The Korean Word For Butterfly

by James Zerndt

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Moon says as they disappear into the sea of red shirts. “He’s the one to take us into the finals.”

  Crowds aren’t really Moon’s thing. Which isn’t good since Korea, the cities anyway, are nothing but crowds. His boss had accused him of being too western once when he was still in the music industry. Moon found it was something both admired and frowned upon in Korea. It all depended on the situation.

  “Can you see from here? This spot okay?”

  For an answer, Hyo sits on the blanket Moon’s laid out. Moon hands him a big, red inflatable-bat. He bought it on the way there. Everybody has them. You wave them in the air, and they make this annoying whirring sound.

  The cicadas’ competition.

  Moon isn’t sure what the point of the bats really are. To distract the other team? But the other team can’t even hear them. The actual game is being played somewhere in Seoul. Over an hour away from them. Not that this is stopping anyone from maniacally waving these bats at the giant screen below them.

  “Want me to put you on my shoulders, so you can see?”

  Hyo takes a tiny step away from Moon. It’s barely perceptible, but Moon notices it. And he’s convinced everybody at the park has noticed it, too.

  “Okay, Hyo. Just let me know, okay?”

  His wife never told anybody. Moon never even had to explain what happened to her. She just knew it was somehow his fault. She kicked him out that night. That was it. The end. Everybody just assumed that what happened to Hyo was an accident. And that might just be the worst part of it. How people didn’t know. How they all still smiled at Moon.

  When they should be throwing stones at him.

  There’s a little girl about the same age as Hyo sitting next to them. She’s playing with a Mashimaro doll. The girl is hesitant, sizing Hyo up. Once she decides he isn’t a threat, she nudges Hyo with her elbow, offers him the doll.

  Hyo takes it from her, and the girl scoots closer.

  The mother smiles at Moon.

  Moon smiles back.

  People are always commenting about how beautiful Hyo is. His wife was once contacted by an advertising agency after she had some portrait photos taken at Samsung Plaza. They wanted to use Hyo on their coupon flyers. His wife wanted to go ahead with it, but Moon had put his foot down. And when she started talking about using Moon’s connections to enroll Hyo in K-pop training camp someday, Moon went off on her. He’d seen firsthand what those places were like, and there was no way in hell Hyo was going anywhere near one.

  Hyo was going to grow up to be a human being.

  Not a brand.

  “He’s adorable,” the mom says when the crowd quiets down. “How old?”

  “Three,” Moon tells her. “Yours, too. She’s cute, I mean. What’s her name?”

  Moon still isn’t good at this. The parent small-talk. He can’t relate to most of the stuff they talk about since he only gets to see Hyo once a week. And never overnight. That was part of the deal. Moon agreed to everything his wife wanted. How could he not? He still remembers what it used to be like though. The waking up every hour on the hour. Hyo sleeping in the bed with them. His little feet constantly poking at Moon. They were like tiny hands searching for Moon in the bed. Grabbing at him. It used to drive him crazy. Every time Moon was about to fall asleep, here would come Hyo’s feet. If he was sleeping on the other side of the bed, Hyo would roll over his mother just so he could be next to Moon. And if it wasn’t the feet, it was the screaming.

  “Up! Up! Up!”

  It was his favorite word back then. Up! As in, pick me up, or I’m going to scream until your ears bleed.

  Funny, how he misses even that little word now. Not to mention being woken up at night. He’d kill for that, too. He doesn’t get much sleep anymore as it is. The nightmares have seen to that. He’s always waking up with a sick feeling in his stomach, the same one that made him vomit that night.

  Some nights he wakes up blanketed in sweat.

  “Wow,” the woman says after watching Hyo let her little girl comb his hair. “He’s so sweet and well-behaved. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.”

  The coldest blanket in the world.

  Moon smiles, all he can do really, and goes back to pretending to watch the match. Korea is winning. The people around them are jubilant, ecstatic. He feels nothing. Like there’s a big stone in his stomach. He carries it every day. This heaviness. Some days his legs tremble beneath the weight of it.

  But nobody can see it.

