My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store

by Ben Ryder Howe

  Suddenly he lights up. At last! his expression seems to say.

  “Performance,” he says. “Performance is the part that I dread. Getting in front of an audience, having to speak and entertain …” He shudders. “I get so bloody nervous.”

  This gives me a bit of a chill, because for George to even talk about “performance” means he’s stepping out of character, which, either because he’s incapable or because he refuses, he simply does not do. George onstage, George regaling guests at a party, George holding court among autograph seekers at a restaurant, are all more or less the same person as George in the office or at home. The mask doesn’t fall away. But everyone who knows George has at one time wondered how happy he is about being “George” all the time, and whether he’s ever wanted to say “Enough! I’m tired of being charming.”

  “You really don’t enjoy performing?” I ask incredulously.

  Frowning, he shudders again. “Sometimes I hate it,” he says, another shock—George never uses the word “hate.” “I get so bloody nervous and worked up. ‘How am I going to do this? I have no idea what I’m doing! Why am I here? What if I fall on my face?’ Oh, it’s absolutely terrifying.”

  George has none of his usual spirit as he says this. He simply looks tired. And now I’m reeling, for not only does this upend my image of George as someone with zero inclination to look inward or engage in self-doubt, but it challenges the whole notion of him as a kind of overgrown child. After all, why would someone do something he hates except out of a sober sense of duty?

  “George, I have to tell you, I never thought you were doing anything but having fun.”

  “Well, then, you see, I am a fraud.” And as if it pleases him just to say that, the faintest smile touches his lips.

  Thus ends my session as amateur psychologist, to the relief of both of us, probably. Whatever the moment was—George revealing something of himself or me just imagining it—it’s over. We talk for a while longer; then, inevitably, the phone rings (“Hullo, Sunny, is that you? Yes, the memoir is almost finished. Just a few more pages. Actually, yes, I am free tonight …”) and his attention drifts off. I sneak out of the apartment and make the long trip back to Staten Island.

  ALIENATION OF LABOR

  NEW YORKERS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN DELIS. IT’S NOT uncommon for us to see the same customers walk through the door five or six times a day. Some people act as if our store is part of their home and come in wearing pajamas or stroking an iguana; some stroll through the aisles for an hour while having an intimate phone conversation at the top of their voice. The way these people act has a desperate adolescent “look at me” quality, and at the same time there’s a certain haughtiness, an attitude of “What, you didn’t hear? This is New York. Get over it.” And, of course, they’re right. What would New York be without bad behavior? And where would people exhibit it if not in delis?

  To New Yorkers a convenience store is essentially a public place, more like a park than, say, a private restaurant. Not long ago a customer came in and asked me to throw away an empty soda can. Then she started giving me garbage from her purse, and then she went out to her car and started bringing me fast food wrappers and coffee cups. I was starting to feel like I had a Department of Sanitation sticker on my forehead and was thinking about saying something nasty, but I held back. It’s better, I’ve learned, to just take people’s trash when they hand it to you, because the alternative is to pick it up yourself off the street later.

  Similarly, it’s always hard to say no when people ask to use the bathroom, especially if they come in grimacing and clutching themselves in agony, as they usually do. If you’re not motivated by sympathy to say yes, then you’re at least concerned about the possible effect on your store of saying no. The problem is that after using the bathroom, people tend to skip the requisite courtesy of purchasing even a token pack of gum. If I were a better person I’d look at them and think, I’m glad they’re feeling better now, but cleaning bathrooms tends to shrivel one’s reserves of compassion, so instead I glare and resist the temptation to ask, “Did you smile for the hidden camera in the ceiling?”

  The most annoying thing customers do is a move I call The Placeholder, which happens when a person walks into a store, grabs an item and puts it on the counter before going off to do the rest of his shopping. When he finishes, he comes back to the register and inserts himself at the front of the line by virtue of having left that item as a kind of proxy—a Placeholder.

