The Queen of Tears

by Chris Mckinney

  But when the teacher, an old white-haired woman who talked in whispers, told the class what the book was about, it was as if he hadn’t even read it. To her, it was a book about the danger of dreaming falsely, the danger of dreaming of money and beautiful girls, the danger of dreaming of becoming American. He knew better. The book was about the danger of being a big man and not having the gate locked to your swimming pool. In America, you must protect what is yours, and your own life is cluttered with the rest of your possessions. Lock them all in a closet. That was what The Great Gatsby was about.

  They were not staying in Las Vegas, and he didn’t have any say about it. He never had any say about anything. Did he want to go to those snotty private schools in Korea? No. Did he want to have that old, bent-back servant woman raising him, the one who would eat chicken legs with one foot perched on the rim of a garbage can, looking ridiculous, like she was a warlord enjoying her booty? No. Did he want to come to America? No. Now, he did not want to leave Las Vegas, but his mother was taking control again. She was talking about Hawaii. It was crazy. She was packing up her belongings, which included her children, neatly folding them into a suitcase, locking everything up, and taking only what she wanted. Sometimes she wanted the kids, sometimes she didn’t. Donny thought of himself as one of her pets. He only went for the permanent moves.

  And what happened when she’d left the last time, and like Jay Gatsby, didn’t lock the gate? His sister was hurt. And since she had been here, had she even spoken to him? No. She’d kicked him in the head instead. He was treated like a dog who urinated on the carpet one too many times. In public, no less.

  He thought they could’ve had a happy life in Korea. His mother was a star. He would have been the child of a star. He could have been Tom Buchanan, the rich, well-respected man with the beautiful wife. Instead he felt like Jay Gatsby, or actually Jimmy Gatz. He was a tourist and had to fight on his own for everything he felt he should have had already. How can one be expected to do such a thing? How can you create a closet of your own when you yourself are locked in a closet?

  Yes, Donny thought, he stole from his own mother. Yes, it was wrong. But did she not owe him that much? Did she still not owe him? It was like she kept borrowing and borrowing from him, and he didn’t have anything. It was like she kept borrowing, and he believed they both knew she would never be able to pay him back.

  But I will get it back, Donny thought. He would squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until that rag of a woman would be so dry that she’d be stiffer than she was already. He would have his own closet with things locked away safely. In America, he supposed, considering what he’d read about and see on TV, these things are possible. A beautiful wife that others envy, a beautiful car that others envy, a beautiful life that others envy. He would become a big man. And he would lock the gate. Is it wrong to hate your mother? Probably. Is it relevant? He did not think so. Become a big man by any means necessary. He would do it, no matter how much it cost her. And as the Americans say, he mused, “So sue me.”

  LEARNING TO FLY

  chapter nine

  -1-

  ARE mothers born? Soong thought about this as she sat in the white, black, and yellow city bus that was taking her to Waianae. She felt safest on the bus; its size and lack of speed eased her fears of traffic fatalities. But it was top-heavy. She could tell that busses had a high center of gravity, especially when she would take the bus up the Ko‘olau Mountains, down the windy roads, and into Kailua town to the restaurant. When the bus accelerated down the Pali Highway, she was aware of the high center of gravity, and felt as if the bus, when taking a sharp turn down the mountain, would topple over the low cement railing and fall off the cliff. If that didn’t get her, she would fear the tunnel. A hole through a mountain felt unnatural to her. All of that earth pressing the round arch of the hollow. She anticipated the tunnel deflating every time the bus would pass through it. She knew something bad was going to happen whether caused by pressure or gravity, and the Pali Highway had both.

  But today, she was heading towards the west side of the island, not the east, and this trip was almost all freeway. There were no mountains. And Soong was aware of how the landscape she passed turned from wet to dry. She thought about motherhood and wondered if she’d ever been cut out for it. Are women born to be mothers? She supposed that this notion could be challenged by the logical follow-up question. Are men born to be fathers? She supposed not everybody, no matter what gender, was up to the task. She’d never felt up to it. But she tried; she knew she tried.

