I'm Ok

by Patti Kim

  My walk turns into a march. I feel so mad that my throat lumps up. I will not cry. No way. Did Clint Eastwood ever cry? I’m not going to cry because I got called to the principal’s office. But I can’t hold back the tears. A dam breaks. Tears gush out. My cheeks are wet. My nose runs. I drip all over the hall. I run to the bathroom, blow my nose, wash my face, and wipe myself dry. That’s enough, crybaby. I fist up my porcupine hair and pull hard. I choke myself to get rid of the lump in my throat. I slap my cheeks. I pound my head against a stall. Stop it, crybaby. Stop it. A toilet flushes. I freeze. Walking out of a stall is Mickey McDonald. She sees me and says, “Oh my Lord, what on God’s green earth are you doing in the girls’ bathroom?”

  “No! You’re in the boys’ bathroom,” I say.

  Mickey opens her arms, waving the hall pass along the bathroom walls like one of the models on The Price Is Right, and says, “See any piss pots?”

  There are no urinals. Where have all the urinals gone?

  “Knock, knock,” Mickey says slowly, stepping toward me with eyes wide open.

  I shake my head, backing into the mirror.

  “This here’s the part where you say, ‘Who’s there?’ ” she says.

  “Who’s there?” I ask.

  “Urinal.”

  “Urinal who?”

  “Urinal lot of trouble, perv,” she says, bobbing her head like a rooster.

  I run out of the girls’ bathroom.

  nine

  Our class walks in a line to go to the library. I’m behind Cassandra Cruz. I lean in and tell her that her hair is a mess. It really isn’t. It looks fine, but I’m trying to drum up business. Cassandra turns around and looks at me. Her eyes are big and round and dark, her lashes curling up to the ceiling. They remind me of eyes you find glued on dolls. I give her the Sorry, but not my fault look and shrug. As we walk, her hands keep touching her hair, trying to diagnose the mess and tidy it up. Her fingers pull, pat, and tuck loose strands. I lean in again and in my most matter-of-fact tone say, “You made it worse.” The more Cassandra touches her hair, the messier it gets. And a girl like Cassandra cares a lot about how she looks.

  “I can fix that,” I say.

  “In your dreams,” she says, and yanks out three ponytail holders. Her hair looks like a tangle of chains.

  “I can braid,” I say.

  “No, you can’t,” she says.

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t touch your hair,” I say.

  “Shut up,” she says.

  I keep quiet.

  Cassandra turns around and asks, “Why not?”

  I shrug.

  When the class reaches the library, we all spread out, looking for books for our social studies reports. I find one about life in ancient Rome and hide in the back corner. I have a funny feeling Cassandra is going to come looking for me. Something about the way she told me to shut up was very promising. I sit on the floor, lean against the shelves, and open the book on my lap. I read about how the Romans stole most of their ideas from the Greeks. Those Romans were nothing but a bunch of bullies and copycats. I keep my nose buried in the book, as if I have important work to do, as if I don’t want to be disturbed.

  I wait. I hope. Please. Disturb me.

  Then I hear rubber soles brushing against carpet. I keep my head down and turn a page. There’s a drawing of Artemis, the goddess of hunting, with a bow and arrow ready to kill. Her arms and legs look strong. Her toga barely covers her breasts. Her long hair flows onto her face. I take a pencil, draw a bubble near her mouth, and write, “How am I to hunt under these conditions? I can’t see. Get this hair out of my face!” I draw a stick figure of me at her feet with a bubble that says, “I can braid it for you.” Artemis points her bow and arrow down at me and says, “Do it. Now.”

  “Awww. I’m telling. You’re writing in a library book,” Cassandra says.

  Without looking up, I turn the page and scribble some more. This feels wrong, but I have Cassandra’s attention.

  “I’m telling,” she says.

  “Suit yourself,” I say, cheering myself on to play it mean.

  I keep doodling. I draw stars, feathers, and dollar signs. I’m going to erase all this later. Cassandra stands there. The toes of her high-tops are scuffed with grass stains. She doesn’t say anything. Drawing more dollar signs, I pray hard that she doesn’t walk away and tell on me. The last thing I need is a second trip to Principal Farmer’s office. Cassandra squats down and whispers, “Do my hair.”

  I try to play it cool like Clint Eastwood. I squint, tilt my head, shrug, make my best bored-to-death look, and begrudgingly say, “Fine.”

  Cassandra quickly sits down in front of me. I stand up. When she crisscross-applesauces her legs, her pants shrink, exposing her calves. They look gray, as if dusted with ashes, nothing close to the brown of her hands and face. I ask, “What happened to your legs?” She pulls her socks up as far as they can go and says she was in a really big car accident. While she talks on and on about this car accident that rendered her skin discolored, I place my hands on her head the way Pastor Chung lays his hands on the heads of the sick, praying for healing. Cassandra’s hair is a tangle of curls, but it’s soft like the stuff teddy bears are made of. I bet she doesn’t even need a pillow for her head because her pillow is built in. Her hair feels so different from mine, which is all needles. I’m porcupine. She’s poodle.

