by Sonya Chung
At one point, Benny did get restless, wiggling around in the chair. Charles reached over and set the boy’s stopwatch, two minutes at a time. It worked like a charm.
At home that night, when Alice saw them, she said only, “Help your sister set the table.” It was Veda who said it all, with her dropped jaw and hand cupped over her mouth. At dinner, no one spoke except for Benny, who told them Mike was the fattest man he’d ever seen. He said it admiringly. He also said Yvonne and Maureen smelled like strawberries and feet. Charles was the only one who laughed, while Veda was ever aware of her mother.
In bed that night, Alice hissed at her husband. “What’s next, Charles—a switchblade? Hundred-dollar sneakers?”
“He asked for it. He was very clear about what he wanted. You’re the one always saying—”
“Fuck you, Charles.” Alice rolled over and faced the wall.
Charles thought, Yeah, fuck me. Or maybe he said it aloud, under his breath. He thought of a line from the movie he’d taken Veda to see for her birthday, Jeff Conaway to Stockard Channing: With a cherry on top.
7.
Hannah arrived thirty minutes early on a Monday. The previous Friday, Alice had asked her if she could begin staying an hour later to help with Benny’s bath before dinner. “He just needs a little supervision. You’d be welcome to stay and eat with Charles and the kids afterward; though I’m sure your mother wants you home.” In fact, Soon-mi worked the early shift at the nursing home; she and Chong-ho ate at 5:30 like clockwork. Hannah had been eating by herself all summer. Soon-mi would save her a foil-wrapped plate, and Hannah didn’t mind, since dinner was typically a silent affair.
Hannah said yes, an hour later was fine, and they agreed she would come early on Monday so that Alice could show her the bath routine.
Alice came to the door in bare feet and a bathrobe, her hair still wet from the shower. The robe was the color of raw shrimp, and the half-moon puffs beneath her eyes matched. “Come in, Hannah,” she said. Hannah stepped inside. Alice cocked her head slightly and said, eerily, as if reading some mirror image of Hannah’s mind, “You look different.”
Hannah had saved up enough for new glasses, which she’d just picked up over the weekend. Her round metal frames were still in her purse. The new ones were plastic—translucent purple—with tiny silver flowers at the temples that gave them a slight catty slant. Hannah had stared at herself in the window reflection on the Metro and decided she liked the new frames. They were different but not too different, and the little flowers were prettier the closer you looked. She liked that especially. But something in her reflection wasn’t right: her forehead shone, long and wide like a loaf of bread. She had to start saving again for a hair appointment at Tease. She closed then opened her eyes, refocused, tried to imagine herself with Phoebe Cates pixie bangs, the rest feathered and flowing to her shoulders.
Alice uncocked her head. For a moment, Hannah was tongue-tied. She hadn’t expected Alice to notice. Hannah didn’t think Alice noticed her much at all. She said, “Um … so do you.”
Alice made a face, then laughed. “Well. Just give me a second, I guess I should finish getting ready.” She ascended the stairs and said over her shoulder, “Benny’s watching a video. Veda’s at Amy’s.”
Hannah wandered into the front room, what she’d heard Alice call the parlor. It was the most formal room in the house, off-limits to the children: everything was perfectly in order. The furniture was nicer and also, Hannah thought, more old-fashioned, as if it had been in the house forever, while everything else had come later. Hannah hadn’t had much chance to be in this room, since she was always with the children.
Alice came back down the stairs just as Hannah stepped toward a wall of framed photographs. It was a relatively small frame amidst larger ones that caught her eye, the only one holding people she recognized.
“You picked us out,” Alice said. Then, half-laughing, “Though I suppose it’s not that hard.” Alice’s was the only white face amidst the black ones. “It’s the only thing I changed in this room when we moved in, adding that photo. Charles’s family cherished this room; it’s basically a mausoleum.” Alice laughed, but Hannah looked at her quizzically. “Like a … shrine. Honoring the family.”
“Is everyone dead?” This bluntness surprised them both.
