The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  Mild laughter filled the air. Her husband was smiling and crying. “This is for my husband,” she said. “This is for him and his father.”

  It was one of the shortest speeches in Korean award history. But to Soong and her husband, there was power in brevity. And when Dong Jin won the award for Best Picture of the Year later that night, he said, “Now I know what it feels like to get hit by a car. It’s the second best thing that ever happened to me. I dedicate this to my wife. The Queen of Tears.”

  For Soong it was a moment of clarity when her husband won too. Life was good. Life was actually good. Since she’d been a child, she considered life a struggle to learn how to live. But now she knew why the struggle was worth it. It was about trading months of toil for moments like these. Yes, the Westerners are right about capitalism, she thought. Everything costs. And the most expensive stuff is the stuff most worth having. She thought about her children and wanted to go home.

  Soong and Dong Jin had to make the social rounds. It would have been bad manners not to do so. But after the second party, Soong kissed her husband on the cheek and said, “I’m going home. I need to see the children.”

  Dong Jin, who was very drunk, nodded. “Take the car and tell the driver I won’t need him. I’ll find a ride home.”

  “Not too late now. You already had too much to drink.”

  Dong Jin kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t worry. Stop being a nag. You’re too young and beautiful to be a nag.”

  Soong playfully slapped his arm. “Soon I’ll be an old nag, and you better appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, go home. Tell the kids I said goodnight.”

  He went back into a conversation with the two directors he had been drinking with all night. He was already talking about his next project. Soong Nan left the party and went home to be with her children.

  At four in the morning, Soong knew something was wrong. She had been waiting up for her husband and didn’t hear a word from him. There had been nights when he’d stayed out even later, but he’d always made sure that she knew when to expect him. By Korean standards, he was generous that way. Soong told herself maybe he forgot because it was such a great night, but she knew he was not a forgetful man. She looked out the window into the garden. Snow had been falling since midnight, and a cottony layer covered the lawn. She wondered about the fish, but it was too dark to see anything but the snow. Looking at the whiteness of the ground, she thought back on her young life. It seemed to her she owed everything to the man she waited up for now. Especially this night. It had been one of those rare nights when, for a brief time, her usual contentedness rose to happiness. And again, she owed her husband. Even though the film had been her idea, it was Dong Jin who’d made it, it was he who’d taken the skeleton which she provided and added the flesh. Good ideas in this world were thought of every day, but to create something great from an idea, she knew this took commitment and sweat. She was so proud of her husband and his tireless efforts of creation.

  Just then she heard the baby cry. It was her son Chung Yun. Soong closed the curtain and walked towards the nursery. It was the cry of hunger. Unlike her first child, Chung Yun ate voraciously. She wondered if it was because she did not nourish this child during her pregnancy as well as she had nourished the first. He also seemed to spit up half of what he’d eat. Before she reached her crying son, there was a knock on the door. It scared her so suddenly that the taste of bile briefly entered her mouth. She picked up her screaming baby and walked to the door. The two women servants also woke up and followed her.

  When she opened the door, two men in tuxedos carried her limp husband in. Soong handed her crying son to one of the women and led the men to the living-room sofa. They laid the body down. Soong felt Dong Jin’s forehead. It was cold. She unbuttoned his tuxedo shirt and put her ear over his chest. She could not hear his heartbeat, but didn’t know if it was because of her son’s screaming or her husband’s death. She felt his face. His closed eyes were motionless. “I closed them,” one of the men said.

  She looked up at the men. They stood there seemingly almost expecting the touch of this woman to revive their friend. But he did not move.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  The taller man, one of Dong Jin’s fellow producers, shrugged. “He collapsed at the party. We picked him up and told everyone we’d take him home.”

  It was the days before emergency-room care, of huge hospitals open twenty-four hours a day. Seoul was the greatest city in Korea, but it was still a poor city, one scarred by a recent war. It was still tradition to take an ailing person to their home. Soong nodded. “Thank you very much. Thank you.”