  There’s no logic to this system. If we all used Placeholders, every checkout line would devolve into chaos and people would end up bashing each other in the head with cans of kidney beans. The move is so brazenly antisocial that would-be critics find themselves sputtering with stupefaction, and usually looking to me as the ostensible authority to sort it all out. (Which I rarely do, because typically the person who used The Placeholder is also the sort of person you do not want to get into a confrontation with.)

  Of course, there’s a flip side to annoying customers, and that’s annoying deli clerks. Not long ago I went into a fancy Korean deli in SoHo, looking for a snack. The store happened to be empty when I walked in, which didn’t prevent the puckish middle-aged woman standing at the register from ringing up every item I touched, even when I was still ten feet away. Not liking to be rushed, I began randomly picking up items and putting them back, but it didn’t seem to faze the woman at all. On the contrary, to let me know she was waiting, she jingled my change.

  Sometimes New Yorkers take it too far—the pushiness, the constant, unnecessary hurrying. But sure enough, her technique was working; I had this urge to keep moving or leave the store. As a result, when I finally approached the register I was agitated and had a hard time getting my wallet out of my pocket. I hated her then, but of course instead of giving her just one of the fresh, crisp twenties I had just withdrawn from the ATM, I gave her four.

  “You try to tip?” she cackled.

  I was ready to pass it off with a casual remark about the winter dryness numbing my fingertips, but for some reason I tensed up and couldn’t speak. The woman looked at me curiously, standing there with no sound coming out of my mouth. Why are you still here? her expression said. Go outside and think about Mommy! I gave you change—move on.

  “I’m not a tourist!” I almost shouted at her then.

  But it was too late. Outside, I stood on the sidewalk feeling humbled, wondering when my next opportunity to prove myself to the city would come.

  My mother-in-law, I’ve noticed, has a similar effect on people. She’s the archetype of a certain New Yorker who, whatever her actual story, is assumed to have sacrificed so much and worked so hard just to be here that it almost makes you defensive. Why are YOU here? What’s YOUR story? It’s not only people like Gab who struggle to live up to their parents’ example, in other words; it’s all of us. New York never lets you just sit there and relax. So many people are dying to get in, and willing to do almost anything to stay once they get here.

  A MONTH AFTER Emo’s arrival I go with Kay to Jetro, a grocery wholesaler on the Brooklyn waterfront. Jetro is the deli mother ship, a giant warehouse filled with cat food, Cheez Curls, phone cards to every country in the developing world, and a few dozen middle-aged men wearing clothes they’ve obviously slept in. It’s like Costco or Wal-Mart but dirtier and without frills like air-conditioning or pest control. The aisle signs are in English, Korean, Spanish and Arabic, although reading them can be difficult no matter what your nationality, because Jetro skimps on lighting, too.

  We have with us our official Jetro member’s ID, which identifies us as deli owners. (As if by looking in our half-closed, bloodshot eyes you couldn’t tell.) The general public is not allowed in. Jetro’s prices are a cut below what you find at most wholesalers, but what attracts deli owners from all over the city is not its discounting, which isn’t all that remarkable. The reason Jetro exists is to cut out deliverymen, the short-range truckers who haul goods from the storage centers to the
convenience stores. Deliverymen cause headaches; in addition to bullying the store owners (as in the case of the snack cake thugs), they always manage to bring that emergency shipment of toilet paper you paid a premium express delivery rate for two days after you run out. And of course they charge a percentage. Jetro not only eliminates the percentage, it gives deli owners the “freedom” to fill their own shelves with whatever they want, whenever they want it. Meaning, of course, you get to be your own deliveryman.

  Whether this is a good idea for the deli owners is an entirely separate matter. Small business people would always rather do things themselves. That’s their nature. But a deliveryman has a truck—that’s one thing you pay him for—and a deliveryman also gets paid to sacrifice his lumbar discs and groin muscles. Jetro knows exactly how its independently minded clientele thinks, and its attitude is You want to do it? Here’s a shipping container—unload it yourself, and try not to get run over by a forklift. The result is like a reality game show—Shop to Death!—in which contestants try to navigate an obstacle course seeded with challenges intended to maim and/or humiliate them.

