by Sonia Patel
The same old tired hurt whips me, hard.
Boisterous laughter, faraway.
The muffled mix of snickering and rowdy mirth becomes a little louder, a little clearer. It slows to intermittent chuckles.
Younger Uncle says something about a noraebang…
Older Uncle hands Mom a glass of water. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Boss?”
“I’m still your family. I’ll help you and Kyung-seok…”
An elbow nudge to my arm. “Boss?” Braid asks.
I blink and look around. “Yes?”
“Let’s go check out the noraebang?” Braid suggests.
I turn to Younger Uncle. He nods and says, “You boys go ahead. Come to my house when you’re done.”
But I don’t want to go. I need answers. Isn’t that why I’m here? I look at Braid. “Go for it. I’m gonna stay and hang with Younger Uncle.”
Braid looks at Strike and Patch. They shrug. Braid looks back at me. “Are you sure we can’t convince you?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” I say. My boys won’t go unless I’m really ok with it. I love them for that. So loyal. And it’s not just about this noraebang. They dropped everything to be here with me on this island, didn’t they?
“A little singing always makes everything better,” Braid coaxes.
I look at the painting and nod. I turn to Braid. “Go on. Have fun. I’ll be here with Younger Uncle.”
“Okay, boss,” he says. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Take your time,” I say crushing my cig on the bottom of my shoe.
My boys dash faster than Seoul’s average internet connection speed, which happens to be the fastest in the world.
Now it’s Younger Uncle and me. Face-to-face. Family.
Family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
My masterpiece is a disaster. Mom split. Dad hits. Is Younger Uncle legit?
Younger Uncle’s eyes are on me, soft and accepting.
I rack my brain for any memory of him and me. Nothing at the moment.
“You look exactly like your dad,” he says.
“So do you,” I say, then sneer. “Aren’t you tired of people saying that? I am. I mean I used to think that was so cool, but now—” I cut myself off. Drop my eyes.
“But now—what?”
I touch my right eye. The outer skin is still yellow-tinged, but it isn’t sore at all anymore.
Younger Uncle cocks his head to the side, inspecting my healing eye. “I wasn’t going to bring it up, but who gave you the shiner? What, ten to fourteen days ago or so?”
I raise an eyebrow. Twelve days ago. Damn.
I pull out my Dunhill tin. I don’t bother offering him a cig. He already told me he quit. I light up and take a soothing drag. I exhale a cloud of relief. Then I say, “My dad’s handiwork. A memento of life under his grand tutelage. And though I hated him for it, right now I’m glad he did it. It’s the reason I’m here. It’s the reason I found you.”
Younger Uncle smiles, then frowns. His right upper lip and nostril rise in disgust. “Your dad. Figures,” he says. “He never stopped punching things,” he mumbles, staring at the table.
“What do you mean, he never stopped punching things?”
He lifts his head. “When we were kids, the three of us would be off in some corner of this island, running amok. Dae-sung would always find some poor innocent creature to beat and sometimes kill. One time, Nam-il and I found him hunched over a dead cat, his hand bloody. He had this sinister smile. I started sobbing, but then he punched me in the gut. Nam-il punched him back.” He pauses to take a swig of water. “Nam-il would never give him more than what he gave us. So that day it was a punch in the gut for a punch in the gut. But we didn’t know how to give an eye for an eye for a dead cat.”
I give a slow stroke to my sideburn. So Dad’s always been a cold-blooded killer. “You know he tortures and kills anyone he considers to be his TSP enemy.”
Younger Uncle nods. “It’s true. That’s one of the reasons I left the gang. Extortion, selling drugs I can sort of live with, but needless killing…” He shakes his head. “That’s where I drew a line.” He lifts his shirt. His chest is a blank canvas of taut skin over toned muscles with the exception of a few raised pink scars.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I got all the tats on my chest and back removed when I quit TSP. No three stars on this body.” He lets go of his shirt, and it comes down like a stage curtain.
