by Chris Tharp
“Yes. Understand, but… “
“Do you have video? Surely you must have video. I demand to see the video.”
“No. You go now!”
The guards once more tried to force me out, but I was now empowered with righteousness. Even if I deserved to be ejected I knew for a fact that they were wrong about the chips. I grabbed my phone and switched from English to the best Korean I could muster:
“Stop! I’m calling the police!”
With that, they took their hands off me, stood, and watched me make good on my threat.
Ten minutes later I was in a back office with a casino manager, along with several security people and two uniformed police officers–both of whom appeared to be annoyed to have to deal with this angry drunk foreigner. The manager put in the video. They all spoke rapidly to each other; I understood almost nothing. At one point the manager stopped the video, rewound it, and played it again. He gestured to the screen and pointed. Everyone else in the group nodded their heads.
“Look,” he said to me. He rewound and replayed: blurry images of hands putting in some chips. “You put in your chips.”
“What?”
“The video shows you bet all your chips.”
“Play it again.”
He did. I saw a set of hands–said to be mine–make a bet… but I had made many bets. I did not see anyone pushing in a large stack of chips.
“I don’t see anything.”
He turned off the monitor and waved to the security guards, who grabbed me and tried to strong-arm me from the office. I resisted with everything I had.
“YOU LYING FUCKERS! YOU’RE STEALING MY CHIPS! I NEVER GAMBLED THEM! NEVER! RACISTS! THIEVES!”
I managed to loosen a hand, make a fist, and swing at the first black suit in reach. I solidly connected on his chin. A couple more guys grabbed my legs, and I was finally carried out of the main entrance, down the escalator, and thrown into the back of a cop car.
* * * *
After a few hours in the Korean version of a drunk tank, I was led to a desk by a hulking cop with vicious acne scars gouged into his cheeks. He hauled me by the scruff of my neck and slammed me into the chair, playing the ogreish role of bad cop with dead-on precision. There I was fingerprinted and booked. I made a phone call to Angry Steve, and let him know what was going on.
“There’s no way the casino stole your chips,” he told me. “The house already has an overwhelming edge. They don’t need to steal.”
After hanging up with me, Steve immediately called Da-jin, who then rang me. I was now double-caught.
The police wanted me to give a statement, but I refused. I kept telling them that I was sorry for the outburst; that my beef was with the casino and not them. The officer in charge just shrugged and shook his head. He let me know that the casino was more than willing to forget the whole incident–that charges would not be filed–as long as I agreed to make a statement. I finally gave in, and, after about thirty minutes of questions and answers, I was released, met by a stone-faced Da-jin, who had come to pick me up
“You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Come, we must eat tofu. This is a Korea tradition for those who are released from the jail.”
* * * *
I quietly slurped from a bowl of sundubu jjigae while Da-jin shook her head and castigated me for my stupidity: “You are such a babo. You will be forty soon and you act like child. I can’t believe how stupid you are.”
With my head down, I nodded in agreement, watching the strands of white tofu float in the reddish broth. Eating tofu, known as dubu, is indeed a get-out-of-jail custom. I recall the scene in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, where the protagonist, Geum-ja, takes a bite from a huge hunk of tofu offered when walking out of the prison gate. My release is less auspicious, and I will have to settle for the loose bits boiled into the jjigae, along with the lecture from an exasperated girlfriend.
By the end of lunch, I realized I was not getting dumped. She was sticking with me, at least for the time being. After all, we were set to fly off to Bangkok the next night, a trip that I was financing on my own. There were errands to run, piles of currency to convert. The Korean won isn’t sought-after; it’s hard to get a good rate outside of the country. It’s not something you want to be stuck with anywhere but Korea, so it’s always a good idea to exchange it before you leave. Soon we were off to Korea Exchange Bank. It was early Friday afternoon and the sidewalks were abuzz with people taking care of business before the weekend.
On the way to the bank, I realized that my Alien Registration Card was missing. This is an important ID that all foreigners working in Korea must carry. While I’d have been able to get out of the country without it, I might not have been let back in.
“Shit. It must be back at the police station. Listen, Da-jin… you go to the bank and I’ll go back for my card. I’ll call you when I find it.”
I did an about-face and headed pell-mell back to the cop shop. I was loath to show my face around there one more time, but I needed the card. After a sad inquiry back up to the floor that held me, I was informed that the card was nowhere to be found. The cop at the security door just shook his head and made an X with his arms. I sighed, sauntered back down to the sidewalk, put my hands in my pockets, and walked back to meet Da-jin at the bank. It was then that I felt something strange in the depths of my right pocket: not something, but somethings, several objects, hard and round, made of plastic. I drew them out and opened up my palm, both amazed and humiliated by the sight of three 100,000-won casino chips. They were there, on me, in my pocket, the whole time. As I picked up the phone to call Da-jin, a stinging blanket of shame enveloped my face and worked its way down until even my toes were burning. I had got what I wanted: I lashed out at the world, exorcised my pain, my anger, and my self-pity, and, in the end, became the punch line to my own joke.
