Dong Jin laughed. “You are going to be a star!”
He opened the box and pulled out a short, simple-looking knife. Its blade was covered by a silver sheath. It was obviously made by a more primitive culture. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.
“It’s a knife, an old one at that.”
“Has your teacher told you about the tradition of the ‘silver knife?’”
Kwang Ja nodded. “Yes. In the old days, it was given to young women as both decoration and protection. A young virgin was always to wear it. But the tradition died, yes?”
Dong Jin nodded. “Yes. In fact, this knife is an artifact. It has been in my family for hundreds of years. But now I give it to you.”
Kwang Ja frowned. She couldn’t imagine carrying around a knife like some kind of cutthroat. “But who do I need to protect myself from?”
“We all need protection. Sometimes from strangers, mostly from acquaintances, and always from ourselves. But please, think of this as more of a symbol. It is a gift that symbolizes the fact that you are no longer the helpless girl I found in the streets. I have armed you.”
Kwang Ja pulled the knife from its sheath. The silver blade drew in the light from the sun and shot it in her eyes. She tightened her grip around its hilt, and tested the blade. It was sharp. She wondered if it had ever been used. Suddenly she felt strong. Her fears disappeared. Yes, she was no longer the scared child starving in the streets of Seoul. She looked up at Dong Jin. “Thank you for the gift.”
He smiled. “Keep it in the box. It’s an antique. Now, let’s talk about your future as an actress. You and I will go to Pusan, where you will be trained in the theater. You will also be taught more Western philosophies there…”
Kwang Ja put the sheath back on its blade and placed the knife back in the box. He was right, it was a symbol, an artifact more than an actual weapon.
“Are you listening?”
She closed the box. “Yes.”
It would be years before she would open the box again. And only twice more.
The next day, in the streets of Seoul, with envious eyes focused on her, Kwang Ja and Dong Jin asked a whore/fortuneteller about a new name. She was a woman in her forties who spent her days on the streets seeing the future, and spent nights trying to insure that she herself would have one. Kwang Ja thought it strange that a rich man like Dong Jin would choose such a fortuneteller. But he simply said, “The ones who have lived tend to be the ones with the most vision.”
The fortuneteller scribbled down what little information Kwang Ja could tell her about her heritage. The woman then threw a handful of beans onto a thin layer of sand in front of her. She carefully studied the arbitrary formation, and Kwang Ja wanted to laugh, but the whore/fortune-teller’s manner of seriousness prevented her from doing so. Suddenly, the woman looked up. “Soong Nan. Your name now will be Soong Nan. It will be a very lucky name for you.”
The fact that this whore/fortuneteller was living on the street in rags told the newly named Soong Nan that she didn’t know the least bit about luck. So she took the name with trepidation. The next day, Park Soong Nan went to Pusan, leaving Cho Kwang Ja buried in the fortuneteller’s shallow sand.
THE INSTITUTION
chapter three
-1-
IT was a small, tourist wedding; the kind of wedding that comes bundled in a package deal with airfare, hotel, rental car, and two anemic steaks and shrimp-sized lobsters. It was held outdoors, in the garden of the Hawaiian Regent Hotel in Waikiki. White wooden lattices, with plastic plants in front of them, served as the backdrop as Donny and Crystal took their vows. Before Donny said, “I do,” he looked down at his family behind the security of his two-hundred-dollar, blue-tinted Jean-Paul Gaultier sunglasses. Won Ju, despite the outdoor heat, wore a matching blazer and skirt. Pantyhose, too. She was looking up and smiling. Her husband Kenny, dressed in khaki pants and a dark blue aloha shirt, was looking at Crystal’s cleavage. Their son, Brandon, who’d just turned fifteen, was also wearing khaki pants and an aloha shirt. He was also looking at Crystal’s cleavage. Soong, who was wearing a white silk blouse and brown skirt, was holding an open umbrella. Donny almost laughed when he saw her look at Crystal’s cleavage and shake her head. Donny’s half-sister, Darian, who was wearing a short but classy brown dress, winked at him. She had the same bird-face and pale skin as her mother. When she had flown in the day before from Berkeley, she seemed to like Crystal. She didn’t regard her with that air of superiority that came so easy to her.
