Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  His hand gripped the back of my head. I closed my eyes, waiting for the kiss, but it didn’t come. A dull drone that had been tickling the back of my mind seemed to be getting louder, coming closer, becoming the sputter of an engine, carrying with it a whiff of gasoline. Suddenly, a piercing light flooded on, illuminating Ji Hoon’s face, carved marble, hard and implacable, the eyes bald of human tenderness or emotion. I struggled to turn around to see where the light was coming from, but Ji Hoon held me tight, cradling my body against his. “I’m sorry, Lisa.”

  And I saw his hand, which one moment ago had been clutching at my ass, come toward my face, a white handkerchief nestled in the palm. Instinctively, I jerked my head away, but my muscles no longer seemed to be working properly. Tightening his grip on the back of my head, he covered my mouth and nose with the damp cloth, which smelled faintly sweet, like an empty box of candy. The motor throbbed louder and then softer in my ears; my vision blurred. Then the night swallowed me up.

  Chapter 5

  “I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me.”

  –Faith Hill

  I had swallowed the universe, and it was churning, in constant motion, ballooning against my insides with a gentle but inexorable pressure. Stars spun slowly, striking sparks as they bumped into the jellied skin of my organs. Planets were cold, hard pits, burning through the heat of my body like ulcers. Comets ricocheted like pinballs, knocking against the hard blades of my ribs and hips, blazing through my skull, jolting me back to consciousness.

  At first, I couldn’t focus, everything was a blur. Slowly my vision sharpened. My eyes wandered, not recognizing the bamboo-patterned silk curtains, the lemon-yellow walls, the painting of a windswept mountain peak, or the stitched ecru linen coverlet on the bed. My mouth felt as if it were coated in glue, and I could not unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth nor tear open the seal on my lips. There were no memories in my brain, just a sickening gray mist, cold and frightening. I didn’t know who I was or where I was: I was a blank slate.

  I closed my eyes. Think, Lisa, think. OK, there was my name, Lisa. And hadn’t this happened to Lisa before, awakening somewhere without knowing how she had come to be there? Hungover on a cigarette-burned couch, waking up still high in a stranger’s apartment, or regaining consciousness in a hospital room… Shame flared through me, and with the shame came my memory of that hospital room, everything flooding back, scenes flashing before my eyes like they do, supposedly, before you die, or before you’re reborn.

  The last scene was Mindy and me at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Mindy, cheeks flushed poinsettia red, eyes curved like samurai blades. I groaned aloud, the force of my misery somehow tearing the two slabs of my lips apart and ripping the cured leather strip of my tongue from the baked and droughty bed of my mouth. My whole body felt parched and stiff. Beef jerky. A block of salt. A cone of ashes. Another throaty excrescence gurgled in my ears.

  A door, bamboo green to match the curtains, opened with a strange hiss, and in slipped a small girl. She approached tentatively on tiptoes, her lollipop-shaped head tilted inquisitively to one side. When she saw that my eyes were open, she stopped short, still tipped up on her toes.

  “Waa,” I croaked. I could taste the blood from my cracked lips smearing my teeth.

  She stared, every muscle frozen.

  “Waaaa.” My voice broke and shattered.

  She backed away with tiny little ballerina steps, crescent eyes trained unblinkingly on me.

  “Waaadaa,” I whimpered as she slipped out of the room. One dark eye glimmered at me for what seemed like an eternity before she finally shut the door.

  Tears rolled into my hair before darkness descended upon me once again, and the universe began to churn and heave in my belly.

  I didn’t notice her at first when I woke up next. Carefully inching my throbbing head up from the pillow, I glimpsed the shining black dome that was the crown of her hair and let out an involuntary scream. She leapt up with the furtive movement of a half-wild animal. Her face, Charlie Brown round, came within inches of mine, so I could see a light zipper of a scar across the small bump of her nose and the soft bristle of her eyelashes that peeked from under her lids. She helped me sit up before bringing a cut-crystal tumbler of water to my mouth. When I tried to grab at the glass with my hands, she gently but firmly put them back in my lap. My tongue lifted up like a wizened claw to drag the liquid to the back of my throat. Blissful relief! But all too soon she was pulling away the glass. With a deft skip backward, she bowed deeply and then scurried out of the room, carrying with her the precious glass of water.