* * * *
Da-jin led me back into the casino later that afternoon, where I slunk behind her, like a dog forced to revisit to the spot where it had peed on the carpet. The manager was courteous and professional, cashing in my chips (despite my insistence that they be given to the employee I socked in the jaw), and letting me know, through Da-jin, that I was no longer welcome in the establishment. Ever. This I understood clearly, despite my shaky handle on the Korean language. Inflection and tone are often more effective communicators than actual words; memory of deeds works even better. I bowed several times, uttered “I’m sorry” in the most honorific Korean I could muster, and walked out of the Diamond World Casino forever.
* * * *
Two months later I received a notice–posted on the door by the mailman–requiring me to pick up a certified letter at the Busan City Courthouse mailroom, which of course caused me some concern. These notices are not usually harbingers of good news: according to Da-jin, they most often indicate that you are in some kind of trouble. And despite it being reasonably late at night, I jumped on my motorbike and zipped down to the mailroom. I gave the minder (yet another uniformed, smoking ajosshi) my slip and he returned with the letter, which I opened at once. After poring over it a couple of times, I managed to get the gist: I was being sued. The man I punched during the casino catastrophe was pressing me for “blood money”–a common practice in Korea after any kind of physical altercation. He was wronged, so he petitioned the court that I pay up, to the grand sum of three hundred thousand won… exactly the amount I took home from the table that night.
I went down to the court cashier and settled up the next afternoon, no questions asked.
CHAPTER 17: MOM
My first memory is of my mother. I was three and half years old, with my family at a motel in Longview, Washington. It was summertime and my dad was working an out-of-town job, so he brought us all along. It was hot and bright and the four of us kids played in and around the pool attached to the Motel 6–all rough concrete and cheap plastic sunbathing chairs. My dad was out paving roads and my mom wa
s working at what she did best: being Mom. She was looking after us as we splashed and swam in the heavily chlorinated water. She wore shorts and a blouse and big plastic white-framed sunglasses. A cigarette dangled out of her right hand; she clutched a vodka and orange juice in her left.
My oldest brother, Mark, grabbed me and picked me up. Despite my squirming, he walked me to the edge of the pool. I couldn’t swim and recognized that the water went well over my head. Well aware that the pool was a turquoise, little-boy-swallowing abyss, I made my horror known through high-pitched shrieks. This only encouraged Mark, who laughed and proceeded to swing me over the ledge, threatening to toss me into the deep end.
“One!” (swing) “Two!” (swing) “Three!” (swing)
After the count of three, I had expected to swing back to safety, but the unthinkable occurred: Mark’s grip on me was looser than he had anticipated and I slipped from his arms, falling straight into the nine-foot pool of water below: SPLASH!
Once underwater, my fear abated. I remember slowly sinking in the warmth of the heated pool. I opened my eyes and took in the sheets of sunlight slicing through the surface. I loved the feeling of floating; that pesky force of gravity was now largely done away with. I was suspended in a place of near-silence. The amniotic feel of the water soothed me, reawakening the sensation of floating in the womb, which, at that point in my life, was a not too-distant experience.
My mom went into action, jumping straight into the water to come to my aid–clothes, sunglasses, cocktail, and cigarette be damned. Her split-second heroism–as well as the fact that she brought all she held into the pool with her–became family lore, repeated over big, boisterous dinners countless times through the years to come. Mom was a terrific swimmer–she loved the water and was at home in it–and within seconds she had me back up on the surface, where I took a deep breath of fresh air and proceeded to wail, realizing then that I had been in real danger, if only for a few seconds, and thankful that my mother was there to rescue me.
* * * *
I had known that Mom was really sick for about a year before even coming to Korea. Mom hadn’t been well for a very long time–like my dad, she had been in and out of the hospital–but I didn’t know how bad it was until she told me. I was visiting my parents in Olympia. It was dawn, and I had stayed up all night at a friend’s place, drinking. I made it back to their mobile home and slipped in through the sliding glass door, hoping not to alert her two terrier mixes that endlessly yapped every time I sneezed, let alone barged into the place smelling of a night on the piss. But my mother was already up, sitting at the table in her pink bathrobe. Her grey hair was disheveled and the purple streaks under her eyes spoke of a night without sleep. A milky coffee sat in front of her and she drew from her ever-present Benson and Hedges cigarette.
“Late night?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down with her and joined her for a coffee. I felt ashamed that here I was, a grown man, slinking in at dawn after a night of partying with my friends. She seemed unconcerned, though. My mother was no prude and got more tolerant as the years went on. Besides, she had other things on her mind–namely, her own health. As I sipped the coffee and looked at my mother, who was in her early sixties but looked older, we talked. My mom and I talked easily and for long periods of time. Unlike the stilted and forced exchanges that passed for conversations with my dad, talking with Mom never required any effort. She was a terrific listener, only this morning it was my turn.
“I’m not well, Chris. This neuropathy is just getting worse. My feet and legs hurt all of the time. I’m tired. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do. It’s as if my body has had enough. I’ve had four children, two miscarriages, and a hysterectomy that I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from. I’m sick half the time and now have to deal with this thing in my legs. I don’t know, Chris. I just feel terrible all of the time. I’m in constant pain.”
