hands me the cup.

  “You don’t want it?” I ask.

  “No, thank you,” she says.

  The way she’s talking so polite and proper to me makes me feel like a grown-up.

  “That’s fine. More for me,” I say, and take the cup. I squeeze it too hard, and the blob of pudding plop-lands on my leg, making a doo-doo stain on my pink tights.

  “Oh no,” Sun Joo says.

  “Aigo,” I say.

  “You go?”

  “Oh, I ain’t going nowhere. I said aigo. It’s Korean. Ain’t you Korean? Aigo, aigo. Don’t you say that when something don’t go right?”

  “Uhhhh. Aigo,” she says, lifting her head up. First time I’ve seen her face without her hair acting like blinders.

  Covering her mouth, Sun Joo nods and chuckles. I got her to laugh. She ain’t balled up like a pill bug no more either. I lick the pudding off my leg. It’s good stuff.

  The bell rings.

  four

  I got me a lunch partner. Didn’t take but three days for Sun Joo and me to come to an understanding that we should sit together in the cafeteria. I can’t say we’re best friends yet, but this here’s the start of something, and it sure beats her crying under the stairs or me eating all by my lonesome and roaming the halls. We are, no doubt about it, the oddest of the oddballs of seventh grade, but who cares. We got each other for these thirty minutes. That’s what counts.

  Sun Joo waits for me at the back table. She don’t take out her lunch box until I sit down with my tray of school lunch. I thought this was ’cause she was being all polite, but then I figured out it was ’cause she was embarrassed of her lunch box. She didn’t want to take that thing out without me sitting there to block anyone’s view of it. I don’t know why she’s so embarrassed about it ’cause it’s the prettiest lunch box in the whole wide world. It’s this pink plastic treasure chest thingy that reminds me of a box of Whitman’s chocolates with a lid and all, but Sun Joo’s lid got this cute rainbow on it, and it’s got words, too. “Happiness is like the smile of a rainbow with colors that sparkle of joy and love.” The girl’s into rainbows.

  She opens the lid, quickly tucks it under the box, and hovers over her food, hiding it.

  “It’s okay. I ain’t going to take your food,” I say, opening my chocolate milk.

  “No, not like that,” she says, and picks at her rice. She got chopsticks in the box, but she uses the school’s spork instead.

  The food in her lunch box is so neat it don’t even look like real food. There’s rice on one side of the box. Slices of pink blocks on the other side. Next to that are slices of yellow coin-looking thingies. I see strawberries tucked here and there. A boiled egg. It’s like an art project.

  “What’s that there?” I ask, pointing at the pink blocks.

  “Spam. You want?” she says, pushing the box toward me.

  “Sure! Oh man, what you got looks way better than what I got,” I say, pointing down at my tray of mashed potatoes, Salisbury steak, and mushy green beans all sopped with beige gravy. “You want to try some of this?” I ask.

  She scoops up some mashed potatoes with gravy and tastes it. She nods and says, “Is not bad.”

  “You want to swap?” I ask.

  “Swap?”

  “Yeah. You know. Like trade. You get mine. I get yours. Swap,” I say.

  “Swap. Okay. We swap,” she says.

  With the tray of school lunch in front of her, Sun Joo sits up straight like she ain’t embarrassed no more. I’m good at chopsticks, so I use her rainbow chopsticks, poking them into the rice.

  “Did you make this?”

  “No, my grandmother. She make,” she says.

  “Lucky duck,” I say, chewing the rice. It’s sweet and tangy.

  “Duck?”

  “Yeah, like quack-quack
duck, but it ain’t like quack-quack. It’s just a saying. It means, like, I wish I had me what you have. I want me a grandma who packs me these kinds of lunches. This is like princess food. It is so yummy,” I say, taking a bite of Spam.

  She watches me eating up her food and says, “I think you are so friendly and so nice.”

  I smile so big the chewed-up Spam in my mouth nearly falls out. I swallow and then say, “Why, thank you, Sun Joo Moon. Thank you so much. That truly warms my heart. But I can’t take all the credit for that ’cause you bring out the nice in me. You really do. You know how, like, some people just rub you all wrong and next thing you know you’re fuming mad and all irritated and calling them names and you don’t even know why? But you’re nothing like that. You push all my nice buttons. You really do.”

