The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  My NaCl is starting to boil. I guess the chlorine is supposed to disappear, and leave behind the salt, and I’m supposed to “oo” and “ah” about it. Like I don’t know what’s going to happen.

  It’s not like Brian and Mary told me about their parents. I don’t even really know them too well. It might be because I only just started going to this school. It might be because it’s like all the white kids hang out with each other, just like all the Japanese kids hang out with each other, and the small amount of Hawaiians hang out with each other. There’s pictures of some seniors in the glass case at the Wo International Center, if anybody needed proof. White, white; Asian, Asian; Hawaiian, Hawaiian. I guess I can pass as either Asian or Hawaiian. But I usually just keep to myself. I’d much rather play Everquest than hang out with these people at the beach or the mall all weekend long. Sometimes I wish my brain had an on-and-off switch.

  I wonder what Dad would say if he knew I wasn’t popular at school. He probably was. You can just tell. I bet Kaipo and Crystal were popular, too. But they went to Waianae High, and Dad went here. Kaipo must’ve played football or something. Crystal, cheerleader? Nah. She was probably one of those hot girls who always got busted for smoking. Kaipo probably threatened her boyfriends and stuff. Now look at them. Just like the other adults. Talk, talk, talk. Do they ever have anything important to say?

  Just like I thought. Just salt left. Now I have to weigh it. Not that I couldn’t listen to Crystal all day long. I have a feeling she might have just been acting last night. I bet she can talk about real stuff. I mean, if I were alone with her, I wouldn’t talk about computer games and stuff. Just about life or something. God, when the limo dropped me, Mom, and Dad off, and she started kissing me? I know I could talk to her. I still can’t believe she married the loser. His weak Elvis impersonation after he takes his vows. God, what a loser.

  I can tell Grandma doesn’t like the loser, too. I guess she has to do stuff for him because he’s her son and all, but she doesn’t like him. But it’s almost like she doesn’t like anybody else, either. I mean, really, I don’t even think she likes me. I mean, I know she’d do anything for me, and she always talks about me and worries about me, but does she like me? I mean, she doesn’t even know me. It’s not her fault. I mean, it’s not like I know her either. It’s not like I sip tea with her and ask her, “So Grandma, tell me about your life?” I mean, I know about some of it, how it was tough and all back in the day, and how she was like famous and all in Korea, but I don’t know what she’s thinking, and I doubt she knows what I’m thinking. Besides, there’s the language thing and all. But it’s more than that. I doubt Brian and Mary know anything about their grandparents either. Look at them. They’re always lab partners. I like not having a lab partner. I can do this quicker. Their NaCl didn’t even boil yet. I’m already weighing my salt. Mr. Cooper lets me read my gaming magazines when I finish early, but today I feel too tired to read, not sleep tired, just veg tired.

  Grandma. I don’t know anything about her. It’s like she’s the chlorine that evaporated. I can’t even see it. But I guess right now it’s all around me in the air.

  THE QUEEN OF TEARS

  chapter four

  -3-

  AT nineteen, Park Soong Nan was a star. After doing seven movies that did modestly at the box office, she hit it big with Chun Hyung Jun. It was a Korean historical drama based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Soong Nan was given the lead by her husband Dong Jin, who produced the film. It was a hit in Seoul. A lot of people went to see it more than once.

  Suddenly she was one of the most desirable women in all of South Korea. She was their version of an up-and-coming Elizabeth Taylor, a Western actress who Koreans loved, a combination of youth, talent, and beauty. And for her it was easy. Because she was so small and thin, the audience ached with sympathy when she acted vulnerable. And when she acted courageous and unbending, the audience saw a brave little sparrow fly into the eye of a typhoon. They began calling her “The Queen of Tears.”

