by Patti Kim
Not all of it is pretty. The pyramids of apples, oranges, and grapes are pretty. Even the watermelon with a flat top looks pretty. But the naked chicken with its butt sticking up? And a mound of what looks to me like brown worms? And the stack of crusty fish with eyes staring up at me? Not pretty. What you looking at? I’ll have you know I’m a guest here, so quit your fishy stares before I eat you up.
The prettiest food of all is the mountain of glossy white, green, and pink candies shaped like baby crescent rolls at a corner of the table. I pull on Sun Joo’s shirt and ask, “What’s that?”
“This one? This is tteok,” she says.
“You mean like ‘lucky-duck quack-quack’?”
“No, not duck. Tteok. It’s the rice cakes, but you’re right, Mickey. Rice cake is lucky, so it’s lucky tteok,” she says.
“See? Lucky tteok. I like that.”
“It’s like the dessert. It’s chewy and sweet inside.”
“So is that why y’all call it chew-suck? ’Cause you chew and suck all this food?”
“No. That not right,” she says, rolling her eyes and shaking her head like she don’t know what to do with me.
“I know. I know. I was just trying to be funny. That’s the way I remember Korean. Like ‘annyeonghaseyo’? I remember it ’cause it sounds like ‘onion-hi-say-yo,’ ” I say.
“What floats boat,” she says, which cracks me up.
“No. That not right,” I say, imitating her.
“What float the boat?”
“Warmer.”
“What floats a boat?”
“Warmer.”
“I don’t care. Is my boat. I float how I want.”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
“Congratulation! You got! Take you so long time!” she says, patting my head.
“Watch the hair.”
Sun Joo’s different here at her home. She walks with her back straight, hair off her face, and nose turned up like she rules all the little kids running around her place. She don’t whisper like she does at school. Her voice got volume here. She got sass and snapitude.
She leads me to the kitchen, where a bunch of women are working their butts off, cooking at the stove, cleaning at the sink, deep-frying chicken wings on the floor, opening and closing the fridge. It bustles like the kitchen of a real restaurant. They talk and laugh and talk and click their tongues and laugh about I don’t know what ’cause it’s all in Korean, but it sounds and feels like family fun.
“Eomma,” Sun Joo calls, zigzagging her way to the woman at the sink.
When the woman turns around to have a look at me, I get a look at her and flash back to the first day when she delivered Sun Joo to Ms. T’s science class. That wasn’t but a blink ago, but it feels like a bazillion years.
Sun Joo’s ma takes off her dripping-wet rubber gloves and lets her daughter push her toward me. Sun Joo’s talking Korean, but I hear my name except she says it like “me key.”
“This is my Eomma,” Sun Joo says.
“Onion-ha-say-yo,” I say.
“Uh,” Sun Joo’s ma says, nodding.
“Did that come out right?”
“Uh, annyeong. Nice to meet you, Mi Ki. You are good friend to Sun Joo. She say you help very, very much at school,” she says.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Sun Joo probably helps me more than I help her. She’s gotten me out of some bad binds. I can get myself into some real messes. Like this one time during science lab, I had no clue—I mean like totally clueless about what we were supposed to be doing measuring the pH of this and the pH of that—and I’m just like ‘Can I eat this baked potato now; science ain’t my thing,’ and Sun Joo here took over like a real pro, and all because of her, we got an A on the lab. Don’t know what I’d do without her. See this here? Fell on my face and lost a tooth last week. It’s a baby canine, and don’t ask me why they call it that ’cause it’s not like a dog or anything. Imagine calling a dog a molar or something. Don’t make any sense. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. How do you do?” I say.
“Mi Ki like the talking,” her mom says.
