The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  The root ball came up, and Soon-mi fell back on her heels but maintained her squat. She laid the matted, gnarly thing in the dirt and eyed the knife, which she’d staked upright at the border where dirt met grass. She sighed. This was the part she didn’t like. Always she had to remind herself, as she sliced through the bone-white roots and offshoots like baby hairs, that she was regenerating, propagating, and not destroying.

  3.

  It was the Saturday before Memorial Day, and Kenyon Street was lined with American flags. They shot out like saluting arms from the porch roofs of row houses. The flag on Charles and Alice Lee’s four-bedroom brick was smaller than the neighbors’—colors dull and faded by comparison, material drab. In this way, the house stood out.

  Hannah Lee walked east from the Columbia Heights Metro station along a sidewalk that was clean but badly cracked. Weeds and tree roots pushed up with a brute force that made Hannah think of her crooked front tooth—how the baby tooth had hung on stubbornly until the permanent one had to come breaking through at an angle. As she walked, Hannah scanned for the little peaks made by broken concrete, to keep from tripping.

  There were people sitting on every porch or stoop along the block—black people, mostly old people, a few babies and toddlers in their laps. They stared at Hannah as she walked by. When she began to feel the stares, she looked up. She stared back. No one smiled. One little boy waved. Hannah was not frightened or nervous, though she had some awareness that perhaps she should be. She didn’t mind—liked it even, a little, this being noticed.

  The Lees’ house was exactly mid-block. There was no one sitting on the porch or stoop, just a mess of bicycles and car/truck/train toys, and potted plants, flowers mostly, unkempt and clustered along the left end of the red-painted steps. Hannah liked the house right away, though she could not have said exactly why. She did think of how her father would have scoffed at the annuals in the pots—her parents grew only vegetables and hardy perennials, in large beds that they tended meticulously from March to November—and how her mother would have pursed her lips at the disorder.

  Soon-mi had not asked to see the exact address; Alice Lee had told her, “a short walk from the Columbia Heights stop,” but she had not said in which direction. Soon-mi had assumed west, toward the park. Alice Lee was a white woman with a master’s degree, after all.

  Hannah rang the bell and waited. A man came to the door. He looked surprised, and he stared at Hannah, though in a different way from the porch and stoop people. Hannah did not mind this man’s staring either; though after a few moments of silence, she couldn’t help but think of her brother, James, who—now that he was majoring in business instead of smoking pot behind the Burger King—had started calling her “spacey.”

  “I’m … Hannah. The babysitter.” Something caught in Hannah’s voice—a flatness swallowed her words. She had intended to be polite, and cheerful. She didn’t know what had come over her: it was like when she had to read Ophelia’s Hey nonny, nonny section in front of the class and she delivered it deadpan, even though she knew she was supposed to be dramatic.

  The man was very dark, and big like an athlete. He had a broad, smooth forehead; wide Eskimo cheeks; a strong jaw, which hung slightly open. His eyes were round and shiny and black, like licorice jelly beans, and Hannah looked straight into the right one (his left), which she could just barely do without craning her neck. He was handsome, this man. She liked the word—much more than cute or hot—and enjoyed the pleasure of both beholding and thinking it. (Pleasure, on the other hand, was a word that Hannah would never have thought, or spoken.)

  Charles blinked once. Hannah lowered her gaze to the many-colored flecks in his brown sweater vest, then to the crisp white of his T-shirt. Her eyes landed on Charles’s collarbones, which pushed out just like the sidewalk’s thick tree roots.

  Another half-beat, then Hannah cleared her throat. “Mrs. Lee said … three o’clock.” Her feet pressed hard into the concrete, her shoulders dropped from her ears. She looked up. Charles lowered his chin, put one hand on his head as if to rub it; then stepped back from the door. He said her name and got it wrong—Come on in, Anna—and Hannah corrected him: “No, it’s Haa-nah.” The voice that came out this time was strange, but also familiar—it was the one she normally heard and kept strictly inside her head. Not rude exactly, but absent the ubiquitous interrogative that all the girls had begun using.

