by Sonya Chung
Charles winced. He imagined the smiling faces, black white brown yellow. Everyone healthy and well-dressed in bright colors. The Army brochure had been like that, too. There was a Yongsan brochure that he and Dennis had looked at together after they’d gotten their assignment. They’d laughed at it, how corny and obviously staged it was. And yet hadn’t they secretly wished and imagined it would be like that? Bright city lights and blue mountains and petite satin-robed women with long, silky hair?
“It’s not so bad. I might as well go. They have a good swim team. Staying here is probably worse. If I stay, then …” Hannah shrugged.
If you stay, then I can look after you, Charles thought. I’ll be there, in the parking lot at your school, at the rec center, every day.
But Charles said nothing. He stood up. The chair scraped rudely on the linoleum. He stood still for a moment while Hannah sat, looking into her lap. Then Charles started pacing behind her. He wandered into the next room—a carpeted room with wood paneling on the walls; the room where he’d seen the weary woman, perplexingly unaware, leaning back in the recliner. The couch was old, the upholstery worn. The coffee table was black lacquer with silver etching, an Oriental pattern. Everything was mismatched—color, style, American, Oriental. It was an ugly room and seemed intentionally so, and Charles hated it and walked back into the kitchen.
“Can I see your room?” he asked.
Hannah looked at him. He’d surprised her. He’d never seen that look before. Something changed then, Charles was taking the lead. It felt right to him. Something was happening. Hannah was becoming. Her feet were resting on the bar of the chair, her knees fell apart.
Charles moved toward Hannah and crouched next to her. Their faces were close, and Charles could see a small, pretty bump on Hannah’s nose bridge he’d never noticed before. Her ears were pierced but she wore no earrings; there was a greenish smear around the hole on the right lobe. She had a brown mole on her left eyelid. She smelled of fruity shampoo and her breath was a little sour. Her bangs fell long and tickled her eyelashes.
Hannah blinked, three, four times in succession. Then she turned to face Charles—eyes wide open.
Charles was confused by how familiar and how strange Hannah looked to him; how, from the moment she appeared on their doorstep, months ago, he seemed to know her by her solemnity. Haa-nah, she’d said. That aspiration: wide, flat a like apple, like hat. That expansiveness, which Charles felt now in his chest. Hannah knew him, too. And she knew Alice, and Veda, and Benny. She knew them and knew what the tragedy meant, and did not mean.
Charles pushed away Hannah’s bangs. Her mouth fell open slightly, and he saw the pale pink of her tongue.
Gently Charles took Hannah’s wrists, and Hannah wrapped her arms around Charles’s neck. He scooped her up from the chair, straightened from his knees and thighs to standing. She was light in his arms, but she was also solid—lean, thick muscle of her hamstrings and across her upper back. Hannah buried the cool skin of her forehead in Charles’s neck. Again, as during the drive home from the shore, Hannah and Charles shared unspoken thoughts. They thought, No one understands, No one knows. They thought, Not everything that seems so important actually is.
They thought, We are alive, even though others are dead.
They thought, This is how it is.
And, There isn’t much time.
They ascended the stairs. Charles did not think of what would come next. He did not see anything at all of the future. He only felt her, Hannah, her becoming. And she was. Neither of them wondered Why, about anything. Neither was confused, and everything seemed very simple. They knew each other. Hannah was solid in Charles’s arms; she breathed on his neck, her elbows were snug around his shoulders. Was she afraid? Was he? No. They were not afraid.
This was how it was, and there wasn’t much time.
What came next was as important as it seemed.
It was Christmas morning. Charles hadn’t turned off the record player. By now it would be spinning the sound of silence.
BOOK TWO:
Les Bien-Aimés
Kenyon Street, NW Washington, DC
May 1988
He caught it on the second ring, but still it woke her up. She came downstairs, stuffy-headed from a cold she’d caught at school. She stood in the hallway, frowning. Rubbed her eyes. Barefooted, too-big purple pajama pants brushing the floor. Sniffle. Where are you going?
He hung up the phone—Goddammit, D—pulled on his sneakers. Laced them too tight. Go back to bed, he said. Emergency at work, I’ll be right back. He tried to sound casual. He hated to leave her alone. She was thirteen, old enough, but still. It was 2 AM.