“I do. I do like the talking. I can talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. My daddy says I got the gift of gab. I talk nonstop when he’s home because he’s hardly home, so when he is, I gotta catch him up on everything. I don’t know, maybe I’m just nervous, but don’t get me wrong, I ain’t feeling nervous right now ’cause I’m too happy to be here celebrating chew-suck with y’all. By the way, thank you so much for inviting me. There ain’t no better feeling in the world than getting included in a special family gathering ’cause it makes you feel like you’re part of the family, and that’s a good feeling, and all the food looks and smells so delicious, and I can’t wait to try one of them tteoks on that beautiful spread you got out there. Tteok. Right? Did I say that—”
And before I can finish my question with “right,” a grandma comes up to me and shoves food into my mouth, shutting me up. She puts her hand on my face and pets my cheek. Whatever she put in my mouth is yum-yum-yum. I want to say that I’ve had this before over at Ok’s mom’s wedding, and I know it’s a dumpling and called mandu, which is an easy Korean word to remember for reasons I ain’t going to get into ’cause I’m trying to mind my manners, if you know what I mean. Think about it. Man. Doo. Doo. So I keep my lips pressed together and chew.
The grandma looks up at me. She’s only about as tall as Benny. Wrinkles cover her face, reminding me of how my palm looks when I close my hand after a spread of glue dries. Her permed hair sticks out frizzy and puffed like an Afro. The ends look purple in the kitchen light. Her silver roots look like a headband around her head. She’s shaped round like a beanbag.
Sun Joo talks Korean to her, saying “me key” again.
“This is grandmother,” Sun Joo says.
“Hi. Thank you for the mandu. That was yummy,” I say.
Sun Joo translates. The grandma takes my hand and rubs it between hers, giggling and nodding at me. I don’t know what to do, so I giggle and nod back.
“She say you are so plump and pretty.”
“Really? Why, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Thank you, Mrs. Sun Joo’s grandma!”
“You can call Halmae,” Sun Joo says.
“Howl-may? Did I say that right? Like howl-may-I-help-you if a dog was talking to a customer?”
“No. That not right, but warm enough.”
“Thank you, Howl-may!”
Howl-may puts my face in her hands, looks into my eyes, and says something in Korean. Sun Joo talks Korean back to her, putting her arm around Howl-may.
“What’d she say? Did she say I look like Miss America?”
“She say you are angel.”
“Oh my Lord of Lords! That’s even better! Thank you, Howl-may! Thank you for them kind words! They really warm my heart and lift my spirits,” I say, as Sun Joo starts pulling me out of the kitchen. “Wait. Wait. Don’t Howl-may want to say more nice things to me?”
Sun Joo pulls me toward one of the bedrooms. She opens the door. Her room crawls with little kids, jumping on her bed, sitting at and on her desk, playing hide-’n’-seek in her closet, playing jacks with rocks on her floor.
“How in tarnation do you play jacks with rocks?”
Sun Joo shouts something in Korean, and they all gasp and go shooting out of the room. She shuts and locks her door. She plops down on her bed. I plop down next to her. Her bed squeaks.
“What in heavens is this thing made out of? Oh my Lord of Lords, please don’t tell me it’s baby minks, ’cause that would make me sadder than the mama mink who lost her poor babies to this divine blanket, but holy heckers, this feels so plush and soft. You ever feel something so soft you just want to die?”
“It made of polyester.”
I burst out laughing. It ain’t even that funny, but something about the way Sun Joo said it all serious and slow and soft revved up my giggles.
“One hundred percent.”
I laugh louder.
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“Machine wash.”
“Stop!”
“Made in Korea.”
“Stop! You going to make me pee! Stop!”
“This is dam-yo Dam-yo. But you say wrong and you say like ‘damn you.’ ”
I am losing it now. My stomach’s cramping up. Tears running down my face. And I gotta cross my legs ’cause I’m going to wet my pants.
Then she puts her hand on my mouth to shut me up, saying, “Shhh! Shhh!”
“Stop! You going to make me pee!” I mumble into her palm.
“Listen.”
It’s quiet. It’s like everyone in the other room left or something. I look around. Taped above her window is a poster of Jesus knocking on a door. Taped on her closet door is a poster of Jesus sitting with a bunch of kids. The window itself is covered with her own art. Sunlight shows through sheets of notebook paper painted with watercolors. Black birds flying over a rainbow. Stars twinkling in the night. A maple leaf glowing with the autumn colors of orange, yellow, red bleeding into one another. The last painting is the back of two girls holding hands and walking under a rainbow. The one girl looks like Sun Joo, and the other girl, as much as I hate to assume ’cause it makes an ass out of you and me, looks just like me, roller skates and big hair and all. I get up to have a closer look, point to the painting, and ask in a loud whisper, “Is that us?”