  Only Moon.

  He sits down on the blanket beside Hyo.

  “You hungry, Hyo?”

  Hyo shakes his head. His eyes are on the big screen, watching a slow-motion replay of Ahn-jung-wan making a shot on goal.

  “What should we do after this?”

  Hyo shrugs.

  Moon’s heart shrugs.

  He gives up, lies down on the blanket. There are so many people around them that he can barely see the sky. The little girl next to them is crying about something. Hyo probably did something. Moon doesn’t care. Let her cry. Let them all cry.

  The doctor told Moon what he did to Hyo was called nursemaid’s elbow. It sounded so harmless. And all the doctor did was bend Hyo’s arm and it popped itself right back into place. “It’ll be a little sore,” the doctor had told him, “but he’ll be fine in a few days.”

  The relief was overwhelming. Utter euphoria. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But then his wife came in. His wife, the nurse. She made sure Moon knew the medical term for what he did was radial head subluxation.

  It sounded more fitting.

  She asked if Moon had been drinking, but it was obvious he had been. The tiny room he’d been waiting in with Hyo reeked of it. Moon nodded. Nothing much else he could do. That’s when things began to fall apart. She refused to give Hyo back to him, made him sign up for treatment right then and there, or they (his wife and the doctor) wouldn’t send Hyo back home at all.

  His wife had to leave work that night.

  Moon was humiliated.

  Enough so that he knew he didn’t need treatment.

  He’d already had his last drink.

  Moon snaps out of it. The crowd around them has become one giant, harmonious bee hive. And it’s beginning to swarm. The game is over. Korea won. He can tell by the faces around them. When they finally lose, it’ll look like a death in the family.

  Ridiculous. Over a game. People were so odd.

  Moon starts to get up, wants to try to beat the crowds, but stops once he realizes that Hyo has snuggled up beside him. How could he have missed it? Hyo’s head is resting on his shoulder, his face drowsy, staring up at the sky with this serious look on his face. Just like Dad. Moon doesn’t move. He lets the people step over them. Hyo doesn’t move either. He lays still, one of his arms draped over Moon’s chest. Why is the happening? What did Moon do? He tries to think if he did anything different, anything special, but he can’t think of a thing. He’d stopped trying. That’s all he can think of. He’d stopped trying. Could it be that simple?

  Slowly, gently, Moon pulls Hyo closer to him. The woman with the little girl leans over them, smiles down again. She says something, but Moon doesn’t hear. The little girl waves. Moon grabs Hyo’s hand, waves back, and they watch them disappear into the crowd. Moon strokes Hyo’s hair. How long has it been since he’s let him do that? The tears are welling up. Moon has to swallow them down. Too many people around. It wouldn’t look right.

  Moon remembers the photo Hyo had with him the last time. It was stuck inside one of his books. His wife’s brother was holding Hyo in his arms, kissing his cheek. It had made Moon incredibly jealous. Just seeing him being held by another man.

  That should have been Moon.

  It was where Hyo belonged. In his arms.

  “Someday,” Moon whispers to Hyo. “Someday.”

  He remembers when Min Jee was pregnant. The doctor told them the baby was at high-risk for congenital heart disea
se (Fetal Arrhythmias), and Min Jee should seriously consider an abortion. She was already ten weeks along at that point. And the way the doctor phrased it, like there weren’t any options. Like it was an order. A death sentence. His wife had shaken her head, whispered a simple “No,” and walked out of the room.

  That was the end of it.

  They found another doctor, told him they weren’t interested in terminating, and, in the end, Hyo’s heart came out just fine.

  The problem, it turned out, had more to do with Moon’s.

  He tries again on the drive home to get Hyo to speak, but he still won’t. What was causing it? Could it have been that night? Or was it just the fact that his dad no longer lived with him? Or was it something else entirely? Or nothing? Maybe the kid was just naturally quiet.

  When he parks the car, Hyo leans over and silently kisses Moon on the cheek. Moon then watches, stunned, as Hyo races back to the house, to Mommy.

  That’s when everything starts to tighten.