Alone. Her mother gone, to who knew where. Veda understood it was for real.
The emergency room on a Thursday night. Two shots to the chest. They said he drew first. They: Sherisse and her ex-con boyfriend. They said he was high. None of this unlikely. But his gun wasn’t loaded. Hers was. Police said the boyfriend pulled the trigger. Doubtful; she’d have done it.
The boy, Lawrence, upstairs sleeping. (Probably why he took out the bullets, he had that much sense at least.) Dennis had come for the boy. What the hell did he think he would do? Run off with the kid, live on the lam? The bitch had won custody two weeks before. No visiting until he was clean and sober. They’d talked about it over the fourth beer at Barkley’s. Charles knew his friend was in bad shape. But this.
He waits for Dennis to get out of surgery. His moms waiting too, stone-faced. The doctor comes out, says he’s stable but not conscious. Edna Rhodes asks, He’s all right, then? When will he wake up? Doctor says, Ma’am, there’s been significant blood loss. The old woman is confused. Spell it out, Charles interjects. Doctor glares at him, knows he’s not kin. Says, I’m afraid it’s wait and see.
The born-again phase had lasted a year. Maybe it would have been better if it stuck. He didn’t know. He never liked it and said so.
But this.
Laid up, all tubes and machines. Wait and see. God fucking dammit, D.
On the way home, he thinks, They were always heading here, weren’t they. Only one of them would make it; wasn’t that the statistic? One in two. Young men in their ’hood. Now Charles knew; he was the one. Alive. Free. Time to go. Not everyone gets the chance. Live the life you want. Erasure, all of it that came before. Survival. Opportunity. Restart.
1985–1988
1.
The old woman’s prickly matter-of-factness did not put Alice off. She preferred it to the childlike compliance of patients at the home. Mrs. Oh was an elegant, haughty woman, more bark than bite. At eighty-seven, her hair was still thick, mouse-gray with wiry strands of silver, blown regularly at the hairdresser’s. She wore long skirts, flowy cashmere tunics, silk-linen in summer. Monthly manicures and pedicures, skin porcelain under expensive creams. Wine-red lipstick, every day. It was not hard to imagine the smart, finely made contents of her shoe closet, though Alice came to Mrs. Oh’s only in the mornings, when she wore satin house slippers.
It was a good job, as easy as they came, and well paid. Alice was thankful to Mr. Hong, the director at the nursing home, for recommending her to Mrs. Oh. Alice did not mind her former employer’s pity.
The old woman did have her moods. “Useless,” she liked to say, waving an age-spotted hand back and forth and referring to any number of things: arthritic fingers, her memory, her two sons and their expensive wives. She was a no-nonsense woman who evidently had stories to tell—something in the downturn of her eyes, the lines around her mouth. That she never told them seemed a source of strength; Alice took her cues. Though one day, when Alice said she had to leave early for her daughter’s teacher conference, Mrs. Oh said, “You have a daughter?” Then she laughed, incredulously. “No, no. But you are alone, all alone, I can see. Like me.”
Another woman brought food at midday. Occasionally Alice stayed for lunch; more typically, Mrs. Oh would lie down for a nap at eleven and Alice would slip out.
A
lice’s days churned, one into another. It was fall again. She had money in the bank, her own account now, and Veda was back to school. The apartment near Dupont Circle was above a pool hall and overlooked a string of gay bars and tattoo parlors. It was a strange neighborhood, people who didn’t belong together. It would be fine for now. Alice had put down the deposit and didn’t tell Charles for two weeks. Then, just before leaving, “It’s month to month,” she said. “Just for a little while. I’ll be home in the afternoons and for dinner. Veda will hardly know the difference.” This last part was true. Alice was gone to Mrs. Oh’s before Charles and Veda woke up.
She’d packed a suitcase and one box. Some clothes, toilet items. A box of old photo albums. A folder full of letters (she’d been writing to Laila, and Laila wrote back—about artisan cooperatives and irrigation and trees). Alice did not in her mind connect the apartment with Rick Mitchell, but of course it was easier than him coming to the house on his lunch hour.
