Re Jane

by Patricia Park

  I told Mr. Farley I’d see myself out. I retraced the circuitous route to the front door. Beth Mazer stopped me in the foyer, breathless.

  “I am so sorry about that,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “It was just an awful miscommunication. . . .” She studied my face. “You seem like such a special young woman.”

  With that she folded me into her arms. It was unexpected. I fell against her with my whole body. “Good-bye for now,” she said.

  When I left the Mazer-Farley house, I still carried the scent of Beth’s touch; she smelled of lavender and fermenting onions. An unpleasant smell, but also oddly comforting.

  Chapter 5

  Food

  I wouldn’t say my earliest associations with Food were pleasant ones. Sang first opened the store when I was around eight years old. According to Hannah, it took him several years to have enough confidence to start another business, post-blackout. But this time he retreated closer to home, instead of opening in Manhattan like so many of his peers.

  Sang was especially irritable in those early days. All of us—Hannah, Mary, even little George—lived in fear and trembling, never sure of what small thing would trigger his too-quick temper. It might have been the way the toilet paper hung from its dispenser, making the user have to inconveniently search through the roll to find where the trail began. He’d come bellowing out of the bathroom. Sometimes I was the last of the family to scramble, and I’d be left to bear the brunt of his wrath.

  It was always just him and me. I was the oldest of the children, so after school Sang would pick me up and take me to work on the store, while the others stayed home. He climbed up a ladder to remove the drop-ceiling panels, and he’d pass them down to me. They were stained and moldy on the underside. When the ceilings were done, we put down new flooring. I remembered struggling with the math, trying to figure out how many tiles would fit across the length and width of the store (“Report card say you good at math. Why you not show?”), which only made the sums that much harder.

  Then it came time to mark the grids across the floor. We each grasped either end of a piece of string, and Sang ran the line on a solid block of chalk he held in his hands. (Later I would learn this was his cheap alternative to buying an actual chalk reel.) How my hands shook as I backed away from Sang! When he snapped the line, the string whipped my fingers and I let go. Sang was furious. We had to redo the line several times before it was perfectly straight. Whenever I stare down at the floor tiles of Food, I can still feel the sting of Sang’s words from that day. When all the construction was done, we cleaned the floors—Sang swept, I mopped. The mop was too big and unwieldy for my hands. When I was older and we’d learn about child-labor laws at school, I’d get angry at Sang. That was against the law! You should go to jail! Then he’d snap back—Then who gonna buy your food? Who gonna pay your clothes?—which would always shut me down.

  But through all that, one memory in particular emerged. Jane-ah! Come here! Sang had shouted. I hurried toward him, bracing myself for a scolding. Sang was crouched over a ceiling panel; something was stuck to its underside. I crouched next to him. He poked the thing with a Phillips-head screwdriver: it was a dead mouse, fused to the panel and fossilized. A few tufts of hair poked out from the bones. Empty shells that looked like the skin of popcorn kernels studded the mouse’s chest cavity. Fly larvae. “I wonder whether he getting eaten alive or he die first,” Sang said. He clucked his tongue. “Either way, I guess he not go to waste.”

  After we finished for the day, Sang took me to McDonald’s next to the public library. As he ate his Big Mac with gusto, I stared at my Chicken McNuggets and thought about the dead mouse picked clean. Nothing ever went to waste.

  * * *

  When I arrived at Food after meeting with the Mazer-Farleys, Sang asked me how my “bank” interview went. I told him they’d “be in touch.”

  Even my uncle understood what that meant. “Because you not try hard enough,” he said.

  “Yes, Uncle. I’m sure that’s the reason.”

  “You back-talk me?” His nostrils flared, the way they always flared with annoyance. I mumbled no.