  The men knew it was their cue to leave. Soong and the two men politely bowed to each other. The servant not holding the screaming baby opened the door for them. Soong’s husband was still motionless on the sofa.

  The little girl Won Ju emerged from her bedroom. She rubbed her eyes and walked across the living room without looking up at anybody. The skirt of her nightgown covered her tiny feet. She had a blanket draped on her shoulders. When she reached her father’s body, she touched his hand. Soong watched as her daughter put the blanket over her father. With no emotion on her face, Won Ju put her small hand under her father’s nostrils. Then the four-year-old tried to open his eyelids. She sighed. “Mom, tell Chung Yun to keep quiet. Daddy’s sleeping. He’s only sleeping.”

  Won Ju walked back to her room. Soong Nan told the servants to put the baby to sleep and go to bed. Over the faint sounds of her hungry and crying baby, Soong Nan cried. It was a soft, gentle cry. Though the tears flowed down her face, sound did not exit her mouth. She took out Dong Jin’s handkerchief and blew her nose. The tears kept coming. She was the Queen of Tears. And suddenly she felt like an orphan again.

  THE TANK

  chapter five

  -1-

  THE restaurant in the Kailua Shopping Center was called “W & D Korean Take-Out.” It was a small eatery with ten feet by twenty feet of pane-glass window, six small yellow tables with six chairs each, and a stainless-steel counter separating the customers from the soda machine, huge rice cooker, and the boxes of straws, cups, plastic utensils, foam food containers, napkins, and wooden chopsticks. Behind this area was the kitchen, which was unseen by customers because of the swinging door. To the passerby there was nothing really different about this property except the name. It had been “Tony’s Drive-Inn,” but Tony wasn’t making money, so he’d left. The W & D of this new operation, Won Ju and Donny, were hoping that the new name and new food would change the luck of this property.

  It was decided that it’d be a family operation. Open seven days a week from ten in the morning until ten at night, there were enough shifts for everyone except Kenny, who wanted nothing to do with it anyway. “It’ll sink in a year, then I’ll have to bail you out,” he’d said. Won Ju and Soong, both of whom did not drive, caught the city bus every morning together and opened at ten, Monday through Saturday, staying until five each day. Donny and Crystal came in at five (except on Sundays, when they stayed the entire shift) and closed every night at nine. Brandon and Darian worked part-time on week- ends, coming in at eleven and leaving at seven. They served as extra help during the busiest times. Crystal’s brother Kaipo sometimes came in during weekday lunches, when business picked up.

  It had been Donny’s first successful idea. Like he’d hoped, the surfers and local residents came. Crystal, with her baby T-shirts and long, lavender fingernails, with glittery silver shooting stars on each nail, was becoming the stuff of local legend. So W& D was fast becoming one of the most popular eateries in the small town of Kailua. And the shifts worked for everyone. Donny, Crystal, and Soong rarely worked together. The hot air was not grating against the cold.

  But after a while Crystal began to tire. She’d never really thought about it before, but this arrangement had her spending all of her time, day and night, with her new husband Donny. And for the first few months, this was fine. Crystal had lear
ned a while back how to tune Donny out, how to simply lower the volume knob and nod her head to the soft repetitive beat of the music. Besides, because his new fatigue was added to his impotence, little physical affection was required of Crystal. So for three months she happily worked clothed for the first time in her life. She was selling man’s second most valued commodity, and liking that it cost her very little.

