by Vanessa Hua
At the taxi kiosk, they piled into a battered Peugeot station wagon. David sat in the front with the driver. “The Jacaranda Fairview,” he said. “Downtown.”
“Closed for renovations,” the driver said. “But I can take you to a better hotel, even cheaper. The Parklands. Very nice.”
“Fine, fine.” David’s head throbbed, his eyes sticky. He might have been more upset at the guide if Justus hadn’t already failed to meet the group at the airport. “Take us there.”
The Peugeot inched through traffic, crawling beside lime-green buses and trucks packed with goods and people, and whole families aboard puttering motorbikes. The air inside the station wagon was stifling.
“Can you turn on the air-conditioning?” Lily’s voice faint, sweat beading on her forehead.
“It’s broken,” the driver said. “You can roll down the windows.”
The stench of diesel fumes flooded in, along with the sound of coughing motors and futile honking. The dashboard held pictures of a small boy in a red bow tie, maybe five years old, and a baby girl, her hair knotted in pink ribbons. He wondered if the driver sent his wages to a distant village to feed his family, or if he was able to tuck these children in each night. A laminated portrait of the Virgin Mary in a blue mantle hung from the rearview mirror. Her peaceful expression, lowered eyes and beatific smile, calmed David. He exhaled, allowing himself to sink into his exhaustion.
“You’re Catholic?” David asked.
“My grandfather converted.”
They introduced each other. The driver’s name was Amos. David asked him if the children in the pictures were his.
“My sister’s. I have no time to have children right now. No time to find a wife.” Amos chuckled, the lilt to his words soothing.
David couldn’t tell how old Amos was. With their unwrinkled skin and bright eyes, many Africans and Asians shared an ageless quality. Amos squeezed the car behind a truck loaded with sheets of tin and concrete blocks. “You Korean?”
“We’re from America,” David said. “My parents are from Korea.”
“Lots of Koreans come here. Good people. I can take you to a Korean barbecue right now, if you want. Misono.”
“Maybe later. Thanks for the offer.” After the shakedown at the airport, David was relieved to find someone friendly in this country.
Then he noticed they were passing the Jacaranda Fairview, the hotel where their guide had made reservations. A bellman in a tan uniform stood in front beside a pile of luggage. The hotel wasn’t closed for renovations. If anything, the Fairview needed them still, with its cracked cement walls, dirty windows, and namesake trees shedding wilted purple flowers.
“Stop!” David shouted.
“We’re almost to the Parklands,” Amos said.
“Stop the car. We just drove by the Fairview—it’s open.”
Being tricked by the driver, who was probably getting a kickback from the Parklands, was intolerable, a symbol of everything that had gone wrong so far. Soon the whole car was shouting. “Stop, stop, stop!”
Amos did a U-turn, buzzing through oncoming traffic, and screeched to a stop in front of the Fairview. They grabbed their luggage, while Amos glowered in the front seat. David threw the bills, scattering them on the driver’s lap and on the floorboard. No tip. That was what cheaters deserved. He stumbled over the broken asphalt, the smell of smoke and rotting garbage making him dizzy. Eunhee and Immanuel hung a few paces back, and David slowed to eavesdrop.
“I wasn’t down with that,” Eunhee said.
He glanced over his shoulder to see Immanuel give the driver a handful of dollar bills. David didn’t like being questioned. He strode into the lobby where Justus was reading a newspaper.
“Welcome!” Justus rose to his feet. He was dark as an espresso bean, with a diamond-shaped face, close-cropped curly hair, and slanted eyes.
“You were supposed to meet us at the airport.” David had to keep himself from grabbing Justus by the shoulders and shaking him.
“The driver wasn’t there?” Justus asked.
“No.”
“I’ll call him,” Justus said. “Something must have happened. He’s usually very reliable.”
“He’s not taking us to the village, is he? We can’t have someone like that, who would leave us stranded at the airport,” David said.