  “Waaii,” I rasped into the empty room. “C’baaaak.”

  Thinking I might follow her, I swung my legs out of the bed but became distracted by a strange crinkling sensation around my crotch. I realized I was wearing a hospital gown. Trying to look under the thin blue fabric, I tipped backward and banged my head against the headboard. Luckily, it was tufted leather, and my head just slid down it like a gob of spit. Finally managing to sit up, I lifted up the gown to see that I was wearing a diaper. For the first time, it occurred to me that I should be afraid.

  The door opened again, and then a cherubic face with small blue eyes drilled deep into blanched flesh, topped by a thin thatch of blond hair, hovered over me. “Ah, Lisa, you are in the land of the living. Finally.” He grabbed my wrist with icy fingers and took my pulse before threading a stethoscope into his ears and poking about my chest and back.

  It was all so sudden, his gestures so forcefully authoritative, that I didn’t think to protest or ask him who he was, but wordlessly and obediently submitted to his ministrations.

  The little girl materialized from behind his back and rudely thrust a thermometer between my lips, the glass tip knocking against my teeth.

  “Open up for the thermometer,” the man said impatiently, nodding at the girl to jigger it in there. Using his thumb, he pulled up a lid and shone a bright light into my eye. “Look over my shoulder at the painting,” he instructed. He had a heavy accent, with abrupt vowels and rolled r’s, like the villain from a 1980s action movie. “Now look over my other shoulder at Ting.”

  My eyeballs faltered, rolling around in a circle as they wondered what “ting” was.

  “The servant. Look at the servant.”

  My eyes found the black-haired girl, who surprised me with a shy smile that made her cheeks bloom like two peonies. With a decisive nod, the man clicked off the light and stepped back and stared at me. A fingertip guiding my chin, he turned my head to present in profile. He and Ting exchanged significant glances. Then he extracted the thermometer from my mouth and read it with another satisfied nod. “Good, good. You are doing fine, my dear.” He gave me a congratulatory pat on the shoulders.

  “Water,” I creaked, my tongue a wooden clapper.

  Ting dutifully brought the crystal tumbler up to my lips and I gulped thirstily. She took it away too soon.

  “More.”

  “Moderation in all things,” the man said. “You’ve been getting your nutrients from an IV drip. We don’t want to shock your body with too much too quickly.”

  “Where am I?” I cawed, my speech a blare of voice that only loosely approximated words.

  Squinting one eye closed, he asked jovially, “What is the last thing you remember?”

  “The fight,” I muttered, running my fingers over the crinkly material of the diaper.

  “Fight? I don’t think there was much of a struggle.” The man frowned, his pallid eyebrows arching up toward his ebbing hairline.

  “The fight with Mindy,” I insisted. “At Dunkin’ Donuts. In… in…” What was the city called? “S-s-s-s…”

  “S-s-s-s?” the man hissed along with me.

  “S-s-s…”

  The servant, Ting, nodded her head encouragingly.

  “Sow…”

  The doctor held me with his pale, clini
cal gaze, neither encouraging nor discouraging.

  “Sow… Soul, Seoul!” I found the word triumphantly. “Seoul, Korea.”

  “South Korea,” the doctor clarified.

  “Republic of Korea,” I concurred with satisfaction, settling back on my pillows, which Ting had plumped up for me.

  But the doctor ruined my brief moment of complacency. “The last thing you remember is a fight in Dunkin’ Donuts in Seoul?”

  “Yes. No.” I put a hand up to my forehead and rubbed hard. My brain was a tiny piece of fruit, a plum or apricot, swaddled in straw and cotton, packed in a wooden crate. “Can I have more water, please? I can’t think, I’m so thirsty!”

  The doctor gave a curt nod, and Ting held the glass to my lips again. This time, I was allowed consecutive gulps, and I erupted with a belch so enormous it ruffled the silky black hair that framed Ting’s clock-dial face. “Oh god, excuse me.”

  “It is to be expected, your stomach is completely empty,” the doctor intoned. He pronounced stomach phonetically. “As you were saying…?”

