The Korean Word For Butterfly

by James Zerndt

  Moon

  By the time Moon gets there, his wife and Hyo are waiting for him outside the doctor’s office. Hyo has a white bandage wrapped around his head. He looks like a miniature soldier fresh from battle. When Hyo sees Moon his face brightens, but he stays seated beside his mother.

  “What happened?” Moon asks, leaning down in front of Hyo. When he goes to touch his cheek, Hyo leans into his palm just the slightest bit.

  “He’s okay,” Min Jee says. “I should have been paying better attention. I don’t know where my head was at. But he’s okay.”

  “But what happened?”

  “He fell and hit his head.”

  “How?”

  “Riding his bike.”

  “The one with the training wheels?”

  “He was fine. Everything was fine. Then I looked over and Hyo was on the ground. I think he hit his head on the curb.”

  “You think? Weren’t you watching?”

  Min Jee tucks a strand of hair that’s fallen into Hyo’s face back under his bandage.

  “Min?”

  “I was on my phone.”

  Moon wants to ask who was so goddamn important that she couldn’t watch her child, but Hyo looks so miserable he can’t bring himself to do it.

  “He had his helmet on at least, right?”

  Again, Min Jee says nothing.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “He didn’t want to wear it. He started throwing one of his fits. You don’t understand, Moon. You don’t know how hard it is sometimes.”

  “No,” he says, trying to keep his voice from trembling, from scaring Hyo. “I don’t. But I wish I did.”

  Yun-ji

  Yun-ji woke when she realized what pushed her.

  Something had been preventing her from turning her head to see who was behind her, though she could hear what sounded like wet footsteps scurrying about. Her toes gripped and curled over the yellow line as she searched the sidewalk below. The park was empty, and everything was grey save for a group of orange koi swimming in the water below.

  Then she saw Shaun.

  He was in the water waving his arms.

  It looked like he was trying to tell her something, or he was just trying to get her to jump. Yun-ji couldn’t tell which. If she was going to jump, she needed to jump now. The sun was setting, and there wouldn’t be light much longer. If she could only turn around, she could ask them to take the harness off, tell them she’d changed her mind and wanted to go home. But every time she tried to turn her head, it felt like she was pressing her face against a window pane.

  Shaun was splashing in the water now, bringing his hands to his mouth the way people do when they’re trying to yell from far away. Did cupping your hands together really work? Did it make any difference? That’s exactly what she’d been thinking in the dream just before she felt a pair of big hands shove her from behind.

  It was still coming back to her, how Shaun’s screams slowly got louder the closer she fell towards him. How when she tumbled in the air she caught glimpses out her father standing there on the platform. How something wasn’t right about the line. How suddenly knew it was an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

  Then the clapping from up above when the line didn’t spring back.

  How she just hung there.

  Limp.

  Like a swaying noose.

  OCTOBER 2002

  Billie

  You’d think that after all this time things would be getting better. Not so much. I avoid Joe at school as much as possible now. He’s a reminder, and all I want is to forget.

  Cue Jean-Paul. I know. Pathetic, right?

  At least my morning class is more under control now. I learn something new every day. Like just today I made the mistake of using a red pen on Richard’s paper. I’d thought nothing of it, and had already started doing something else, when Alicia pointed out that Richard was crying.

  Richard was not only crying, Richard was hyperventilating.

  Maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe red circles meant something horrible in Korea. I tried to explain that it was okay to make mistakes, but Richard was long past listening. His breathing only slowed once I erased the red from his paper. Which was no easy task by the way. I erased and erased until little balls of paper came up along with the ink. The look of utter relief on his face, you would have thought somebody had been brought back to life before his very eyes. The kind of pressure some of these kids are under to succeed is frightening.

  Who would do that to their child?