  Then Soong Nan got pregnant. Putting her career on hold, she stayed at the house and relaxed in the garden. She read books, worked on learning Japanese, and ate grapes to her heart’s content. She did not really have any of those strange cravings that many pregnant women do, except during the summer of her pregnancy, when the purple grapes in the garden grew plump. Every day she ate them by the dozens. After the vines of the gardens grew bare, she ordered them from the markets all over the city. Though they were expensive, Dong Jin did not care; he doted on his pregnant wife so vigilantly that whatever she needed she got without complaint. She knew he would have grapes from France imported for her if she ate all the ones in Seoul.

  During those months in the garden, her skin turned a light tan. Though she spent most of the time underneath a big umbrella, the sun managed to touch her every now and then. She did not care. Besides, her skin did not seem to darken as quickly as it did when she was a child. A fall and winter indoors would quickly take care of the tan.

  Soong Nan was content. Sitting underneath the umbrella, she thought about the incredible turn her life took, and smiled. She no longer feared the things she used to. Her fears changed from threatening to trivial. Instead of fearing hunger, she now feared riding in her husband’s car when the driver accelerated too quickly. Instead of fearing a life of prostitution, she now feared the occasional plane trip to Tokyo. Instead of fearing the exposing of her foreign blood, she now feared the pains of childbirth. Her fears became those that every human being should have the luxury to own. And she owed it to her husband, Dong Jin. Sitting under the umbrella, many times she asked herself if she loved him.

  When she asked herself this question, the answer she came up with was always the same. Yes, she loved him. But her relationship with him was completely unlike the relationships she portrayed in her movies. Her marriage lacked the irrationally charged emotions that her characters felt. If her older husband died before she did, which he probably would, she would not lose her mind and commit suicide. Their relationship was not like that. Instead she would honor him by caring for his children and making sure they knew what a great man he was. Because her marriage was unlike those of her movies, she wondered how she could pull off faking love and passion so easily when performing in front of the camera. She thought maybe it was because deep down inside she craved the craziness.

  But during the summer in the garden, she would not have traded her situation for anything in the world. All she wanted was the devotion of her husband, a healthy child, and a bucket full of sweet purple grapes. When her daughter was finally born in August, she had all three.

  After two months of caring for her child, whom they named Park Won Ju, it was time to go back to work. After the grueling search for a nanny whom Soong Nan felt she could trust, Dong Jin was ready to start filming. After an appropriate caregiver was found, one of the most qualified women of Seoul with the required bent back, they started on the next movie. It was another historical drama. It would be the first of many.

  Park Dong Jin was losing money, and Park Soong Nan’s career was stagnant. For two years, they worked seventeen hours a day, making about a movie a month. Park Soong Nan was still a star, but a star whom the critics and audience felt was wasting her talent on mediocre scripts and subpar directing. Most of these films were historical dramas, and considering that Korean history was five thousand years old, there was not a shortage of stories. Most of the films Dong Jin made depicted aristocratic regimes from the Shilla Kingdom of the eighth century or the Choson Kingdom, which, after five hundred years, fell to the Japanese in 1910. And because this kind of re-creation cost a lot of money, Dong Jin’s movies were not making their money back. The sets and costuming were killing him.

  Soong’s contentedness was disappearing. She never got to see her daughter; instead she watched her husband stoically lose money. Though he did not complain to her, his hair seemed to get grayer every month and his weight was dropping dramatically. Obsessing ove
r history was making him old. She found a real fear again. She suggested that they take a break, but Dong Jin refused. Sitting on the patio in front of the garden one night, having tea at the very same table he had made the fourteen-year-old Kwang Ja the offer, the twenty-one-year-old Soong Nan confronted him. She sat down in front of the brooding Dong Jin and poured him and herself tea. She did not feel afraid in broaching the subject with him. They, unlike many traditional Korean couples, shared an open dialogue. Though it was tradition that she be spoken down to, he never seemed to do it. What she did fear, however, was the possibility that he would not heed her advice. She knew if he went on the way he did, his life would be cut short.

  “Perhaps we should slow down,” she said, after sipping her tea.

  Dong Jin smiled, then sighed. “We can’t afford to.”