  However, after these three months, two things began to change. First, Donny began to change the beat of his music. His success catalyzed a conceitedness which Crystal found overbearing. He began telling her what to do. He began to snap at her when she made mistakes. He also became more aggressive sexually. He wanted to try sex every now and then, and unlike before, became angry with every failure. Sex had never been a part of their deal. Crystal had always thought about their relationship in terms of a constructive symbiosis. She provided him with a wife his mother hated and most men envied. She gave him a sense of ego. In return he gave her stability, an alternative source of income, and a break from self-destruction. He gave her ego because she knew he was in a sadder state than she. But suddenly he seemed to want not just a wife, but what she thought of as a traditional Korean wife. He wanted one who would put up with all of his shit and scratch it up to wifely duties. Crystal was getting scared, especially when Donny leaned closely toward the television when that Bob Dole ad on Viagra would show. And besides that, the other thing started to change.

  Crystal, after those first few months, was losing her hatred for the male gender. Away from the slobbering wanna-be gynecologists at Club Mirage, she began to find some men attractive again. At first, she caught herself saying, “nice ass” here, or “nice eyes” there. Then she began fantasizing about having sex with some of these customers. These were not elaborate dreams of men dressed like slaves catering to her queenly needs, not Liz Taylor in Cleopatra fantasies: instead they were purely erotic images of her and a customer having feral sex. But she wouldn’t act on these impulses. She’d instigate some harmless flirtation and return to work not thinking about it. Or she’d look at her husband and her sexual impulses would evaporate. It was funny, she thought, that at the same time she stopped hating men, she started hating her husband.

  One Friday night, five months after the opening, a young, shirtless surfer walked to the counter. He was tall, and his dark skin grabbed tightly around his dense muscles. His aloha-print surf shorts were a size too big, and they hung low on his waist, revealing a severe tan line where his muscular stomach and slender hips met. He was also handsome. His dark face was angular and a muscular jaw sat below big, brown puppy-dog eyes that seemed to glow with simplicity and innocence. His eyes were not like the wanna-be gynecologists of Club Mirage, instead they were the eyes of a man who simply loved to surf, and was looking for something as simple as a bite to eat. Crystal felt her hand brush back her bangs and the erotic images chaotically twirled in her head, not like ballerinas, but like figures falling down in fits of seizure. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, can I get the Special and a jumbo Coke.”

  Crystal scribbled down “Special,” which was a mixed plate of kalbi (marinated Korean short ribs), barbecue beef and chicken, two scoops of white rice, and kimchee, and she dropped the order off to Donny in the kitchen. Not saying anything to him, she quickly went back to the counter where the surfer was waiting. She looked at the brick-colored floor of the restaurant and saw how his large, bare feet tracked sand from the door. “Sorry,” he said.

  Crystal smiled. “You better get a broom and sweep that up.”

  The surfer looked stunned. Then he smiled. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She gave him a deadpan look. AWon Ju look. “Not at all.”

  “Uh, oh, I’m sorry. I don’t have a broom.”

  Crystal was having a ball. But in a way, his stupidity irked her. “Sorry, I was kidding.”

  The surfer sighed. “Cool.”

  “So how were the waves?”

  “Shitty. Blown out.”

  Strong wind did have a bad effect on waves. Perfect, rolling swells were meant to build up and peak into perfect, swirling cylinders, but if a strong wind came, waves seemed to shatter on reefs. The wind should learn humility, she thought. Before she could continue the conversation, the surfer walked to one of the yellow tables and sat down. Crystal was annoyed. She made his soda and walked outside of the counter to give it to him. “So, do you like surfing?”

  The surfer grabbed his soda and forced down a large sip through the straw. “I go every chance I get.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “I went to Sandy’s today.”

  “I love Sandy’s.”

  “Do you surf?”

  “I used to a lot. But I don’t have time anymore.”

  “You have to make time.”

  This guy was way too involved with his surfing, Crystal thought. She looked up at the counter and saw Donny approach it. He put the styrofoam container filled with food on the counter and walked back to the kitchen. Crystal smelled the familiar grilled meat and sighed. It was a smell she had a hard time getting out of her hair every night. She bagged the container, put a plastic fork and knife into the bag along with a few napkins and gave it to the customer. He stood up and took the bag from her. His eyes never met hers. Instead, he looked longingly at the white styrofoam container he was holding. As he exited Crystal called out, “Come back anytime.”