  Alicia was having a bad day, too, crying in the playroom though for entirely different reasons. The big play mat has four different colors on it. Blue is for water, green for grass, red for fire or volcano depending on who you talk to, and yellow for sky. Towards the end of playtime, I heard a loud wailing and turned to see Alicia sitting on her knees. Judging by the volume, I thought maybe she’d been hit in the face or broken her leg. But when I walked toward her she ran into my arms, buried her head in my shoulder, and started crying uncontrollably.

  None of the other kids seemed to know what had happened, and Alicia certainly wasn’t about to talk, so I carried her outside and asked Yun-ji to translate. Yun-ji pet Alicia’s head, cooed something to her in Korean, and she finally began to settle down.

  I like Yun-ji. She once wore a Superman t-shirt to work. On casual Friday. It was fitting since Yun-ji always comes to the kids’ rescue in one way or another. But she seems different lately. Preoccupied somehow. I can’t quite put my finger on it. And every time I try to talk to her, or ask if she’s okay, she suddenly finds something to do and leaves. Weird. Out of all the people here, including the other teachers, she’s the one I wish I could be friends with most. I can tell she’s lonely. And I don’t care what country you’re from. Lonely is lonely.

  Anyway, it turned out that Alicia wanted to play alligator and Richard said yellow was fire and Alicia was standing in the yellow and had died. I stroked Alicia’s hair. The poor little thing. Everybody knows red is fire.

  The rest of my day didn’t get much better. During arts and crafts time, Jenny couldn’t get her glue to come out, so I began squeezing the tube, thinking it had hardened and I could get it to trickle out. What I didn’t realize was that I was holding a brand new tube of glue, and it was still sealed under the cap. Apparently you’re supposed to puncture it with a pin first. Especially before squeezing the thing with all your might. And definitely before you lean down and stare into the nozzle of said glue.

  So, naturally, it exploded into my eyeball. I couldn’t have done a more thorough job had I been intentionally trying to seal my own eye shut. “It’s okay, guys. Teacher just needs to go to the bathroom. Everybody stay here and wait for me, okay?”

  I sprinted to the bathroom, began flushing my eye out with water, but it was no use. The lids were clumping together and my eye was turning a bright red. One by one, the kids peeked into the bathroom to see if teacher was still alive. Sunny even started to cry when she saw me. It looked that bad.

  That made three criers in one day.

  Soon to be four, if I counted myself.

  I told the kid’s everything was okay, that I needed to go to the office, and that I’d be back as soon as I could. When I explained to Kim what happened, she didn’t seem particularly concerned about the fact that I had just super-glued my eye shut. Instead, she calmly told me there was an eye doctor just down the street and that she’d take over my class until I got back. Finding a doctor here is hard enough with two good eyes, but I didn’t argue. I’m on shaky enough ground with Kim as is.

  I did eventually manage to find the optometrist’s with the help of a few kind strangers. Forty five minutes and a tear-duct flush later, I was back teaching with a large white patch over my right eye.

  Koreans aren’t shy about wearing eye patches.

  Or dust masks.

  I’ve seen a number of people wearing dusk masks around town. I assume it’s for the air polluti
on, but who knows. Maybe it’s a fashion statement of some kind.

  When Alicia saw me, she smiled and pointed at my face.

  “Now teacher Korea!”

  Indeed. Now teacher Korea.

  For lunch, I treated myself to my favorite Japanese restaurant. I don’t know what it’s called, but the other teachers at the school call it The Chicken Place.

  Because every dish has chicken in it.

  It’s becoming a real talent avoiding Joe. And Jean-Paul. Everybody tends to go to the same places during lunch but eating alone is the one thing keeping me sane at the moment. I could eat at the school, I guess, but that would mean a bowl of rice and water soup. Or what looks like water soup anyway.

  The Chicken Place, thankfully, was empty today save for an old man reading a newspaper in the corner. There are six different plates you can order, all of which are pictured on the wall. I order the same thing every time: two fried chicken breasts, gimchi, miso soup, and rice.

