The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  He had a big voice. People on the other tables overheard, and played with their continental cuisine with their silverware. Kenny scratched his face. “It’s the evolution of the world, my friend. All of us Hawaiian brothers have to adjust.”

  Won Ju quickly rolled her eyes. It was a rare, betraying gesture from her. Kaipo smiled. “Yeah, maybe evolution. But dat don’t make it right.”

  Darian was staring at Kaipo. Kenny was looking down, and Won Ju was smiling. It amazed Donny to see his sister make such a spectacle of herself. Soong spoke. “When I was born Korea, Japanese everywhere. Very bad to Korean people. When I was little girl. When teenager, American GI everywhere. Before all them, Chinese, Mongol, white missionary. No, not right.”

  Donny was surprised. He’d never considered his mother a politically liberal person. In fact, he considered her a racist and elitist who didn’t even like most Koreans. Donny glanced at Brandon, who seemed bored by the entire conversation. He seemed to be the only one in the entire dining room not affected by Kaipo’s presence. It was like the glacier pushed everybody, except this tall, spindly fifteen-year-old, away to make room. Kenny, on the other hand, looked like he was pushed all the way to the beach. Then Donny got tired of looking. He had a job to do. The waiter came and took their order.

  “So Mom,” Donny said in Korean, “I have a business proposition for you.”

  Soong looked at Darian. “Is this proposition going to cost me a great deal of money?”

  “Absolutely not, think of it as an investment.”

  Darian laughed. “An investment is probably what a degenerate gambler calls a bet.”

  Donny glared at Darian. She was the spoiled one. She’d never had a life like him or Won Ju. “No Mom, not a bet. I want to open a restaurant. Crystal and I wanted to open a restaurant.”

  Crystal stopped eating when her name was mentioned. She looked at Donny. Donny tried to send her a reassuring side-glance. “Anyway,” he said, “it’ll be a loan. You can charge me interest and everything.”

  “You mean,” Darian said, “you’ll be reconsolidating this with your previous loan.”

  Donny was getting angry. How could Darian even say anything when their mother had been pumping thousands of dollars a year into Berkeley for her? Not to mention her degree was virtually useless in the real world. An MA in English, what a laugh. Before he could snap at her, Won Ju spoke. “Let him ask,” she said.

  Kenny laughed. “There they go again, talking behind our backs right in front of us.” He looked at Crystal and Kaipo. “Maybe us Hawaiians should leave.”

  Won Ju looked at her husband. “Please feel free,” she said.

  Kenny’s face, even from far away, looked angry. Kaipo spoke. “Jus’ let um talk bradda,” he said.

  Soong put her fork down, ignoring the non-Korean speakers. “How much?” she asked.

  Donny cleared his throat. “I need to borrow about twenty thousand to start.”

  Soong sighed. She looked at Won Ju. “What do you think?”

  “It’s not my money, not my decision.”

  Soong wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Listen, Chung Yun, I really don’t have too much. You know your stepfather spent most of the money I made in Korea on the farm. Your sister also borrowed to open her boutique in Waikiki. Your other sister is not finished with school yet. How badly do you want this restaurant?”

  “Crystal and I really need it, Mom. And I know it will work.”

  Darian laughed. “How could you know?”

  She is trying to protect her precious fake-world tuition, Donny thought. “I know,” he said.

  “This is the last time?” Soong asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So Mom,” Won Ju asked, “are you planning to stay in Hawaii?”

  “I think I might have to.”

  “Why?” Darian asked.

  “Because it seems I’m betting on it. Besides, at least I can keep an eye on Brandon.”

  Brandon didn’t even flinch at the mentioning of his name. He never seemed to. Donny supposed the fact that he was the center of his grandmother’s universe seemed as uninteresting to him as the fact that the sun is the center of this solar system.

  “Well, Mom,” Darian said, “I might be staying a while too. You see, school’s not really working...”

