Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  Leaning my head into the breeze of the fan, I fluffed my hair to release the heat trapped between the follicles. “I thought you said it was free,” I accused him.

  “No, no,” he hastened to assure me. “For the plane ticket to Washington.”

  “Oh.” I laughed embarrassedly. Digging through my purse, I came up with a credit card.

  “They also need your passport.”

  I handed the stiff little blue booklet to him, our fingers brushing, sparking a blaze that exploded all the way down to my groin.

  After I had deleted all the emails alluding to Kenji from my inbox, I sent my mother a note with my flight information, omitting the details on the trip to Jeju Island, because there was no way I could adequately explain to my mom why I was taking an impulsive trip with a handsome stranger. Finally, after much hesitation, I sent Mindy a two-liner: “Hope everything went OK with your birth mother without me there to embarrass you. My mom told me I should apologize, so sorry.”

  Then I quickly logged out before I could regret the defensive tone of my message. Closing the laptop, I turned to find the four of them looking at me. The travel agents seemed to blink in unison, like computer-programmed avatars.

  “Ready?” Ji Hoon asked, handing me back my credit card and passport.

  “Yeah.” I stuffed them into my purse, wrestling with the faulty zipper to close it but quickly giving up, because my fingers were too sweaty to get a good grip on the metal pull tab.

  The travel agents bent simultaneously into a low bow. “Thank you for your pa-pa-patronage,” the designated speaker said solemnly.

  Back in the car, with the air-conditioning blowing icily even though it would have been easier to open the windows to the cold early-spring air, Ji Hoon mentioned that a friend wanted to meet up at Honey Do. “I thought you might like to join us. He’s a nice guy and likes to practice his English.”

  “Honey Do?” I echoed incredulously.

  “Yes, well, actually, I suggested we meet there,” Ji Hoon explained as he deftly slid through traffic. “I remembered what a pleasant place it is for just hanging out. The girls don’t bother you if you tell them to leave you alone.”

  I thought to point out that there were plenty of bars about that weren’t hostess bars, but instead asked, “Is his English good? Because I have to be honest with you, it’s really boring having a conversation with someone who thinks their English is good, but it really sucks.” In a grating falsetto, I mimicked an Asian accent: “Do you rike my shity? Can you eat lice?”

  “Oh, his English is excellent,” Ji Hoon declared, honking his horn at a Hyundai that was crawling along too slowly for his taste. “And he loves American culture. You’ll see.”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do.

  Though it was still full daylight when we entered Honey Do, inside it was Saturday-night dark, the backlit bar and tiny pinpoint lights embedded in the ceiling the only illumination. There were no customers, just two lacquer-faced hostesses and the mama-san owner. Mama-san, whose blaring blond hair was cut short in an early Princess Di pouf, brought us a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, a wooden tag around its neck, and two glasses clinking with golf-ball-sized ice chunks, while her hostesses followed bearing shallow dishes filled with peanuts, rice crackers, dried squid, and popcorn. They tried to sit down on the low leather couch with us, but Ji Hoon shooed them away, muttering something to Mama-san that made her hurry off, patting worriedly at her hair.

  “What’s the little tag on the bottle mean?” I grimaced as the whisky blazed a fiery trail down to my stomach.

  “It is my bottle. I pay for it and they bring it out whenever I come here.”

  “I thought you said you hadn’t been here in a long time.”

  “I came last night, to make sure it hadn’t changed since the last time I was here,” he said, cocking his eyes sideways at me underneath the velvety swoop of his tousled bangs.

  In the glum darkness, my thoughts turned to Mindy, wondering if she had read the email yet, wondering if she missed me like I missed her. I took another deep draft of whisky, and Ji Hoon promptly poured more into my glass. “I feel terrible about Mindy,” I confessed, my tongue already sprung loose by the liquor. “I miss her like crazy.”

  “I think it’s always best to let these things cool down a bit after an argument. Wait until we are back from Jeju Island to contact her. She will be so happy to hear from you by then,” Ji Hoon advised. “We Koreans are hot tempered and need time for our emotions to cool before we can see things clearly.”

  “Do you really think we’re Koreans?” I wondered, popping a salt-flecked peanut into my mouth.

  “Oh, your friend is a classic Korean beauty!” Ji Hoon declared.