Donny knew that Crystal’s family was not going to show. His family members were the only people in attendance. She had long before been disowned because of her career choice, or so she’d told him, and Donny didn’t really know how he felt about this, nor had he even met Crystal’s parents. It was funny with that Hawaiian family, jail was fine for her brother, but stripping was a huge sin. There was dignity in prison, none in peddling flesh. Sometimes he sympathized with her because he often thought he was a mere step away from being disowned. But sometimes he envied her because she didn’t have to deal with family. But on this day he was glad they didn’t show. He reveled in the support of his sisters, the envy of his brother-in-law and nephew, and the disapproval of his mother. More people would have ruined the closeness of it all. Crystal had mentioned that her brother might stop by at the reception, but he wasn’t worried about that now. Instead he felt good, like he accomplished something. It took a man to do what he was doing. Originally he wanted to do it in Vegas and have an Elvis impersonator marry them. But Won Ju would have none of it. So for her, he’d decided on the Hawaii tourist wedding. He knew he owed his older sister a lot, so he was more than happy to adjust his plans for her. But he couldn’t resist. After he politely kissed his bride, Donny looked out at his family, bent down on one knee, and said in his best Southern drawl, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
It was a good thing he’d had a couple of martinis at the Hawaiian Regent bar before he got hitched.
The reception was at the Hawaiian Canoe Club. Kenny, who’d been a member since childhood, set it up. The private club, which charged thirty thousand dollars for new membership, sat in front of Waikiki Beach. When the super-stretch Lincoln limousine pulled up at dusk, Donny watched as an older, dark-skinned Filipino employee, dressed in dark brown slacks and a beige button-up collared shirt, lit the gas-powered torches at the entrance. The torches, each an iron pole about six feet high with an iron cone at the top, were almost too high for the Filipino to reach. The employee, after he turned the gas on with a wrench, stepped in the bushes of ti leaves and extended his arm with a lit match. Donny rolled down the window and heard the flame appear with a low, soft, popping sound. He smiled, feeling important, like the torches were lit for him on this special day.
The limo stopped, and Donny let everyone out. His mother stepped out first, followed by his sister’s family, his half-sister, then finally his bride. Crystal waited for him to exit, then smiled and grabbed his hand. He glanced at the bust of her wedding dress and suddenly wished it were not cut so low. Though he enjoyed the cut at the ceremony, he knew this was an exclusive club populated by a lot of rich and important people. He didn’t want people to think, like his mother, that he had married trash. Though he liked his mother thinking it, he didn’t want anyone else to. His head began to pound from the afternoon martinis, and he desperately needed another drink.
The family walked to the registration desk where an older Caucasian woman greeted Kenny with a smile. She was wearing a brightly colored muumuu and thick brown-rimmed glasses. “Hi Margie,” Kenny said as he signed the registration book. Donny looked around the lobby while he waited. There were wicker chairs surrounding small, wooden coffee tables. There was a magazine rack with issues of Time, Newsweek, Honolulu Magazine, and Women’s Health. The room was lightly decorated with plants. It was like a picture in a magazine. When Kenny finished signing in, Donny walked past with his head down. The woman smiled and said, “Congratulations.
”
As they made their way from the lobby to the dining room, two Caucasian boys, both blond, tall, shirtless, and skinny, were running out past the no smoking sign. Weird dress code, Donny thought. Then he looked up. The dining room seemed to be the only way to get from the beach to the lobby. Donny took off his sunglasses and looked out to the beach just as the sun was setting. The clouds were lit with splashes of orange and red, while the sky above them was blue and indigo. Red grating against blue. A perfect ending of a day, Donny thought, as the entire family stopped at the hostess podium. Crystal squeezed his arm. It was the first time he’d realized she was even there since they’d gotten out of the car.
The clanging of dishes and the enthusiastic chatter of club members Donny had never met surrounded their table. Every table was filled. Filipino bus boys walked to and fro pouring water and removing dishes. They wore bright purple aloha shirts with black slacks. The waiters, dressed in tuxedo shirts and black vests, were busy taking orders and serving food. Just about every other table was filled with Caucasian club members. Donny was sitting with his wife on one side and his mother on the other when a cocktail waitress came and asked everyone if they wanted anything to drink. Crystal ordered two bottles of champagne. She and Donny were on the same page. There was only one empty seat at the table, just in case Crystal’s brother showed.