  When we arrive at the waterfront I attempt to park as close to the entrance as possible, so that afterward we won’t have to haul our “U-boat” (what Jetro calls its industrial cast-iron shopping carts) across Jetro’s pothole-riddled lot. But there are no spaces except in a loading zone, which Kay, sitting in the passenger seat, nudges me toward.

  “That just waste of good space,” she says. “Go on. Don’t be scare.”

  This is the beginning of my morning’s humiliations—being called a sissy by my fifty-five-year-old mother-in-law. Shopping with Kay is never good for my self-esteem. I’m either hiding my face in my hands, hoping nobody I know sees the candy wrappers and cold coffee casually flung from our vehicle as we cruise down Fourth Avenue, or rebuking myself for being such a lightweight. At Jetro, Kay always seems to get in confrontations with other deli owners as she bumper-cars through the aisles, and I have to play peacemaker before things get physical. She bargains, she haggles, she nags, and I have to stand there and smile while people look at me like, Is this woman for real? Kay exhibits no fear or squeamish-ness, no recognition of physical or psychological pain. What it boils down to is that no matter how much more of a man I am as a result of this deli experience, I will never be as much of one as my mother-in-law.

  This realization comes after deciding I’d had enough of beating myself up. The Puritan tendency is to dig ever deeper for sources of guilt (which, given the iniquitous history of the Puritans’ descendants, the Wasps, tend to be ever plentiful), but lately I’ve run low on the necessary fervor for self-carving. All I want is to continue the store’s success.

  However, Kay’s tendency to throw herself at things is our next big issue. We have to find a way to stop my mother-in-law from working herself to death, whether that means reducing her load generally or specifically targeting the damage she inflicts on herself doing things like going to Jetro. Kay’s body has been altered by the physical strain of the last seven months. On one hand, she’s leaner and even stronger than before. The other day, looking through the store window and watching her smoke a Parliament out on the corner (one of those rare moments in which she stopped moving long enough that I could actually look at her) in her favorite sleeveless T-shirt, I could see new definition in her biceps. Kay has always had thick shoulders and arms, thanks to the years she spent sewing in sweatshops, but now they look young and sinewy again. On the other hand, she’s been injuring herself constantly, whether it’s dropping a case of Chunky soup on her foot at Jetro (thanks to which she now has an eggplant for a big toe) or reaggravating a damaged rotator cuff from the sweatshop years. Thus my presence here on the waterfront at nine A.M., shopping for industrial-sized boxes of pine-scented car freshener trees and El Bubble chewing gum.

  “What is better, studded or ribbed?” Kay asks, holding up a box of Trojans. “Which one customer like more?”

  Mortified—doesn’t she realize that I, of all people, have no idea, having been in a relationship with her daughter practically since the onset of puberty?—I snatch the condoms out of her hand and fling both boxes on the U-boat. “Let’s keep moving,” I say. Kay shrugs and we roll on. The next section is pet food. Nothing to be afraid of here, right? Except that when my back is turned, Kay deadlifts a couple of enormous bags of kitty litter onto the U-boat.

  “Hey, that’s my job!” I protest. Those kitty litter bags are as heavy as wet rugs, and they don’t have a thing on them you can grab. They’re the worst menace to lower backs since the eighty-pound sacks of rice Kay lugs home from the Korean supermarket.

  Too late. “Job done,” Kay says. She asks me if I can run back to a previous section and fetch some paper towels instead. Sigh. Jetro sells blocks of Bounty that look impressive when you lift them over your head, but the truth is, they’re as light as marshmallows. And while I’m distracted she hoists some more heavy merchandise (What do they put in cat food, anyway? The stuff weighs more than lead) onto the U-boat. I’m not amounting to much help.

  This sort of scene gets repeated any number of times each day. Rather than wait even thirty seconds for help, Kay will invariably move the oppressively unwieldy racks of produce and soft drinks inside the deli herself. She’s as much the compulsive nonprocrastinator as ever. The family has tried to restrain her, but without physically stopping her it’s simply impossible.