  Sun Joo smiles and nods like she gets what I’m saying, but I don’t know for sure ’cause I’m gabbing a mile a minute with no plans on stopping. I’m on a roll.

  “But I’m afraid being nice don’t get you too far in this neck of the woods, if you know what I’m saying. Like you kinda have to have a streak of mean if you’re going to be somebody around here. I’m talking somebody with a capital S. You gotta have attitude. Like that girl Sydney. See her over there? See how she holds her nose up and swings her hair like that? It’s like she’s queen of the hill or something and the rest of us is a bunch of nobodies. You know, her friends nominated her for president. Oh man, I wish I had friends like that. Always right by my side. Nominating me. Following me around. Telling me how pretty I am. I think I’d make a great president. I got so many ideas to change this place up. I’d represent everyone, especially the nobodies. I’d help everyone. But for girls like Sydney, it’s not about making the world a better place, it’s not. It’s all about power and popularity. Want to hear something pathetic? I’m probably going to vote for her ’cause she’s got that star power.”

  Sun Joo nods like she gets what I’m saying, but who knows ’cause her English ain’t that great. She pulls an apple out of her rainbow backpack. She grips it with both hands like she’s pressing hard on it, like she’s trying to twist open a lid on a jar. Then crunch. Like magic, the apple splits in half. Sun Joo split that apple in half with her bare hands.

  “Wow,” I say.

  She hands me half her apple. I take it. I look at it, making sure it’s a real apple, and say, “Oh my tarnation, how’d you do that?”

  She takes a bite and says, “Is my star power.”

  “Girl,” I say, and hold my hand up for a high five.

  She high-fives me back.

  five

  Ma’s sleeping when me and Benny get back from school. We gotta keep it quiet. It’s like we’re sneaking into our own home. It’s been like this since she started working nights regular.

  Benny turns the TV on. I rush to push the mute button.

  “But I can’t hear nothing,” Benny whispers, grabbing the remote from me.

  “Can’t you read lips?” I whisper back.

  “I don’t like reading,” he says, and turns on the sound, but he keeps it low at one notch. He sits so close to the screen his face glows with the happy family splitting open a Hot Pocket. What’re you going to pick? Hot Pockets. Benny licks his lips and swallows.

  “You’re going get blind,” I tell him.

  “I’m hungry.”

  I pick him up, set him a little farther away, and give him one more notch of volume.

  “Didn’t you have no lunch?”

  “I want a sandwich.”

  “Hang on. I’ll make you something,” I say, and head over to the kitchen.

  As I spread mayo on bread, I hear the TV get louder. I rush over, turn the volume down, bop Benny’s head with the remote, and take it with me. We can’t have us another blowup.

  One time, we had the TV on too loud while Ma was sleeping, and she came storming and stumbling out of her room like a drunk-up maniac, yelling at us to keep it down and throwing whatever she could get her hands on. Cushions, hairbrush, stack of junk mail, ashtrays, a barrel of Cheese Balls that was open and full. Them balls went flying all over the living room, and Charlie went crazy jumping to catch them midair. Benny and him vacuumed those puffs up off the floor, crunching and munching on them like it was manna from the Father God Almighty himself. Food from heaven gave Charlie the runs. Woke up in the morning to the glorious view of Lake Orange Diarrhea at the front door. Guess who got to clean that up?

  I struck it lucky Ma didn’t run into Charlie’s sick mess, ’cause she’d been threatening to get rid of him. Costs too much to keep him. (It don’t cost that much.) He’s getting old. (He’s but like fifty years old in people age.) Too much work taking care of that oversize animal. (I feed, water, and walk him. She don’t lift a pinkie.)

  Ma’s spewing off sorry excuses ’cause Charlie was Daddy’s idea from the get-go. He brought him home as a pup, and we went wild, falling in love. Ma’s just rampaging to rid our home of any signs of Daddy.

  I wish Ma had the wherewithal to give herself a time-out and think long and hard before she rampages, opening her big old mouth and erupting everything into a ruckus. One of these days she’s going to break our TV, throwing that Mother’s Day ceramic ashtray Benny made for her clear through the screen. It weighs a brick and looks like a deflated heart.