Amidst the loud voices in the room Brandon turned to his grandmother. “Grandma, why did you hold an umbrella over you at the wedding? There wasn’t any rain.”
Donny laughed, then spoke with his accent, which even after twenty years, he was painfully aware that he would never shake. “Your grandma is afraid of the sun.”
It was the most he’d said to his nephew in the last month. They’d never really talked. Brandon turned to his mother and asked, “What does he mean?”
“She doesn’t want her skin to get dark,” Won Ju said.
Brandon frowned and looked at his dark-skinned father. Kenny straightened his blue collar, then shrugged at his dark-skinned son and looked at his well-tanned wife. Won Ju, who glanced at her new, well-tanned sister-in-law, said, “In the old days in Korea dark skin was regarded as, well, peasant-like.”
Donny looked at his mother. He was enjoying this. Because her English was so bad, she was almost like a nonentity at this table. He knew his mother was smart, maybe smarter than anyone else in the family, but he kind of liked that most of them didn’t think so, especially her precious grandson. He smiled just as his mother spoke up. “No, not true. I not think bad because rich, no rich. Look all round. All people here,” she pointed to the other tables, “have tan. Rich people. But sun bad for skin. Especially old woman. Wrinkles.”
Brandon nodded.
Then she said in Korean, “You do not have to speak for me, children.”
Kenny, who sipped on his sweating glass of water, reached over and lightly touched Crystal’s arm. He held his fingers there while he talked. “You better get used to this Korean language thing. They could be talking about you, and you wouldn’t even know it.”
Crystal laughed. Soong spoke in rapid Korean, pretending to say it under her voice. “Learn the language, like we learned yours.” She looked at Donny and Won Ju. “Look now, Darian is my only hope. Darian, are you going to make your mother happy and find a nice Korean boy?”
Darian, who was quiet until now, spoke in perfect English. “Please don’t suck me into this. Let me just get drunk in peace.”
Donny believed he loved Darian, but sometimes she irritated him. To him, Darian always had this pretentiousness about her, like she was the only American out of the children, and that this meant something. Her English was pure, while Won Ju’s and Donny’s were accented. The fact that she was working on her MA in English at U.C. Berkeley didn’t help either. “Besides, Mother,” Darian said in Korean, “I’m never getting married. As a great American actress once said, ‘Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.’”
It translated badly. Donny expected his mother to come back with a Korean quote qualifying the virtues of marriage, but she didn’t. She just shook her head and said in English, “Hard-head girl.”
Darian turned to Kenny and Crystal, and said in her weather-girl voice, “I’m sorry. We were just having a discussion on the institution of marriage. It might be a bad choice of topic considering we should be celebrating it, not debating it.” Donny hated that voice. She could’ve said, “It will be sunny tomorrow with a chance of rain,” and he would’ve hated it even more. Not only did its perfect enunciation irritate him, but the voice also suggested that it was saying something important to a lot of people, while most of the time, it was saying something meaningless, either trying to guess at something that couldn’t be predicted or stating the obvious.
Just then the cocktail waitress appeared and poured everyone a glass of champagne. Donny caught Kenny looking at her ass as she walked away. He smiled and raised his glass. “Am I going to have to toast myself?”
Kenny laughed. “Sorry. To Donny and Crystal. All the happiness in the world.”
Donny quickly emptied his glass, then refilled it. He enjoyed getting drunk. It took the edge off. Everything looked more round. There weren’t sharp edges, nothing around that could cut him. The world felt safer when he was drunk. Even his mother’s sharp eyes, nose, elbows, and tongue seemed less likely to cut him. He emptied his second glass and poured himself another. He really wanted to smoke a cigarette.
After Donny finished his fifth glass of champagne, the blue and red of dusk blended into a hazy purple, and the clanging dishes and chattering voices faded into a dull hum, a mountain began to slide into the dining room. Donny thought he was seeing things, so he looked around the dining room, but saw that even all of the tanned, white faces were seeing the mountain, too. Maybe it wasn’t a mountain; mountains don’t move, instead it was a glacier slowly and deliberately moving towards them. Suddenly Donny waited for a male member of the dinner crowd to yell, “To the lifeboats! Women and children first!” The voice never came, but Donny could tell that he wasn’t the only one thinking it.