  Won Ju closed her eyes. Soong sipped her glass of chardonnay while Darian talked. Donny felt really good for the first time in months. Bye, bye, tuition. He winked at Crystal. But she didn’t see. She was talking to her brother, while Kenny glared at Won Ju. They never suspected that he saw so much behind his blue-lensed, two-hundred-dollar Jean-Paul Gaultier sunglasses and through the champagne buzz that was slowly turning into nausea.

  After dinner, they all walked out to the limo and said goodbye to Kaipo. Donny, in a mild drunken haze, hugged his brother-in-law. He imagined it was like hugging a stuffed grizzly bear. Imagining it as a live bear would’ve been too scary. This bold act instantly told him he was properly drunk, and he slouched into the limo. First they dropped Darian and Soong off at the hotel. Then the car took the Akana family to their condo. Before Brandon could make it out unscathed, Crystal smothered his face with drunken kisses. Kenny laughed while Won Ju playfully slapped her hands away. Donny looked at the boy. He was growing tall and handsome. Donny sighed as the family congratulated the couple. The car drove away, heading towards Donny’s and Crystal’s apartment. Donny lit the cigarette he’d been dying for for the last three hours.

  Crystal rolled down the window. “So, what’d you think?”

  Donny sighed again. “It was O.K..”

  She lit a cigarette and laughed. “We got ourselves a weird extended family.”

  “Yup.”

  “You know your mother hates me.”

  “Yeah, and Kaipo hates Kenny. Kenny hates Kaipo. Brandon hates me. Darian loves Kaipo. Won Ju loves everybody, except for maybe her husband, and I hate...”

  Crystal turned to Donny. “And you hate?”

  “No one.”

  She took a long drag from the cigarette. “You hate her, don’t you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? She’s giving us the money.”

  “I thought she was loaning it?”

  “Don’t talk stupid.”

  “So you don’t hate her?”

  “I thought I talked to you about this before. I don’t hate her. I just hate the way she raised me and Won Ju.”

  Crystal threw the cigarette out the window. “Won Ju doesn’t seem to have a problem.”

  Donny sighed. “Don’t let her fool you. If she wants to she can keep a straight face about anything.”

  “And what about Darian?”

  “She grew up different. Her American father saw to that. Besides, my mother wasn’t working when she was growing up. She never lacked the attention.”

  Crystal laughed and put her arms around Donny. “Poor little Donny. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

  Normally this would have infuriated him. But he was too tired. He felt like puking, but he was even too tired to do that. He simply leaned against Crystal and let her tease his hair. When the limo pulled to the apartment building and Crystal pulled Donny out, he laughed. She’ll take care of me. One of these days, I’ve got to learn to take care of myself.

  -2-

  In the elevator, Won Ju heard her son ask a wincing question, the kind that everybody asks themselves, and despite much speculation, can never find an answer for, partially because it is a genuine mystery, but mostly because they’re afraid of it. “Why did Crystal marry Donny?”

  He might as well have asked, “Why can human beings be so cruel?” Kenny laughed, sounding proud that his son asked the question. “They love each other,” Won Ju said. “And remember, it’s Aunty Crystal and Uncle Donny.” She knew she gave him a Santa Claus or Easter Bunny answer.

  The elevator doors opened. “He isn’t my uncle,” Brandon said as he stepped out first.

  Won Ju looked at Kenny.
He shrugged then pointed at her. “Don’t start. I have my own gripe with you.”

  Won Ju followed her son into the hallway. “What are you talking about, he’s not your uncle?”

  Brandon stopped and turned around. She suddenly became aware of how much taller he was than she. He was fifteen and already about five-ten. But it was weird with children. She still felt like she was looking down at him. “Dad told me how he used to steal Grandma’s jewelry and pawn it.”

  She was surprised her husband had told their son this, but she was even more surprised that her son cared. He never seemed to take a genuine interest in his grandmother, despite the obsessed interest Soong had in him. “You don’t know how Donny was brought up. You know nothing about him. And remember, he is my brother, he is your uncle.”

