by Mia Yun
And it seemed we were always going somewhere that summer. On foot. Following our parents around Flushing, where the crowded streets looked strangely somnolent on hot afternoons. And in Uncle Shin’s shiny, black, air-conditioned Cadillac with everything automatic and plush blue leather seats that smelled new. Inah wouldn’t miss the chance to ride in it for the world. Whenever Uncle Shin came to take Dad to look at used cars that summer, elbowing me in the arm, Inah would climb into the back.
Then on the way, she would listen in as Uncle Shin—he was even then a self-appointed expert on America—explained to Dad how things worked here, saying how in America, we do things this way and that. Then he would hold up his tubby thumb and say how in America, money is king and without money, you are nobody. Dad would always quietly listen to him and say, smiling, “You have an incurable American disease.” Inah, all razzle-dazzled, would break into their conversation and chirp, “Uncle this” and “Uncle that,” ingratiating herself.
Later, walking around the steamy used-car lots, squinting in the sun, among the rows of glinting and immobile used cars between Uncle Shin and Dad, Inah would ask them how they liked this car and that. The prices marked on the scratchy windshields in Magic Marker, of course, had no actual meaning to Inah or me. Uncle Shin, who had a big head, mostly bald except for a few strands of long hair that he’d carefully comb across the shiny pate, and a big puffy red face that made him look like he was a little short of breath, always carried a small brown leather bag, which dangled from his pinkie as he walked around with his arms behind his back. And for some reason, in the summer heat, he wore a turquoise-and-pink iridescent jogging suit. It made swishing noises as he strolled ahead of us, leaving behind a trail of the too sweet smell of the eau de cologne he was known to apply liberally. Inah followed him and giggled, covering her mouth every time he pointed at a car with his chin and said it was nothing but a “tong cha,“ literally a “shit car.”
A few times that summer, Auntie Minnie and Uncle Wilson took us and Jason sightseeing in their big, old, faded electric blue Bonneville. It was trimmed with shiny chrome fenders, and I remember the afternoons when we returned home, all hot and tired, in the back of the baking car, which Uncle Wilson drove like a sailboat, sitting sloped sideways at the steering wheel, his left arm leaning out the open window. Often soul music was droning on drowsily from the car radio. And from the backseat, I could always smell Uncle Wilson’s musty aftershave and Auntie Minnie’s menthol cigarettes, which she smoked one after another, holding them pinched between her two fat fingers tipped with press-on nails, all the while patting down her frizzy, bleached permed hair pinned to the top of her head, spread out like bird plumes.
We must have been coming back from the Bronx Zoo the afternoon Auntie Minnie pointed out Central Park and the horse carriages we were passing. In the sky just over the tree lines of the park, a huge August moon, full, hazy and orange, was hanging. I remember sticking my head out the window and watching it follow us, slipping behind the tall glass buildings and out again in the slivers of sky between side streets as cars, honking, bumped past us like a stream down the wide avenue. Tall buildings with flags, and yellow and red, sun-melted, Jell-O-like windows flew by. People swelled like waves along the sidewalks cut by deep, black shadows.
No matter where we went that summer, the terrain was always new and unfamiliar. The sounds ambivalent and the smells foreign. It was as though I was always seeing things through haze: Everything looked somewhat blurry and fuzzy, disjointed and jumbled. And so puzzled that Inah’s face had remained the same, I’d obsessively and compulsively check it. I had been sure that it was going to become new the moment we stepped off the plane in America. Like magic. We would say abracadabra and Inah’s face would be new again. Just like that. I don’t remember what it was that made me finally realize that, even in America, she wasn’t going to get a new face.
But Inah was a happy and chirpy and intensely animated presence that summer. She was so relentlessly upbeat that Uncle Shin even nicknamed her “Sunshine.” And, she was in love with Jason. The late afternoons when we returned home from sightseeing she always sat in the middle, between Jason and me, and played endless rounds of paperscissors rock with him, being thrown about, sliding up and down the oatmeal-colored, cracked backseat. Her bony back always obstinately turned to me, she would pull at his arms and beg him, “Play, play,” and repeat, “Oh- kay? Oh-kay!” Jason, looking hot and all bothered and tired, would finally scream and bury his face in his hands and say, “No, no, no.” But Inah, laughing and giggling and still undaunted, would climb onto his back and try to pry his hands away, singing to him, “Yes, yes. Play. Oh-kay?”