  A wad of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! melts in the pan. As it spreads and sizzles, I plop down a slice of bread, mayo-side up. I top it with a sheet of cheese, which sweats and goes soft in the middle. I blanket the liquefying cheese with another slice of mayo bread and flip it. The fried side glistens golden and crusty. Beats that nasty grease cheese at school. My mouth waters.

  I give Benny his sandwich.

  “Does it got loaf?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “I want loaf.”

  “I want a thank-you.”

  “Thank you,” he says, chomping a mouthful.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “But you said you wanted me to say thank you.”

  He chews, smiling like a demon child.

  I stoop, snatch a bite, and hurry back to the kitchen. It takes a second for Benny to say “Hey!”

  We got Steak-umms in the freezer, but that’s our last three sheets of beef, which I need to save for dinner. Ma’s been wanting meat. She’s on the fast track to looking and sounding like that barking grandma in that Wendy’s commercial looking for where the beef is at.

  For tonight’s dinner special at the Chez Michel, we will serve noodles de macaroni and crème de cheese topped with delicate sheets de Steak-ummlicious thinly carved to melt-in-your-mouth tender perfection.

  I leave the meat in the freezer, but take out the empty Steak-umm box. I cut out the front with the picture of a sub overflowing with ribbons of meat, melted cheese, and fried onions. Just cutting up the box works up my spit.

  Ma’s up. She stumbles to the bathroom. The toilet flushes. She stumbles out and back to her bedroom. The door slams shut.

  On the blank side of the Steak-umm postcard, I write in caps: OK LEE.

  I know his address by heart. Rosewood Lane’s got a fancy ring to it. So does Silver Spring. Sure beats living on a street called Thirty-Five. It’s an ugly, odd number. Dirty thirty. Dive five. Try to stay alive.

  I’m all set to write “urinal” answering his “who’s there,” and he’d come back with “urinal who,” and I’d come back with “urinal heap of trouble perv” just like how we ping-ponged a million years ago, when I caught him in the girls’ bathroom crying. I never did find out what was making him cry that day. I would never shed tears in school. Never. I’d give myself one of them snap-out-of-it talks and move on.

  As my pen forms the first stroke of the letter U, it detours, turning into an I instead, and that’s all it takes for me to gush:

  I camped at Ocean City after you took off to your fancy new house. No hard feelings. You woulda liked our tent. Daddy showed up late, made a mess of things, then took off.
He and Ma fought. World War III. Don’t want to get into it, but I gotta tell someone, may as well be you. He was in his truck cleaning his gun with Benny sitting next to him. Gun went off. No one got hurt. But cops came. Get this. Daddy told the cops Benny did it. Blamed his kid so he don’t look stupid. Don’t get no lower than that. Bubble busted. Then we get a flat on the side of the road next to some cornfields and Charlie goes running into the street and almost gets hit. Screeching tires like you never heard. It’s a miracle we’re all in one piece. How’d your summer go? What’s school like? Here’s my knock-knock answer: Chesterfield.

  From the one and only,

  Yoo No Hoo (my Korean name)

  PS Made a new friend. A bona fide FOB. Why ain’t it FOP?

  PPS You still owe me a year’s worth of braids.

  My words make me feel light as a feather and stiff as a board, like I can levitate off the floor.

  I put a pot of water on the stove for boiling the macaroni. I join Benny and Charlie on the floor and watch TV. Jill hops on the couch behind me and settles on my shoulder. Kelly snuggles onto my lap. I don’t know where Sabrina’s at. Bet she’s under my bed. Benny’s head rests on the nook of Charlie’s neck. They could pass for a two-headed dog. I drape my legs over Charlie. We fit like pieces of a puzzle.

  This here’s the calm before the hurricane.

  Any minute, that doorknob’s going to turn, and who knows what’s going to come spilling out while she gets herself together to mind a tollbooth all night. Wonder if there’s any chance of Daddy driving through her booth again. That’s how they met. I seen a picture of them taken before I was born. Daddy looked like Daddy, but I had to squint to see Ma. She used to be real good-looking. If that’s what it costs, I ain’t never having babies. Wonder if Ma wonders if Daddy will ever drive through her booth again. It took five drive-throughs for him to get her number. That’s romance. Under all that raging, Ma’s just real sad. Daddy ain’t what we imagined he was. Hardly ever here for us to get a real feeling about him. We dreamed him up.