Somebody's Daughter

by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

  He punched in the number, waited, said hello—which was accompanied by a half bow. I heard “Sal-ah Dor-son” and “Min-ah-so-tah,” and then he lost me in a stream of native-speaker Korean. He kept on, five, ten minutes.

  “What? What?” I said, even before he had hung up.

  “I spoke to a Miss Park, the curator.”

  “What?” I said. “About what?”

  “How to get to the orphanage, that kind of things,” he said.

  “But do they have anything, on me?”

  “There are some records, yes.”

  “About my family?”

  He nodded, slowly. “They keep a record of each child. But maybe not so much for to tell you about your parents.”

  “But something. I mean, you were on the phone for a long time.”

  He nodded.

  “Can we go there right now?”

  “Two weeks, that is the soonest someone can see you. That will be the last time we meet, also.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “That is what the curator said.”

  I sighed. Jun-Ho’s flash card system had the side effect of overcramming his brain with arcane and slangy words, churning his speech into a stew of malapropisms. When the hot coffee made him sweat, he giggled about his “respiration.” When recounting Bernie’s scorn at my attempt to say harlmoni, the word for grandmother, Jun-Ho pronounced that Bernie needed to see a “shrimp.”

  And earlier, he had been puzzled by my shocked look in response to him saying he was going to miss these afternoons of “intercourse” with me. Should I tell him that “curator” wasn’t the right word for the orphanage lady? But suddenly, I couldn’t think of what the right one would be. Curator now sounded strangely accurate, as if it had picked up new meanings as I pondered it.

  I gave up. I was ready to give up on Korea. All I wanted right now were the answers to my life. How was I going to exist, child-for-purchase, for two more weeks?

  SARAH

  Seoul

  1993

  “Miss Sarah!”

  Jun Ho’s hair was now so close-cropped, it revealed the stark whiteness of his scalp, like the sun shining into primeval forest canopy. The Oxford shirts and sweater vests had given way to his army uniform, regulation camouflage. He was calling to me from a car, a kiwi-green hatchback.

  “How about if we do something different?” he asked, out the open window.

  He tossed me a grin as I slid in. Unlike your average scowly-faced Korean man, e.g., the Stamp ajuhshi or the unsmiling men who worked in the Institute’s administrative office, Jun-Ho let his face melt with mirth or cheer when he felt it. I was beginning to think I might actually miss him when he was gone.

  The car started with a hop and a chirp, and he pulled into the vortex of Seoul traffic. The car was his friend’s. Borrowed, he said, so he could show me around a bit before he left. I was suddenly aware that I’d seen very little of Seoul besides the immediate neighborhood of the school, so I sat back, pleased.

  “Next week is the orphanage,” I said. “You’re coming with me to translate, right?”

  He cracked another grin. “Right now, we will have fun,” he said. “We will talk only about fun things. We shall conversate in Korean, or English?”

  “Oh please, I’m experiencing brain-lock,” I told him, gazing at a plastic Tweety Bird ornament hanging from the rearview mirror. I wondered if his “friend” was male or female. A lacquered Kleenex box dripping with an elaborate fringe of fake pearls (Koreans seemed to never be without their tissues) in the back window also gave no clue.

  “You have to speak to me in English if you want me to say anything at all.”

  “Aye-aye.” He saluted smartly, before clapping both of his small hands back on the wheel to avoid a gargantuan bus tipping over the asphalt’s solid white line, threatening to obliterate us.

  “There, the U.S. Embassy used to be, before the Korean War,” Jun-Ho pointed, as we passed a two-storied Western-style building, insignificant in the shadow of the Lotte Hotel across the street. Now, it was UNITED STATES INFORMATION SERVICE.

  “And Lotte, you know Lotte?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. Lotte was a chaebol, a Korean conglomerate, probably one of the largest. Besides the hotel, there was Lotte gum, Lotte cookies, Lotte-burgers, Lotte shoes and Lotte sportswear, not to mention Lotte World, the Disneyland of Korea.