  She sighed and went back to the counter.

  * * *

  After closing that night, Donny and Crystal took the long and familiar drive up the Pali Highway. As the car scaled the green mountains of the Ko‘olaus, Donny rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. Crystal rolled down her window and lit her own. “Maybe we should get rid of this car,” she said.

  “The lease runs for another five months. We can’t just get rid of it.”

  “I’m tired of it.”

  Donny laughed sarcastically. “You don’t even drive. All you do is ride like some kind of princess. How can you be tired of it?”

  “Well, I leased it. Isn’t it my decision?”

  “No. I like the car.”

  Crystal threw her cigarette out the window. “Lease your own.”

  The car entered the tunnel. Crystal turned on the radio to 97.5, the alternative rock station. No Doubt’s “Spiderweb” blared out of the speakers, mixing with the noise of driving through the tunnel. The wind and acoustics of the tunnel, along with the music, made Donny’s response inaudible. His voice was just a part of the strong wind blowing through the open windows. The smell of exhaust entered the car. Crystal found the fumes intoxicating. The smell reminded her of stopping at gas stations as a little girl in her father’s truck. She’d loved the smell of pumping gas. It was before everything went wrong. After they passed through the first tunnel, Crystal lit another cigarette.

  In the second tunnel Donny turned the radio off. “You know I hate that music,” he said loudly.

  Crystal shrugged. When they exited the second tunnel, they began their descent down the Ko‘olau Mountains. The BMW sped up to seventy, and in fifteen minutes they would be back home in Honolulu. “Why don’t you learn how to drive already?” Donny asked.

  “Believe me, I’m considering it,” Crystal said.

  At their apartment, Crystal walked into the bathroom and locked the door. She heard Donny turn on the television. She recognized the sound. It was one of those nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel. He loved those animal documentaries. The night before, he’d watched a crocodile one. She remembered seeing his amazed trance as a lizard-sized baby was peeking out of a cell made of its mother’s teeth. The teeth were the size of boar tusks, or so the narrator said, and the baby was quite safe in its mother’s mouth, but it still looked like it wanted to get out. She also thought it was kind of neat.

  Crystal undressed and turned on the shower. Before she stepped in, she smelled her hair. The scent of marinated cooked meat clung to every highlighted stran
d. She checked the temperature of the water, slid the curtain back, and stepped in. The shower had become a sanctuary for her. It seemed to be the only time during the day that she was not with her husband. Sometimes she would stay in even after the hot water ran out and the water turned cold.

  The warm water poured over her body. She shivered and tilted her head up. The water blasted against her closed eyes. Then she thoroughly scrubbed shampoo in her barbecue hair and rinsed. She repeated the process three times before giving up, telling herself that too much shampoo would damage her hair. Next she rubbed a bar of soap into her soft washcloth and began scrubbing her body. Suddenly she remembered the surfer who ordered the “Special.” She closed her eyes and listened for Donny. She couldn’t hear him or the television. Then the twirling images returned. The naked surfer kissing her body, working his way down to her pelvis. Then his body thrusting into hers. The images emerged like she was watching them on a randomly patched-up strip of porno. There was no sense of chronology with these chaotic images. When Crystal finally opened her eyes, she was sitting in the shower with her legs shaking. Feeling an unfamiliar guilt, she turned off the shower, quickly dried off and dressed.

  Donny was watching some documentary about little light-brown monkeys in Sri Lanka. They all had long tails, pink faces, and heads of hair like Moe from the Three Stooges. Crystal sat on the sofa and began drying her hair with a towel. The monkeys were having some kind of civil war. Anew faction had arisen and challenged the old leader. Donny was immersed in the program. “Is it that interesting?” Crystal asked.

  “It’s amazing. It’s like they’re human beings.”