by Mia Yun
SEVEN
In America, home-alone kids are taken away and placed in foster homes. So when Mommy starts working for Liberty Tours, the travel agency on Main Street, after school, we head to Auntie Minnie’s hair salon instead of home. Mommy is so very sorry that we have to spend the afternoons cooped up at the salon, but we don’t mind it at all. For one thing, we no longer have to sit down with her for our daily math study and spelling test.
We are supposed to go straight to the salon, but, if we are in the money, we stop at the Korean bakery, O-bok, Five Blessings, which is just a couple of doors up from the salon on Union Street. Usually, we get a couple of red-bean-filled doughnuts or cream-filled buns, at sixty cents each. But our favorite is bing-soo, which comes in a pretty glass bowl, heaped with shaved ice and sweetened red beans, and sprinkled with dried fruit on top. When we are there, we also like to look at the birthday cakes that sit behind the glass display case. One can be ordered in advance, and we would very much like to when Daddy’s birthday comes. That’s if we’re in the money. We will ask them to decorate it with blue and white roses, since he loves flowers.
But if we’re not in the money at all, we go to the Korean stationery store on Roosevelt Avenue, where they sell Made-in-Korea fruit-scented erasers, fancy pencil cases with magnetic covers and Hello Kitty sticker pads. We finger them and smell them until the Korean uncle comes over and says if we’re not going to buy them, we shouldn’t touch them so much. If they get to be old-looking, who would buy them?
In the back of Auntie Minnie’s salon, there is a small curtained-off room, and that’s where we spend the afternoon. It’s got a sagging brown leather couch, perfect for a couch potato or two. And there is also a minifridge, a boom box, and a coffee table, where stacks of old Korean beauty magazines and hairstyle magazines sit, their spines broken and pages thumb-harassed into tatters. The minifridge is stocked with our favorite red bean bars, Bing-grae yogurt in miniplastic containers, and a big family-size bottle of Coca Cola that keeps us wide awake for the rest of the afternoon on a caffeine high. After hurrying through our homework, Inah and I play Monopoly and tic-tac-toe with the boom box on. I like Kiss FM. Inah likes 1010 WINS. News every ten minutes. With traffic and weather updates.
When I get bored, I go out to the salon and sit in one of the pink swivel chairs and watch Auntie Minnie snip and snap hair off her customers and blow-dry it and set it with plenty of hair spray, which she pumps out in clouds of mist from a can she wields like a magic wand. Auntie Minnie’s customers are mostly “aunts,” not “misses,” because “misses” go to the salons that have track lighting and play piped-in music, and those are not even called salons but a “hair lab” or a “hair studio” or a “hair science,” and in those places, beauticians are called “hairstylists” and they wear silver lamé vests over black mesh uniforms. But Auntie Minnie has plenty of business. She talks a haircut customer into being a perm customer. She gives a free manicure or free hot-oil treatment to any highlight or dye or tint customer. Highlights and tints soften the look, Auntie Minnie says, for she’s got an opinion or two on everything and everyone. Black hair makes you look harsh. Blond hair is softest and easiest to cut. White women’s skin wrinkles easy because it’s so fair. Asian women have yellow skin tone. A regular facial massage—twice a week—keeps skin young. And a peel-off pack shrinks pores. Besides shampoo and hair rinses and hair gels, Auntie Minnie also sells cucumber massage cream that comes in white plastic jars, and Aloe Vera & Herbal soap that comes in three-bar sets. She’s also taking permanent tattoo makeup lessons and is thinking of applying to become an Avon representative. She says, no one calls them Avon Ladies anymore. I say, Oh.
Did you know, Auntie Minnie asks me one day, that I used to sell Amway products when I had a salon in Brooklyn? No, I didn’t know that. Almost all my customers were black women, she says. And they are the best customers in the world. And to tell you the truth, I like black people better than any other people. Better than Koreans. Then how come you and Uncle Wilson are getting a divorce, I ask. And how come Jason lives in Brooklyn with Uncle Wilson and Grandma Wilson, not with you in Flushing. It’s a long story I haven’t got time to tell, and even if I did, you wouldn’t understand, she says. But I still go to my old black church every Sunday. All the way to Brooklyn. Why do you think that is? I don’t know. Do you know, she says, Koreans call me a yang-gongjoo, “western princess,” because I married an American GI? Uh-uh, I shake my head. Not only that, they look down on me even more because I married a black GI. Oh, I didn’t know that. Now you know, she says.
