by James Zerndt
“What name of song?” Moon asks when Joe finishes his juice.
“That? Oh, that’s just something of mine. It doesn’t have a name or anything.”
“You sing-uh?”
“Ha. No. No way.”
“Why?”
Joe picks up the guitar again, wraps his fingers around the neck. “Believe me, Moon. I wish I could. I just can’t is all. I can sing. And I can play guitar. But I can’t do both at the same time for some reason.”
Moon understands. Or, at least, he thinks he does.
Maybe his grandfather didn’t sing for the same reason.
Or maybe his grandfather just didn’t want to.
Joe hands Moon the guitar, shows him how to play an E chord. Moon’s fingers are too big. He’s certain of it. They keep bumping into each other, slipping off the strings and wandering off. Still, he tries. Joe shows him a G next. Then a C. As Moon tries to hold his fingers where Joe places them, he wonders if his grandfather’s gayageum felt as awkward the first time he held it.
Like a fork.
Then, as Moon’s trying to strum something called D Seven, Moon has an idea.
Hyo’s broken wing.
That’s what his wife used to call Hyo’s arm.
The lyrics are already starting to take shape in his head.
Hyo, the little one-winged bird...
“You’re doing pretty good, Moon. I can leave the guitar here if you want to practice some more, but I should probably get going.”
Moon shakes his head, hands the guitar back. A feeling of relief immediately floods him. So guitar isn’t his instrument. Now he knows.
“Have you ever been in love, Moon?”
Joe asks this so matter-of-factly, so out of the blue, that Moon isn’t sure at first if he’s understood him correctly.
“Love? Yes. One.”
“Ha. Yeah, me too. One. I asked Billie to marry me once, but she said no. That’s why I asked her to come out here with me. She was getting bored. I was going to lose her.”
Moon nods.
But he doesn’t want to talk about Min Jee.
Or Hyo.
He doesn’t know Joe well enough yet.
“Okay then,” Joe says, taking the hint. “Same time next week?”
“Please.”
Joe opens the door.
“And, hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry about those two girls. We read about it in the English paper today. It’s really horrible. I don’t understand how something like that could happen. None of us can.”
“Thank you,” Moon says. “Our country...sadness now.”
With that Joe bows and takes his leave.
When Moon’s alone again, the lyrics start to come back.
Only this time he writes them down.
Yun-ji
Her mother wanted Yun-ji to make an extra batch.
They were hosting a special event at the restaurant next week, and her mother was afraid of running out of gimchi. Which was ridiculous. Yun-ji knew there were buckets and buckets of the stuff in the walk-in. What her mother really wanted to know was if Yun-ji could still make decent gimchi.
It was a test.
1. Salt (in wounds)
Yun-ji usually skipped this part. She liked her gimchi crunchy, but her mother had already layered the Chinese cabbage with salt and covered it with water in a plastic tub.
Yun-ji drained the tub, rinsed the cabbage.
2. Mix (with a foreigner)
Yun-ji grated the radish, ginger, and carrot and then mixed them in by hand. She peeled a head of garlic and sliced it thin. Thinner than her mother normally did. She chopped up the mustard greens and scallions, added a little sugar, salt, and water, and mixed in the powdered chile.
That was about it.
Except for adding a little gimchi from her mother’s last batch. Yun-ji didn’t tell her she did this, but it helped speed up the fermentation process.
Which Yun-ji didn’t have the patience for.
3. Fermentation (in belly)
Yun-ji set the tub out on the back porch. It was hot out, so she’d probably only leave it for a couple of days. Anything longer than that, and her mother wouldn’t approve. There was no way to duplicate the gimchi every time, to make it exactly the same. That’s why fermentation was so unique. People always assumed the heat came from the peppers. But it wasn’t the peppers. It was the fermentation that did it. Yun-ji went back inside, wrote herself a reminder to stir the gimchi in the morning.
She could already feel it inside her.
She didn’t need to take any of the tests Soo bought her.
Something was fermenting inside her.
Only it was a much longer process.
Billie
To everybody at the school I probably look fine, but I can see my shoulders beginning to droop. I’ve thrown up six times in the school bathroom already this week, not to mention all the lovely episodes before work.
Still, I’ve told no one.
I can’t go to Kim or any of the Korean staff.
All those twenty-foot neon crosses have made that clear.
Last night I thumbed through my South Korea travel book. I don’t know what I expected to find. Maybe a chapter titled EMERGENCY ABORTIONS FOR AMERICANS. That would have been nice. It did have a nice section on having a baby, though, stressing the challenges inherent in raising a child in a foreign country.
Good to know.
There was also the GAY AND LESBIAN TRAVELLERS section which said that most Koreans insist there are no homosexuals in Korea. Homosexuality, it said, was a strictly foreign problem.
Red flag #17.
I did eventually find something called an International Clinic in Itaewon that provides medical services to foreigners.
I wrote the number down just in case.