I always felt vaguely sad and rejected during the ride back home. That must be why I still remember it so vividly: row houses with small backyards and quiet and deserted tree-lined streets, and tall buildings with their windows on fire from the sun that I saw flying past the car window. And a big blue sky with white feather clouds that floated along. In endless reels.
That summer, Inah was also what they call an ass-kisser. She would try so hard to ingratiate herself to everyone around her. Okay-ing and kowtowing. Strangely docile even to Cousin Ki-hong and Cousin Ki-sun, who seemed to decide it was more fun to scare her than to play treasure-hunters in the pool.
They would repeatedly dive in and roar out of the water behind her like sea monsters, and Inah, squealing with fright and delight, would furiously paddle away on the float. Then Cousin Ki-hong and Cousin Ki-sun would catch up to her, grab the end of the float and push it around, this way and that, shaking it and jiggling it. Inah, trying desperately to hang on, would say, in her fake, singsong voice, “Oh-kay! Oh-kay!” and they would make fun of her, saying, “Anyah, OK,” “Not OK,” and cruelly flip her over, repeatedly dumping her into the pool.
Inah, who couldn’t swim, would go down and come up, frantically flailing her arms and spitting water out of her mouth. From the look in her eyes, I could tell she was scared out of her mind, but she wouldn’t scream or make any sound. She would just try to stay afloat, blinking her eyes and gurgling. Trying all the time to look like she was having the time of her life. I would run along the edge of the pool, screaming to Cousin Ki-sun to get her out of the water. Cousin Ki-sun would pretend he didn’t understand me. He would put his hand behind his ear and say, “Moo-soon mal ?” “What are you saying?” and laugh. I would keep screaming and hollering and stamp my feet as Inah desperately struggled to stay afloat.
Finally, Cousin Ki-sun would grab her by the scruff of her neck like she was a drowning puppy and push her to the edge of the swimming pool. Frantic and looking like a sewer rat, she would scramble and climb out, dazed, her face plastered with wet dripping hair, her lips blue, and her eyes red. As Inah stood doubled over, retching and coughing, all goose-bumped and her teeth chattering uncontrollably, Cousin Ki-sun would stagger around holding his skinny, ripple-lined belly, laughing and laughing and pointing at her. But Inah was willing to go through it all over again. Just so she could paddle around on the float.
Then we moved to our own place in an old apartment building on Bowne Street in Flushing. We had hardly any furniture, and the rest of the summer we lived out of suitcases and ate and slept on the floor, Korean-style. Mom seemed to be constantly cleaning, scrubbing down the walls and floors, turning the old apartment inside out. In the living room, Dad often sat cross-legged on the old parquet floor, hunched over the Korean newspapers he’d go out and buy. We’d hear him saying, “Hmm, hmm,” as he drew circles here and there with a leaking ballpoint pen in the Help Wanted section.
Inah, so excited about living in an apartment, would ride the elevator up and down or go to the hallway and ring the doorbell, calling in her trilling voice, “Hullo. Hullo.” She would also spend endless hours with her elbows planted on the sill, looking down at the street below from the window of our eighth-floor apartment. Kicking her legs and humming. And every afternoon, on top of the kitchen counter, like a tireless parrot,
the portable cassette player blared the “Listen and Repeat” English conversation lessons we had brought from Korea. We hardly listened to them, but Mom never stopped putting them on.
Some time that summer, we rode along with Dad in the noisy, mini, plum-colored, dented Ford his driving instructor drove. It was a sweltering afternoon, but we couldn’t open the windows as all the handles were missing, and for some reason, the seats in the back where we were riding were ripped up and the springs kept poking at our legs. The instructor, a Korean man who wore extra-thick-lensed glasses that kept slipping off his skinny nose, was a self-proclaimed devout Christian. In the car, he kept a picture of Jesus nailed on the cross. It dangled from the rearview mirror, and Inah and I couldn’t help notice it, because every time the car hit a bump, Jesus seemed to writhe in such terrible pain. Dad wasn’t too fond of him because, like so many other Koreans he’d meet in Flushing, he tried to talk him into becoming a Christian, a God’s child, as he called it. One day Dad finally told him he was a Buddhist, even though he wasn’t really. After that, he talked to Dad only when it was necessary to teach him how to drive.