  Clutching at my head, I couldn’t quite dredge up those most recent memories that I knew where there, shadowy figures in an occluding haze. “I can’t!” I wailed. Looking up at the two of them, I pleaded, “Where am I? Who are you? Is this still Seoul?”

  “Does it feel like Seoul?” the doctor asked cryptically.

  “What?”

  “You may finish the glass of water,” he said with an insincere smile. “You are doing fine. All your vital signs are good. You should remember soon enough.”

  The fake smile lingered as he watched me guzzle the cool, sweet water. Ting gently took the empty glass from my weak grip, and the two of them filed out the door, which closed with a soft sucking that made my ears pop. Exhausted, I fell back against the pillows, trying hard to free my brain from its swaddling, but the swaddling bound me ever tighter until I slipped into unconsciousness again.

  Sometime later, I was roused from my sleep by a gentle shaking. Dragging my heavy eyelids apart, I saw a pale circle set with delicate features and fish-shaped eyes, a little scar like a caterpillar crawling across her nose. “Ting.”

  The ends of her lips crept up in a tentative smile. With a gentle wipe, she pulled a lock of hair out of my eyes and then helped me to sit up. Working with quiet efficiency, she smoothed the covers and then straddled my lap with a little tray with fold-out legs. On it was a steaming lacquer bowl of broth and a glass of water. When I rushed the soup to my mouth, she fluttered her hands in alarm, then blew softly on the golden liquid shining in the well of the spoon. A single star-shaped noodle spun lazily as she blew. Then she nodded her approval. The broth was incredibly rich and delicious, and a small moan escaped me as it trickled down to my entrails.

  “This tastes so good,” I whispered as she blew on the next spoonful. “Did you make it?”

  Though she nodded, it was to tell me that the liquid was sufficiently cooled to be sopped up by my eager lips.

  “Do you speak English?”

  She smiled sweetly and nodded encouragingly again, making happy slurping noises.

  “Yes? No?”

  She nodded in answer to both questions. Maybe she was a deaf mute. Up close, I saw that she was not the little girl I had thought she was. Small lines creased the tapered ends of her eyes and parenthesized her mouth.

  After I finished the soup, I realized simultaneously that I had to urinate and that I was still wearing a diaper, which was swollen and damp against my skin. I wanted that diaper off and started to pull at the elasticized waistband through my gown. Ting understood and led me to the bathroom, which, like the bedroom, was interior decorating gone wild, Martha Stewart on steroids, with a claw-footed bathtub sheathed in sheer drapes that were swooped back like drawing-room curtains, a glass-bowled sink with a sleek parabola of polished chrome for a faucet, a massive beveled mirror trimmed with lights like at a professional salon, and pastel pink granite tiles and counters. While Ting began drawing a bath, the smell of lavender wafting out upon curling fingers of steam, I dropped the diaper with a heavy thud on the floor. Gently, she untied the hospital gown and slipped it from my shoulders, then gestured at the bath. I sank my body into the cloud of softly popping bubbles, groaning gratefully as the hot water enveloped me. She pointed to the back of the door, where a pair of pumpkin-colored satin pajamas hung from a hook, then placed a wicker table with a People magazine on it within easy arm’s reach of the tub before exiting the bathroom. I picked up the magazine to see the date, March 28, 2011. That was two days before I was going to return to Japan. Kenji.

  Oh god. Kenji. Bubbles nibbling at my skin, I sank down until the water closed over the top of my head, lifting my hair up in a cloud. I lay submerged until my breath ran out. The sloshing water unlodged a memory: the slap of restless waves against pier pilings, a motorboat approaching… As I surfaced, my eyes popped open, and I exclaimed, “Ji Hoon!” He was the missing link between Seoul and wherever I was. It was blindingly clear to me now, as it should have been clear to me from the first, that he was something much more sinister than a tour guide for adopted girls. He was a honey trap, and I, with my ravenous craving for fun, distraction, and attention, fell for it like the simple, feckless fool that I was.

  “Ting! I need to talk to Ji Hoon!” I called as I stepped out of the bathroom, hair wrapped in a meringue of Turkish towel, the satin of my new pajamas caressing my skin, but the room was empty. “Ting!”