  Won Ju had told her to meet her at Safeway in Waianae. When Soong asked how she was supposed to know which Safeway to meet her at, Won Ju laughed and said, “There’s only one. You can’t miss it.”

  Soong did not think that it was an odd place to meet her daughter. She knew that Won Ju had an affinity for supermarkets. She was not a shopper, not even a window shopper, but for years, since the first time the entire family had moved to Hawaii, Soong remembered her daughter’s desire to always go to a supermarket. Back then Soong had been keeping a close eye on her daughter, and she immediately noticed that Won Ju rarely bought anything. When she’d asked Won Ju about it, she said, “I don’t know, it’s therapy. I just look at all of that stuff, and I feel better. It’s like I stop thinking when I look at meats and produce. There is nothing that stops my brain more than looking at a rack of pork short ribs.”

  Soong thought she had really gone mad. But over the years, she’d noticed that her daughter only did it in times of crisis. She did it before she got married, then when she was pregnant with Brandon. She did not abuse her therapy. So Soong thought that it was eccentric, but perfectly healthy. In fact, Soong envied the fact that she had a haven from herself.

  It was a long bus ride, over an hour, and it gave Soong time to reflect on her family. She was tired of thinking about them, but it was all very astronomical to her. She was simply a planet revolving around a star, compelled by something as uninteresting and powerful as gravity, moving around and around, in a slow oval orbit. Sometimes she would be closer to it than other times, but she was never far enough away to break the monotony of gravity. And the star always burned. She felt like a dead planet, a moon. There was no cause, just carousel motion. Around and around and around.

  She found it funny in a very unfunny way that when people have children, they have such high hopes. Parents think success when there is weakness and failure all around them. Soong felt that indeed most people were failures and weak. And it took her years to learn that her children, as chances would have it, were among them. Chung Yun, born with a dent in his baby chest, failing to fill it; Won Ju, who only just discovered anger in her forties. Did she only just realize that anger and strength are tied together?

  As the bus neared Waianae, Soong became very interested in the passing landscape. It amazed her that on such a tiny speck of an island like Oahu, there was such variety in climate and vegetation. Kailua, on the east side of Oahu, was brilliantly green and often rainy. It was also very humid. Honolulu, on the south, was more moderate. It rained, but not too much. It was often hot, but not too hot. At least it was not as uncomfortable as the restaurant in Kailua. Now, nearing the west side of the island, Waianae, for the first time in her life, she noticed it was very dry. Sun-baked branches, probably good for fire-building. Long shafts of dried vines and grass. It looked like North Korea. How could that be? It never snowed here; there was no Siberian winter pushing from the north. Soong imagined what she saw was an anomaly, like some sort of tropical glacier.

  The people also piqued her interest as the bus entered Waianae town. Hawaiians. Then for the first time in the hour-long bus ride, she looked closely at the people on the bus. The overweight woman wearing an old purple tank top, holding her sleeping infant. A white, crumpled Longs Drugs translucent plastic bag filled with what appeared to be two baby bottles, a few diapers, and a big leather wallet leaned against her dry feet. An old man, his cracked skin sagging off from bones, hunch
ed over, his hands folded on the handle of his stainless-steel cane. The three teenage girls, all three wearing denim shorts and rubber slippers, holding their wicker purses, using their beach towels as pillows. But she felt that the observation was forced. She laughed to herself, knowing that she’d never been good at it. She’d never been good at seeing things. Doing, she did brilliantly, efficiently, and quickly. But seeing was an entirely different thing.

  Could she see her grandson? She didn’t even know the awkward, quiet, gangly boy whom she would do anything for, did she? Did she have to? If he were on this bus right now, would she even notice him? Probably not, she conceded to herself. He would’ve fit in on this bus. He was part-Hawaiian, as almost all Hawaiians were, and he would have blended in on this bus with the now-different colors of Hawaiian people. She was coming to Waianae for him. The phone call she’d received from her daughter earlier that morning was distressed. Meet at the supermarket? Soong knew that there was big trouble. She was on the bus thirty-three minutes later.