  The voice had raced out. Hannah was about to regret it, chase after the words and smash them with her hands like ants, when Charles’s hand came off his head, licorice eyes rolling up and smiling bright. “Sorry, right. Come in, Haa-nah.” Voice warm and deep. Not deep like a tuba, but lighter, and a little sad, like a clarinet. Hannah stepped past, two long strides, and into the house.

  4.

  Charles led Hannah through the kitchen to the back door. Hannah had both hands on her purse. In new places she felt loose and awkward with her hands dangling at her sides; she always wanted to touch things, like a blind person groping with her fingertips.

  Charles opened the screen door and stepped out onto a square cement landing. “Alice,” he called, and motioned for Hannah to descend the steps. His voice had changed: it was both heavier and more floaty. Hannah watched her feet as she took each steep and slanted step. Charles then disappeared into the house, the screen door falling shut behind him with a light crash.

  “No slamming!” A boy stood up from a crouch, sausage finger pointing up in the air.

  Alice Lee was kneeling in the grass. She raised herself up without using her hands, brushed dirt from her denim pedal pushers, then nudged a bouncy blonde lock from the corner of her eye with a knuckle. “And no shouting, mister,” she said.

  The boy was Bennett, after Alice’s maternal great-grandfather. They called him Benny. He grinned, slapped a chubby brown hand over his mouth, then leaped a frog-leap to another corner of the sandbox, toward a yellow dump truck. Noisy, catastrophic collisions ensued. The boy was all hair, big and Brillo-y, the same burlap-sack color of his skin. He wore a T-shirt two sizes too big, shorts that went down to his calves. He was an ugly boy, and not a little frightening.

  “You’re Hannah,” Alice said, smiling with her lips but frowning with her eyes.

  It was an odd greeting; it made one feel caught out somehow. Charles leaned on the kitchen sink drinking a Pabst and looking out the window. He felt for the girl. He watched his wife amble toward Hannah in her cowgirlish way, reaching out her hand. The two were likely the same height, but Alice slouched slightly—or maybe it was just that she had sharp shoulders and a short neck, it was hard to tell. Charles did not care to watch the scene anymore. He went back to the scores, to his La-Z-Boy.

  Out in the yard, Alice said, “So this is it,” spreading her arms. “Did you have any trouble finding us?” Hannah shook her head no, said from Wheaton it was six stops and one transfer, and a short walk from the station, just as Alice had said. “Good, I’m glad it won’t be a long commute for you. Makes everything simpler.” Alice went on to describe the areas of the small yard and what each child liked to do there—Veda at the picnic table with her craft projects, Benny in the sandbox or on the climber. There was a trellis with thick brown vines growing all over it that looked like something out of a children’s storybook. It was in fact a small fig tree whose branches had grown long and snakelike. “Hose play is fine, especially on hot days, but you should hold the hose for them, or else Benny gets a little wild.”

  “Should they be in swimsuits?” Hannah asked.

  “Veda will want to change. Benny can just lose his shirt.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “So Benny is six,” Alice continued, as if pointing out yet another feature of the yard.

  “Six and a quarter!” Benny shouted.

  “Six and a quarter.” Alice rolled her eyes, and Hannah pushed out a small laugh. “Veda is nine, ten in September. She’s at a friend’s house down the street. I’ll show you the rest of the house and then you and
I can walk over to the Mitchells’ to pick up Veda. She’s over there enough that you should meet them.” Hannah nodded again. Alice Lee was clearly, thoroughly in charge.

  After the tour, which was really just a walk around the first floor, Alice told Charles they’d be back in a few minutes. Benny continued to accelerate, crash, and explode things in back. “When you can’t hear him, that’s when he needs checking on.” It was not clear for whom the statement was meant, Hannah or Charles.

  The front gate closed behind them; Hannah and Alice headed west to the Mitchells’. With her mind, Hannah looked back toward the house; with her eyes, she noticed Alice Lee’s bouncy blonde hair. It was just the style she herself had hoped for when she’d gone for a perm. On Alice Lee, though, with her pointed shoulders and skinny legs, it looked somehow not-right; like movie-star sunglasses on a cloudy afternoon.