Sun Joo jumps out of bed, grabs my wrist, and pulls me out of the room. We walk into the living room. It’s quiet. Everyone stands, looking at the table of food. Sun Joo pulls me toward the glass doors of the balcony and parks me there. She goes to stand next to her ma and grandma, who’ve changed their outfits, by the way. Oh my heavens! They got on these dresses that’s putting me in a spell of longing. I stare at the bright colors. Pink. Red. Purple. Blue. Gold. They look like flowers. I drool.
I’m guessing this here’s Sun Joo’s daddy kneeling at the table of food. He strikes a match. He lights a stick on the small table, which is in front of the big table, which has all the food on it. He stands up, backs away, then bows to the food. This ain’t no regular bow and curtsy. His face touches the floor. He bows again. Face to floor again. Good thing we ain’t wearing shoes. He pours something into a cup and holds it to the smoke rising off the stick. He puts chopsticks on a plate and sticks a spoon into a bowl of rice. It’s like he’s having a tea party, but the mood ain’t fun and giggles. It’s serious. It feels like a funeral.
Then everyone takes turns bowing. Sun Joo bows. Then she stands next to the man who started the bowing. I was right. He’s her daddy. He got his arm around her. She got her head tilting against his chest. Side by side, they look alike. He don’t look like how he looked in Ms. T’s class that first day. Sun Joo don’t look how she looked. I guess this ain’t school. People look different in different places. I wonder how I look right now.
I lean against the glass door. Outside the leaves blaze with autumn colors. Red. Yellow. Orange. It’s like the trees are on fire. I see my reflection. I smile, give myself a little wave, and whisper, “Onion, Mi Ki. You going to be all right.” My breath fogs the glass. I write “MSM was here” on the glass and draw a heart around it.
I smell smoke.
Sun Joo’s daddy holds fire in his hand. It’s a sheet of paper. He’s burning it in front of everyone. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s like a magic show. He holds it and holds it and holds it, letting the paper burn till it can’t burn no more without setting his hand on fire. He drops the flame into a metal bowl. Ashes float up. Waves of smoke move through the room. I hope the smoke detector don’t go off.
Sun Joo comes over to me, and I ask her, “What’s up with all that bowing and burning?”
“Ancestor stuff,” she says, pulling open the glass door. She steps outside. I follow.
It’s nice out here. Sun’s about to set. I don’t normally like fall ’cause of school starting and days getting shorter and everything dying and the air stinking like ratty old sneakers, but this feels all right.
Sun Joo shuts the door. She drags two cinder blocks from the corner of the balcony and sets them side by side near the railing. She sits on one, so I go over and sit on the other. People are getting food inside.
“So was that like calling on the dead? You know, like a séance?”
“Séance?”
“Yeah. I don’t think there’s any food at a séance. You don’t really gotta feed the ghost, but you sit in a circle and the leader of the séance gets possessed by the ghost and the ghost talks through them. And you can ask the ghost questions like who killed you and who am I going to marry and what’s the winning lottery number. Like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost. You see that movie?”
“No.”
“Same. I didn’t see it either. I just heard about it.”
“It’s not séance. It’s just for respecting ancestors,” she says.
“Speaking of ghosts, what’re you going to wear for Halloween?” I ask.
“Halloween? I don’t know.”
“I’m thinking about dressing up as Gidget. Like in the show? You ever watch that? I don’t know, maybe put on one of them 1950s swimsuits? But I’d need a surfboard. Maybe I could make one out of cardboard. You know what you need to wear? One of them dresses.”
“What dress?”
“One your ma and grandma have on.”
“You mean hanbok?”
“How’d you say that?”
“Hanbok.”
“Oh, that one’s easy. Han as in Han Solo and bok as in Ok, my friend’s name. You should wear a hanbok for Halloween. Is your ma going to let you borrow hers?”
“I have mine.”