But his show isn’t over yet. He pushes up his sleeves. His dragon and tiger posture. “I kept these beasts so I’ll never forget how brutal TSP was. Is. And so I’ll never forget the things I’ve done. The things I regret.”
“But you left the gang. You’re not brutal anymore. Seems to me like you could get rid of those if you wanted.”
“I thought about that,” he whispers, then sad-smiles. “The thing is, I can’t take back the bad things I’ve done. And there were times I had a chance to stop your dad from killing people. I didn’t.” He strokes his dragon. Then his tiger. “I keep these as penance, though I know it’s not enough…”
I get it. “Were there other reasons you left?” I ask.
He looks at me, pulls his sleeves down. “I’ll tell you. But first, you tell me something.” He points to my right eye. “How is your shiner the reason you’re here?”
“Dad punched me. So I punched the wall in his den. Actually I threw something, and it made a hole in the drywall and this”—I reach into my pocket, bring out the envelope—“this fell to the floor.” I put the envelope on the table.
Younger Uncle picks it up, examines it.
“I had so many unanswered questions. I convinced myself that maybe this island had the answers.” I take a draw, exhale a smoke stream. “So I told my boys everything, and here we are.”
“Glad you’re here,” Younger Uncle says.
I reach inside my dress shirt and pull out the TSP medallion. “I found this in Dad’s den too. It’s Older Uncle’s, I think.” I unclasp the chain, hold the heavy necklace up. The medallion swings like a hypnosis pendant.
Younger Uncle shakes his head. “No, that’s mine.”
“How do you know?”
He points to the medallion. “One of the diamonds is missing.”
I check. Sure enough there’s a little empty dip on the right side.
“I sent it back to your dad after I moved here,” he says. He fans himself with the envelope. “And I sent him this too.”
“What was inside?” I ask.
“I wrote to ask how you were doing. He never wrote back. And actually, I wrote many times to ask about you. I never got a response.”
“Oh.” I slow stroke my sideburn, looking at the necklace. “Well, I’m guessing you don’t want this, right?”
Younger Uncle’s eyes narrow as he nods. “No star tats. No star medallion. It’s all bullshit.”
I shove the chain and medallion into my jacket pocket. “Ok, your turn,” I say. “What are the other reasons you left the gang? Dad said he banished you.”
He shakes his head. “No. He didn’t exactly banish me. It was my choice to leave.” His gloomy eyes drop down and he winces.
“Younger Uncle?”
He rubs his eyes, then tries to smile.
“What is it?”
He looks at me with a fixed expression. “I had to leave. See, I was in love with your mother.”
My rock face turns into a fish face: gape-mouthed. A first for me.
28.
Mom’s last film opened with her in a dingy, dark restaurant, heartbroken and immobile under a wide-brimmed hat. Smoke spiraled from her cigarette. That’s Younger Uncle and me now. He’s resting his forehead on his palm, like he’s overcome with exhaustion, and I’m silently counting every tiny scratch on the table, a rivulet of smoke rising from the Dunhill dangling between my fingers.
It’s quiet in the restaurant except for the chop chop chop of vegetables in the kitchen. When it
feels right to stop counting, I look up. Soft white light spills in from the many-paned window, it narrows into slivers that cut across our table top. Outside, dark green leaves brush the thin glass, whisking away leftover raindrops. So many leaves within the splintered frame…
Before I know it I’m committed to counting.
But Younger Uncle’s hard cough ends that obligation.
I put out my cig and look at him. “Are you ok?”
He nods, even though his face is red and scrunched up and his eyes are watery. He’s about to say something, but then he coughs again, takes a sip of water. “All those years smoking,” he says before coughing one more time. He guzzles the rest of the water, sets the empty glass down. A second later he shoves it clear across the table.
I catch it just as it goes over the edge.