When Auntie Minnie is extra busy with more than one perm customer, I help and sort out a pink plastic bucket full of perm rollers, dripping with solution. The smell makes me fuzzy and happy in the head. Every time I help out, Auntie Minnie promises a free pin curl, but when she’s finally free, she lights up a cigarette instead, sits down in one of the pink chairs and watches what she calls “soaps” on the mini TV that perches on the counter. Pulling at her cigarette and blowing out smoke through her nose, she asks me if I notice how all the soap actors and actresses have perfectly beautiful hair. Instead, I notice the sunlight pulling out of the scratched linoleum floor like a magic carpet, and I yawn.
But Inah doesn’t ever hang out at the salon. She doesn’t like all the mirrors, where her scarred face multiplies. It makes her feel stuck inside a magic glass. That’s what she says. Besides, customers always stare at her through the mirror. They just can’t help themselves. And then they want to know how her face got that way. They ask Auntie Minnie what happened. Then they find out that we’re twins and feel double sorry for Inah. Sometimes, I wish someone would feel sorry for me, too, but no one ever does. They cluck their tongues again and again. They look at me, and say such a pretty face Inah lost too. They say all this in front of me and Inah, making us blush and squirm and feel so dumb and bad.
Inah rarely gets bored, anyway. She likes to read. That’s all she does every afternoon after finishing her homework. No more Monopoly or tic-tac-toe. Instead, she sits crumpled at the far end of the sagging brown leather couch and reads for hours with her nose buried in whatever she can lay her hands on. Just like Daddy, when she’s reading, she doesn’t hear anything or notice anything.
In a way, Inah is even worse than Daddy. Wherever we go, right away she looks around to see if there’s anything to read. Her eyes greedily zero in on a book or newspaper or whatever happens to be lying around. And then she gets so caught up in reading that she becomes oblivious of everything else that goes on around her. When we go to Jessica Han’s, as soon as she shakes her shoes off her feet, she heads straight to the bookcase. It’s full of medical books that belong to Jessica’s father, who is a doctor with a ground-floor office in the same building. She then sits on the floor and pores over one of them for hours. Jessica Han says she’s such a bore.
I know for sure Inah doesn’t really understand all the stuff she reads. It’s just a fixation. She just has to devour anything and everything. She likes to read newspapers most of all. Advertisements. Stock market reports. Horse racing results-from Belmont and Yonkers and even the Kentucky Derby. She knows all the names of the racehorses, like Surpassed by None, Simply Fabulous, Unbridled Delight, Soaring Lark and Belle Indeed. And she keeps asking Daddy to take us to a horse racing track but he never has time to because he works all day as a stock boy (even though he’s too old to be called a “boy”) at a warehouse in Long Island City and then goes to English classes at night. Anyway, I don’t think they let children into those horse racing places.
On Easter weekend, we go to Dobbs Ferry to visit Dad’s college friend from Korea. He’s a doctor who cuts up dead bodies to find out why and how and when and what they died of. But he doesn’t look scary. He even looks normal. They live in a big house with a thick woodland behind it. After the Easter meal of Korean food and turkey meat we’ve never eaten before, all of us kids go out to play. Only Inah doesn’t want to, so Mommy shoos her out like a fly, saying, �
��Go out and play. Get some fresh air.” The air is real fresh in Dobbs Ferry.
We play hide-and-seek. When it’s Little Sam’s turn to seek, every kid scatters into the woods to hide. But he’s too scared to go in because it’s so quiet and dark there. So he just wanders around the edge, finding no one, and we get bored stiff waiting for him. Finally, David, the oldest kid, goes out and sneaks behind him and squeezes Ernie, someone’s squeaky toy that says, “Hi, my name is Ernie.” It scares Little Sam out of his wits. Screaming and crying, he runs as if his behind is on fire, and we laugh and laugh. He says he doesn’t want to play anymore. Inah jumps at the chance as though she’s been waiting for it and takes him back inside.