  Speculating on what could be wrong with her grandson, Soong missed the bus stop in front of the shopping center. She’d just missed it. Swearing to herself, she rang for the next stop. After she got off, she shook her head. How could she have missed it? The shopping center, with its Safeway and Blockbuster video store, contrasted sharply with the rest of the neighborhood. She imagined that this is what it must look like when the Americans start pushing themselves into foreign countries now. Colonel Sanders is the new missionary.

  Soong walked quickly to Safeway. She swore under her breath at the heat. There was no path of shade to the store, so she was forced to weather sun exposure. When she got to the entrance, Won Ju was standing by the front door smoking a cigarette. Soong looked down at her feet. There were five cigarette butts, all the same brand, flattened in front of her. They nodded to each other. Won Ju threw down her cigarette while stepping towards the automatic door. She tried to step on it, but missed. Soong quickly stepped on the lit butt.

  Won Ju didn’t grab a shopping cart or basket. She slowly walked to the right, towards the produce section. Soong patiently followed her. Won Ju stopped in front of the grapes. She picked up a bunch and seemed to be inspecting them. Some of the purple orbs had a white film on them. “Crystal is pregnant,” Won Ju said.

  Soong sighed. Won Ju put down the bunch of grapes. “Donny is not the father. Brandon is.”

  Soong closed her eyes. She realized that she should be shocked, but she no longer had the ability to be shocked. When did she lose it? She shook her head. “Are you sure?”

  “Brandon has no doubt.”

  “It could be anybody, couldn’t it?”

  Won Ju began walking. “Don’t start, Mother.”

  They walked to the end of the produce section and turned left. Milk and eggs. Won Ju stopped at the orange juice. “What do I do?”

  Soong paused. It amazed her that she was feeling so numb. She did not feel excited at all. She was just tired. She didn’t know what Won Ju should do, and at the moment she wasn’t sure if she cared, though she knew it was her duty to care. “Where is Crystal?”

  “Nobody has heard from her, not even her brother.”

  “Who is living with you? You, Crystal’s brother, Darian, and Brandon?”

  “You knew about Darian and Kaipo?”

  “Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? Why else would you move here? Your sister picked you up.”

  Won Ju began walking again. They turned up the next aisle. Diapers and baby food. A teenage mother pushing a stroller, a beautiful girl, grotesquely dressed and made-up, was reading the label of a jar of mashed peas. Her long brown hair was streaked with blond highlights, and her shorts were so short that the crease on the bottom of her buttocks showed. There were a few faint bruises on her smooth thighs. “Kaipo’s mother still lives at the house, but I’ve only seen her once,” Won Ju said.

  “Is it a big house?”

  “No, it’s only three bedrooms. And the only time I saw her was in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep, so I sat in the kitchen smoking. She came out of nowhere. I thought she was a ghost. And as soon as she saw me, she disappeared. It was, I don’t know, sad. She’s almost invisible. When I asked Kaipo about her the next day, he said that it wasn’t a ghost, and his mother was still alive. I didn’t believe him.”

  “When are you going back to your husband? You son needs a father.”

  “I don’t think I am going back. Besides, what does he have to teach?”

  Soong noticed the music for the first time. It was very mellow and sedate, careful not to offend. The sound did not seem manmade. Soong imagined that there must be some kind of computerized machine that makes supermarket music. It was very soulless; very sad. It seemed as artificial as the bright fluorescent lights. For the first time, Soong noticed the similarities between supermarkets and hospitals. “Why do you hate him so much?”

  Won Ju began walking. They skipped a couple of aisles before coming to the next. Frozen foods. Aman with bushy hair, a large stomach, and baggy jeans was looking at Tombstone pizzas. Two for nine dollars with your Safeway Club Card. Everything was big on the man, except for his rear. The back of his jeans looked like an empty pouch. Won Ju stopped and looked at TV dinners. “I hate his feet.”

  “That sounds very stupid.”