  They walked in the opposite direction from the station—just two streets over, but a different neighborhood altogether. The sidewalks were wider, and even; the faces mostly white, and relatively young. On one side of the street the houses were very tall and lean—like Olympic athletes, solid and erect—all brick, and without porches. Some of them looked like castles, with their bay windows and turrets. On the other side, the porch roofs were held up by beautiful white pillars. None of the houses on the Mitchells’ street had chain-link fences.

  Hannah thought how her father would consider all these houses—attached to one another, with their tiny yards—inferior. But Hannah liked them—the way she liked chess, which her friend Raj had taught her, and memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations for Madame Glissant’s French class. Anyway, she knew her father missed a lot of things; that he and her mother lived so much apart from others and did not see everything clearly.

  Alice stopped in front of a fancy iron gate and let out a mysterious sigh. It was a tall porchless house with green double doors. Hannah and Alice ascended the steps, and Alice rang the bell. “Karen’s a pediatrician, so I never worry when Veda is over here on the weekends.” Alice spoke in tight, confident tones, like a receptionist for an important person. “Amy is Veda’s best friend, and they’re young for sleepovers, but I allow it. Amy’s a very sweet girl.”

  On cue, they heard the pitter-patter of small feet running to the door, which opened slowly. A tiny, full-freckled girl pulled with both hands.

  “Hello, Amy,” Alice said, leaning down as if she might pet her.

  “We knew it was you,” Amy Mitchell giggled. Her bare feet were cross-stacked on top of each other, one knee bent, in the manner of children who have to go to the toilet. She chewed on a strand of frizzy brown hair, the rest of which was piled elaborately on top of her head with a fistful of bobby pins. Sparkly pink earrings hung from her lobes.

  “Hi Alice, come in!” a voice called from within. Alice helped little Amy with the door, pushing her way inside.

  “They’re here!” Amy called.

  “My, what pretty earrings,” Alice said, reaching out with her fingertips.

  The girl leaned forward with one ear, so they could be properly admired. “We’re playing makeover.” Amidst Amy’s freckles were glitter stars, sparkling around her eyes and cheeks.

  Amy turned and pattered back toward the kitchen. Alice and Hannah followed. Alice fell behind Hannah, lingering to notice the new bamboo floors. The lighting was different, too—modern half-moon sconces led them down the long hallway. Karen Mitchell had a busy practice and was highly sought-after among the government set; she also published articles and taught at Georgetown. Her husband, Rick, was an estate lawyer.

  “Hi, Karen. I guess we’re a little earlier than I said.” It was not quite an apology.

  In the kitchen they found Veda, sitting in a lacquer bar chair, legs crossed at the ankles. Her hair had been tightly French-braided and tied up in back; a rhinestone tiara circled her crown. Karen Mitchell leaned over her, applying blue eye shadow.

  “Ta da!” The shadow was light and shimmery on Veda’s dark skin. The girl sat perfectly upright, and with her hair pulled back so tightly her face looked both calm and alert. Against the shimmer of the blue shadow and the sparkle of the tiara, Veda’s grey eyes turned translucent, shifty and complex like a crystal.

  Hannah nearly gaped. The sight of Veda took her breath away, and for a moment, she saw not a made-up child in a stranger’s kitchen, but an African princess.

  “My goodness.” Alice’s tone was somehow both airy and taut. Amy giggled with her hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, I hope you don’t mind, Alice. I had a feeling this blue would just be spectacular on V. Do you remember wearing this stuff? God, the seventies!”

  Alice smiled weakly. She’d never worn eye shadow in her life. Karen’s thin pink T-shirt was sliding off her bare shoulder, pale and freckled like her daughter.

  “These next, these next!” Amy was jumping up and down, holding a small black container with a clear plastic top. False eyelashes.

  “Put those down, honey. Those are for another time, maybe. In a few years.” Then Karen winked at Hannah. “Maybe when you’re old enough to babysit.”

  “Oh, gosh, sorry.” Alice’s voice was looser now, but too loud. “This is Hannah, who I was telling you about. She’ll be watching the kids after school.”

  “We have a babysitter, too,” Amy said, twirling around on the ball of one foot. “She’s sixteen, and she has big ones.”

  “Amy.” Karen flashed her daughter a look, but she was smiling.

  “Well, Hannah is thirteen, but she’s very responsible.“

  Hannah flushed, and noted Alice’s rounding up her age by a few months.