A while later, Mommy comes out and tells me to get Inah because we are leaving. But she’s inside, I tell her, but she says in turn, no she isn’t. I go look for her all over. She is not in the den, where the TV is. Not in the basement, where the Ping-Pong table is. Not in the living room, which is full of people. Not in the backyard that sits empty. Not in the darkening woods, where birds I can’t see shriek. Not even in the garage, where we are not allowed to go because we might push the automatic door button by mistake and get crushed underneath. Inah is playing Alice-in-Wonderland again.
Soon everyone in the house is looking for her. We go around, calling, “Inah-ya!! Inah-ya!!” Outside, it’s starting to get dark, and Mommy is scared. She is sure Inah wandered outside by herself and got lost. And having never been up here before, she would never be able to find her way back. Mommy asks Daddy to call the police. Daddy’s friend says, “Before calling the police, let’s look around the house one more time.”
And guess where she’s found? Upstairs, in the room of Daddy’s friend’s son who’s away at college. Daddy and I find her sitting crammed under a desk, doubled over a thick, heavy college textbook about human social behavior or something that sounds very boring like that. Lost deep in a sam-mae-kyong, a blissful state of absorption people are supposed to fall into while reading, she doesn’t even look up until Daddy gets on his hands and knees to crawl in and shake her good. The way she looks at him, you can tell she has no idea where she is or what’s going on. She looks like someone who’s been sleepwalking.
On the way home in the car, Mommy berates Inah, saying she still can’t believe she didn’t hear everyone calling her name. But Inah insists she didn’t.Mommy says it’s Daddy’s fault. He makes a bad example. Daddy finally says that’s enough. It’s not like she’s been caught doing something bad. If that’s the only trouble parents have with their kids…. Isn’t it surprising, though, that she finds such a difficult book interesting? Did you even understand what you were reading? Inah shrugs her shoulders, and he says she might be a genius. I don’t want that kind of genius, Mommy says. Don’t you know, he says, all the geniuses are a little strange.
But Daddy doesn’t know how bad it really is because he’s long gone and not around in the morning when we get ready for school. He has no idea what kind of battle we go through just to get Inah out the door. When she’s supposed to be brushing her teeth and washing up, she’s spread on the bathroom floor with Daddy’s Korean newspaper from the night before, or his new book or some junk mail salvaged from the garbage bin. I tickle, pinch, poke and even kick. She just grunts and keeps on reading. Then, in the last-minute mad scramble, she sprinkles token water on her face and hands. Thanks to her, we are always rushing and always running late. Every morning, flying out the door with shoes hardly on our feet. Book bags dangling and jackets dragging.
Inah’s fixation gets so bad she can’t function normally. Life for her is an obstacle course. So says Mommy. She seems to be constantly stumbling on a new book or newspaper or magazine. Then, so distracted, she can’t do anything until she has read the very last word. Mommy has to literally rip it away from her hand before she staggers out of her zombie state and begins to focus on things. Mommy yells, cajoles, threatens and even cries, but nothing works.
One day in school, Mrs. Warshofsky notices what looks like a black ring of dirt crusting around Inah’s scrawny little bird’s neck. She calls her over and asks if she can take a look at the back of her neck. But Inah squirms so, shrinking her neck like a turtle, making it impossible for Mrs. Warshofsky to get a good look. So she asks her if she regularly takes baths at home. Your neck seems very dirty, Mrs. Warshofsky says. Inah doesn’t get fazed that easily. No, not at all. She’s got the chutzpah—that’s what Mrs. Weiss in our building says Inah has—to say that it is only a tan. She plays a lot outside and she gets tanned easily. Are you sure, Mrs. Warshofsky asks skeptically. She’s got the voice of a thrush so it always sounds pleasant even when she doesn’t mean to. Inah cheerfully assures her that she’s sure. Inah reports all this back to me like she’s proud, but she doesn’t let me take a look at her neck, either.
“Promise not to tell Mommy,” she asks, holding up her pinkie.
“Promise you will wash good,” I say, wondering how come so much shampoo is gone after she takes a shower. We hook our pinkies and shake them hard.
“How is school?” Daddy asks as soon as we sit down for dinner. He always asks the question before he opens the Korean newspaper he brings home.
“Oh-kay,” I say. Daddy nods and looks at Inah, expecting more or less the same kind of answer.