  “What if we make the store so successful that your mother doesn’t have to work there anymore?” I asked Gab the other day. She shook her head. “She’d still come in and kill herself. When it comes to work, she doesn’t trust anyone else, not even me or Emo. She wants to do everything herself.”

  I think about that remark a lot, because it suggests that self-reliance is a compulsion, not a skill you acquire because you or your parents thought it would be good for character development. You acquire it by being scarred, and becoming incurably suspicious that if you don’t take care of a job yourself, no one will. Which is a harsh statement, if true, because how many of us are lucky enough to be immigrants, war refugees or single parents? (Maybe being a shopkeeper comes close?)

  In order to convince Kay to slow down, I need to know what makes her tick. But how do you even begin to understand someone whose origins are so distant? Sometimes I look at her the way I look at a musician or an athlete and think I could never do what they do.

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m not suggesting that Kay’s an automaton. In Korea, her generation experienced some awful things during the Korean War—massacres, aerial bombardment, forced relocations—which she doesn’t talk about. And as immigrants the Paks went through plenty of other dramas, which similarly aren’t discussed. The sum of those experiences, I’m certain, tended to numb as well as focus the mind.

  After the paper towels and the pet food, she and I move on to the personal hygiene section, above which Jetro’s corrugated steel roof, now popping in the late morning heat, has sprung a leak, resulting in a flood that even a lifetime supply of Bounty can’t soak up. Naturally, Jetro’s management acts as if the thigh-deep puddle isn’t there. Kay and I look at each other. Should we have brought our own inflatable canoe? The Black Pond of Aisle Seven is filled with pigeon feathers, floating Optimo cigars and other crud, and as I wade in I worry about it carrying some electric current too. But since the warehouse is now roasting like an oven, it actually feels refreshing, and with the cases of tampons and Huggies perched on my shoulders as I make one sortie after another into the muck, I can easily imagine the studio audience for Shop to Death! cheering in appreciation—not to mention the denizens of Boerum Hill. Of course, wet pants become something of a liability in Jetro’s frozen section (“Gotcha!” the producers scream), and as I run around frantically fetching frozen logs of baloney while icicles of sweat form on my eyebrows and pneumonia develops in my lungs, the studio audience breaks into nervous laughter. I would laugh too, if only these sorts of tasks weren’t the ones gradually killi
ng Kay.

  AFTER JETRO ONE task remains, a brief stop at Jetro’s little cousin, a Yemeni-owned place called Screaming Eagle.

  Unlike Jetro, I look forward to going to Screaming Eagle. It’s smaller and even grubbier, but its young owner, Walid, is right down there in the squalor with you, and it’s one of those obscure but integral parts of the city whose existence I would never even have known about had we not gone into the deli business. Nevertheless, as soon as we get there, I always have to fight the urge to run. The place is forbidding. You park on this lifeless industrial block of truck bays and warehouses without a pedestrian in sight—just different shades and textures of concrete covered with broken glass. One of the truck bays belongs to Walid, though I can never figure out how Kay knows which one, since there’s no sign. After parking next to a car with no wheels, we approach and, finding a half-open side door, enter without knocking.

  “Yoo-hoo!” says Kay, stomping out a Parliament before waltzing blithely into the darkness of a crumbling stairway. “It’s me, old Korean lady. Anybody home?”

  There’s no buzzer or waiting room. You just feel your way along (unless you’re Kay, in which case you barely slow down, despite the gimpy leg) to the next door, which feels as if it could open to a dungeon, an arsenal or an opium den. Suddenly you find yourself inside a dim, low space full of men wearing ankle-length tunics, with devout-looking beards and faces that always convey surprise and displeasure no matter how many times we come. Middle Eastern music plays in the background, but shuts off as soon as we walk in. Seeing Kay, some of the men walk out. Then Walid comes out and greets us, and while still stealing nervous glances at us, the remaining men go back to their work, which involves slicing open an endless heap of cardboard boxes containing all manner of small electronics and personal hygiene products, plus tobacco and baby formula, then setting out the boxes on shelves for clients like us to rummage through.