They were nothing to speak of, Rick’s weekly visits. One restless summer evening Alice had gone to see Karen. She found Rick at home alone—drinking, unshaven. Karen and Amy had gone to Karen’s parents in Connecticut after they’d argued. Rick told Alice this, told her too much, and then it happened. Clunky and sweaty on the family room rug, an itchy old thing.
He was older than Charles by a few years and wore a sweet aftershave Alice didn’t like. But his body was soft and warm, and he took direction hungrily. He had a fat tongue and thick, slow fingers that he sometimes pressed into the outer edges of Alice’s spine. Afterward he always showered, rinsed his mouth with Listerine, and Alice didn’t mind. Sometimes, before getting up, Rick would want to talk—about Karen, or his dead father. Once, he said, “You and I, we have both lost someone important,” and Alice asked him right then to leave. But the next time he came, Alice was apologetic. She wanted his warmth, needed his hunger. She demonstrated her remorse sexually, as she’d learned to do with Charles. Or maybe she’d learned it long before, she really couldn’t remember. That time, Alice let Rick talk. It was fine as long as she didn’t have to respond, as long as he kept her out of it. “Karen keeps telling me to go to a shrink, to work on my ‘issues.’ She wants me cured. She’s a wonderful woman. It makes me hate her. Only people who’ve never been broken think that others can be easily fixed.”
Mornings with Mrs. Oh. Coffee shops and mall food courts in the afternoons, where Alice wrote to Laila. She’d exchanged a few letters with Pauline, who’d married a Brit and lived in the English countryside. Three children, two dogs, chickens, horses, and pigs. They homeschooled and brewed beer. Neither had kept in touch with Suzanne.
Evenings on Kenyon Street, where Alice cooked from recipes on pasta boxes and soup cans, smiled and half-listened to Charles and Veda talk about their days. She washed the dishes and avoided going upstairs. Rick Mitchell once a week in her echoey apartment that always smelled of fried foods from downstairs. It was in her clothes, her hair; she grew used to it.
Alice’s days churned, sometimes, it seemed, without her. Time passed. A year, two years. Charles worked long hours, got promoted. Veda’s feet grew long and she shot up, taller than Alice.
Twice a week there was group. Here, Alice “worked out her grief.” By the third year she’d become the longest standing member. It was a dubious honor; others had moved on, graduated. Callie, the leader, believed in capital-T Truths. Death is a part of life was one, and The reality of death is what gives life meaning its corollary. The others repeated these out loud, but Alice never did. It sounded to her too much like You can’t have your cake and eat it, too, something her mother had started to say toward the end of her life. Also, You make your bed, sweetie, and then you have to lie in it, so choose a firm mattress and the prettiest linens you can afford.
The dreams started again. The old dreams, from when she was pregnant with Veda. Rick Mitchell shook her by the shoulder and said, “You were moaning and mumbling. Don’t go, don’t go.” Alice never told Rick about the dreams. She never told Callie, or Charles. The dreams were hers. They were what she had left. Alice dreamt of a boy who tried to come close, because he loved her and wanted to be with her. He tried, and tried again, but he was always just out of her reach. Always departing, disappearing, swirling away like refuse down a drain.
Every time she dreamt it, some piece of her went spiraling down into the same futile darkness. Alice wanted to chase the darkness. It was hers. All hers. The darkness and everything it consumed.
“What is it, Alice?” Callie asked when she came to group drawn and dark under the eyes. “Tell us how you’re doing.” Shut up, Alice wanted to say to Callie. Callie with her strapping sixteen-year-old son who stopped by to pick up car keys and waved hello to the group. Truths with a capital T. Here are some: Nothing is really yours. Your best is nowhere near good enough. Bad things happen, things fall apart, good intentions turn to shit. You are not loving, or good. You are a pile of tired bones, heart like a toy chest—filled with moods and feelings that come and go, make loud noises and flash bright colors; then break.