“You got your own hanbok? Why ain’t you wearing it?”
“It’s soooooo uncomfortable. It’s too tight on here. I can’t even breathe. It’s worse than bra. It’s sooooo itchy and make my neck feel like it’s choking in a box and it’s like a big umbrella and you can’t walk or move or sit or breathe or talk because it’s, like, choking you. I hate the hanbok,” she says.
“I am telling you, Sun Joo. If you wear that thing for Halloween, you will win the costume contest. Hands down. People are going to be ooohing and ahhhing like you’re some Korean princess. I money-back guarantee it. It’s going to make you popular.”
“Popular? You mean like Sydney? No, I don’t believe it. Sydney is so pretty. She look like the supermodel.”
“How much you want to bet?”
The glass door opens. Howl-may brings out two plates of food. She has towels tucked into her armpit. She says something in Korean to Sun Joo, and Sun Joo says something back. I stand up, take my plate, and say, “Thank you! This looks so delicious! I can’t wait to eat it up. Thank you, Howl-may!”
“Uh-uh,” she says, nodding. She says something to me in Korean. I ask Sun Joo what it means.
“She say to eat a lot.”
Sun Joo takes her plate. Howl-may lays towels down next to the cinder blocks, saying something. It sounds like scolding. She’s shaking her head like tsk-tsk. Then she goes back inside.
“What’s that for?”
“She say girls should not sit on the cold things,” Sun Joo says, putting her plate down on the cinder block.
“Why not?” I ask, following her lead.
“Because it’s bad for the girl stuff,” she says, sitting down on the towel.
“What girl stuff?” I ask, sitting down next to her.
“You don’t know the girl stuff? The menseh. Because then we cannot have the babies.”
“What? For real? Ewwwww. No thank you. I don’t want no babies. Go get me a bag of ice to sit on.”
“You are sooooo weird.”
“You’re so weird,” I say, and bump my shoulder against hers.
“You are more weird,” she says, and bumps me back.
“You are the queen of weird. You know why? I’ll tell you why. ’Cause you got yourself this beautiful hanbok dress thing and you refuse to wear it. Shame, shame, shame. That’s like hiding your shine. Don�
�t you know that song? ‘This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine’? You got to stop hiding your shine. What would your ancestors think?”
“I don’t care what ancestors think. They are dead,” she says, and bites into a dumpling.
I snort out laughing, spitting out bits of spinach. I say, “Sun Joo Moon, you are so shiny.”
“Only sometimes.”
“I bring it out in you, don’t I?”
“You don’t,” she says, shaking her head, her mouth full of food.
“You know I do. Admit it.”
“Maybe little bit.”
“I got you a nickname. I’m calling you Sunny from now on.”
“Sunny? You mean like sun in solar system? It’s so bright it make you hot and sweat all the time and make the skin burn up and wrinkly. My mom say sun is sooooo bad for the skin and eyes because it make you blind if you look at too long not wearing the sunglasses. It’s just big ball burning up with the fire. It’s like ten thousand degrees. You come too close, you burn. Oh, I like. Okay! Call me Sunny. Sunny Moon.”
“Girl, you crack me up.”
“How about I call you the McDonald?”
“How about I call you the Moon-butt?”
Sun Joo chuckles as she slurps up glassy noodles. I slurp up mine.
I poke my chopsticks into a tteok. I sniff. I put the plump pink rice cake into my mouth, bite down and chew.
“It don’t taste like I thought it would. It don’t taste like nothing. That ain’t chocolate in there, is it?”
“No. It’s bean.”
“Beans for dessert? That’s, like, false advertising. Imagine biting into a Twinkie and getting cottage cheese. What’s your favorite candy?”
“Ummm. It’s the Hershey’s Kisses. It shape like ddong.”
“Ddong?”
“Is the poo-poo in Korean.”
I laugh so loud some heads inside turn to check us out. It’s getting dark out here, so I can see pretty good what’s going on inside. People are starting to leave. Howl-may looks like she’s giggling up a storm, saying good-bye to everyone.
“You wear the bracelet?”
“Right here,” I say, and show it to her.
“I have too,” she says, and shows hers to me.