  I rushed to pull on the doorknob, which was cool to the touch. The door did not budge. I tried pushing against it; it didn’t yield a millimeter. I banged against it with the heels of my hands; it neither rattled in the frame nor creaked. It was made of steel. Stomach tightening, I scurried over to the window, which was placed so high up that I had to climb on a chair to look out of it onto a tiny strip of rocky ground bordered by an impenetrable thicket of bamboo. With no hinges or crank, it was unopenable. When I knocked on the glass, it had the dull solidity of a wall. A metal taste of fear flooding my tongue, I crept back into bed and watched the light drain from the window, straining to hear ambient noise that would give me a clue as to where I was. But there was nothing. No traffic, no barking dogs, no distant sirens. The only sound was the thrum of my blood being pushed through my brain by my pounding heart. I could no longer deny that I was being held captive, and I was pretty sure I knew by whom. After all, who had long wished me out of their lives? Who had motive and means? Who had paid for me to come to Korea in the first place?

  Margaret and Howard Stamwell.

  How did they hate me? I counted the ways.

  There was the shoplifting arrest at Macy’s that forever cemented my reputation as every adoptive parent’s worst nightmare: the bad seed, genetically incapable of nurture, hopelessly corrupt by nature. There was the time that Margaret caught me and my one-hitter in flagrante in their laundry room, and the other time when she found a three-inch cap of ice floating in the Stoli bottle they kept in the freezer. There was my slovenly appearance, my bad posture, my ward robe of ripped jeans, thrift-store T-shirts, and clunky-soled shoes. My mediocre academic performance, my mediocre college, my English major, my lack of postgraduation accomplishments. My directionless wandering. My unrealistic dreams. But more than anything else, there was my deep-seated conviction that Mindy was destined to become a great actor.

  It culminated the fall of our junior year with a late-night dinner at the Four Seasons to celebrate Mindy’s opening night performance as Maria in a local production of West Side Story. The audience had given Mindy a standing ovation, Margaret clapping so hard I thought the diamonds in her rings would fall out, which was why I felt emboldened to say, only half joking, “Mindy should skip college and just go straight to Broadway.”

  A discreet hum of conversation lapped around us, the light tinkling of the piano drifting in from the bar. Mindy twiddled with her lobster ravioli. Gave me a furtive glance. She still had her stage makeup on, her skin bronzed to a deep Puerto Ri
can tan, eyeliner applied under her lashes to make her eyes look rounder, mouth a delectable cherry-red heart. Looking down at her plate, Mindy said, “This is going to be my last play.”

  I laughed. “What, you mean, like, ever?”

  “Well, ever is a very long time,” Margaret answered for her daughter, the soft light of the pewter table lamp gleaming off the lustrous sheen of her skin and the amber waves of grain of her hair. “But for the foreseeable future. At least until she gets into college. What with all the rehearsals, Mindy’s grades have been slipping, and at such an important time! Colleges look very carefully at the eleventh grade GPA!” She waved an emphatic finger in the air, urgently alerting me to this very important fact.

  “But, Min Hee.” I leaned in close to Mindy in order to exclude Margaret from the conversation. “Acting credits will increase your chances of getting into Juilliard and Bennington. This is your first professional production! You’re actually getting paid to be onstage! You can’t stop now!”

  The dimple under Mindy’s eye was a flickering star, appearing and disappearing, flashing at me in warning.

  “She’s not applying to Juilliard and Bennington,” Margaret said firmly.

  “Of course she’s applying to Juilliard. She’s been talking about it forever! It’s what she wants to do, Mrs. Stamwell.” I glanced at Howard to see if he could give me some support. He couldn’t, sitting there with his habitual Mona Lisa smile, content to just bask in the incandescence of his wife and daughter.

  “Tell her what Candy Bronson, the girl who plays Velma, said,” Margaret prompted Mindy.

  Mindy stirred the ice cubes around in her glass with a bendy straw, still not looking at me. “She told the director that no one was going to believe that I was Maria, since I was obviously Asian. In front of everyone. While I was standing right there.”