  Sang ordered me to go change out of my suit. Because, as he’d lectured me many times, the customers might think you were showing off with their hard-earned money. That was one of the reasons he drove a ddong-cha, a poop car. Yet Pastor Bae drove a Mercedes-Benz S-class—apparently he wasn’t afraid of the congregation seeing what he did with the weekly collections. Hannah, who faithfully wore her darned sweaters and hole-ridden pants at the store, didn’t see why we also had to live in a ddong house, when other families at church—like the Ohs—had years ago left Flushing for Long Island.

  It was busy that day at Food, and the walk-in box was being particularly temperamental. I caught up with my uncle and told him the door was acting up again.

  Sang gave me a look—And so?—and said, “How long you work here?” Releasing his hand truck, he did the jiggle-slide-shuffle routine with an ease that never came naturally for me. “See? You act like problem when there’s no problem.” He slammed the door shut again.

  If I hadn’t just come back from the interview with the Mazer-Farleys, I might not have opened my mouth right then (it was hard to believe that interview had taken place only a few hours ago). “I think we should have . . . a conversation about it,” I said, repeating Beth’s words.

  “A what?” Sang jerked his head toward the front of the store, and through the rubber flaps of the doorway I could see the growing line of customers at the register, where Hannah was now. “Who got time for conversation? You think time like some kind of luxury?”

  With that he pushed aside the thick plastic strips hanging in the doorway and wheeled off.

  I stared at the door with a rising anger. I tried it again. Fuck this. I grasped the handle with two hands and yanked it free.

  The first thing I heard was a pop! Then a crunch. The door handle pulled free and clattered to the floor.

  Sang heard the commotion and rushed back to the walk-in, immediately followed by Hwan. They both surveyed the damage. Then Sang looked at me, his eyes blackening.

  “You . . . nothing . . . but . . . the . . . careless!” Once he wrenched those first words out, the rest poured forth quickly. “What, you do on purpose? Show off how you right? You no idea how much it gonna cost?”

  When Sang grew excited, his already tenuous command of English grammar fell in inverse proportion to his rising anger. I always found it odd that he stuck it out with English rather than simply switching over to Korean. But in the house he spoke in Korean only to his wife and in select moments of tenderness, like when he was talking with his daughter.

  Hwan was crouched at the door with a can of WD-40 and a pocketknife, trying to pry it open.

  “You know why this happen, right?” Sang went on. “Because you act like wild girl!”

  But each person has a breaking point. I had reached mine. I shouted, “That door’s been like that my entire life!”

  There was another pop! and crunch between us, but it wasn’t the door handle. Then Sang’s voice grew eerily calm.

  “Okay. Go to office call Mr. Hwang. His brother the repairman. Get the brother number and tell him come to Food right now. But after that you just go home. Today you causing more trouble than you help. Ga.” That last command—Go—was issued in Korean. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

  When Sang was gone, Hwan said, “I hate this damn door, too.” With a twist of his knife, he set the door free. He dragged the cinder block against it, leaving it a crack ajar. He fixed his steady gaze on my face; I looked away. “Your uncle, he get angry now, but, eh, you know he always cool down quick. You no worry, Miss Jane.”

  I looked up. But before I could say, “Thank you,” Hwan was already gone, the plastic strips in the doorway flapping closed behind him.

  * * *

  The
week wore on. At work I measured out my life with cans of Spam, with apples and pears and boxes of Napa cabbage, with milk and honey and D batteries, with dimes, nickels, pennies, and food stamps. With each passing day, my thoughts would turn to the Mazer-Farleys. I took their silence to mean they’d moved on.

  One night, almost a week after my interview, the five of us were sitting around the flimsy card table in the kitchen. The remains of our dinner were spread before us: a picked-apart fried mackerel, its shredded skin glinting like flakes of gold leaf; cubes of kkakdugi-radish kimchi (a name, I was certain, that derived from the sound you made—kkak!—as you bit into it); garlic stems, smothered in red-pepper paste; cold beef chunks and hard-boiled eggs, stewed in soy sauce; shriveled-up baby sardines.