Younger Uncle looks away, his jaw clenched. Squiggly veins pop out of his temple.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I—” he starts but cuts himself off. He takes a deep breath, exhales, and tries again. “I was in love with your mom, but she cared about me like a brother. Nothing more. She was very loyal to your dad. I have to admit I tried a couple of times, but she always refused my advances.” He gazes out the window, stroking his upper lip to his chin. In a soft voice he says, “She loved your dad. She was always faithful. But your dad, he did things to her…” He presses his lips together, and his shoulders bow.
“What things?” I ask. I quick make myself imagine her on our balcony with a serene smile, rain bathing her city and opera caressing her soul… because I don’t want to know what things.
He shakes his head a little, reaching for his empty glass. He twirls it a few times, then drags his hand back towards his body, slow, like a turtle drawing its head into its shell. He pounds his fist on the table.
I jump a little.
His eyelids are stretched apart as far as they’ll go. Tiny ripe, red veins mottle the whites of his eyes. “It made me so mad when he beat her,” he growls. “I couldn’t take it. Nam-il and I tried to intervene, but your dad wouldn’t have it.” His face starts glowing like embers. Soon it’s as red as the burning tip of my last cig. “‘Stay away or I’ll kill her,’ he said, ‘and then you. And what will happen to poor Rocky?’ That was the first and only time in my life I wanted to go beyond an eye for an eye. I wanted to kill him. But then I’d be just like him.” He massages his temples. His voice is brittle when he says, “I didn’t want anything to happen to you or your mother.”
An ocean of memories drowns me.
She’s crying, holding her cheek.
She’s sleeping at noon.
She’s crouched in the corner. Stringy hair. Sweaty. Red eyes. Picking, picking, picking. A worn-out baggie of crystals. A pipe…
My fingers twitch. I draw my blade and throw it.
Younger Uncle turns and gapes for a second at the quivering knife sticking out of the wood panel behind him. He faces me again and says, “An expert, I see.”
But I’m not thinking about my knife. “Did you know she got into meth?” I hold my breath.
“Yes.”
“Why!? Why would she…”
Younger Uncle blows out slowly. “It’s complicated,” he says.
“No!” I blurt. “What’s complicated about that? She was a junkie! She picked drugs over me!”
Younger Uncle reaches over and lays his hand on the sleeve of my jacket. “No,” he says. “She wasn’t. She didn’t. She did what she had to do to take care of you and—”
I don’t let him finish. “That’s bullshit! I want her to say it to my face. Where is she?”
“She’s…she’s…”
“Where?!”
He squeezes my arm but doesn’t say anything.
“Come on!”
“Rocky, listen. Calm down. I—”
“Calm down?” I kick the table. “How can I—”
“I know. But please try,” he whispers. “It’s hard for me to talk about this, and your being upset doesn’t help.”
I blow out my cheeks, then hunch over. “I’m sorry.”
He lifts his hand and drapes it on my shoulder. “Your mother…she…she wanted to take you with her.”
“Take me with her?” I ask. “Where? When?” I grab a cig, light up, and start smoking the shit out of it.
Younger Uncle sweeps his hand over his face. “Everything happened so fast.” He balances his temples on a tripod of fingers and thumbs. “It was bad. Really bad, Rocky. It started way before that night your dad took her to the Han, but that’s where it sort of ended,” he says.
It sort of ended at the Han? I always end up at the Han.
He spreads his palms on the table and makes small circles. “They got into a fight, and he got physical which wasn’t new.” His fingers curl in. “But that night at the Han, he thought he’d killed her.”
He thought he’d killed her.
Time stops. I’m in a black hole, and it’s completely silent.
A voice. Far, far away. “Rocky?”
I hear myself ask, “Wait, he killed her?”
Younger Uncle shakes his head in slow motion, his lips move in slow motion.
I read them.
He thought he’d killed her.
I’m quaking like an earthquake inside, but my body is still. He thought he’d killed her. I touch my ears. Younger Uncle’s voice comes scraping and grating back, fingernails on a chalkboard.