  “But it seems that not slowing down will cost us more.”

  Dong Jin scratched at the short wooden table with a single fingernail. “Do you remember the first time we had tea at this table?”

  Soong put her hand on his. “Of course. I’ll never forget that.”

  Dong Jin laughed. “You were a real firecracker. I knew I had to marry you even then.”

  Soong smiled. “I didn’t. I didn’t know much of anything back then.”

  Dong Jin scratched at the table again, then looked into her brown eyes. She felt completely comfortable when he did it. It may have been the training in acting that enabled her to do it; of course she was no longer the skittish girl who feared everyone was looking at her, but then it was just her husband. She’d seen the face so many times, it was as comfortable to look at as her own. “You knew the most important thing any living thing should know,” he said. “You knew how to survive. I don’t think you’ll ever lose that.”

  “I owe it to luck. I owe it to you. Besides, you gave me the silver knife. After that, the idea of survival became easy.” She shook her head. “The Japanese thing. What a child I was. You taught me that I was just an adolescent fearing men, as most adolescent girls should. The knife took care of that fear. You took care of it. I’m on to you. Always the storyteller. Always using symbols.”

  Dong Jin shook his head. “No, you do not owe me or that knife for your survival. You owe no one but yourself. The money, yeah, maybe you owe me a little.”

  Soong laughed. “How much do I owe you?”

  Dong Jin looked into her eyes again. “You don’t owe me anymore, I owe you. You’ve made me truly happy.”

  Soong put her hand on his cheek. “Then why can’t we just slow down and enjoy our happiness?”

  “Do you still have the silver knife?”

  “Of course.”

  Dong Jin smiled. “You never even needed it. But if I were to... ”

  Soong interrupted him. “I will always have the knife. And when it’s time, our daughter will have it.”

  “I hope she never needs it.”

  “Do you notice that she doesn’t cry?”

  Dong Jin’s face lit up. “Yes. Sometimes I watch her in the mornings before the sun comes up. She wakes early every day. But she does not cry. She waits. Can you imagine? Having consideration as an infant?”

  Soong smiled. “She is pure goodness.”

  Dong Jin began scratching the table again. “Why do you scratch at the table?” Soong asked.

  “Look at this worn mark over here,” he said, pointing to a smooth groove which looked like the beginnings of a canoe. “This was my grandfather’s table, and this is the exact spot where his fingernail constantly grazed the surface. He was a nervous man but also a great aristocrat. Many big decisions were made at this table. Most importantly, he decided that our family would not resist the Japanese occupation.”

  Soong thought about the occupation. It was brutal on many Koreans. The Japanese were perhaps the cruelest people in the world at the time of the occupation. But she’d also learned that perhaps those who were the most cruel were the Koreans who acted with the insurgents. She looked at the groove on the table and guessed then that the Park family had collaborated with the Japanese. Only a man lacking a clear conscience could have scratched at a solid surface so hard. “I did not know,” she said.

  “My father was enraged. He went against my grandfather’s wishes. He called him a traitor at this very table. When I was old enough to make my own decision, I opted to side with my grandfather. Because I had made it into the university in Tokyo, and I did not want to forgo my future by chasing some romantic dream my father had of Korean independence.”

  Dong Jin sipped on his tea. “Back then it was almost impossible for a Korean to get to Tokyo for studies. I worked very hard for it. So my father was killed, my grandfather managed to hold on to some money, and I left Tokyo with a degree in philosophy.”

  Soong Nan sipped her tea. “And this is why you’re concentrating on making as many historical dramas as you can? To somehow make up for it?”

  “Now it’s my turn to scratch the table.”

  Soong grabbed his scratching hand and kissed it. “Maybe we should take a break.”

  Dong Jin pulled his hand away. “I can’t.”

  “I’m pregnant again.”

  “You can break.”

  “Not without you. I’ll do one more.”

  Dong Jin stood up. “I just need one good idea.”