“Everything will be fine,” Justus said. “Let me help with your bags.”
They registered at the front desk. David had his own room, Gene and Immanuel were sharing a room, and the women were in another, all on the fourth floor.
“Enjoy your stay.” The clerk handed them keys on plastic fobs. “I put you in the renovated rooms.”
David halted. “What do you mean?”
“A pipe broke and flooded the rooms. We were closed for a week.”
Toting his bags, David took the punishing walk alone up the stairs, leaving everyone else to the elevator.
~~~
A decade ago, just before his conversion, he had been a history teacher and wrestling coach at a prep school in Providence. From across the country, his parents nagged him in weekly phone calls, insisting that he obtain his doctorate, although they knew that it was too late for David to become a rising star in academia. Those who won tenure at prestigious universities had to proceed directly to graduate school, publish papers in top journals, and present at conferences. But to his parents, attending graduate school was superior to David’s teaching position, even if at the end of the program he would have no better job prospects than what he currently held.
His parents were professors at a top-ranked science and engineering college in the foothills of the San Gabriels, in a leafy, prosperous enclave less than an hour’s drive from the largest Korean community outside of Seoul. However, the Professors Noh had no use for other Koreans, nor for Christ, despite their own Protestant upbringing.
Instead of studying for graduate exams and writing essays, David was lured by another calling: professional poker. He’d come across a televised tournament featuring players stoic and solid as totem poles. They never betrayed their doubts—never had doubts at all. Nobodies emerged to win by their wits. Why not him?
In pursuit of poker, David drove an hour to southern Connecticut, to the Foxwoods Casino, a sprawling labyrinth in the forest, on the weekends and eventually, every night. Surrounded by the elderly clientele—who were hooked to oxygen tanks and to slot machines—he never felt more alive, young and perfect. Powerful and possible.
At first he won. He felt blessed by a preternatural understanding, as if he could see through the cards, through everyone at the table. His losses were momentary and quickly reversed. He loved the crack and riffle of the shuffling deck. The click of the chips, heavy and hypnotic. An accretion of risk, luminous and great. One night, a crowd gathered, pointing at him and whispering, “Hot hands.” David knew better—he owed his success to his skills, not luck. When he returned home, he fanned the $100 bills and tossed them into the air, giddy with the scent of all who had lost to him. He made plans for Vegas.
Then he lost. His fingers became clumsy, thick as cigars. Always a minute behind what was happening, realizing too late the way the cards had fallen. When he won, it was by chance. By accident. He drained his savings and maxed out three credit cards, fell behind on his rent, called in sick at work. He wrote none of the college recommendations he’d promised his seniors, played documentaries from the History Channel® rather than teaching, and by the end of May, the school had fired him. His wallowing worsened in the summer. He rarely left his stuffy apartment, rarely left his bed, and lived on saltines, tuna straight from the can, and cheap whisky. His portable fan cranked at full blast in a numbing buzz. With sticky red plastic cups piled on every surface, his apartment resembled a carnival game: win a goldfish, if you can land a ping pong ball inside the rim.
After months of doubts, he woke early one morning with the overwhelming urge to pray. He knelt on his bed, wobbling and sinking into the mattress,
before he climbed onto the dusty hardwood floor. Was this how? He didn’t know how long he could hold himself up. Head bowed, he began. “How much longer? Tomorrow? Next month, next year? Why not now?” he had whispered, his eyes wet with unspilled tears.
A shaft of sunlight expanded, filling the room, and David felt light enough to levitate. He no longer had to worry: he was in the Lord’s hands. On his shelf, he found the Bible—from his college days, a reference book— and read it as if for the first time. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. In search of God and a community, he joined an immigrant Korean church, the Holy Redeemer in Boston, where he met Esther and to the continued disappointment of his parents, devoted his life to spreading the Good Word. Guiding others, he kept his own life under control.