He drove us to a flat, low-lying area in the shadow of the electric-purple Shea Stadium. It was intersected with gritty, industrial-looking streets lined with body shops and used auto parts yards that sold hubcaps and used tires. It must have been Sunday afternoon, because the streets were completely deserted and all the shops were closed. As we drove by, behind the padlocked chain-link fences, vicious-looking, sharp-fanged dogs jumped and barked. Inah and I had to get out of the car and wait at the curb of a stinky, oil-blackened street, blasted by the white afternoon sunlight, while Dad practiced left, right and U-turns, up and down the street. It would be a while before it would dawn on us that Dad wasn’t going to be driving a black, shiny Cadillac like Uncle Shin. At least, not any time soon.
Then one day, our first summer in America came to an abrupt end. It was the day Auntie Minnie and Uncle Wilson took us to see the Statue of Liberty. Inah was super-hyper, and mean all day, pushing and pinching, as we waited in the long lines in the blistering heat.
On the ride home in the afternoon, Inah and Jason fell asleep in the back of the car. I remember that Inah was wearing a sleeveless blue dress that day, ruffled around the armholes and skirt hems, and she looked like a crumpled blue flower, sleeping slumped like a half-empty barley sack with her hot, sweaty head crushed against my arm. Next to her on the other side, slouched sideways with his head on the hot window, Jason was out cold too, with a frown on his soft and smooth brown face, prettier than any pretty girl’s, like he was having a bad dream. I remember sitting very still and trying to stay awake so as not to disturb Inah. Then, I too fell asleep.
Some time later, we all woke up to the sound of Auntie Minnie and Uncle Wilson arguing in the front of the car. To my sleepy head, it sounded like firecrackers going off, the way Auntie Minnie was yelling and screaming. And then suddenly, it was Uncle Wilson whose thunderous roar made us jump up like jackrabbits, disoriented and frightened. Not knowing English, we had no idea what the fight was about. We just sat without a peep, hoping it would stop, while they went on arguing at the top of their voices. Instead, Uncle Wilson began hissing and pounding the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, and Aunt Minnie went on yelling and cursing in Korean and English. All at the same time.
Jason sat hunched over, his hands pressed over his ears and his eyes tightly crushed shut. Scared, Inah and I held on to the edge of the cracked vinyl seat, melting in the sunlight that was blasting in through the window. Traffic was heavy. We could hear cars honking. Then outside the window, we saw the Korean furniture store where, with our parents, we had gone to look at a dining table once. We were almost home!
But just as we turned onto Bowne, Auntie Minnie angrily rubbed out the cigarette in the car ashtray, picked up a tissue box from the floor and threw it at Uncle Wilson. I remember Uncle Wilson swerving the car toward the front of our apartment building. He flung the door open, jumped out and stomped around. Terrified, Inah and I fast-peeled our sweaty legs off the seats, scrambled out and ran to the doorway of our apartment house. When we looked back, Uncle Wilson was trying to pull Auntie Minnie out of the car, and she was fighting him off like mad, screaming and cursing and kicking her sandaled feet like busy pedals.
Jason was still in the back of the car, glued to the seat with his head down, as if melted by the sun. Inah ran back down and gestured and shouted to him in Korean to get out of the car, but he wouldn’t even look up. I went back down and joined her. He was weeping now, holding his pretty shaved head, sparkling with sweat beads. His neck was shiny, too, with sweat. Auntie Minnie was still screaming and cursing at Uncle Wilson, who had her arm in his hands. Her skirt had climbed up her plump white legs, almost all the way to the hip. I wanted to go and pull it down for her, but I was afraid.
Inah turned around and ran into the apartment building to get Mom. With my heart pounding and pounding, I stayed put on the sidewalk, where a small crowd had gathered. They stood around and watched Uncle Wilson and Auntie Minnie fight, as if it were a show. And poor Jason was still weeping like a baby in the back of the car.