  “The Sorrows of Young Werther. That is one of my favorite texts that I was introduced to in college.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, Lotte, Goethe’s great love.”

  “Oh.”

  Jun-Ho navigated the buglike car through the yellow afternoon light. I was surprised to see that all the road signs were in English as well as Korean, although a sign that said Yongduip’o (arrow, next exit) didn’t mean a lot to me.

  Jun-Ho explained that the signs were for the U.S. military—in case of an emergency, they needed to be able to get around. He also pointed out some huge, dolmen-like concrete structures, which he said were antitank barriers.

  We were going to Yoido, Seoul’s own Île de la Cité. Yoido, he told me, contained all the city’s important buildings: the National Diet, the National Library, Korea’s version of Wall Street, Korea Broadcasting, and the Six-Three Building, the tallest building in Korea.

  As we crossed the bridge, the traffic slowed to a snarl at the nexus of bridge and island. But no one honked; this condition must be normal and expected. The pollution here seemed even worse than the rest of Seoul; the slanting sun gave Yoido an unnatural phosphorous glow. As we waited, I looked out onto the waterfront, bordered by dilapidated food stands, skeletal trees, and a concrete walkway along which mothers, children, and old men strolled, their faces pushed dreamily to the wind. The children’s voices unfurled into the chemical air like colored kites, adding another layer of unreality to the bleak landscape.

  Truly, Yoido, this showcase of the city, was barbaric. There wasn’t enough room for all the vehicles trapped in the blocked and hardened arteries of the island. Besides the desiccated trees teetering precariously near the water, there were no other signs of sustainable vegetation. Everything on this island seemed faked, claustrophobic. It was someone’s vision of a great, metropolitan structure, but it wasn’t mine.

  After measuring our progress in millimeters, we finally reached our destination, the Six-Three Building. It was called that because it had sixty-three floors, or was supposed to—I didn’t count. In the late seventies when Korea wanted to show the world it wasn’t just some backward country, Jun-Ho told me, it erected this. At the time, the highest building in Asia was fifty-five floors. The Koreans ascended to sixty and added on an extra three floors along with a cloud-puncturing antenna just to make sure it was the tallest. The building had an impressive glimmery gold surface on its exterior that would make it look like a trophy in the setting sun.

  We headed for the observation deck. In the elevator, a lady dressed in a stiff Jetsons-type uniform announced something in a soft voice and then pushed the buttons with a white-gloved hand. She was even taller than I was.

  We walked out of the elevator into a round space that was covered by what I can only describe as a glass orb, almost geodesic, Buckminster Fuller-ish.

  By leaning into the sides of the orb, we could command a panoramic view of the city. I would have expected the city to be obscured by Yoido’s smog, but from our height, we could see past all that.

  “Wow!” I said. “You can see everything.” The scenery seemed to be shifting very slowly, but steadily. Then I realized that we were the ones who were moving; the round platform was turning, revolving-restaurant-style.

  Jun-Ho grinningly nodded. “No one can hide from you up here, Sarah.”

  I pressed my face as close to the glass as I could manage. Now, I could see the mountains ringing the city again. When I’d first flown into Korea, I’d looked out the plane’s window and seen those gray peaks; there had been the last little bit of snow remaining on their summits,
as if the mountains had been inverted by the huge hand of God, their peaks dipped in sugar, then righted again. That sight had struck me, suddenly, as so familiar, so home for some reason, that this feeling had burbled over into tears. I sobbed—invisibly, I thought—behind a paperback book tented over my face. But the man next to me, a stoic Korean businessman who hadn’t said a word to me during the twenty-hour flight, poked a package of tissues over the top of my book.

  Beyond the mountains were more mountains. I came out of this place, somewhere. Where was my Korean family during that small, fleeting time? Were they north of the Han River? South? Rich? Poor? What was the name they had given me, and who named me? My mother? Had she been thinking of me those last seconds before the toothed glass and groaning metal devoured her tender flesh, leaving glass diamonds and glistening rubies of blood spangling the asphalt? Where had they been going, why had I not been with them?