“You could quit smoking,” I said, as she lit up another one. “Surely that would help.”
My mother had been a smoker all her life. She started in the Catholic parochial high school she attended, in Tacoma, where she would sneak smokes in the bathroom with her friends. She often told stories of evading the nuns and priests who taught there, in order to get a puff in. Mom smoked all the time, wherever she could. She was a committed smoker, a smoker with an almost fanatical dedication to the vice. She disdained people who complained about cigarettes and waved off the health risks with the stock quip, “My grandmother chain smoked Winstons and lived to be 87 years old.” This claim was indeed true, but as my mother’s health began to deteriorate–most of it breathing-related–the old line about my chain-smoking great-grandma’s legendary longevity ceased to impress.
When I was a kid, she had no qualms about sending me to the store to buy smokes for her. In those days you just needed to supply your child with a note requesting the sale, and the local clerk (who knew our family) would gladly ring me up. Later in life, when I began to periodically light up myself, she welcomed the company, as if I had become a co-conspirator. She would have been happy if the whole world smoked, because that way no one could judge her for it.
* * * *
Like she had been for all of my life, Mom was my lifeline once I got to Korea. While I certainly wasn’t homesick for most of the first year I spent on the peninsula, talking to my mother was always a thrill. I’d call my parents every two weeks or so, eager to regale them with tales of their youngest son’s adventures in the exotic East. And even if my surroundings weren’t as exotic as I would have liked, I could certainly make them sound that way. Mom was always a willing audience for my ramblings. She had been one of the most supportive people in my decision to come over to Korea and was probably the most supportive listener. During these talks I’d usually have a brief chat with my dad, but despite my deep affection for him, like many American fathers and sons, we never spoke easily. Dad would usually affect mirth and respond to everything I said with a certain enthusiasm (That’s great, or Sounds like a winner!), but there was always a distance between us. I suspect me being the youngest played a part, but my father was at the tail end of a generation of men who could never relate fully to their sons. The touchy-feely Sixties and Seventies helped to do away with such dynamics–or lack thereof–but my parents were really products of the Fifties, with a dash of Sixties tolerance thrown in for good measure.
Dad was also sick. He had gotten seriously ill just one month into my first year here, and much of the time he was a tired man donning his happy mask. After all, who wants to worry their kid? My father was a master of this, but we all knew how serious the situation was, and his declining health eclipsed the fact that my mom was really doing no better. Often, when I called, Dad was asleep, and during these occasions I could quiz my mom on how he was actually doing. She gave me much more realistic assessments than perpetually-optimistic Pops could muster, but it occurs to me now that I rarely asked Mom, “And how are you? Really?”
I already knew the answer to that question. By the time my second year had rolled around, she had been hospitalized once. Every winter, usually around January or February, she’d get sick. I suspect it was often a common cold run amuck, but this would mutate into a severe sinus infection or even pneumonia, which required a course of antibiotics strong enough to kill a whole city’s worth of bacteria. And each time she got sick it took her longer to recover. My dad was on full-time oxygen, and now she required it too, on and off, as her worsening condition dictated. My brothers and sister watched in horror as both of them were slowly consumed.
My sister, Molly, lived just a couple minutes away, and became their caregiver. She made their relative happiness the focus of her life, despite the fact that she was raising three kids on a fixed income. My two brothers lived far away–Phoenix and San Antonio–and like me, they could only look on helplessly. While Molly was handling the situation on the ground with a kind of selflessness that I still can’t comprehend, the brothers were
sending money when appropriate (my folks were broke) and attempting to plan for the eventuality that we saw speeding toward us. It was all we could do, short of moving home, which none of us was willing to undertake.
In Confucian Korea, the idea of filial piety is perhaps the culture’s most cherished value: to serve and honor one’s parents is one’s deepest duty.Through much of my father’s and mother’s slide into invalidity, Da-jin often castigated me: “What are you doing here? You are making money and traveling and being selfish. You should be home taking care of your parents. I do not understand you Americans.” She couldn’t process how I could possibly stay in Korea while my parents suffered.
* * * *
My father died on January 28th, 2008. I went home and managed to see him before he passed. I spent two weeks in America, burying the man and doing my best to pitch in with both the costs and logistics of a funeral for which no real preparations had been made. I returned to Korea that February, stinging from the loss, but also relieved: it had been a savage four years, and I could only hope that he was somehow now happier, in that “better place” where we hope our loved ones end up.
Dealing with loss has not increased my faith in any sort of God or afterlife. If anything, it’s shown me that life is often cruel and ugly. Back in my expat bubble in Korea, I was aflame with anger: angry that he was gone, angry that he was so responsible for his own demise, angry at the mess he had left, and above all, angry at myself for running away from the whole tragedy. This anger quickly morphed into a new feeling of dread, however: one that made me sick in the deepest center of my gut. What was to become of Mom?
She had already lost a little toe to the ravages of neuropathy, but now had a sore on her foot. She mentioned that it was getting worse, but that the doctor had prescribed a regime of antibiotics to clear up the infection. She took the lot but they were ineffective: “It just won’t heal,” she said over the phone. “It won’t heal.”