  I take a small portion of hair and try to remember the pictures in the instruction manual. I divide my handful into three, cross the right piece, put it between the other two, cross the left piece, and put it between the other two. It’s like a game. The third piece keeps breaking up the pair, and before it storms in to divide the two, it gathers up more hair or more forces from its side to conquer the alliance. Divide. Conquer. Reinforce. I’m doing it. I’m French-braiding Cassandra Cruz’s hair. I can’t get all the tangles out, but that’s not a problem because they’re holding the braid together. It forms down the center of her head, just like in the pictures.

  While Cassandra goes on and on about how she almost died in that car accident, I say it. For the first time, I tell somebody. I don’t know if I’m showing off and trying to one-up her tragedy, but I say, “That’s nothing. My father fell off a roof, broke his neck, and died.”

  She pauses and says, “Oh my God. That’s too bad.” Then she continues about how her dad was in the same car accident but he didn’t die or anything but there was blood everywhere and hundreds of ambulances and police cars and motorcycles showed up and—“Oh my God, you know MacGyver? Do you watch that show?”—the police officer wasn’t really MacGyver but he looked just like him, and he carried her out of the car and told her to hold tight and she was going to be all right because he’d make sure of that and she was so lucky to be alive, but now she has to go to a dermatologist every week to get this special and very expensive medicine, which is, like, a hundred dollars, because if she doesn’t use the medicine, her skin will fall right off.

  Cassandra Cruz is all talk, but that’s fine with me. I’m braiding her hair.

  ten

  Word spread fast.

  Almost every girl in my class has some version of the French braid. The single braid, the double braid, the triple, the one-third, the one-side, the horizontal, the upside-down, the headband, the ring-around-the-entire-head. Demand is high. Girls follow me, stop me in the halls, pass me notes. This volume of attention from the opposite sex is unprecedented. I braid before school. I braid after school. I braid on the bus. I braid during recess. I braid during lunch.

  With all this braiding, you’d think I’d be rolling in the dough by now, wearing Nikes, paying bills, moving out of the one-bedroom back into our two-bedroom apartment, getting rid of my mother’s piles of sleeves and cuffs all over the floor. I can’t move around our place without knocking them over.

  Once, I had to run to the bathroom. I didn’t mean to knock the pile over. Ŏmma yelled at me, called me a pabo, knuckled my head. She never used to yell at me
. She never used to call me names. She never used to hit me. That was my father’s job. He used to say under his breath, loud enough so I could hear, but soft enough so I felt guilty about eavesdropping, “When’s this idiot going to be a human?” My father shoved me from behind to hurry me up, saying, “Why are you so slow? You move slower than an ant with all its legs cut off. Move, ant. Move.” I wanted to turn around and push him back, telling him to stop pushing me and that slow and steady wins the race, but my mother would beat me to it and tell him to be quiet, look who was talking, look who took forever to get us into a house.

  My mother used to stand up for me. She used to always make me feel better. If my father put me down, she cheered me up with a smile or a hug or a pat on the head or something yummy to eat. I never used to get goopy rice and soy sauce for dinner. Goopy rice is for the sick. I’m not sick. I’m a growing kid, and if I want to keep growing, we need more money.

  I’m not making enough. These girls can’t pay me fifteen dollars for each braiding session, as I’d priced in my business plan. They give me whatever they’ve got: a penny, a dime, a quarter if I’m lucky. All that work for $4.68. I need to hit it big, like win that talent show. Maybe I can braid onstage? I’d need to braid with my toes, dressed like a cheerleader, twirling batons and blowing “America the Beautiful” on the harmonica for any entertainment value.

  My problem is that I’m having a really hard time saying no to these girls. They follow. They beg. They pass me notes. Please, please, please. Some of the girls come back the next day and say the braid didn’t hold up overnight and this one part is loose, so can I do it again. So I do it for them because they’re girls, and I can’t say no to girls unless it’s Mickey McDonald, and I like touching their hair and making them happy.

  Some of them even hug me afterward. At first I thought they were coming in closer to smack me or something, so I ducked. But when they hugged me, and I felt their arms around me, my face would go hot and my hands would shake. A red face and shaking hands aren’t good for business. But I got used to the hugs. You get enough of them, you kind of become immune. Adoration from your clients is part of the business.