  Brandon turned around, pulled out his keys, and opened the door. He took off his shoes and walked to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door. “But he’s a loser,” Brandon said.

  After taking off her shoes, Won Ju looked back at her husband. He smiled. She closed the refrigerator door and put her hands on his shoulders. She was about five-three, so it was a high reach. “I’ll say this once,” she said. “He’s your uncle and that’s that.”

  Brandon pushed her hands away. He walked away, biting into an apple he grabbed from the fridge. “Yeah, yeah,” he said as he made it towards his bedroom. The door shut.

  Won Ju turned around to look at her husband. He was sitting at their glass dining-room table with the newspaper lying in front of him. “How could you tell him that?” she asked.

  “Well it’s true, right?”

  “That’s not the point. Donny is his uncle and he should show him respect.”

  Kenny picked out the sports page from the Honolulu Advertiser. The sports and business sections were the only two portions in the paper he read. Though, a couple of times, she caught him reading the funnies. He opened the sports section up, which he had already read in the morning. Won Ju could only see a large picture of Shaquille O’Neal hanging from a basketball rim. “Listen,” he said, “I like Donny. I really do. But I don’t want my son showing respect for people who don’t deserve it. He’s getting older and deserves to know about human nature. I told him the story, and he made his own moral decision.”

  “His own moral decision? Fourteen-year-old boys who never had to make any real decisions yet are not in any position to judge others who have. It’s not right.”

  Kenny put down the paper. “He’s fifteen. And like I said, I like the guy. I like him more than I like your mother. But your mother deserves some damn respect. What was he pitching to her tonight? Another one of his quick-cash money schemes? Your Mom’s a pain in the ass, but I respect her. Your brother, Brandon hit it right on the nose, he’s a loser.”

  “Kenny, fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you. And what was that shit tonight? Feel free to leave? Don’t smart-mouth me like that, especially at the Club.”

  Won Ju walked into the kitchen. The Club. She hated that place. She’d felt the haole members watching the table full of Koreans. She knew they looked down on her and her family. Them with their smug smiles and Filipino servants pouring them water and washing their dishes. She hated that the Filipinos worked their lowest-paying jobs. She felt a kind of kinship with the Filipinos because the Philippines got it just as bad as the Koreans did. There was kinship in pain. The Spanish, the Japanese, the Americans. She’d learned much of her English reading the school books her brother never read in high school. Even though the books downplayed it, she knew what happened. This was why Kenny’s love for the haoles went from puzzling her to angering her. He was Hawaiian. The Hawaiians got it so bad from the whites that there were hardly any pure-blooded Hawaiians left. But Kenny wasn’t pure Hawaiian. His mother was German-Irish and his father was half-Chinese. However, the rule in Hawaii was if you have any Hawaiian blood, you can call yourself Hawaiian. But Kenny grew up rich. So his liking white people was probably a class thing, not a race thing. Won Ju felt you could not choose pride in both class and race. Kenny was proud to be Hawaiian, but to her it was like he didn’t deserve to feel that way because he didn’t suffer the poverty that many Hawaiians did. And when he said, “Don’t smart-mouth me like that, especially in the Club,” she was livid. He couldn’t have his little, docile Asian wife disrespecting him among those of his class: the rich whites. So with her mind running like this she walked to the table, picked up the newspaper, and threw it on the floor. She stepped on Shaquille O’Neal on the way to the bedroom, wanting to leave her husband, but feeling like she wouldn’t and never could.

  “Hey, stop being such a fuckin’ brat,” Kenny yelled as Won Ju walked through the bedroom door.

  Brat. He even spoke to her like she was a child. Right now, he was probably sneaking a peek at Snoopy sitting on his doghouse having another moronic WWI biplane fantasy, and he had the audacity to refer to her as a child. After he’d read the funnies, he’d probably go to bed and take about three seconds to fall asleep. Then he’d wake up at three-thirty, in turn waking her up, if she could even get to sleep by that time, to watch the stock ticker on CNN. Degenerate gambler. Asshole.