  I took a dissatisfied swallow of whisky. Ji Hoon topped up my glass. “What about me?” I asked, pouting.

  “You…” He slid his eyes sideways at me with a delicate, just-between-you-and-me smile. “You can be as Korean as you want to be. It is your choice.”

  Almost half the bottle and a few karaoke songs later, I asked where his friend was. “Oh”—Ji Hoon smiled apologetically—“he is famous for being late. He’ll be here, though.”

  “Well, I think I better switch to beer,” I slurred.

  Ji Hoon snapped his fingers in the air and yelled out, “Maekju.” A bumper-sized bottle of Cass materialized quickly. He poured beer for me and I reciprocated, clinking the bottle heavily against his glass and almost knocking it over.

  “I feel really good right now,” I suddenly decided. “I feel like things are looking up. I can’t wait to go home and see my mom again. Working at MotherFinders, you probably think all adoptees want to meet their birth mothers, but not me. I think it was fate that my birth mother can never be traced. Many adoptees believe it’s their destiny to find their birth mother; I believe it’s my destiny not to.”

  There was a bit of a commotion at the door, but I continued to ramble on, barely even noticing when Ji Hoon stood. By the time I turned my bleary eyes up, Ji Hoon was bowing deeply to a chubby number wearing an oversized Chicago Bulls jersey, baggy nylon basketball shorts, bright yellow Jordans, unlaced, a leather baseball cap emblazoned with a gold skull skewed sideways on his head. From a thick rope of gold chain, a gigantic dollar-sign pendant glistening with rhinestones hung down to perch on the cushion of his paunch. I giggled. “Yo, bro! Whazzup?!”

  Ji Hoon frowned seriously at me. “Lisa, it is my pleasure to introduce you to my friend Jonny.”

  “Hey, blood!” I held out a clenched hand for a fist bump.

  The hip-hop wannabe looked angrily at Ji Hoon and they exchanged a few terse words. Sensing that I was maybe messing things up for Ji Hoon, I laughed. “I’m just kidding, Jonny. It’s just, I love your outfit. You got a real sense of style. I dig it!”

  Jonny nodded, chewing the inside of his lip, a little dimple quivering in the massive slab of his cheek, silken strands of a Fu Manchu hanging down like a beaded curtain over his little mouth. The hostesses were flitting about, stroking the air around him and making frightened little squeaking sounds. A few large men lurked in the background, sensed more than seen. He lowered himself next to me on the couch, and immediately Mama-san brought an overstuffed pillow to put behind his back and an ostentatious cut-glass decanter with a crytal stopper. A tray of bar foods also materialized: hamburger sliders, chicken wings, miniature hot dogs wrapped in puff pastry. After everything had been arranged just so, the women were dismissed with a shake of his meaty hand. Jonny held out to me a snifter that gleamed with an amber liquid poured from the sparkling decanter. I shook my head and held up my glass of beer. Ji Hoon snapped, “Take the glass, Lisa. It is rude not to accept it.”

  I shrugged, accepted the snifter.

  Jonny raised his glass, pinkie extended, and proclaimed, “To mothers.”

  “To the motherland,” Ji Hoon added with a hot exhalation.

  “Motherfucker,” I joyously rejoined, swooping my glass toward
Jonny’s, but he already had his at his lips.

  “Harrison has told me about you, Lisa.” His accent, like Ji Hoon’s, was almost nonexistent. “I’m very pleased that you agreed to meet a nobody like me.”

  My loose laugh was cut short by his finger probing the bridge of my nose. “Hey!” I jerked my head back. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Jonny regarded me with bemusement, as if he wasn’t used to people talking back to him. “It is not often one sees a nose like yours,” he said by way of apology.

  I reached out to touch his nose, nestled unobtrusively between his massive cheeks. His skin felt rubbery. Ji Hoon leapt up as my finger skidded down the clean slope of Jonny’s nose and two hulking men emerged from the shadows. Chuckling, Jonny said something in Korean. Ji Hoon sat down again, and the two men melted back into the gloomy periphery. Jonny stripped the flesh from a chicken wing before tossing the bones onto the floor.

  Taking a pull off my drink, I asked, “What is this, cognac?”

  “Yes,” Jonny said, and took an appreciative sniff. “Hennessy X.O. The best.”