He never confided in Esther about his gambling, telling her only that God had filled a void in his heart. He had his reasons. She would despise him, and he had to admit, keeping the secret allowed him to cherish certain memories, jewels he could admire in private rather than submit for public reckoning. God already knew.
~~~
That afternoon, the men headed to an open-air market, where Justus bargained for shovels, PVC pipe, and other supplies. He shielded them from the beggars and the trinket vendors, sending them away with a flick of his chin. Reggaeton thumped beneath the haggling of shoppers and the rustle of plastic bags. They passed a stand that sold nothing but used T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of imploded dot-coms.
This is where failure finds another life, David thought.
He bought his daughter a knit doll, a baby monkey with cream-colored paws that he waved at Gene’s video camera. She was daddy’s little girl, all rosy cheeks and sturdy legs, preferring him when she got into a scrape. He stroked the monkey’s head and imagined Naomi’s delighted laughter, her gap-toothed smile—and behind her, his wife. As a pastor’s kid, Esther helped legitimize him. She knew how to befriend women no one else wanted to talk to—the shy or prickly ones—and how to word the most difficult part of a sermon.
Five years ago, he and Esther had moved from Boston to Southern California, where he’d served as an assistant pastor at a Korean mega-church. Two years passed, and the Lord called on David to plant a new church in the Bay Area. He went from backyard barbecues to breakfast meetings to win over KA professionals who wanted to start a new church, galvanized them into joining a radical startup that would go public in a very big way. Calling himself a social entrepreneur, a change maker, a thought leader, he had positioned Bountiful Abundance as a revolutionary movement to transform not only their lives but the world around them. Let’s go after a God-sized dream!
After so many frugal meals, his evenings and weekends away from home attending to endless emergencies, their cheap cars, and cheap vacations, Bountiful Abundance had seemed a success worthy of their sacrifice.
Yesterday—or was it two or three days ago?—on the way to the airport, Esther had asked if he’d remembered to cancel the bills. Yes, David said, though he hadn’t, too preoccupied with last-minute preparations.
“I still don’t understand why we’re getting utility bills for our old church space. Water. Phone. Garbage,” she said. A sheaf of bills, stamped with their apartment as a forwarding address, had arrived that week.
He cursed himself for forgetting to cancel the utilities. More debt. A few times, he had waited on hold, but hung up before customer service came on the line. Urgent matters had interceded: Naomi wailed after a spill, or an e-mail or call arrived from someone in crisis.
“While you’re gone, I can sort through all the bills.” She pulled away from the toll plaza. The sky was boundless, and sunshine shimmered over the bay. “What’s your password for the church’s online bank account?”
“I told you, I took care of it.” David swiveled around and wiggled Naomi’s nose. She giggled and grasped his arm, and he licked his thumb and wiped off a streak of dried milk around her mouth.
Both sets of grandparents had wanted a firstborn son. Esther too. “A big brother, to look after his siblings,” she had said. But David had wanted a daughter, Esther reborn, whom he could watch grow up from the beginning. Naomi was a daredevil who flipped off the arm of the couch and bounced on the bed so high that her head almost hit the ceiling. Who ran off naked after her baths, as hard to catch as a greased pig, glistening with salve to treat the eczema she’d inherited from him.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the airport. You’ll get to see the planes,” David said. Take-off and landings mesmerized her.
“Why?” She nibbled gold-fish crackers from a plastic cup.
“Daddy’s trip.” Yesterday, she’d come into the bedroom and seen him packing. They looked at the map, and he showed her pictures of the village. Now he clicked a few tracks ahead on the CD, to a song in Swahili, from a world music compilation for kids. “I’m going to a place where they speak this language.”
Her cheeks and fingers were still chubby, and her hair fine, but her features were sharpening into the girl, into the woman she’d become. Someday, he’d bring her on a mission trip and raise her as his parents did not—to love others. He reminded her that they’d prayed for the children who weren’t as lucky as her. She nodded sleepily, and a goldfish slipped out of her hand. David blew her a kiss. “I love you, sweetie.”