  The window fan whirred but offered little reprieve from the late-summer heat, barely moving the air that was thick with humidity and the smells of fried fish and Hannah’s fermented bean paste. George left the table for the family computer in the living room. He did not clear away his bowl and chopsticks. Mary left the table to practice piano for church service. She carried her bowl and chopsticks to the sink but did not wash them. Each time someone got up, the table wobbled, despite the folded-up magazine pages wedged under one leg.

  After Hannah and I cleared the table and washed the dishes, Sang asked me again whether I’d heard back from my interview. When I told him I hadn’t, he shook his head with disappointment. “You want something happen? You gotta make happen. When other people sleeping, you suppose to be digging well.”

  Abruptly I rose from the table. The backs of my thighs made a squelching sound against the plastic seat. I opened the fridge to the usual assortment of bruised fruit. We took home the rejects from the store, and that night there were Asian pears, which were my favorite.

  When I returned to the table with the most banged-up of pears, Sang was fanning himself with a Con Ed bill. Hannah was boiling water for tea. (She thought that eating hot foods on hot days was good for the system.) I set to work on the pear, slicing away its sores, the card table all the while rocking unsteadily. Then I began to peel.

  Sang stopped me. “Look, you waste.” He held up the pear peel and pointed to the white flesh on the underside. I’d cut too thick a peel. He shook his head in disappointment. Asian pears cost us around four dollars each at wholesale. Hannah picked up my too-thick peel and put it in her mouth, scraping off its flesh as if it were an artichoke leaf.

  Sang launched into one of his stories that were always the same: the business of Flushing. Which of his friends were making money and which were not. In this case Mr. Hwang and his real-estate deal.

  Sang’s eyes, seeking an audience, darted through the doorway to his daughter at the piano, but she was immersed in her Bach. Mary always started her piano sessions with warm-up scales, then a couple of Bach two-part inventions, which you could always tell from their utter mathematical symmetry, then something more erratic and swelling: sometimes Beethoven, sometimes Rachmaninoff. Sang’s eyes moved on to his son at the computer. George was clicking furiously on the mouse with one hand while punching a key with the index finger of the other. Sang sighed, his story barely started. It felt rude to leave him hanging. “Which deal is this again, Uncle?”

  My uncle ignored me. “Ya! Georgie-ah!” Sang said. “Your abba talking to you!”

  George looked up from his computer game and groaned. Reluctantly he trotted back to the kitchen table. Mary stopped her piano. “George! Did you log off? I’m expecting a phone call.” George returned to the computer and replugged the cord into the phone jack.

  Sang began his story again. “Hwang just buy house in Great Neck. Kings Point! When he suppose to buy business building instead. Now he have Chinese landlord. Every morning ten, fifteen Chinese people coming up from building basement. They just living there. Those people, willing to sacrifice anything. Where they go bathroom?”

  The phone rang as my uncle went on about the Chinese. Mary rushed across the living room to answer it. “Jane, it’s for you.” She held out the receiver.

  “Jane!” a voice cried out. “It’s Beth Mazer. We’ve been trying you all night, but the line was busy!”

  “I’m sorry, my cousin was on the computer.” I glared in George’s direction, but he was engrossed in his pear. His eyes went blank whenever he chewed, as if he were gazing across the pasture. I envied his ability to escape.

  “Jane, my sincerest apologies for the delay. I was away at a conference and then et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I’m calling to offer you the au pair position with our family, and I’m crossing my fingers that you haven’t already been snapped up—i.e., if you even still want the position. . . .” She named a figure that would have been one-third my starting salary at Lowood, before factoring in annual bonuses. Of course, her figure included room and board. I wondered whether I’d been her first choice or if she’d made similar calls to others and was forced to move further down her list.

  “And,” she continued, “we really loved you—Devon especially. We’d be honored if you joined our household.”

  “But I thought”—I cupped the receiver with my hand—“I wasn’t what you and Mr. Farley wanted.”

  I could see Sang pretending not to listen.