Sometimes Alice went for long drives. Once, on her way back into town, she found herself pulling off the beltway and driving to the V.A. Charles had gone there for minor things, but Alice had never been. She saw the sign and something made her turn off. She sat in her car with the engine running. After a few minutes, she parked and walked in. In the lobby she stood frozen. A petite woman wearing scrubs asked did she need help. Her eyes were unbearably kind. “I’m fine, no,” Alice managed to say. Alice walked through the lobby to an atrium, where she could see into a courtyard. There were paved paths and a very green lawn and low purplish plantings. Orderlies wheeled patients around; a few men moved slowly on crutches or with walkers. Those in wheelchairs had all their limbs; those trying to get around did not. Alice sat on a bench and watched them through the glass for some time. She wondered: who was worse off, those trying to walk, or those being wheeled? She thought: I could watch them forever. But the sun began to go down, and the nights were cool now; everyone came inside, one by one. They re-entered the building on the other side of the courtyard, and Alice felt them moving away from her, leaving her. She hugged her handbag in her arms. She saw the frayed, hanging pant leg of an amputee sway back and forth as he made his way down the path. It swayed, loose and empty, and Alice began to weep. She wept as she drove home and never returned there.
Later, Alice wondered if that day at the V.A. had actually occurred. If the courtyard wasn’t a mirage, or a nightmare. If she’d actually wept those tears. The days churned one into the next. Alice felt like an alien creature, living outside time, apart and alone; even when, especially when, she was among other people.
Another year went by. It was 1988: Sonny Bono was elected mayor in California, Cher won an Oscar, and scientists had genetically engineered a mouse. Alice wasn’t sure anymore who was the alien, her or everyone else. One day in spring, Charles told her to pack and move all of her things. He didn’t say why, or why now, just, You’ve been gone a long time; so you should leave.
2.
Soon-mi and Chong-ho saw Hannah off at the Greyhound station on a snowy January afternoon. Their car would not do well on wet country roads, they reasoned, and thirteen was old enough to travel alone. Hannah had one large suitcase and a duffel bag.
Soon-mi had knocked on Hannah’s closed door, asked if she was almost ready; she said Yes. Then, Will it be as cold there?
Soon-mi said to the door, I think so. Pack your naningoo. Always good to have it.
They watched Hannah hand the ticket to the driver and board the bus. Soon-mi saw how Hannah looked the driver straight in the eye and said, Thank you. Then Hannah disappeared down the aisle behind tinted glass and Soon-mi left the boarding area. She wandered the parking lot looking for the white Nova—a red Bronco blocked it from view—and once she found it pulled around to the front of the station. Chong-ho was waiting, hat covered in large fluffy snowflakes. They drove away and turned left
at the first intersection, while the bus came up just behind and turned right.
It was dusk. The days were getting longer, but it didn’t seem so. They stopped at a diner. The previous summer, when Hannah had started coming home later from Alice Lee’s house, they went out like this a few times, the two of them. Once in a while, not often, Chong-ho craved a hamburger and French fries. Soon-mi usually ordered spaghetti or baked chicken. Tonight she ordered from the breakfast menu, steak and eggs, and Chong-ho had fish and chips. Soon-mi ate Chong-ho’s pickles, and they shared a hot-fudge sundae for dessert.
Hannah called later that evening. There was a shuttle that picked students up and brought them to campus. She had no particular impressions to share. Before they hung up, Soon-mi said, Make sure stay in touch with your brother. James had a job lined up in Seattle and would be moving in June.
They did not hear from her. In the spring James told his parents that he’d tried to get Hannah a summer internship at his company. But Hannah said she preferred to stay at the school, where she would work part time for room and board. Something about an independent project in French, and swim training, James said. Chong-ho and Soon-mi didn’t ask questions.
The lilac bushes finally bloomed after fours years; the Baptisia grew vigorous and full in back, an indigo oasis around the patio. Soon-mi and Chong-ho worked in the garden every day, and Soon-mi brought cut flowers for the residents at the nursing home, zucchini and eggplants for the staff. The long winter was finally over.
Within weeks of Alice Lee’s resignation back in November, they all knew what had happened: the drowned boy, on Hannah’s watch. It was enough, these two facts together, to generate a radius of silent pity around Soon-mi. But then, the boss’s wife, while searching the drawers of Alice’s old desk for paperwork, found a family photo. Charles Lee, everyone soon learned, was a black man.