“Well,” Alice said, closing her eyes tight, then looking up, as if to heaven. “Let’s see. Charles’s mother died just before he went into the Army. That’s her, Esther, in the blue dress.” Hannah followed Alice’s eyes to a large family portrait, the dark woman with helmet-styled hair who wore shiny blue polyester and sat with her big hands in her lap, poised with a half-smile. The rest of the family stood around her like petals of a flower. A hand on her shoulder belonged to the man in the portrait—stocky with a baby-smooth face, and cheerful-looking. The three boys were all about the same age, although one of them, with a faint mustache and sleepy eyes, could be just a little older. The girl was younger—four or five, Hannah would guess, by her tiny front teeth—in a lemon-yellow dress and little bows at the ends of her braids. Hannah leaned in and squinted but couldn’t make out which one was Charles Lee.
“Charles wasn’t born yet,” Alice said. “Not for a year or so. The other boys were close in age. Derrick and Carl are still with us, but we don’t hear from them. It’s almost like Charles is an only child. Except for his sister, Rhea. She took care of him most of the time.” Hannah nodded, taking it all in. She studied the man and the woman in blue more closely. “That’s Robert Lee; he died not long after. That portrait is the last photo they have of him. Stabbed by a junkie who wanted cash. Terrible.” Alice shook her head. “Charles never knew either Robert or his own father, Frank, who came along … well, maybe he was already around by this time.” Both Alice and Hannah stood very still for a moment. “He left suddenly. Frank. Just after Charles was born. Some men come around when the baby shows up—like it dawns on them, that they’re a father. But Frank ran; he was one that ran and never showed his face again.” Alice’s voice had become light and thin. The parlor windows faced west, and the sun had begun filling the room like a floodlight, like white noise.
“Now that’s Uncle Marvin,” Alice continued, in a hard voice now. She pointed to a gilded frame on the end table. “This was his house. He passed three years after Essie—Charles’s mother, that’s what they called her. Grandma Nona was with us until, gosh, almost five years ago now. I never knew Marvin, but knowing Nona was almost like knowing Marvin. He was her favorite. There was a much-younger brother, Charles’s Uncle Ernie, but he disappeared long ago, in his twenties, I think. They suppose he died, too. Drugs, alcohol, what have you.”
Hannah’s brow crinkled, she was figuring something in her mind. “So the mother lived longer than the children?”
Alice nodded, oddly animated, like a teacher being asked the question she’d hoped for. “It’s something, isn’t it. Unimaginable, really. Although, having known Nona, it’s almost hard to imagine it any other way. She was something else.” Alice enjoyed telling these family stories, despite their tragic content. And Hannah liked hearing them.
Hannah turned back to the small photo on the wall. “Where was this?”
Alice stepped over the threshold into the center of the room. “That was in Seoul. We’d just gotten engaged.” She took another step forward, toward Hannah and the wall, squinting. Now she was like a tourist in a museum gallery, merely curious. And Hannah felt awkward, like an untrained docent, lacking the information she is expected to impart.
Alice laughed. “That uniform. It’s strange: it’s not the person wearing it who’s acting or pretending; it’s the uniform that has its own … personality. You never expect to be so impressed by it.” Hannah listened to Alice while staring at the photograph. From her angle she could see Alice’s reflection, from nose to neck; but not her own. Alice’s face was thinner now than in the photo—her bones more prominent, lips drawn, eyes buggier. Charles’s face had grown fuller. The
y both smiled wide, and their faces were joined at the ears. Hannah wondered if their arms were wrapped around each other; the photo showed them only just past their shoulders. Alice’s brassy blonde hair fell beyond the bottom edge of the frame. Charles wore his private’s cap.
“Sorry,” Alice said, snapping herself out of her reverie. “I’m sure you’ve heard it before, Beware of men in uniform. It’s not necessarily true. Well, not any more true than anything else you might judge.” Hannah leaned on her right leg, just slightly, and tilted her head to catch her own reflection in the frame. But the light was streaming into the room now; the glass was all brightness and glare.
“Well,” Alice said. She took a deep breath, as if about to turn and walk out of the room.
“What was it like in Korea?” Hannah hadn’t thought about her question; the words seemed to come from elsewhere.