  Like Moon is somehow being vacuum sealed.

  And the stone in his stomach. It’s getting bigger.

  Heavier.

  Filling him up.

  Like if he opens his mouth, pebbles will spill out.

  Yun-ji

  Yun-ji put the pages of the children’s book in order for the new teachers and tried to focus on the numbers on the bottom so she’d be sure not to place the butterfly before the caterpillar. But it was no use. She’d passed the protest on her way to work and now the images of the two school girls kept creeping into her head, mingling with the innocent story-book pictures. Both of the girls probably knew the English word for nabi. But did American children need to learn the Korean word for butterfly? No. There was no need for their children to learn Yun-ji’s language.

  The protesters had all carried photos showing the two bodies pressed into the dirt, their insides squeezed out onto the road. Yun-ji could picture the girls, fingers in their ears, looking at each other and giggling nervously at the large rolling-sound behind them. They were used to the Americans and their 25-ton tanks. There was nothing to be afraid of. Then one of them falling. Or not falling. More of a snapping down. Or maybe one of them seeing the large jutting steel-nose of the cannon over her head just moments before. How long did it take for the tracks to ladder them down? Did they pass out? Did they have time to cry out? It was the same questions every time Yun-ji saw the photos.

  But that’s what they were for.

  So people wouldn’t forget.

  Yun-ji went about the rest of her day in a sort of a daze, but none of her co-workers even mentioned the tragedy. It was possible they hadn’t heard yet, what with all the media coverage of the World Cup.

  Yun-ji showed Billie and Joe the playroom, showed them how to operate the projector so they could dance along with Barney and the children. Joe made some comment under his breath about the purple dinosaur, something about strangling him, but Yun-ji didn’t quite catch all of it.

  He seemed nice enough though. Tall and thin. A baby face.

  She couldn’t look at him without thinking of Shaun.

  Shaun. He kept calling. And texting.

  But Yun-ji couldn’t bring herself to answer him.

  Yun-ji avoided it for as long as possible, her head still hurt from the night before, but eventually she took Billie and Joe into one of the kindergarten classes. Here, new American teachers, you are now entering a thunderstorm. The thunderstorm will last until 10:30 every morning.

  Good luck and please watch out for lightning.

  She left them in there to observe and crept back to the safety and relative quiet of the office. Somebody, thank God, had had the foresight to sound-proof the office when they’d built the school. Not that Yun-ji didn’t love the kids. She adored them. It was just that they could be a little overwhelming at times.

  And by “a little,” she probably meant a lot.

  The day seemed to drag on a little more than usual, and when Yun-ji got home that night, she found a note on the table from her mother. Her parents were at Samsung Plaza watching the match against Germany. Yun-ji was supposed to call. Her parents would find a nice spot in the grass and meet her after she’d eaten something. It was the least she could do, the note said, after her “recent antics.”

  Yun-ji sat down to eat. On the table was a newspaper, a picture of Ahn-jung-wan on the cover. Korea’s star striker. The Golden Boy with rock-star good looks, long black hair, and the legs of a horse.

  Then there was Shaun.

  With his blonde hair and strange American accent.

  Yun-ji tried to picture him on the 33rd floor of their apartment building. He’d probably like the giant plasma television set they had. Her father bought it last summer when the restaurant was doing well. Shaun probably grew up in a mansion. Didn’t all Americans? Yun-ji didn’t know one family that owned a real house. What would Shaun think of her small bedroom with the peeling paint and the metal desk she used for studying? Or the pictures hanging in the front room of her grandparents wearing traditional hanboks?

  She imagined introducing him to her parents.

  Shaun, this is my father, a prominent soju-man in the area. You may have seen him staggering through the streets, bowing grandly into his cell phone. He wants to know why you and your tanks killed those two girls. Oh, I’m sorry, yes, this is my mother. She serves what you Americans call “dog soup.” Oh, and don’t bother to bow now. It’s way too late. Mother is something of a meegook vulture. She already picked apart every move you made since you walked in.

  You never stood a chance.

  Billie

  It’s raining outside.

