Emo’s stories read at first like the fairy tales passed around the Mazer-Farley breakfast table: beautiful, smart heroine, impoverished childhood. When you’re starved for any taste of the past, you bolt down what little is rationed your way. But after a while Emo’s stories started to taste tinny, like tuna sitting out too long in a can. Whenever I pressed her for more details, her face would go blank. My mother was but a hazy portrait: a composite of Emo’s fuzzy adolescent reflections. She could have been anyone: the co-ed laughing with friends at Michelangelo. The schoolgirl sitting alone on the subway, spinning her way back home. After a certain point, your palate begins to long for something fresh. Eventually Emo’s stories began to peter out—I stopped asking, and she stopped telling.
But the most interesting picture to emerge from all of Emo’s tales was that of Sang. Before she had placed that photo of him as a child in my hands, I’d never had reason to ponder his own backstory. “Your uncle used to be so funny,” she said. “Okay—maybe more like corny. Okay—maybe more like a troublemaker.” Emo had spent much of her childhood skipping home from school only to find her big brother kneeling in front of the house, arms raised high in the air as punishment for his latest mischief. The time he and a friend had swiped melons from a local farmer’s patch. Or when he was sent to the fish market for some fresh mackerel and blew all the money on boong-uh-bbang, toasted carp-shaped cakes filled with red bean paste, for all his friends. Or the time Sang made a quip about Re Myungsun’s short-lived pompadour.
These stories had me bursting with laughter—Sang would make George, Mary, and me do the same raise-your-hands-in-the-air punishment when we were little. (We’d always lower our sore arms whenever Sang had his back turned.) Yet they formed a very different portrait of the Sang I knew: stern, militant. But what did we know of his childhood? There were no framed snapshots of him as a little boy back home—the literal film reel of his life began in New York. How was it possible for Emo to have such specific memories of Sang when the age gap between them was even wider than that between her and my mother?
When Emo wasn’t telling me stories about the family, she was watching soap operas. She never spoke of her friends, and no other plans seemed to occupy her evenings. (Whereas Sang and Hannah were always darting off to some church function. Or gye gathering—a money-lending club they joined as an excuse to get together with their friends.) Emo loved soaps. Apparently Big Uncle did, too. One night we sat down to watch a new show, a Chosun-dynasty court romance called Don’t Throw Me Away and Leave Me. The title came from a line from the folk song “Arirang”—The beloved who threw me away and left me / Will get no farther than ten ri / Before he injures his foot. It was the same melody as the front-door chime—a cheerful tune with a spiteful message. Emo and I sat on floor cushions with our backs propped against the white leather couch. Big Uncle sat in a leather massage chair. We passed a bowl of squid-flavored rice crackers back and forth.
“The main lead is Eun. He was lowborn, but he studied his way into the scholar class,” Emo explained between animated crunches. “So the king arranges a marriage for him with a nobleman’s daughter named Bora. She’s an ‘Old Miss,’ just like your Emo.” Emo often used the Konglishism “Old Miss” to refer to herself—it meant spinster. “That is, until he meets a beautiful young courtesan named Jihae!”
I think she expected me to gasp, so I said, “No he didn’t!”
Big Uncle went “Uh-uh-uh” as the chair’s tiny electric fingers jabbed his back and the undersides of his legs.
Emo ignored him. “Do you see Eun’s dilemma? Will he choose his duty? Or throw it all away for love?”
The plot of this soap opera hit eerily close to home. I tried to change the subject. “So yesterday in my class, that funny boy Chandler, he was saying—”
Big Uncle cut me off. “You always focus on the wrong stuff,” he said to Emo. “The most important part is how our people will outsmart the Japanese. Those warmongering bastards. The highlight’s gonna be the tale of Nongae.”
Emo explained. Nongae was a courtesan who lured a Japanese general onto a romantic boat ride in the Nam River. Then she threw her arms around him, fastened jade ring locks around her fingers, and tipped them both overboard. They drowned.