Alice rested her hand on the back of a velvet wingback. “What was it like? Haven’t you been?”
Hannah shook her head. “Well, once. When my grandfather died. I don’t remember, though. I was too young.”
“I didn’t know that. And they’ve never taken you since?” Hannah shook her head. “That … I’m surprised to hear that. You seem very Korean to me.”
Hannah did not know what Alice meant by this, but she didn’t like the sound of it. “My brother says my parents wanted to stay, but they left to get away from their families. I guess they wished they could have kept Korea but not their families.” She did not really want to talk to Alice about Korea or her parents, but neither was she ready to leave the room and the photos.
“So you never knew your grandparents?” Hannah shook her head. “That’s too bad.” Alice said this flatly, but heat came on suddenly between Hannah’s eyes, a low but intense flame. Her shoulders tightened. What did Alice Lee know about it? Or about seeming very Korean?
They were real jerks, James had said about their father’s parents. They were really against Dad marrying Mom. Wrong side of the tracks or whatever. Dad was kind of a dark horse or something back then—wrote poetry, rebelled against the Japanese. I guess our grandparents were all about submitting to Japanese rule and following traditions: Mom said Dad used to get the shit beat out of him.
Something snapped inside Hannah, like a dry twig. “I don’t mind,” Hannah said. “It doesn’t mean anything, just to be related. My parents are very close, like best friends. For like thirty years. And their parents would have kept them from being together.” Strictly speaking, all this was true. But Hannah’s defense of her parents was not. More than defending their way of living, she was telling Alice Lee to mind her own business.
As Hannah spoke, the expression on Alice’s face shifted, from mild dismay to a weary smile.
“Well, and then you wouldn’t be here, would you?” Alice’s tone had become maternal. “I suppose I can see why you wouldn’t want to meet the people who tried to prevent your own existence! But … meeting you could very well be the thing to change their minds. It happens like that sometimes.”
“They’re both dead now,” Hannah said. Hannah had no idea if her grandmother was also dead; but anyway, it felt true.
Alice sighed. She was looking at Hannah and thinking of something, though evidently not Hannah’s supposedly dead grandparents. The light shifted and cast an Alice Lee-shaped shadow over the divan. “Well … I shouldn’t speak disrespectfully of the dead, but …” She looked again toward the wall of photos. “Sometimes it’s for the best. Moving on. The generations. Families can be the most difficult, the least accepting. Your parents … I don’t know what their conflict was. For us, it was … obviously, it was being a mixed marriage. But we’ve managed to … Well in Korea it was even worse. There was no way we could stay there. I might have, on my own. But Charles …” Alice wasn’t really talking to Hannah anymore; she’d gone somewhere in her mind, her memory. Then, abruptly, she was back, in the parlor, with Hannah and the photos. “It was complicated, but also not really. You see how all races are suspicious of other races …”
“What are you two doing in there?” Benny came stomping down the hall, halting at the threshold between entry and parlor. On this one thing, he’d been well trained.
Alice pepped up. Hannah felt the room tip, like a ship on a wave, toward Benny, and mild nausea threatened to rise to her throat. She squeezed her toes in her sandals, pressed her palms into the sides of her thighs.
“We’re just talking, sweetie.” Alice stepped toward Benny, across the threshold, and wrapped her arms around him from behind, cradling his chin in the crook of her elbow. She kissed his crown, her lips touching the valleys of scalp between braids, and then rested her cheek there.
Benny crossed his eyes and wriggled away. “Come on. We have to show her my bath things.”
“Yes, darling. Let’s take Hannah upstairs.”
8.
At 4:30, Hannah fed Veda and Benny their snack. Benny pushed his apple slices to the side and scooped up peanut butter with his finger.
“You have to eat your apples, Benny,” Veda said. She used the plastic knife Hannah had put out and spread her own mound of peanut butter over the green-skinned slices in frosting-like swirls. “You want me to spread it for you?”
“No.” Benny opened his mouth wide, showing Veda his goo-smeared teeth and tongue.
Veda sighed, said nothing, and turned away. It was a very grown-up gesture. Hannah imagined she’d learned it from any number of adults, and yet it also seemed natural, very much her own.