  Jun-Ho must have wandered away, for he was back, holding in his hand a small figurine that looked like a pair of warped, demented totem poles. At the top, each pole had a grinning monster head.

  “Please receive,” he said, proferring it respectfully with both hands. “A gift.”

  “What is it?”

  “This is a replicate of the gateposts Koreans used to erect outside their villages to honor the Five Generals Who Hold Up the Sky. See here—” He pointed to some Chinese inscriptions carved in the bottom. “It says, ‘General Scare Away Demons.’”

  “So will it scare away my demons?”

  “It might,” he said. “You try.”

  Jun-Ho escorted me around the floor. A few times, we bumped accidentally. We’d never been this close physically, I was realizing—we’d always been separated by an expanse of glass-topped table. I was a good four inches taller than he was.

  He stopped at an ice cream stand and bought us watery soft-serve cones. He devoured his in three sucking bites, as if he were eating a juicy peach.

  “Jun-Ho,” I laughed. “It’s ice cream. You’re supposed to lick it.”

  “That is American style?” he asked, curling his lip. “This, too, is American style to eat chicken.” He pantomimed licking his outstretched fingers.

  “Okay, true,” I said. “We call it ‘finger lickin’ good.’”

  “Not so good—very dirty,” he said. “Koreans don’t eat things you touch by your hands. Even fruit, we use toothy-picks.”

  I had to smile at him. His uniform was open at the neck, revealing a small triangle of gray undershirt and the tiniest bit of smooth chest, a child’s skin. There was something vulnerable about that place, and I suddenly wanted to kiss it or touch it with my fingers as if it were a baby animal. But I looked down to see his black army boots galumphing on the floor, that idiotic purse dangling from his wrist, and then I wanted to laugh. How had it come to this, that I had become friends with this man from another country, who spoke a language I didn’t know, and chewed soft-serve ice cream, ate fruit from toothy-picks?

  We called the elevator, and the lady pressed the button for us, again—how could she stand such a job? She kept her eyes lowered, never once looking at us, her makeup so thick it looked like a mask. Perhaps she wasn’t real; maybe she was a Stepford Korean. I felt no motion as we descended, heard no sounds, so when the door opened in the lobby, it was as if we’d been beamed in from another planet. The lady bowed mechanically and thanked us as we left.

  “Thank you,” I said to Jun-Ho, when he dropped me off at the Residence. Bernie, Helmut, and some of their friends were playing basketball at the dilapidated hoop out front. Even though it had grown quite cool, they’d taken off their shirts—possibly for the benefit of the girls hanging around the fringes of the court. Their skin glistened white as bones in the fading light.

  “Americans.” Jun-Ho chuckled, as if the scene confirmed some long-held theory of his. “I hope you passed your time enjoyably, Sarah.”

  “I did, thank you,” I said. I had one foot on the concrete of the parking lot, the rest of me still in the car. Between the two bucket seats, a paperback textbook was wedged: Common American English Slang, Idioms, and Vernacular.

  “And you’ll be there next week—we’ll go to the orphanage together?”

  He nodded, but his face turned sad. I didn’t want him to leave; I wanted us to embrace, to touch. But the insistent thunking of the basketball and the assorted cries of “Shit, man!” and “What the f-u-u-u-uck!” kept me from doing anything.

  “Thank you, Jun-Ho,” I said again, trying to put all my emotions and feeling into it. Maybe if I knew Korean I could say something that would show my gratitude for all the things he’d done for me. “Thank you” was inadequate, something you said to the elevator lady. But once again, I lacked the words.

  Jun-Ho grinned and saluted smartly with his tiny hand, but the sadness remained, a glum residue. I watched as the green car (called a pony galloper in English), belching unhealthy black clouds, chugged back toward the road that would take him, now, to wherever he was going.

  “Hey, good going, adoptee-girl,” Bernie said, punctuating his words with the thunk-thunk of the pockmarked basketball. “That horny soldier show you a good time? You know it’s customary for guys to go to prostitutes right before they get inducted.”

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” An unbidden rage curled my hands into claws.