“Nongae is one of the finest ladies in our people’s history,” Big Uncle said. “Now, what Japanese geisha would do that for her country?”
The mood between all of us was so relaxed that I ventured a joke. “Very funny how Big Uncle’s also enjoying soap operas, like middle-aged housewives,” I said.
But Big Uncle didn’t appreciate my joke. “It’s called ‘drama,’” he corrected me, his tongue tripping over the English word and rendering it into three syllables: duh-rah-mah. It was one of the many foreign loan words that had become embedded into the language. “And it’s not just for the ajummas.”
The festive mood instantly dissipated. “Sorry, Big Uncle,” I said. I instantly focused on the television screen.
The “drama” was about to start. Eun, the male lead, had thick, strong eyebrows and a square jaw. He was supposed to be a young lad, but he looked almost as old as Big Uncle. He walked around the set with a pained expression, as if he had to relieve his bowels. But whenever his eyes alighted on Jihae, the young courtesan, his whole face broke into a smile. Eun’s smile reminded me of the unabashed way Ed had smiled at me at McDonald’s. It had been one of his rare smiles, the one he deemed too good for everyday use.
“If only I were half the beauty Jihae is!” Emo sighed wistfully. But I did not find the actress playing Jihae attractive at all. Her face was pale and pointy. The bright TV lights washed her out. She looked like the “after” shots in plastic surgery ads on the subways.
Eun, staring longingly at Jihae in the distance, failed to notice the gang of Japanese samurai charging behind him with raised swords. The episode ended and was immediately followed by a commercial for a kimchi refrigerator.
Big Uncle pointed to the television screen in disgust. “See? That’s what happens when you get caught up in silly romance.”
But Emo was lost in her own thoughts. “I’m such a sucker for romance,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “My head says Eun should follow his duty, but my heart wants little Jihae to succeed. Jane, what do you think?”
There were infinite reasons their union was all wrong. Eun was way too old for Jihae, for one. He should have focused on securing his future—being with Jihae would only have set him back. And frankly, Jihae wasn’t all that.
“Jihae should show some nunchi and just going away,” I said. Then I promptly excused myself for bed.
* * *
Don’t Throw Me Away and Leave Me only seemed to stir up the feelings I’d been trying to push down since leaving—fleeing—New York. During those first few months in Seoul, as the pleasant chill of fall gave way to the early frost of winter, I found my thoughts turning continually to Ed Farley. In the mornings, when I crossed the river on my commute to work, I pictured him sitting at the block wood table carving out shells of baguette. In the evenings, when I crossed the river again, circling my way home, I thought of him sitting at that same table opposite the woman he did not love. The two of them could hardly “have a conversation” without disagreeing. Whereas Ed and I spoke the same language.
That was the other thing I missed as the months wore on—conveying all the subtleties and nuances of language. My Korean had stalled, despite the exponential leap I’d made early on. I grew frustrated at my inability to move beyond the most perfunctory speech. I could feel myself making mistakes—the clunky sentence constructions, my stunted vocabulary. At the same time, my English grew stagnant. Despite the fact that I spoke English every day in class, I repeated the same phrases over and over, like a scripted reel. The simplest of expressions were beginning to elude me—my brain growing dull as I tried to conjure them up.
I was caught in a no-man’s-land—the gulf
between English and Korean felt wider than the East River and the Han combined.
I was lonely, my linguistic loneliness echoing the dull ache that tugged continually at my heart. That loneliness was amplified by the swift chatter of the subway passengers surrounding me and by the ads blaring from the walls of the Number 2 train as the Seoulites and I spun round and round its endless loop.
Chapter 17
Friends
A Don’t Throw Me Away and Leave Me craze swept over the land. The drama was all that Emo and Big Uncle talked about at mealtimes. My students chatted about it endlessly in labored English during class and rapid-fire Korean during breaks. Then a new character arrived on set—Chulsu, a young nobleman making a play for Jihae the courtesan. The love triangle reconfigured into a quadrangle.