The glacier was a man who was a combination of professional wrestler, prison movie hammer, and geology on the Discovery Channel. He was tanned and had short, curly clown-red hair. His worn aloha shirt, which had faded pictures of Hawaiian hieroglyphs, men with spears, failed to completely cover his stomach. Below his faded black shorts, Donny saw calves the size of his thighs, and slippers the size of canoes. But the most impressive thing about this man was his neck. Donny could easily imagine a guillotine shattering like glass on this man’s neck. This was not a Hawaiian Canoe Club member. And despite his roundness, he looked very sharp and dangerous to Donny. Donny put on his sunglasses when the glacier reached the table. The man rubbed his red goatee that turned into a light blond as it crept up his upper lip. Donny thought the contrast of the red hair with the blond looked ridiculous, but he wasn’t about to mention it. “Hi Sis,” the man said.
Crystal jumped from her chair and hugged her brother Kaipo, whose look pulled more Caucasian than his sister. He lifted her off the ground and she let out a girlish squeal. He put her down and smiled. “So dis mus’ be da new family.”
Donny shook Kaipo’s hand, or it may have been just one of his enormous fingers, like how babies shake an adult hand, then he watched him go around the table and shake everyone else’s. Donny noticed his flawless use of the old plantation pidgin English. And when Kaipo got to Kenny, and Kenny stood up, shook his hand, and said, “Eh, wassup bradah,” Kenny’s pidgin lacked the same fluency. It was like he was forcing the old language. Donny had heard the phrase “coconut” once to describe Hawaiians like Kenny. Brown on the outside, white on the inside.
Kaipo smiled and sat in the empty chair next to Darian. When he put his forearms on the table, it looked like he was about to have make-believe tea with a group of little girls. He looked around. “Ho, dis place is like haole central, ah?”
Won Ju laughe
d and said sarcastically, “Hey, this is the Hawaiian Canoe Club, we’re all Hawaiians here.”
Kaipo smiled. “Yeah, whatevas. Jus’ because dese white guys paddle Hawaiian canoe, no mean dey Hawaiian. Hawaiian is one race, an I no mean one canoe race, not one club.”
Crystal reached over to Kaipo. “Now relax. Besides, look at you. The red head. You’re half haole.”
“Not my fault.”
Everyone was watching Kaipo except for Soong. She was staring at her grandson. Always the actress. Donny turned to Kaipo. “So I guess you’re my new brother.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Crystal ordered another bottle of champagne. Won Ju looked at Kaipo with an almost smile. She liked him. Donny felt that only he could decipher the emotions that his older sister subtly displayed. His half-sister Darian, who had the bad habit of not leaving anything to decipher, spoke. “You know, I’ve been reading some stuff up at Berkeley about the effects of Western imperialization on the indigenous people of the Pacific. How even today the disenfranchised, like the Hawaiians, are still like second class citizens. First in heart disease, first in felony convictions. Some are becoming diasporatic and moving to the continent. Kaipo, how does it feel to be sitting in this dining room with these people?”
Donny was amazed that she got through it without saying a single version of the word “problem.” With her, things were always “problematic,” or “problematized.” Kaipo laughed and pulled a pack of Kool Filter Kings from his pocket. He popped one in his mouth and lit a single match with one of his gigantic hands. The cigarette looked like a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. Several club members, as if trained to do so, were about to remind him that there was no smoking allowed at the club. Then they thought better of it, and looked away, pretending it wasn’t happening. “I neva even get half of what you said, but I goin’ say dis. I jus’ got out of prison two months ago. Wuz fo’ grand theft auto, possession, and assault on one police offica.” He looked at Kenny. “One Hawaiian cop of all tings. Now fo’ one yea’ I stayed in one jail dat Hawaiians neva build because I stole one car dat Hawaiians neva make, fo’ drugs Hawaiians neva bring in, and fo’ punching one cop dat stay on one force dat Hawaiians neva create. Seems to me dat I neva look fo’ trouble, instead trouble came to me, came to Hawaii. Shit if neva have haoles, I would’ve probably been paddling one canoe jus’ like da kind dey get now. Now I cannot even afford one paddle. But den again, maybe I jus’ like revenge. Steal back.”
The Queen of Tears Page 5