  “Bitch,” he said, mortally offended. “You know, your mother must have been a whore or something—those are the kids that get put up for adoption. Normal kids are taken care of by the family.”

  I lunged at him, grabbing the ball out of his hands and smashing it across the bridge of his nose, his orbital bones flattening and fracturing under the blow. The girls in the background screamed, Helmut and the other players gaped, but didn’t move. But then Bernie rose, blood on his face, and marched to the phone and called the director of the program, describing my transgression. I would be made to go home within the week, days short of my goal. As I saw all this in my head, I turned, leaving him untouched, and flew up the building’s steps, up to my room.

  SARAH

  Seoul

  1993

  The next week, Jun-Ho was there, waiting, at the Balzac.

  “Ready?” I asked, starting to shake slightly in anticipation, like a frisky horse.

  “We should partake of something before we go,” he said. Mildly irritated, I sat down. How could he be thirsty on this, the day of days?

  The coffees arrived, in their usual bonglike glasses. He regarded his but didn’t drink.

  “Sarah,” he said. “I don’t know if this is, you know, an auspicious idea.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to find out about your parents.”

  “What are you talking about?” My voice rose several octaves. “You said the orphanage has things in my file.”

  “Yes, some officious data. But not so much to help you find out about your family. I am sorry.”

  I jumped up. The sugar canister keeled over, the brittle sound of glass on glass. People at the next table openly stared. Jun-Ho, to my surprise, didn’t look angry or embarrassed. He just had that sad, vaguely wistful look he had had last time I saw him.

  “So this whole thing’s been useless?”

  He looked down at his hands. He informed me that he’d made the appointment for two weeks hence in the hopes that maybe I would give up, lose interest. To soften the blow.

  “Perhaps that is the more advantageous way—for you, for your Korean family,” he said. “Let the past become nostalgic.”

  “That’s not for you to decide,” I said. “How can you say you’ll help me and then turn around and stop? You promised you’d help me.”

  Jun-Ho’s hands, lying between his knees, flexed open and shut as if he were warming up to play some scales on the piano. He sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go. Kapsida.”

  It took two subways and a bus to get to the Little Angels Home. The brick building was nondescript—there wasn’t even a s
ign marking it. Inside, it was hot, the cries of babies and the smell of unwashed baby bottoms filling the stagnant air. I longed to smell some kind of strong-smelling disinfectant. Menthol. Pine. Anything.

  A lady in a severely tailored Western suit, a Miss Park, greeted us. She seemed too old to be a “miss.” She had a half-grown-out perm, straight on top, then crimped at random angles like a tangle of insect legs.

  She sat us down in her cluttered office that abutted the nursery. An assistant, her own perm crispy-new and uniformly curly as ramen noodles, offered us Dixie cups of sugary coffee. Why was everyone trying to delay me with coffee? The chemical smell of it, mixed with the smell of urine and old formula, turned my stomach.

  But a few minutes later Miss Park returned with a folder, and my heart jumped. In there, my life was in there. She handed it wordlessly to Jun-Ho. I expected him to tear it open. He just looked at me.

  “Please,” I said. “Please read what it says.”

  Two yellowing pages. He glanced at them, looked up again.

  “Sarah,” he said. “It doesn’t say much. Just about your eating habits and so forth.”

  I gripped his arm, as if I needed to feel the veins, sinew, tendons to know he was real, to know we really were in this place from which I’d come.

  “Read it to me,” I said. “Don’t skip a word.”

  He bowed his head, cleared his throat with a mucusy haAAAARGH.

  “‘The baby did not eat for the first three days after she was brought to the orphanage,’” he read. “‘But after that, she ate some. She had very regular bowel movements. Dr. Bai determined her to be free of diseases. She cries a lot and does not sleep much some times but otherwise seems to be a happy baby.’

  “‘She was assigned to foster mother Kang Koom-Soon shortly after.’”

  Miss Park, absently flipping through papers, looked up and said something to Jun-Ho. He nodded.

  “He says Kang Koom-Soon is dead, he was an old lady.”