  Soong Nan looked into her cup of tea. Then she looked out in the garden at the green mountain behind the stone wall. It was so unlike the dusty mountains of North Korea. She thought about her husband’s guilt about his father. The wind blew in her face. The wind. It was an ancient wind, the same wind the old shamans recognized as the breath of god. The shamans were here before Confucianism and Buddhism were imported from China. It often amazed Soong how old Korea was. Five thousand years. When the wind disappeared, a thought was left in her mind. It was as if the ancient wind brought a seed for her then left. “Maybe you should not look so far back in history,” she said.

  Dong Jin turned around. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe a movie about the Japanese occupation.”

  “And?”

  “Maybe it should be a movie about a man who defies his family to fight against the Japanese. Maybe this man can have a young wife who begs him not to go. Maybe he dies in her arms.”

  Dong Jin pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. Then he began laughing uncontrollably. He laughed so hard, tears welled in his eyes. They poured down his face in streams, his eyes were like mountains filled with rainwater. “Noon Mul Ui Yau Wang,” he said. My Queen of Tears.

  -3-

  The movie took two months to make. By the time they were finished, Soong Nan was six months pregnant. They wrote the pregnancy into to script to add even more to the melodrama. She and Dong Jin worried that the work would have a bad effect on the pregnancy, but it seemed fine. Soong craved grapes again, but because it was winter, they were not in season. She did not bother to try and get them imported because she was too busy. She sometimes felt guilty that she was not providing her second child with the nourishment that she had provided for her first. But she knew her husband needed this movie to be great.

  When they went to the premiere in Seoul, Soong Nan looked at the poster. It was perhaps her greatest. She was holding onto the beige army shirt of her movie husband. Her hands held the material tightly. Her eyes were closed tightly. But the look on the face was subtly deceiving. At first glance it appeared that Soong was refusing to let go. But if you looked at the poster carefully, at the face and the position of the head, you could tell it was the moment right before she let go. Looking at the poster, Soong smiled. It was perfect. Walking in the theater, she convinced Dong Jin to get her a framed copy of that poster. Maybe she would give it to her daughter when she was older. Like always he agreed without argument.

  It was a huge blockbuster success. It was nominated for ten awards, including Movie of the Year and Best Actress in the Great Bell Awards. After their second child, a son, Park Chung Yun was born, they left the c
hildren with the nanny and went to the awards ceremony. All of the biggest producers, directors, and actors showed up at the theater on Seoul’s version of Broadway. Red carpets, flashing cameras, hairdos that took hours to create. Tuxedos, sequined evening gowns. It was all very knock-off American. Very Hollywood.

  Soong sat with her husband at the awards. The movie had lost some of its nominations. Best Score was out, as were Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Editing. Soong glanced at her husband every once in a while. He kept his stoic face. Only when he was drunk or talking to Soong would his face convey strong emotion.

  The next presentation was in the Best Actress category, which she had been nominated for. Dong Jin squeezed Soong’s hand. She felt as if she were going to bounce to the ceiling. She wanted to win for him.

  When they called her name, she screamed. It was not a bragging scream, but the kind of scream a child voices when their father sneaks up behind them in the dark and yells, “Boo!” It was loud enough so that everyone around her heard. Soong quickly covered her mouth. She stood up to walk onstage. Before she took her first step, she looked back at her husband. He was crying. She quickly turned around to prevent herself from crying, too. She made the awkward walk in front of the sitting people. She said, “Pardon me,” to everyone she passed. When she made it to the aisle, her leg buckled. She screamed again. Everyone was laughing. As she walked towards the stage, she heard the applause. When she finally made it to the podium and accepted her award, she forgot the speech she had come up with the night before. When the applause slowly died and she put her mouth in front of the microphone, she felt the heat from the spotlights above her. She didn’t know what to say. Silent for a several seconds, she put her hand, salute style, against her forehead. She was looking for her husband. The man working the lights immediately got what she was doing. Suddenly a light hit her husband. She smiled. “I feel like I just got hit by a car,” she said.