  He’d looked so good on paper when she’d decided to marry him. Wealthy, good-looking, college-educated. She’d never even thought until recently that the combination of these three things often create something toxic. It was like when she was a bartender. Chivas, Glenlivet, and Patron may be quality stuff on their own, but mixed together? Well, you got the stuff you squeeze out of a bar rag. When did she start hating her husband?

  She went to the fish tank to feed the fish. When she opened the lid, the larger oscar rushed the surface, and his fat black lips broke the surface of the water. He waited there. Won Ju closed the lid. Let them starve. She walked into the bedroom with the cylinder of fish food still in her hand. She was going to fight with her husband, and she needed something to throw at him.

  -3-

  Soong sat at the small circular table in the hotel room with Darian, missing Long Island. The air conditioner hummed as she put a coat on. She hated air conditioning, but in a hotel in Hawaii, you either left the thing on or sweated out a pound of water. Their conversation in Korean started. Though Darian could not write in Korean, her spoken Korean was eloquent. “So what’s this about leaving school,” Soong asked, “are you getting bad grades?”

  Darian stood up and looked into the mirror above the wooden dresser. “No Mom, my grades are good. I don’t know, maybe Dad’s death is finally getting to me.”

  It had been over a year since the stroke came that finally killed Soong’s second husband. It took four to kill the tough ex-army captain, but the years of cigars and Scotch whiskey had finally caught up to him. Strokes and stomach cancer. Soong missed him too. Despite everything, he had been the love of her life. Darian was the only one who’d flown to New York for the funeral. “He wouldn’t want you to use his death as an excuse.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sometimes a cliché is all that’s left.

  “I know. But I don’t know, lately I’ve been feeling like what I study there, I don’t know, like it’s worthless. Like you’re spending thousands of dollars on nothing.”

  Darian walked back to the table and sat down. Soong looked at her daughter’s face. She was a very pretty girl. In fact, she looked like Soong when she was young, only more American. Soong did not know what this meant, and couldn’t pick out a physical trait which was not Asian but distinctly American, but to her Darian would always be her American child. “I told you to study something more practical.”

  Darian sighed. “I know. You know what’s funny? You know what I’m studying in the English Department at U.C. Berkeley? I’m studying you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Soong said.

  “I’m studying literature written by first-generation Asian-American immigrants. I’m reading the works of their children. I’m reading about us.”

  “And it seems worthless?”

 
; Darian stood up again. “It’s not that it’s worthless; it’s…” She paused and said in English, “Problematic.” Then she reverted back to Korean. “It’s a problem. Sometimes I feel like we’re studying ourselves with a kind of detachment that’s scary. I don’t know what they called it in Korea, but here we call these intellectual learning centers ‘ivory towers.’ It’s sad. A bunch of people who may have grown up Asian, saying their thoughts and experiences are the valid ones. Turning isolated experiences into rules of thumb for entire races. Feeling sorry for themselves because they think they’re second-class citizens.”

  Darian sat back down. “Kids like me, Mom. Second generation. Some can speak their ethnic language but not read or write it, like me. Some can’t speak, read or write. Only a few can do all of it. But we all pretend like we know what’s going on. But in truth, we’re just twenty-something-year-olds swapping sob stories and using ridiculously big words to rationalize our experiences. Ivory tower, Mom, looking down on the masses, isolated, out-of-it.”

  Soong frowned. “And what does your father’s death have to do with all of this?”

  “Dad was second-generation Korean. His parents came and worked the sugar plantations of Hawaii. He grew up dirt poor, he was in World War II and the Korean War because he thought that was his only way out of plantation life. He liked to drink Scotch and tell stories. I loved him. You were a famous actress in Korea who came up from nothing. You lived through national scandals and immigrated to a foreign country not being able to speak any English. It’s like what right do I have to dwell on my heritage and call it my own when I never experienced any of the stuff you guys experienced? I feel like a self-righteous fraud.”