  “Please, we’re on a first name basis in this household. Call him Ed. And again, my utter apologies for that miscommunication.” Her tone was breezy. “While we did initially want an au pair who spoke Chinese, we’ve since had some conversations. Devon’s getting quite a lot of exposure through her Chinese school, and . . .” Beth trailed off. “So what do you think? Will you join us?”

  I knew I should not have taken that job. I should have held out for a better offer. At the very least, I should have asked for a day or two to think it over. And I definitely should have asked Sang and Hannah’s permission.

  But sometimes you don’t always do what you should do. I wanted that job.

  I found myself blurting out, “I’d love to. Thank you for this opportunity.”

  “Fantastic! We are so thrilled,” Beth said. We made arrangements for me to start the next morning.

  Sang’s eyes studied me when I hung up the phone. “Who that is?”

  “I got a job.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What kind of company calling you nighttime?”

  “It’s . . . different. I’d be helping a family.”

  “Helping family what?”

  “They have a daughter. And . . . I’d be living with them.”

  “What!” Sang dropped the paring knife; it clattered on its chip-proof plate. “This is like bad dream.”

  “It isn’t,” I protested. “They’re a good family. They’re teachers. The wife is a professor at a college. Imagine how much I’d learn from her.” I tried to speak Sang’s language. “It’d be like . . . like getting a free education.”

  He wasn’t having it.

  “So you just want to throw away your everything? To become like indentured servant?”

  Sometimes the range of Sang’s English surprised me.

  “Never this happen you go to Columbia.”

  My uncle did this every so often: trace back all my recent failures to my not attending Columbia. I’d gotten in, only to find I didn’t qualify for financial aid. I couldn’t ask my uncle to spring for my tuition (blame nunchi), nor could I justify saddling myself with all that debt. I turned down Columbia and decided on Baruch, which I’d applied to as a safety school. When Sang learned this after the fact, he’d been furious. We fought and fought, our fight devolving into a litany of piddling resentments we’d each harbored over the years. The time the septic tank burst and my profligate use of paper towels (Use rag and bucket! he’d shouted) as I helped him clean up. The time I accidentally locked the keys inside the car and made the damage worse with a misdirected coat hanger. Each and every time he favored Mary and George over me. But it had been too late to rev
erse my decision; I was bound for this “lesser” path. And with that, Sang had swiped the air, taking an eraser to the plans charting my future.

  “Uncle know this family?” he demanded. “They Korean?”

  “No. American.”

  “American!”

  “Uncle: I’m half American.”

  Sang looked stunned, as if the words had hit him square in the face—furious that I’d brought up the side of me he’d been trying all these years to forget.

  He reached a point where the English language could no longer contain his uncontrollable emotion, where he had no choice but to switch over to Korean. “Do you want to end up like your mother?”

  On any other day, the invocation of my mother would have had the power to cut right through me, making me shrivel with shame. But that evening was different. I was going to leave Sang’s house forever, and now his words flew past me. In my head I was already bolting through the door and out on the street. I was already on the Q13 to Main Street, then down to the subway platform, bound for the next 7 train stuttering out of Flushing.

  Chapter 6

  The Mazer-Farley Household: A Primer

  I wasn’t even one foot in the door when Beth folded me into her arms, overwhelming me with her particular aroma. “Welcome! Jane, you have no idea how happy we are.”

  “Thank you for hiring me,” I said. The words felt stiff; I had no natural vocabulary for receiving compliments.

  Beth surveyed my clothes. “Don’t you look nice today! Doesn’t she, Ed?” she said. I was wearing dress slacks, a button-down shirt, and sensible heels. Her husband didn’t look over at me, though. “But . . . wouldn’t you rather change into something more comfortable?” Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, they taught us in the Career Services office. I wasn’t about to show up on my first day in the kinds of clothes I wore at Food.

  Devon pushed her mother out of the way. “Jane!” she cried. “Your room’s next to mine. I’ll show you!” She tugged my hand, leading me toward the stairs, but Ed Farley stopped her. “Later, kiddo. She just walked through the door.”