“That’s a pretty hairstyle on you,” Hannah said. Veda’s front hair was swept across her forehead, like the velvet drapery across a French window, and pinned to the side with a sparkly purple barrette.
“Amy did it. Amy wants to be a movie-star stylist when she grows up.”
“Stylist?” Hannah didn’t know what that was.
“That’s only if she can’t be an actress, which is her first choice.”
“I wanna be a barber!” Benny said, kneeling up on his chair and hovering over them.
“Sit down, Benny.” Hannah poked an apple slice into his open mouth. He’d eat anything if it was fed to him.
“Fat Mike! Fat Mike!”
“That’s the barber,” Veda said drily. “Benny had an experience.”
Hannah had gathered that there had been some issue with Benny’s braids, though she didn’t know exactly what. No doubt Alice Lee did not approve: it was a gangster style. But what, Hannah wondered, did his father think? “What kind of ‘experience’?”
Veda shrugged. It was her mother’s word.
“What’s your first choice, Veda? For what you want to be when you grow up?”
Veda sipped her milk, then dabbed at her white mustache with a napkin. “Supreme Court Justice,” she said, reaching for her last apple slice. Then, before popping it into her mouth, “Or, maybe beauty queen.”
Hannah cleared the children’s dishes. It was 5:15. Suddenly, she felt rushed, and determined. To do something, change something. Her moods had been shifting and heaving like this lately. The bright reflected light from the parlor earlier had filled her head like a sharp pain. Now a different photo (one she’d come across in a shoebox in her mother’s closet when she went looking for bobby pins) filled that white space in her mind: Soon-mi on a summer day many years ago, wearing a minidress, sleeveless with big brown sunflowers, and white go-go boots; her back straight, skin smooth and very pale, hair in a bouffant bob; the Washington Monument in the background and cherry blossoms cascading all around.
Hannah started to think that Alice Lee definitely did not know anything about being Korean. Somehow Hannah knew that it was simply impossible for Alice to know, and Hannah didn’t like this nagging feeling of misunderstanding. The nagging spawned and then fed a blooming urgency that was now upon her.
“You guys okay for a few minutes? I need to use the bathroom upstairs.”
“Why can’t you use the downstairs one?” Benny asked.
“It’s a gir
l thing. I’ll just be a few minutes. Veda, you’re in charge.”
The small scissors had been in Hannah’s mind ever since Alice had shown her the upstairs bathroom. Hannah didn’t know what they used them for, or why they were in the toothbrush cup, but they looked just like the scissors Ms. Kwak at the Supercuts used. Ms. Kwak had been cutting Hannah’s hair ever since she could remember, and it had been the same style—straight, shoulder-length—since forever. Except for last summer when she tried the perm: it had taken a full year, but finally it had grown out.
Hannah stood in front of the mirror, which covered half the wall over double sinks, and looked at herself. Her new glasses really were nice, she thought. She was wearing a plain white tank top and a faded denim skirt. Her posture was getting better (after years of her mother telling her to sit up straight), her skin was darkening to an olive-bronze from all that time at the pool. Her arms and shoulders were shapely. She had started wearing lip gloss (only away from home), which she’d bought at Strawberry’s the last time she and Teresa went to the mall; a reddish color that looked purpler on her lips than on the label. Hannah grinned like a cat, then closed her mouth again: her front teeth were small and square and the one that was slightly turned made her top lip look fuller, and she didn’t think that was a bad thing. She took her glasses off, pulled the rubber band out of her hair, and reached for the scissors.
She worked slowly at first, then hastily as she grew impatient. The scissors were very sharp and quick. Ten minutes later, she was almost done and anticipating a feeling of satisfaction, when a thundering against the door startled her. “What are you doing in there?” Hannah had been concentrating and hadn’t heard Benny’s footsteps on the stairs. The banging was like a punch to her elbow, and her hand slipped; the tip of the scissors nicked her above the eye, her new bangs now slanted upward, noticeably, right in the middle. There was blood on the scissors tip. Luckily the cut was tiny; it blended into a freckle just below Hannah’s eyebrow.