  “He has enormous feet. They did not bother me at first, in fact I liked them, but now I hate them. They never stop moving. When he is watching TV, and he drops the remote control, he tries to pick it up with his toes. If he doesn’t have anything to pick up, he’s poking at the nearest thing, whether it’s the coffee table, magazines on the coffee table. In bed, he used to pinch me with his toes, and think it was all very cute. He is constantly knocking things down with his feet. Or trying to grab things with his feet. If I were to go back, I would not be able to help myself. I would saw off his feet.”

  “What about Brandon? How is he?”

  They walked a few aisles down. Alcohol. It was the first time Won Ju actually grabbed something. It was a box of white zinfandel with a plastic spout. Won Ju looked at her mother. “I know, it’s terrible. But it does the job affordably.”

  “Do not become Chung Yun on me. Once you start speaking about alcohol in terms of affordability, you are drinking too much. I asked you how Brandon was.”

  “Did you know that Donny has been at the restaurant, working by himself, every day? Something inside of him broke or something. Have you spoken to him? He’s very sullen, but I’m so proud of him. You should go see him.”

  “I plan to. How is Brandon?”

  Won Ju sighed. “Let’s go. This is all I’m going to buy.”

  Normally, Soong hated grocery-market store lines more than any other type of line. It was a place that was permeated with lack of human consideration. Why did people demand to write checks? Why did people go to the nine-items-or-less line when it was apparent to everyone that they had more than nine items? Why did people argue over the price of a pound and a half of yellow onions when, first of all, yellow onions were usually only about sixty-nine cents a pound, and second of all, when most of these people could not comprehend mathematics beyond the third-grade level? The supermarket line was a place of evil to Soong, because it was a place of inconsiderateness. Wasn’t that what evil was? Soong was feeling all of this frustration standing in the express line with her daughter, but she was even more upset because Won Ju would not tell her how her grandson was. “Now tell me,” she said, aware of heightened volume of her voice, “how is Brandon?”

  The checkout girl looked toward the back of the line at Soong. Soong wondered if she would’ve gotten the same look if she asked the question in perfect English. “He’s not good. He’s scaring me.”

  “Why? What is he doing?”

  “That’s just it. He’s not doing anything. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t eat much. He never mentions his computer. Before any of this happened, I had to fight him to spend less than six hours a night on that computer.
Now, he doesn’t even mention it, or doesn’t seem to miss it. Along with his father.”

  “Isn’t he always quiet? Does he seem angry?”

  “No. I wish he seemed angry, but he doesn’t. When he told me Crystal was pregnant, it was very deadpan. I was very upset, asking him all sorts of questions, but he just sat there quietly. Kaipo is the only one he talks to. And not in my presence. The only reason why I know this is because Kaipo told me he does when I told him that Brandon never talks. Kaipo just said, ‘He talks.’ I’m really worried.”

  Soong sighed. “We will fix it. Where was it that Crystal used to work?”

  “Club Mirage.”

  “And no one has found her there?”

  “No one has looked. Who is going to go? Her brother? Donny? He doesn’t even want to see her.”

  “She’s keeping the baby?”

  “Brandon thinks so. And I understand that.”

  Won Ju paid for the box of wine with cash. She gave the short, chubby girl her Club Card. After ringing it out, the checkout girl, handing Won Ju the receipt, said, “Thank you, Mrs. Akana.” The change slid out of the change machine. Yes, she understood it, too. As they walked out of the store with a box of white zinfandel, walking towards Kaipo’s truck, which had absurdly big tires, Soong understood that as mother, grandmother, now great-grandmother, responsibility grew with age. Kaipo’s enormous silhouette hunched over the steering wheel. She felt like one of those back-bent women in Korea. Time just kept adding responsibility after responsibility. But Soong wondered whether it was really time that aged people, or was it people that aged people. Either way, walking to the truck, Soong felt older than she’d ever felt before. She swore she heard her body making a creaking sound with each step, and there was no way she would be able to carry that frighteningly big figure in the truck, too. “Crystal’s brother is here to pick you up?”