  It sounds so much like sizzling bacon that I get up to see if there might be some cooking on the stove. But no such luck. It looks like that’s one thing I’ll have to give up. At least until we find a decent grocery store.

  Koreans eat eggs, don’t they?

  Our one-day training is over, but I still feel ludicrously unprepared. Joe seems more comfortable, like he knows where to find the workbooks, the pencils, erasers and stuff like that. And, more importantly, he seems to understand what it is we’re supposed to be teaching.

  This information has, somehow, slipped by me.

  “How do you not know this stuff?” Joe asks while looking for an umbrella.

  “I don’t know. I just thought I’d absorb it somehow.”

  “You worry me sometimes, Billie. You really do.”

  I sit down, watch the rain outside our kitchen window. The window is at street level, so I have a perfect view of a car’s front tire. Another foot closer, and I could scramble it on the stove. The apartments across the way are fancier than ours. They have big bay windows, and I can see a young mother in one of them, doing laundry with a baby on her hip.

  Same kind of rain as back in Portland.

  Same clouds.

  We don’t have any umbrellas, so Joe grabs a cardboard box to use for our walk to school. When we come in sopping wet, one of the secretaries rushes over with a towel. She looks like she’s about to cry with sympathy. There’s this oh-you-crazy-Americans tone to the whole thing that seems a little unnecessary.

  Joe, though, doesn’t seem to mind the attention.

  Go figure.

  “She’s just being nice, Billie.”

  He’s right. She is nice. Like catholic-school-girl nice. I bet she has zero problems. But I kind of like her. She’s quiet, but the good kind of quiet. A quiet quiet, if that makes any sense. She tells us her name is Yun-ji. Such a gorgeous name. And the way she says it, with such humility, makes me feel like a goober for being irritated at all in the first place.

  As we’re drying off, the bell rings.

  Jean Paul, the nerdy superhero, sees us standing there looking lost and hands us our lesson plans. Before going off to his class, he tells us to watch out for something called dong-jip. He then lets out this creepy laugh and walks off without bothering to tell us what it means.

  I guess we’ll
find out soon enough.

  Once we’re left alone in the hallway, Joe, trying to sound optimistic, says, “Remember, nobody knows. We can do this, Billie.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Piece of cake, right?”

  Through the window I can see about eight small children running in circles around a table. One of them climbs on top of it and starts shrieking. Like a monkey. I have the unmistakable urge to grab Joe and run for the exit.

  “Hey,” he says. “It can’t be as bad as washing dishes. Try to remember that.”

  My last job. Which somehow seems like a peaceful occupation at the moment. There’s a long pause, my hand hesitating on the doorknob.

  “You feel nauseous?” Joe asks.

  “Completely.”

  “Me, too,” he says and smiles before trudging off to his class.

  Somehow it makes me feel better.

  When I walk into the room, the first thing I notice is the camera in the corner of the ceiling. The second thing I notice are the eight smiling kids now seated quietly around a blue egg-shaped table.

  The smallest of the group is the first to speak up.

  “Good morning, Billie teacher.”

  The other kids repeat this after her.

  “Good Morning. What’s your name?”

  “Jenny,” the little girl says, smiling proudly.

  “Hi, Jenny.”

  “And that’s Sunny. My twin sister.”

  Her sister smiles, looks away. They’re both extremely beautiful girls, but I can already tell Sunny will get the boys. And, because of it, most likely be the unhappier of the two. While I’m processing this useless information, I look around the table and try to figure my next move. But I’m a blank. What the hell am I doing here, and why did I ever let Joe talk me into this?

  Before I can think of anything even remotely teacher-like to say, an unspoken understanding seems to pass between the children: She hasn’t any idea what she’s doing! Let’s go!

  I’m in the classroom a little over a minute before I officially lose control. I can’t even find the stupid attendance sheet. I clutch the lesson plan they gave me. What’s first? Flash cards? No, it’s singing. We were supposed to sing a song to start off class. What song? Any song? Where are the damn flash cards? I’m having a panic attack. I feel like I’m at a job interview with eight very unimpressed employers.