That winter there was a popular ad for a brand of kimchi refrigerator. A bride in a white wedding gown and a tuxedoed groom stood on either side of the pink-and-white flower-printed appliance. The bride was the actress who played Jihae. The groom was Chulsu, and he had the same windblown hairdo and jaunty lankiness as Chandler. Their faces glowed; their arms formed a heart shape over their heads.
The slogan, written in English, read FRESH . . . MOIST . . . WELL-BEING. WHEN ONLY #1 MATTERS. The first time I read it, I snorted; the passengers on either side of me glanced over and inched away. It was only when I stopped laughing that I noticed the two parents in traditional hanbok dress, tucked away in the corner of the ad. “Our child deserves only the best for a perfect life!” said the balloon blowing out of their mouths. They stared with approval at the newlywed couple.
The news about Don’t Throw Me Away even spread to Flushing, where, of all people, Sang learned about it. Imagine my surprise when an e-mail arrived from him. Well, not from him directly (to this day I still don’t think Sang knows how to operate a computer). It was sent via George.
“Yo, Jane Nuna. Abba made me write to you. He says, ‘Your aunt like drug addict for Don’t Throw Me Away and Leave Me. But they not have yet in New York. Church mothers, they say you buy VHS tape in Itaewon. But I say, NO WAY. Aunt say maybe you find someplace else, safe place, like Dongdaemun Market. When you coming back home, you give to her. But only after you bargaining down price.
“‘You not forget, Jane: you living there still burden for Big Uncle and Emo. No making mess. Once a week you buy something, say thank you. You not be cheap. Right now Jeju hallabong orange in season. Use money Uncle give you.
“‘Yesterday Uncle get call from your old lady boss. “What we gonna do Jane’s stuff?” she say. So now Uncle have to go all the way Brooklyn. Why you not taking care your stuff before you leave?’”
I shuddered thinking of Sang entering the Mazer-Farley house. Would he be able to sense what had happened between Ed and me? Hurriedly I read through the rest of the e-mail.
But Sang had no more words for me. George had taken over. “P.S. Jane Nuna, I heard H.O.T.’s coming out with a new album. Can you pick it up for me before you come home? I’ll totally pay you back.”
And then the last postscript: “Abba didn’t tell me to write this, but at dinner last night he said, ‘I’m glad Lowood rejecting her.’ I just thought you should know.”
Sang’s e-mails, by way of George, were not the only reminders of home. Nina and I continued a regular correspondence. It was she who narrated the aftermath of the attacks, the utterly downcast spirit that shrouded the city. And it was she who sent updates about the Mazer-Farleys. Interwoven with these accounts was the latest in her own love life: Joey Cammareri had finally asked her out.
I scrolled down through her e-mail. Joey (though Nina was now calling him “J.”) had taken her to a gallery opening in Chelsea. Nina couldn’t follow any of the conversations that swirled over toothpicked cubes of smoked gouda and water crackers flecked with black pepper, so she quickly downed three Grey Goose and tonics instead. She spent the night gazing at the floor tiles that lit up to a neon pink until Joey packed her off in a cab with the promise they’d do something again “real soon.”
I braced myself for the next paragraph, one undoubtedly chockablock with Joey Cammareri effusions. But instead my cursor landed on the word “Ed.”
The morning after that first “date” with Joey, Nina was stumbling hungover down sunny Court Street in search of ginger ale when she ran into him—them.
“Ed and Beth were out buying their bagels and coffee, and—get this—they were holding hands.”
In my one year with the Mazer-Farleys, I had never seen Ed and Beth hold hands, in public or in private. (I had also never seen Beth eat bagels or drink coffee.) They never displayed any affection at all, except for that one time I’d overheard them having sex.
“I was going to say hi but the two of them looked totally lost in their own world.”
Ed and Beth. Holding hands. Ed and Beth. Holding hands. The words glowed in pairs from the screen, flaunting their union.