When he turned around, Esther was clenching the steering wheel, her mouth a thin line. He stroked her face, but she did not reply.
“A pastor’s wife has more important duties,” he said. “Don’t worry about the bills.”
Esther had dropped him off at the curb—which stung because he thought that she and Naomi would wait with him in the departures terminal before the flight. He took out his satchel and his suitcase and set them on the ground. They had only a minute before the airport police would tell them to move. He opened the back door to kiss Naomi, strapped in and starting to cry. She smelled of baby powder and shampoo from the bath he had given her last night. Esther waited for him on the curb. They hugged, and in his grip he tried to make her understand what she meant to him, how difficult and terrible it was to leave her. He kissed the top of her head and rubbed his cheek against her silky hair.
“Do good,” Esther whispered. He watched their silver hatchback disappear around the bend.
The vision of Esther taking off with Naomi seemed ominous now, maybe prophetic. David blinked in the bright sunlight, trying to dismiss his doubts. Bountiful Abundance didn’t yet have a board, although some members had spoken of forming one. An exploratory meeting was scheduled the first week of January, after the missionaries returned. Although he dreaded opening the books, he was convinced a successful trip would ease the shock. “The church can pull together,” he’d say. “Look at this footage, look at the good we’re doing.”
As he turned toward the sound of a car backfiring, he noticed posters for prayer meetings. He sidestepped a murky puddle leaking from a restaurant. “There are many Christians here,” he said to Justus, and pointed at a rusty cross marking a shanty church.
“When did you accept Christ?” Immanuel asked.
Justus told them that he had been saved as a teenager, when missionaries visited his village, and an overseas church provided for his schooling before he moved to the capital. Their guide was proof of the good work missionaries could do here. David hoped to change a child’s life in the same way. He knew he shouldn’t try to predict how many villagers might come to Christ—he couldn’t divine God’s plan—but he ached for at least one on this mission.
At the hotel, they found Lily crying in her room, with a bump on her head and a bloody gouge on her knee. “I want to go home,” she sobbed.
They’d gone in search of a place for dinner, walked a couple of blocks, and opened the guidebook to check a map. A pair of men shoved Lily to the ground and took her backpack.
David had promised her parents that he’d protect her. Immanuel
went to his room and returned with antiseptic and bandages that he wrapped around her knee, while Gene held her hand. They discussed reporting the crime to the police, but Lily didn’t want to leave the hotel again.
“I’m so embarrassed.” She fingered a frayed tassel on the worn gold blanket. “I’m sorry to be such a baby.”
Together they prayed for her recovery and a successful mission.
That evening, from a pay phone in the lobby, David dialed Esther with a cheap calling card he had purchased at the market. He knew she wasn’t home, because she’d be taking Naomi to pre-school at this hour, morning in the Bay Area. He told her they had arrived safely and that he loved her. He rested his forehead against the faded velvet roses of the wallpaper. What did she know? He pictured Esther dropping off Naomi, going into his office and opening his filing cabinet. He never bothered to lock it. She would find the stacks of rental contracts and the credit-card bills he could not pay, spread the bills on the kitchen table and tally them up, writing down the grand total in her neat, round script. Esther would take Naomi and fly to her parents in Boston the next day.
Lord, please let this mission be a success. Only then would Esther understand his lies and withheld truths. She loved the prestige of being a pastor’s wife, the deference and attention. She had grown up in the church, the sparkling child of its feared and respected leaders. Take the church away and what would be left? Nothing but him.
~~~
Their plan was to depart the day after their arrival, heading west to Lake Alexandrina. They would stay overnight in Port Kemba before driving another four hours to the village. One day in the capital dragged into two, then four, as Justus told them about each new delay. The Land Cruiser broke down, and they needed to wait for a part. The driver wanted more money. David agreed to the demands, for what else could he do? They would have to cut the English lessons short and maybe build fewer water filters.