  “Just like Jay-Z likes, eh?” I teased him. Guessing what Jonny did for a living, I now knew where Ji Hoon got his drugs from. “You like Jay-Z?”

  Popping a pig in a blanket into his mouth, he shrugged. “I prefer singing, you know? We Koreans love our folk songs.”

  “Oh, like enka?”

  “Enka is Japanese,” he growled sternly. “You must know that we Koreans hate the Japanese.” He glared hard at me, gnawing at the inside of his lip. I ran my tongue over the ragged flesh of my own mouth.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” I agreed. “Goddamn Japanese.”

  “Monkey demon puppets,” he muttered in answer. Then he grinned boyishly, and I thought maybe I had been wrong to assume we were about the same age—maybe he was just a teenager, which would explain his silly outfit. “But they make damn good sushi, am I right, Harrison?” The two of them laughed knowingly as if at some inside joke, slapping high fives. Sighing happily, he leaned back into the couch, slinging his arms across the top, where they lolled like beached whales. “Tell me about yourself, Lisa,” he enjoined.

  “Uh…” I blinked at him. “How about you tell me about yourself first? Looks like your story is much more interesting than mine.”

  “I don’t know how my story could be more interesting than someone who was ripped from the bosom of her mother and her country, but OK. My story is not a remarkable one at all, for Korea. My father works very hard. As a child, I did not see him much but was always under his loving guidance, and it is for him that I strive to do my best. My mother sacrificed everything so that I could become successful. If I can prove myself, I can become head of the family business.”

  “And what is that business?” I asked, aware that Ji Hoon was rigid as a corpse by my side.

  “Oh, it’s complicated,” Jonny said, snapping his fingers toward a gold cigarette case that lay easily within his reach. “A huge conglomeration of businesses, mostly in entertainment.”

  Mama-san placed a cigarette between his lips and worked the lighter.

  “Now it’s your turn.” He squinted at me through a cloud of smoke.

  “Well…” I took a fortifying gulp of cognac, emptying the glass. One of the hostesses immediately slithered up to pour more, but Jonny waved her away gruffly and personally filled my glass. “My name is Lisa Sarah Pearl, and I…”

  A small smile played through the glossy threads of his mustache. “You don’t look like a Lisa Sarah Pearl.”

  “Yeah, I know. Um, as you seem to already know, I was adopted. My parents divorced when I was eight—”

  “Whoa, whoa.” He held up a hand, small and bloated like a baby’s hand, the knuckles dimpled, nails bitten down into little halfmoons. “Where were you born? When?”

  “I was born here…”

  “Here? At Honey Do?” When he smiled, his chubby cheeks and long, curved front teeth gave him the spunky cuteness of a chipmunk.

  “Here, in Seoul,” I snapped. “In 1983.”

  “And what do you know of your real mother?”

  “My real mother is on the other side of the Pacific,” I told him. “As to my birth mother, I know nothing, but I presume she was some bar girl or prostitute. As Ji Hoon must have told you—”

  “Ji Hoon?” he echoed.

  “Yeah, Ji Hoon.” I rolled my eyes toward Ji Hoon, who had barely blinked since Jonny had come on the scene. “Your pal here.”

  “Ah, Harrison.” Jonny’s glance at Ji Hoon was like a glare of a searchlight on an escaping prisoner.

  “Lisa wanted to know what my Korean name was,” Ji Hoon squeaked apologetically.

  “Yeah, Jonny.” I dripped sarcasm onto his name.

  He fluttered two fingers through the wispy fringe of his chin hairs. “So, what is it that Ji Hoon has told me?”

  “That the company he works for, MotherFinders, could not locate any records on my birth mother. Which just really reinforces what I thought all along: she was some downtrodden, two-bucks-a-pop whore—”

  “Hey, hey, now,” Jonny cautioned sternly.

  “What?” I shrugged my shoulders, reached for another chicken wing. “No need to get offended. It’s my mother, after all.”

  “Your language is unladylike,” he said, pursing his lips prudishly.

  My laughter crackled loudly amid the strange hush of the bar. “Whatevs, motherfucker. You sitting there in your ghetto outfit. Isn’t that what you entertainment purveyors do? Sling filth?”