Moon
Hyo, the little bird with only one wing
Oh, how he tried and tried to fly
But all he could do was hop
Hop, hop, little Hyo, hop hop
Hyo, the little bird with only one wing
All the other birds made fun
Never in his life would he reach the sun
Cry, cry, little Hyo, cry cry
Hyo, the little bird with only one wing
Met another bird one day
Who had only one wing
Sing, sing, little Hyo, sing sing
Hyo, the little bird with only one wing
Asked his new friend to hold his hand
And the two birds started to flap their wings
Flap, flap, little Hyo, flap flap
Hyo, the little bird with only one wing
Was no longer Hyo, the little bird with one wing
Now he and his friend were the big bird with two wings
Fly, fly, litte Hyo, fly fly
Yun-ji
The cicadas were in full bloom, their voices pulsing across the Wan River as Yun-ji walked. She was late, halftime already over by the time she found Billie sitting outside of Kentucky Fried Donkey. There was a big screen TV set up on a picnic table outside, most of the small crowd wearing red shirts with the words Go Red Devils! written across the front.
Billie was still in her teacher clothes.
It didn’t matter though.
She’d stand out no matter what she wore.
“Nice to see you,” Yun-ji said, stopping beside her table.
“Yun-ji! I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I did not also,” she said and sat down when it became apparent Billie wasn’t going to offer her a chair. Billie looked pale sitting there under the glow of the street lights. Well, paler than usual.
“Do you want a Coke? A beer?”
“A Coke, please. Beer makes my face go red. Like gimchi.”
“Like gimchi,” Billie repeated and smiled. “Okay, I’ll be right back with a Coke. Don’t go anywhere.”
Yun-ji didn’t mention she’d gotten sick that morning, that beer would not only turn her face red, it would als
o most likely make her throw up. When Billie returned, she poured Yun-ji’s Coke into a glass for her. At least she’d learned that much, that it wasn’t polite to pour your own drink.
On the TV, a German player was down cradling his knee. Yun-ji couldn’t see anybody near him, but the referee ran over and raised a yellow card in the air like he was awarding the German a prize for acting.
“You came,” Billie said once play resumed. “How come?”
“It was on the way. My family is at Samsung Park.”
“We can go to there after the game if you’d like. I’d love to meet them.”
“We will see,” Yun-ji said and smiled at Billie with her teeth. Like an American. Yun-ji knew that if they went to meet her family, her mother would bow politely and welcome Billie with milk and sliced Asian pears. No different, on the outside, than how she’d welcome any of Yun-ji’s friends.
A cheer, followed by a collective groan, rose from the little crowd as there was a near miss on Germany’s goal. Yun-ji could hear the neighboring bars and parks echoing around them.
“What’s that big guy over there saying?”
The teachers did this often. Asked Yun-ji to play translator. Sometimes she obliged, sometimes she didn’t.
“He say, I really like Korea sport!”
“Come on. I know he’s saying something about me. I can handle it, Yun-ji.”
Yun-ji knew the large egg-shaped man in the expensive suit. He was a local doctor and had just finished telling his friends that Korea would wipe out the Nazis just as they’d wiped out the Americans the week before. “Americans,” he’d then added. “The world’s new Nazis.”
“He say something about game,” Yun-ji finally said. “Nothing important.”
Even though Yun-ji didn’t know much about soccer, it seemed like Korea was spending a lot of time at the wrong end of the field. The game remained tied, and a melancholy soon settled over the crowd. Only the doctor, obviously drunk, continued to gesture at the television, shouting objections to anyone who would listen. But most of the other patrons sat quietly, clasping cigarettes between their hands as if in prayer, the smoke rising like incense.
Then Ahn-jung-wan glided across the screen.
Golden boy.
Rock star.
Long, black flying hair.
Legs of a horse poised to kick Korea into the finals.
Into history.
Into all the sunshine promised them for so long.
Ahn-Jung-Wan passed the ball to a teammate Yun-ji wasn’t familiar with. The teammate took a shot on the goal as the final seconds ticked away, and, for one long second, you could almost hear the country’s breath being held as Korea awaited its destiny. Even the cicadas seemed to have momentarily crossed their legs and shut up.
But the shot veered wide.
“You idiot!”
Had the words been uttered during a church sermon, it would have seemed less offensive. Yun-ji counted six heads turn in their direction.
“That’s too bad,” Billie went on, abundantly oblivious, abundantly American. “I doubt they’ll get another gift like that.”
The doctor rose, stumbled the few steps to their table. “We Koreans speak English very well,” he slurred. “You should watch your tongue. For all your own health!”
The doctor then turned his swaying bulk toward Yun-ji. His words came out slow and thick, weighted down with soju. Didn’t Yun-ji realize what an embarrassment she was to all of Korea for befriending this foreigner? Didn’t she know that the American president had not yet apologized for what their tank did? Wasn’t two innocent girls enough? Or did Korea need to lose yet another young one to the Americans? Is that what she wanted?
Billie stood up, planning to do what, Yun-ji didn’t know. Maybe shoot the doctor. Wasn’t that what Americans did in these situations?
“Sit down,” Yun-ji said, and, to her surprise, Billie did.