  The owner is always coming and going on his moped because the restaurant does a lot of deliveries, so his wife and daughter do most of the cooking. They have such sad, tired faces. I know this will probably sound horrible, but it’s comforting to me. I feel at home there. And, when it’s busy, the surrounding table conversations blend into a beautiful and mysterious kind of nonsense. Like music without words. Though, oddly, that’s exactly what the notes are made of.

  Words.

  Joe, obviously, isn’t happy about me eating lunch alone. But Joe isn’t happy about a lot of things these days. I tried to explain that without a little breathing room, I was going to suffocate. I know he worries I’m with Jean-Paul, but I’m not. Truth is I don’t want to see either of them right now. And it doesn’t help that every five minutes Jean-Paul says things at school like “What’s the crack?” and “Bollocks!”

  Like he’s from fucking Liverpool or something.

  Which nobody gets.

  Superhero Nerd is from Canada.

  Needless to say, the teacher’s lounge is quickly becoming my least favorite place to be. The idea of taking my breaks in the bathroom is starting to sound better and better.

  Oh, before I forget, I have to mention something.

  A normally very polite and quiet girl started rocking back and forth in her seat during my afternoon class. She seemed uncharacteristically distracted, so I asked a number of times if she was okay but every time she simply smiled and said “yes.” The room was fairly cool, yet I noticed a small trickle of sweat running down her forehead. And both her hands were tightly clamped between her legs.

  Then it hit me.

  She was masturbating.

  Or at least approximating it the best she could under the circumstances. It was completely unconscious, of course, since she’s only eight years old. But still...

  I was getting nervous.

  I read somewhere that behavior like that usually meant something bad was happening at home. And that it sometimes manifested itself in public.

  Or maybe I was making too much of it.

  I gave the class something to work on and tried not to think about it. It was probably just some sort of phase. No reason to jump to conclusions. A minute or two later the girl was staring off into space again, rocking back and forth, completely ignoring the assignment I gave her. In the past she’d always been the first to finish.

  Then I had an idea.

  “Hands on the table, please.”

  She looked at me briefly, then sort of snapped out of her trance. There seemed to be a glimmer of understanding passing between us, almost as if on some level she knew what she was doing wasn’t okay.

  But I’m probably just imagining that.

  The incidents didn’t stop altogether after this. I had to tell her four times more before the hour was up to put her hands on the table. I wonder if she’ll remember any of this when she’s older. Maybe the phrase “hands on the table” will trigger something negative in her.

  On my way home that night (Joe trudging along up ahead as usual), I couldn’t stop thinking about my own childhood. I remembered running naked through the woods near my house with the neighborhood kids. I was about the same age as the girl in my class. It was a game. But it was the bumping part of the game that felt good, even though I didn’t understand exactly why. There was some vague excitement about it that made me dream about it at night. Just the bumping into each other part. That was all I was able to imagine. Bumping into everybody. Both boys and girls. I knew there was something more to it even back then, but I didn’t know what exactly.

  Maybe that was all it was.

  Maybe the girl in my class is just growing.

  Bumping into herself, so to speak.

  I hope so anyway.

  Moon

  Moon had been tempted to ask if his wife had been drinking when Hyo hit his head.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead he said thank you. For calling him. It was one less thing he’d missed in Hyo’s life. The important thing was that the tests came back negative. Nothing more serious than a bad lump on his head, thank God.

  But what happens when the training wheels come off? Will his wife teach him how to ride a bike? Or maybe, and Moon has a difficult time allowing this thought to come fully into his head, another man will teach Hyo.

  Moon picks up the bottle of soju, hefts it in his hand before placing it back on the mantle. He then goes into the kitchen and downs a big glass of tap water.

  It passes.

  It always does.

  He’s learned this much by now.

  His phone buzzes.