  He glowered at me, his eyes thinning to dark crevices and his mouth puckering up into a little dot. I grimaced back, lifting my upper lip off my teeth.

  “Can you sing?”

  “What?” Just then a disco ball started to spin, flinging bright sparks through the empty room. A brief blast of music made us all jump, then was quickly silenced.

  Jonny stood up, beckoning me to do the same. “Let’s sing something together, shall we? Beatles? ‘Yesterday’? ‘Twist and Shout’? Abba? ‘Dancing Queen’?”

  “‘Top of the World’?” Ji Hoon volunteered in a thin voice.

  “Umm…”

  “‘Yesterday’!” Jonny decided. With a snap of his fingers, he directed Mama-san to cue the song. “Come on, Lisa, get up!”

  I stumbled a little as I struggled to stand up. “Oopsie!”

  Holding a microphone out to me, he instructed, “Now I really want you to belt it out.”

  Mama-san poked violently at the remote control, and then a disconsolate man buried his head into his hands on the screen as the guitar strummed and words began to skip across the bottom. “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” we yowled asynchronously.

  “No, no, no.” Jonny waved his arms in the air. He barked at Mama-san, and she hurriedly clicked the remote control, starting the song over again. “Together now, Lisa, OK? Ready? And a one, and a two, and a three.”

  He chopped his arm through the air, and we sang again, together this time.

  Chapter 4

  “I grew up with a big hole inside of me. Most adoptees grow up sensing that same hole inside of them… Many people spend their whole lives searching for something to fill that hole.”

  –Michael Reagan

  In the elevator, Ji Hoon said, “My girlfriend is driving us to the airport.”

  Sludgy-headed from the evening before, throat raspy from a night of karaoke, I croaked, “Your girlfriend?”

  He nodded glumly. “She is angry with me. Just ignore her.”

  The elevator thudded to a stop and I stumbled out. He had a girlfriend for fuck’s sake?

  I ducked into the backseat of the Audi, singing, “Hello! I’m Lisa!”

  The dark helmet of hair didn’t turn around.

  “Look, I’m sorry to inconvenience you like this…” I wanted to explain that I hadn’t even known she existed until five seconds ago. But really, if I had, would it have changed my plans? A free vacation with an Adoni
s was a free vacation with an Adonis. Not that I really thought anything would happen between the two of us.

  The car shuddered as Ji Hoon slammed the trunk. On his way to the driver’s seat, he opened the back door. “Are you comfortable?”

  “To be honest, I’m a little hungover. I’m going to try and get more sleep, if you don’t mind.”

  “Here.” He stripped off his leather jacket, turning it inside out to the soft quilted lining, warm from his body heat. “Use this as a pillow.”

  As he handed it to me, the girl turned around, following his gesture with angry eyes. I gave her a quick glance as I took the jacket. Plump face, pearly skin, long taut eyes, little button mouth. Tucking his jacket, which smelled of sickly-sweet cologne mixed with a more enticing muskiness that I imagined was his natural scent, under my cheek, I tried to make myself go to sleep. For a while, I listened to their hushed conversation that occasionally burst into sharp nips and outraged growls, like tussling puppies who didn’t know the strength of their own jaws. To be unconscious was really the kindest thing I could do to my body, and I finally managed a queasy state of suspended consciousness, the car like a space capsule, or a casket, cradling me in cushioned, hushed monotony.

  Shaking me gently by the shoulder, Ji Hoon purred, “Lisa, we’re here.”

  My eyes creaked open to see the two of them twisted around in the front seat to peer at me. Sitting up, I wiped the drool off my cheek, corrugated with the pattern of the quilted lining of his jacket. His girlfriend’s lip rose in a hostile curl before she turned to get out of the car. She was beautiful, but not as beautiful as Ji Hoon, poor thing. It must be a constant aggravation to have such a gorgeous specimen of the human form for a boyfriend.

  As he stuck his head through the driver’s-side window to say good-bye, I imagined Ji Hoon soothing her: “See, just take a look at her. You don’t have anything to worry about.” He nuzzled his face toward her cheek, but she leaned away and began to nose out of the parking space before he’d pulled his head out the window. Cheekbones edged with crimson, he shouldered his MCM leather bag, grabbed the handle to my dingy rolling suitcase, and marched into the vast concrete bunker of the terminal.