Yun-ji then turned and bowed deeply before the doctor. She knew exactly how to handle these types of men. She’d been doing it her whole life.
“I am sorry if we have somehow offended you, doctor. This woman is a teacher, and I know she didn’t mean what she said. We will be leaving now. Our deepest apologies.”
Yun-ji bowed once again while the doctor stood there, observing her like a patient. When he returned to his table, he was greeted by solemn pats on the back.
Once they were safely out of earshot, Billie spoke.
“I’m sorry, Yun-ji. I was just talking. I didn’t think it was any big deal. And I didn’t know they spoke English. Why didn’t you tell me what they were saying before?”
“It too hard sometime.”
“But I need to know.”
“Sometime it’s not okay,” Yun-ji said. “Please. I want to show you something.”
The place she wanted to take Billie wasn’t far, another block or two. They soon rounded a corner and came face to face with a brick wall covered in photographs. The ground before them was carpeted in candles, casting shadows on the wall, on the two girls posing in their grade-school uniforms, on the army tank and the dirt road, the two small wooden coffins...
“Those poor parents,” Billie said, almost whispering. “I hope they don’t have to see these every day. That must be horrible.”
Yun-ji hadn’t thought about that. She wondered if anybody had when plastering the photos of the mutilated bodies everywhere. She considered this, then said, “But your President not apologize.”
“He’s not my President,” Billie said, backing away from the memorial. “I’m sorry, but I can’t look at these right now. I think I might be sick.”
“Because you feel guilt?”
“No, because I’m...sick.”
There were others stopping to look now.
Not at the photographs. But at the meegook.
Yun-ji hesitated, then grabbed Billie’s hand and led her up the street toward Samsung Plaza. As they walked, Yun-ji tried to explain.
“In your country, people always think snowflake.”
“Snowflake?”
“Americans. They think everybody is snowflake. Only one snowflake. Only one you. I read this before.”
“You mean everybody is unique?”
“Yes. Not same.”
“Okay. Not same. So?”
“So in Korea we think opposite. In Korea we think like snowball. Everybody snowball.” Yun-ji packed an imaginary snowball in her hands, then lifted it, palms up, as if offering Billie a present. “You see? Snowball.”
Both of them looked at Yun-ji’s hands holding nothing.
“Snowball,” Yun-ji repeated, then looked at Billie, at her unhappy mouth, at her face that looked like it had been bleached, and she pictured Shaun sitting in that tank, listening to head phones, maybe reading a Rolling Stone magazine, then the call coming in over the radio, the hurried attempts to think of an excuse, some reason why he didn’t see two fourteen-year-old girls walking down a deserted country road in South Korea.
“Never mind,” Yun-ji said and dropped her hands.
When she looked down at her shoes, she half-expected to see a puddle.
But there was nothing.
Just the flickering of the candles.
Billie
I finally found out what dong-jip means.
Thanks to a demonstration given to me by one of my kids. It’s sort of like the equivalent of goosing somebody in America. Or a wedgie. Take your pick.
The dong-jip technique:
1. Clasp both hands together, intertwining the fingers.
2. Point with both index fingers, thumbs collapsed forward (should resemble a gun without a hammer).
3. Sneak up behind someone.
4. Jab fingers up into behind of victim, aiming as much as possible for sphincter region.
5. Repeat as necessary.
I’m not one to be easily shocked, but when Richard snuck up behind me and gave me one, that’s exactly what I was. But then the kids all started cracking up, and I
couldn’t help but laugh too.
This was the highlight of my day.
How pathetic is that?
After work, I asked Joe if he’d go to the park with me. I’ve gotten into the habit lately of going by myself at night. It’s a good place to think. Sometimes when I walk around the lake, the koi will follow me around. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself they’re doing. The lights, too, reflecting off the water from the surrounding restaurants give the place a peaceful feel.
But I need Joe tonight.
More, possibly, than I’ve needed anybody before.
We walked slowly, my arm folded over his, just like any of the other couples there.
“You’d think I was walking around naked the way some of these girls stare at me.”
There were two Korean high school girls walking past, both of them giggling with their hands over their mouths.
“Ignore them, Billie.”
“Easy for you to say. They don’t look at you the same way. All I want to do right now is scream and tell them how stupid their black designer clothes are.”
“I know,” Joe said.
But he couldn’t possibly know.
“Can we stop for awhile and let them pass before I rip their beautiful hair out?
I said this way too loud, but the girls didn’t seem to understand. Or care. Or both. Annoyed, I stopped to watch a group of koi glide by. There were three orange ones and a large white one. The white one looked like someone had flicked black ink all over it. Maybe his friends called him Pollock.
“How did this happen to us?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said, and we continued to walk until we fell in step behind a young couple. The woman had her head on the man’s shoulder. As they walked, they left a trail of laughter behind them.
To me it felt like bee stings.
“They’d probably be excited about a baby.” My voice wasn’t my own. It sounded old. Bitter. “I wish this pregnancy was a stone I could slip in their pocket. Or skip across the lake.”
“Let’s not start talking like that.”
“Well, it’s true. I was sabotaged before I even got on the plane.”