  Something had changed in the air. Karen Mitchell stepped back from Veda, who thus far had not said a word.

  Veda blinked her eyes and climbed down from the chair, her head and neck held perfectly still. She reached out for Hannah’s hand and took it. “You have to help me wash this off now,” she said, as she led Hannah, her new responsible babysitter, to the bathroom. Amy skipped along behind, and Alice stared after them.

  Karen cleared her throat. “They had a nice time,” she said.

  “She always does,” Alice said, remembering to smile.

  “I thought I might have to run to the hospital and leave them with the sitter, but I’m so glad I was able to get someone to cover for me.”

  “Mm,” Alice said.

  “So Hannah seems nice,” Karen said. “Very calm. How long has she been with you?”

  “Oh, just today. It’s her first day.”

  “Oh! My gosh. I didn’t realize. I’m sure she’ll be just great. And it’s so terrific, Alice. You back to work. And using all of your … experiences, after all these years. I don’t know if I could do it. If I’d stopped working when Amy was born. But you’re so brave, and you’ve had so many interesting adventures. Remind me—you speak Korean, right?”

  “Just a little.”

  “And is Hannah’s English pretty good?”

  Alice looked at Karen, whose linen miniskirt showed off her athletic thighs. Karen was turned away from Alice, gathering the makeup containers. Something hot and scratchy rose in Alice’s throat. “Karen, Hannah speaks perfect English. Don’t you have any colleagues at the hospital who are immigrants?” Alice laughed, a little too sweetly.

  Karen turned to Alice, a quizzical look on her face. She might have been considering Alice’s question; she might have been considering Alice.

  Amy came skipping out from the bathroom to find the two women locked in silence. It was Alice who turned away first. “How’s it going in there?”

  “The soap,” Amy said, “it’s stinging her eyes.”

  “Oh, jeez, you need this,” Karen said, reaching for a small blue bottle. “Here you go, pumpkin.”

  On the way home, Alice walked with her arm around Veda’s shoulder and said to Hannah, “That Amy really is such a sweet girl.”

  5.

  It was the first day of summer. The children’s summer. School was
out, but Hannah still took the Metro to Columbia Heights station in the afternoons, as she had for the previous three weeks. Alice worked the 3-to-11 shift at the nursing home, which meant she was home until 2:30. “So it will just be an hour earlier every day,” she had said, and Hannah said that would be fine. Her only other plans for the summer were to read Le Petit Prince—which Madame Glissant had recommended to her—and to swim every day, which she did at the pool in Silver Spring. In the fall, Hannah would start high school and intended to be the number-one seed in backstroke. Raj’s brother Ravi had said that the girls’ team sucked, and this, Hannah thought, boded well for her.

  Alice did not ask what else Hannah would be doing when she was not watching Veda and Benny. But she did raise Hannah’s wage by fifty cents an hour. “It’s the least we can do. There must be so many other things a girl your age wants to be doing with her summer afternoons.” It was a funny thing to say, Hannah thought—as if Alice Lee had some completely different girl in mind when she said it. But Hannah was happy for the raise; it was the first time she’d had her own money, and she was saving up. For what, exactly, she didn’t yet know.

  In the evenings, Charles arrived punctually at six o’clock. Sometimes he carried bags of groceries, sometimes takeout Chinese or pizza. He wore short-sleeved collared shirts in light blue or yellow, or sometimes plaid, with a white undershirt that showed through; pleated slacks; and black rubber-soled shoes. He did not wear a jacket or tie. Hannah tried to guess where he was coming from, but she found she could only guess where he was not coming from: he was not a lawyer or a businessman, he did not work at a bank. He was probably not a doctor, either; though maybe he worked in a lab doing research like her father (who wore a pin-striped shirt and gray pants every single day). He was clearly not a plumber or construction worker: he had smooth, long-fingered hands; the half-moons of his fingernails were perfect and white. He looked like he could be a teacher, but then it didn’t make sense that he would be going to work all day in the summertime. Hannah resorted to considering what sort of job the husband of Alice Lee would have, but that got her nowhere. In general, Hannah had trouble holding Alice Lee and Charles Lee as a pair in her mind; except for the first meeting, she never saw them together.