All this time I’d taken a silent comfort in knowing that we were both suffering, respectively, even if on opposite sides of the globe. I loved him. I gave him (sort of) my virginity. And apparently it had all meant nothing. As soon as I’d left, Ed went right back to Beth. Her! Parading Beth down Court Street, for all the neighborhood to see. There was an expression they used a lot here: There’s no tree trunk that doesn’t fall after it’s been struck with an ax ten times. It sounded much more elegant in Korean, yes. Couldn’t Ed see? Of course I was the one who had to leave—I was the one who’d wrecked their home. But if he had truly wanted me, wouldn’t he somehow have chased after me? It was a stupid thought, yet still it persisted.
“I thought things were rocky between them when you lived there. So . . . what happened?”
If Nina was hinting at something, she could just forget it. I had been reduced to nothing in his eyes. And spilling the beans to Nina would change none of it. You did the right thing. I should have been happy he was honoring his commitment to his family, to his wife, to his daughter.
But I wasn’t happy. The ache in the cavity of my chest resurfaced. I remembered that graph I’d imagined, the one that clearly showed all the ways Beth took precedence over me. It was obvious that Ed had made his choice: Beth. Not me.
* * *
The school semester was drawing to a close. After our last class, Chandler, Monica, and Rachel invited me out to the local hof, or bar. Always refuse offer first time. If the offer was renewed, you knew it was genuine. At least this one bit of advice from Sang proved true. After two rounds of refusals, my students insisted, Chandler especially. He nodded vigorously—“We take American teacher to American hof!”— and led the way.
I had never been inside one before, even though I’d seen them everywhere. This one was Western-themed, with a sign in the shape of a spur and glossy swinging saloon doors. We ordered chi-maek—short for fried chicken (chiken)and pitchers of beer (maekju). This was also the first time I’d been out socializing with other young Koreans. It was a welcome change after spending months watching the cake-eating groups all around me while I sat alone.
Our food and drinks arrived. Rachel was frowning at Monica, whose fork was hovering in midair above the plate of fried chicken. Monica glanced up at her friend before moving her fork to the bowl of radish cubes. She speared one and gently gnawed off one corner, her mouth and tongue going chyap-chyap. A large sound for such a small bite.
Then Rachel’s eyes flitted over to me. Was I imagining the way they explored my chin, my cheeks, the bridge of my nose? She said, “Chandler, you not say you want to see new Ahn Jaeni movie? Monica, she also want. Maybe you must go together.” She was going chyap-chyap, too—on a large hunk of fried chicken.
Chandler busied himself with refilling my beer glass. “No, I never say.”
He was moving on to fill the other glasses, but Monica took the pitcher from him.
Rachel, rebuffed, tried again. “Ya, Monica! What do yo
u eat? Your skin looks so pretty!”
Monica jumped in. “Ah, no, no, no. I am not pretty. Rachel is pretty. Jane Teacher is pretty. So pretty she look like actress!” That’s what they called me, no matter how many times I tried to correct them. (“You don’t actually call your teacher ‘Teacher.’”)
Chandler nodded—“Yes, just like Jihae from Don’t Throw Me Away!”—and I demurred. Rachel shot Monica a look.
That Rachel was trying to peddle Monica to Chandler was obvious; what I didn’t pick up on for a long while yet was why. At the time I thought it was less about Monica’s feelings for Chandler and more about Rachel’s attempts to make me look like a babo, a fool, in front of him. She must have picked up on the fact that over the course of the months I’d found myself drawn to Chandler. I always perked up with a nervous energy when he was in the room. Emboldened by the alcohol, I found myself fluffing my hair coquettishly and addressing him pointedly in the conversation, sometimes to the exclusion of the others. Girls can be petty when they’re competitive. Even more so when they’re drunk.
My paranoid suspicions were confirmed when Rachel, her eyes once again latching onto me, cocked her head to one side. “Jane Teacher, may I ask you question? Where your parents are from?”
My chest tightened at the thought of where this conversation was leading. “My mother’s from here,” I said cagily.
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