  Here –Joe

  Another guitar lesson. Good. He’s going to record Joe again. That way Moon can practice singing when he’s gone. Moon’s been listening to 13 Songs lately by Fugazi. He ordered it off the internet. Joe’s favorite band. He tried to translate some of the lyrics but gave up. It didn’t matter really. Moon could feel the music. It was powerful. A lot of anger. Passion. Not exactly the band Moon would have guessed as Joe’s favorite, but then Moon’s favorite band was Black Sabbath and that never made much sense to people either.

  There’s a knock at the door, and Moon sets the CD on the coffee table.

  “Hey, Moon. What’s the word?”

  Moon smiles. He’s never heard the expression before, doesn’t know what to say. Joe doesn’t look good. He looks tired. Maybe hung-over. Probably something to do with Billie. He doesn’t like seeing Joe like this, but he knows from experience there’s not much you can do for a person when they’re intent on being miserable.

  Joe sees the CD, picks it up.

  “Hey, where’d you get this?”

  “Amazon dot com.”

  “How do you know about Fugazi?”

  “Rolling Stone,” Moon says, thinking on his feet.

  “Yeah. Rolling Stone. Wow.” Joe puts the CD back on the table, shakes his head. “You’re always full of surprises, Moon.”

  Moon brings out the recorder, sets it on the table.

  “You play for me today? It okay?”

  “Sure thing. Just play anything?”

  “Please.”

  Moon hasn’t brought up the applications yet, the fact that he suspects Joe and Billie never went to college. He’s never had the heart to do it. Plus he’s still waiting to hear back from the college. That, and he always seems to find some excuse not to. Like today, the way Joe’s playing. Even the notes sound depressed.

  Still, the music is perfect for a song he’s been working on lately. He hums along to himself as Joe plays...

  The little monkey bumped his head

  And gimchi spilled out

  The little monkey bumped his head

  And gimchi spilled out

  The little monkey was hungry

  So he filled his belly

  But oh no, no, no, it did not taste so yummy

  When the song finishes, Joe turns the recorder off.

  “Do you mind if we take a break? I’m not feeling so hot.” />
  Moon sits down next to Joe. It’s definitely a hangover. He can smell the old, familiar stench of it.

  “You hungry?” Moon asks him.

  “No. Thanks though.”

  Moon decides to go ahead and make it anyway. “Yes. You wait. Watch TV. 5 minute-uh.”

  Joe shrugs, takes the remote Moon is offering him. “I’m not sure what you’re up to, but okay. I guess it’s not like I need to be anywhere anyway.”

  Moon disappears into the kitchen and sets about making his favorite hangover remedy. Juk. A simple rice porridge topped with duck eggs, salted pork, and ginger. It was something Moon lived on at one time. The only meal he’d sometimes eat in an entire day.

  “For you,” he says when it’s finished, handing Joe the steaming white bowl. “Now eat. Feel good.”

  “It looks like what we’d call gruel back home.”

  “Yes. Fur of dog.”

  “Fur of dog?”

  “For drinking headaches.”

  “Oh, you mean hair of the dog. Ha. Got it. Thank you, Moon. How’d you know I was hung-over anyway?”

  “I have same problem before,” Moon says and walks to the mantle, picks up the bottle. “With this.” Then, when he can’t find the right words, he taps his chest, his heart. “And this.”

  “Is that why you’re not with your wife anymore?”

  “Yes,” Moon says quietly and places the bottle back.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. This is really delicious by the way.”

  Moon sits back down, waits while Joe slurps his Juk. They’ve almost got enough for an entire CD of songs now. Moon hasn’t told Joe yet, but there’s a possibility he can get them studio time. He called in an old favor, a contact from his days in the music business. He’d like to do it for Hyo. As a sort of present to him. Something he’ll always have from his father. That is if Joe’s even interested.

  Which, lately, Moon isn’t so sure of.

  He’s about to ask, suggest they set up some time next week just to see how it goes, when Joe places his empty bowl on the table. “Damn, I really needed that. Remind me to get the recipe from you later. Thank you so much.” Joe settles back on the couch, rests his guitar on his lap. “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”