Soon Inah ran out of the building with Mom at her heels. Mom pulled Jason out of the car and handed him over to us, and we took him up to our apartment. Inah made him sit on the floor, and stayed with him, holding his hand. I got him a glass of water and a wet towel. Jason took just a sip and sat sniffling and twisting the wet towel in his hand as Inah rubbed the tears off with her dirty hand, leaving smudges all over his smooth cheeks.
“Oh-kay, oh-kay,” Inah whispered to him.
After a while, we heard the apartment door fling open, and Mom sailed in, followed by Auntie Minnie, hissing and cursing in Korean. Her hair was down in a frilly mess and her makeup was all smudged in sweat. Mom looked very upset and out of breath.
“If you two want to fight, go somewhere else and fight. Of all places, why do you have to do it right at my doorstep?” Mom said to Auntie Minnie.
“I’m not in the mood to be preached to!” she yelled at Mom. “So what are you going to do? Now everyone knows you got a relative married to a blackie!” Then, pulling Jason off the floor, Auntie Minnie sailed out of the apartment with him. Inah ran out after them, calling, “Jason! Jason!”
FOUR
On the morning of our first school day in America, Inah and I pose for Mommy’s camera in front of our redbrick apartment building. We are scrubbed clean, and dressed in matching twin outfits Mommy picked out from the suitcase full of brand-new clothes from Korea. From our necks, two sets of nylon cords hang, one with a name tag, the other with a steel bicycle whistle. Inah fidgets.
“Stand still,” Mommy tells her, stepping backward and bending her knees. Squinting in the bright morning light with our arms dropped stiffly at our sides, we stare and stare at the camera, trying not to blink. The big white bows decking the fronts of our cutie-pie, blue-and-white checkered dresses already start to droop like the tongues of panting dogs.
“Smile! Don’t frown,” Mommy says, and the camera goes click, click. Twice. Inah blinks hard. She hates taking pictures.
But in no time at all, we hate going to school. Every day, during the recess, Korean kids chase us around the playground like a flock of mad birds, pushing us at the back and pulling at our way-too-uncool dresses, and shouting and singing, “One so pretty! One so ugly!” and “Monkey see, monkey do.” And they call Inah “Ghost Face” and “Devil Face” and “KFC.” (It takes us a long time, like a month, before we find out what “KFC” means: Not Kentucky Fried Chicken as we’d thought but Korean Fried Chicken.)
White kids are no better, even though some look like angels with their yellow curly hair and blue eyes. Pointing at Inah’s face, they chant what sounds to us like, “Cha-na-chi! Cha-na-chi!”We ask Jessica Han what’s “Cha-na-chi.” She says they are saying “China Witch.” But we’re not even Chinese, Inah says, looking puzzled. Jessica says it doesn’t matter. After
that, whenever kids call her “Cha-na-chi,” Inah barks back and says, “You stew-peed! I not Chai-nee!” They laugh because, as Jessica says, they don’t care if we are Chinese or Korean. They pull their eyes up and say, “You all same same.”
Inah screws her face hard and sticks out her tongue at them, and they laugh like they have never seen anything so funny. “Catch me or catch you,” they say, making her chase after them around and around like a merry-go-round. They wait until she comes close and pretend they are oh so scared (but they aren’t) and run off, screaming. But they are having the best time in the world. “Witch, you watchee!” they sing in pidgin. “How about a watchee for a peachee!”
I don’t fight back, although I know I should stand up for Inah. But it’s not that easy. Every time kids pick on us and call us names, my tongue gets tied and my face turns as dark red as the ripest plum. I only wish I could make myself invisible, or grow wings and fly off to the sky. I wish we didn’t have the same pageboy haircut and wear matching clothes. I wish we didn’t go to the same school. I wish Inah didn’t tag along after me everywhere like a shadow. I wish I could lose her even if just for a day. And I wish she didn’t fight back like mad, because it only makes everything even worse.
When we walk home from school in the afternoon, kids from Bowne stalk us like an army of ants on a march. Up the street, around the corner, giggling and mouthing off bad words and crushing their faces into odd shapes and peeling down their eyes with their sticky fingers. It doesn’t matter that Mommy is with us. There’s not a Korean kid up and down Bowne who doesn’t know her by now. They know she’s just a paper tigress. With no bite.