“But she wasn’t dead. She called me…” He taps his knuckles on his lips.
“And then?”
“She wanted to go back to the penthouse right away to get you and leave for good. You were only six at the time. But I told her to stay put.” A soft breath escapes from between his lips. “I hated myself for advising her to do that, but if your father found out she was still alive, he would kill her for sure.”
My brows bump together, my vision is blurry. “Mom wanted to get me, and you told her not to?”
“Oh, Rocky. Your dad would’ve killed her. And maybe even you. That’s how vengeful he was. Is.”
“She-she didn’t try again? She didn’t try to get me another time?”
“Your mom and I schemed all the time. So many different plans. We tried several times. But your dad had his men on you. Even at school.”
Black suits, red pocket squares. In-su and Chul-moo…
“Nothing was working. There was only one option—wait until you were an adult. Until you didn’t need your dad’s permission to do things. Until you could leave the penthouse for university. He wouldn’t stop you from doing that…”
I can’t hear him anymore, too many tears.
Younger Uncle holds out his handkerchief.
I shake my head, sucking in my snot. I force myself to stop crying. “I’m ok,” I say.
“Your mother loves you more than anything,” Younger Uncle says.
Mom loves me more than anything.
My tears return, but slow this time.
I count the fresh ones that end up on my lips.
“She misses you,” he says. He puts his hands together in prayer and presses his lips onto the tips of his index fingers.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“She tells me when we talk on the phone.”
“What else does she say?”
“She dies a little each day that passes without you. But she will pay that price to keep you safe.” Then his eyes and his words implore. “Please understand the seriousness of the situation, Rocky, your dad’s brutality has no limits. Your mother had absolutely no choice but to stay away in order to take care of you.”
I scrub my face with both hands. No more tears. “Where is she?”
“In Los Angeles. I helped her get out of the country within twentyfour hours of her supposed death. That was the only way.”
“Is she ok?”
“Yes.”
My eyes well up again. I blink hard. No more tears.
Younger Uncle half smiles. “You kno
w, she’s kept an eye on you—from a safe distance. Far enough to not put either of you in jeopardy. She’s flown to Seoul a couple of times a year, every year, since she left.”
My face contorts.
“I don’t know if you’re aware that she’s a pretty good photographer. She bought a fancy camera and in different disguises—something she learned in the movies, right?—she’s taken lots of photos of you.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Photos of me?”
He nods. “At school. Near the penthouse. At the Han.”
My brain starts to close up shop. But it has a grand opening with what Younger Uncle says next.
“She’s waiting to show you the album.”
29.
The Willow Tree Spa sits high on a hill overlooking Seoul. It’s the most expensive and luxurious day spa in all of South Korea: a playground for the rich and famous from here, there, and everywhere. In my dad’s case, his playground for the rich and infamous every Sunday afternoon. I can’t believe I thought he kept going because he wanted to keep up the weekly tradition he had with Mom, cherish their good times as a couple, not bask in the selfishness of still being able to go despite ‘murdering’ her.
Younger Uncle and I drive up the winding road and park near the bottom of some wide stone steps. We come to the entrance—a narrow passageway between two rows of willows, their sweeping branches forming an extended canopy. We breathe in the quiet.
I slide my hands in my pockets. One hugs mom’s handkerchief. I trace the stitched willow.
I picture my dad steaming or soaking within these elegant walls. He’ll have no excuse to avoid me here. And hopefully he’ll be too relaxed to greet me with a fist in the face. Maybe not. Because I get it now—there’s always a calm before a storm for him. His calm before his storm.
He thought he’d killed her.
I’m calm outside, but my own storm brews inside. Part of me wants to fight, part of me wants to flee.
I have to fight.
Besides, this isn’t bullying. This isn’t needless fighting. This is my only way out of a life of perpetual violence.
I have to fight one more time.