“Oh-kay, Daddy.”
“Speak Korean,” Mommy says, ladling out the rice into a stainless bowl. The rice is hot and steamy and smells sweet.
“Being good students? Good!” Daddy crackles and spreads open the paper, and soon his face disappears behind it.
“Oh, I forgot about Mrs. Warshofsky’s letter,” Inah blurts out. Then she looks at me and covers her mouth. I don’t know anything about Mrs. Warshofsky’s letter.
“What letter?” Mommy asks, looking very alarmed. She puts down the chopsticks she has just picked up. They settle on the table with a sharp chime. “Where’s the letter? Bring it over right this minute!” she says. Daddy slowly and reluctantly folds back the paper and puts it down and tells Inah it’s all right, go ahead and bring it. Oh, we are in deep doo-doo for sure.
We are then sent to our room so fast that we’re still chewing mouthfuls of rice. Inah sits at the edge of the bed, dangling her legs and looking scared and nervous and chewing her thumb. She won’t look at me either because she knows I am hissing mad at her for dragging me into trouble all the time, and getting Mommy and Daddy into fights. We can hear Daddy shouting at Mommy to quit her job if she can’t even send us to school clean. She’s doing everything wrong. She has forgotten what’s important and why we came here. How, how could she not know Inah goes to school unwashed and dirty? Forget the job, and that church she goes to every week, twice a week. “So religiously too!” we say in hushed unison, completing his sentence. If she can’t even send the children to school clean, we all might as well pack up and go back to Korea, Daddy says, rephrasing. Right now! We jump a little when we hear the door slam. Daddy is gone.
Soon, Mommy sails into the room and tells me to go and fill the bathtub with hot water.
“And you, stay right there!” she yells at Inah. I slide past Mommy and escape to the bathroom. The tub is nearly full with scalding hot water when Mommy marches in with Inah in front of her like a hostage. Inah looks terrified.
“What are you doing in the bathroom every morning and every night? Do I have to keep an eye on you every second? Hold straight! Keep your arms up!” Mommy angrily pulls the shirt over her head. Inah folds her arms right over the two little buds on her chest. Mommy slaps them down, but they come right back up.
“What are you trying to cover? Nothing there,” Mommy says, slapping her hands down again. Inah stands stiff as a frozen broom out in the January cold. I giggle, and she gives me a black look.
“And you!” Mommy shouts, throwing Inah’s clothes into my arms. “Where do you carry your eyes? How come you don’t notice anything? Letting your own sister go around looking like a beggar living out of a cave! Inah’s Inah, but at le
ast you should know better.”
Mommy tells Inah to turn around and gasps. Every crevice of her body—at the ankles, the knees, the back of the knees, the elbows and the neck—is crusted with about an inch thick of dirt. I’m exaggerating, but still, it is so ingrained with dirt that the skin looks leathery. Like cracked crocodile skin.
“The shame! The shame!” Mommy hisses and says she hasn’t seen anything like it since the Korean War. Inah sheepishly wades into the tub full of scalding hot water and squats down, wincing. I squirt bath gel and lap up mounds of foam around her with my hands. Mommy rolls up her sleeves and lathers a washcloth with soap and scours her all over. Inah whines and yelps. Roll after roll of black dirt falls off, revealing pink, scrubbed-raw skin below.
EIGHT
During the weekdays in the summer, Jason is staying with Auntie Minnie. But all of his friends are in Brooklyn, and that means he’s often bored stiff. So every afternoon, he comes and waits for us outside the YWCA where Inah and I attend summer school only to make Mommy happy.
“Yo,” Jason hollers when he sees us filing out the door. He has on a yellow mesh Magic Johnson basketball jersey that reaches all the way to his knees. Below it and his half-pants, his skinny shanks disappear into the high-top Nike shoes that look huge.
“You look like a scarecrow,” Inah says.
“What’s that?” Jason says, and Inah giggles, covering her mouth with her hand.
With Jason leading, we slowly walk in a single file to Weeping Beech Park. No one’s around because it’s so blazing hot, without a dot of shade anywhere. With the whole park to ourselves, we horse around, wrestling and pummeling one another like chimpanzees in a zoo, and then play jump-over-the-back and tag until we are red in the face and sticky as melting caramel.