  I’ve also noticed that girls have a lot of secrets, and when you’re doing their hair, all those secrets come spilling out. They start out by saying, “Don’t tell anyone this, but . . .” Here are some of the secrets I’ve collected while braiding: Jaehnia is in love with Asa, and Asa is not at all interested in her in that way ’cause he’s not into desperate girls and Jaehnia got desperation written all over her sad face. Monroe got the highest score on the math test, and that made Jack really mad and he started cussing at her in front of the whole class ’cause a girl beat him in math. Kym’s parents are getting a divorce. It’s not really a secret ’cause she’s telling everyone about it. She must like the attention. Claudio got caught sneaking around under the back staircase looking up girls’ skirts. What is wrong with boys these days? Why don’t they got no manners? How come they be so nasty? “You are not nasty, Oak. You are different. I like you. I feel like I can tell you this, but promise me you won’t tell anyone. Seriously, you cannot tell this to a single soul, ’cause if you do, oh my God, I’m going to be in so much trouble, but . . .”

  I need to charge more for my services. I am both braiding booth and confession booth. I can’t continue to conduct business this way. I’m not running a charity here. My fingers are getting tired. I’ve become the class gossip dump. I’m risking detention, suspension, and possible expulsion. My bright and promising educational future darkens. And for what? A fistful of dollars? On top of that, I don’t even have time to eat lunch or go to the bathroom anymore. I need to charge one dollar per braid, and that’s that. No if, ands, or buts. No buck? No luck. And then there’s Mickey McDonald, who keeps eyeing me ever since the bathroom incident. I’m afraid she’s going to say something and ruin my business. I now have more girls after me than Asa does—for different reasons—but quantitatively I am in higher demand, and I want to keep it that way. I dread the moment a client sits before me, my hands braiding her hair, and she says, “Oak, is it true you were crying in the girls’ bathroom?”

  eleven

  On Saturdays my mother used to clean the apartment, do laundry, make banchan to last us the whole week, sew, sleep, watch TV, and make sure I had plenty to eat and did all my homework. We used to eat out on the weekends too. My father liked taking us to restaurants. His favorites were Ponderosa, Bob’s Big Boy, and Beefsteak Charlie’s. He insisted we order the steak dinner that came with a baked potato, green beans, and all-you-can-eat sweet rolls. He poured A.1. sauce over his steak. I liked mine with ketchup. My mother squirted hot sauce on hers. We finished the meal with slices of apple pie. We would walk out of the restaurant feeling stuffed, slow, and all-American. We don’t do that anymore on Saturdays. Instead my mother works the cash register at Arirang Grocery from nine in the morning to seven in the evening, and I’m all by myself. It’s all right. I kind of like it. I just hope she brings food home tonight. We’re low on kimchi and rice. We need another case of ramen. Our fridge is empty. There’s nothing to eat.

  I organize my money on the kitchen floor. All $11.68 in change. I stack my pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, entertaining possibilities. I could buy comic books, lottery tickets, a kite, a pizza, M&M’S, Kentucky Fried Chicken, “Finger lickin’ good.” I knock down my puny towers of change, thinking how far away $11.68 is from $100.

  I could give the money to my mother. I miss her. I miss how she used to read the Korean newspaper to me after dinner and tell me Korean folktales that were supposed to teach me lessons, the main one being “Listen to your mother.” I remember the story about the sandal peddler, who one day, while making straw sandals, began to laugh very loudly. He laughed and laughed and laughed. And then he died.

  “So what’s the moral of that story?” she asked.

  “Laugh every day because it may be your last,” I said.

  “But didn’t laughing kill him in the end?”

  “No, because the day of his death was inevitable. It was good he had a joyful last day.”

  “Which is better? One day full of laughter ending with death, or one full of tears with more days to face?”

  “More days,” I said.

  “Good answer,” she said.

  I could offer the money to God tomorrow, drop my coins onto the plate, make it go chink-chink like a soda machine swallowing quarters before making thirsty wishes come true. What blessings can $11.68 buy me?

  I could save for a rainy day.

  Rain isn’t impossible today. There are plenty of clouds in the sky. It’s windy, a good day for flying kites. Once, when my father was in one of his nostalgic moods, he and I flew kites that we had made with parchment paper and strips of bamboo. We smeared the string with Elmer’s glue. We broke dead lightbulbs in a paper bag. We crushed the glass into powder and used it to coat the kite strings. We hung the glassed strings on the railings of our balcony to dry in the sun. My father told me, “You don’t fly kites. You fight them.” Once we got our kites in the sky, his attacked mine. I didn’t want my kite to snap and crash. I didn’t want his to snap and crash. Couldn’t we just fly them for fun? I didn’t want to fight, but my father kept at it, striking his string against mine until it snapped and my kite crashed. This made him laugh and laugh, just like a kid. It made me feel sore inside.

  Today is rainy enough for me, so I put the coins in my pockets and a key around my neck, leave the apartment, and walk to Peoples. Our phone is dead, so my mother can’t call to check on me. I have the day to myself. I’m free.

  The automatic doors of Peoples open. I limp-strut in like I’m supposed to be here. If anyone asks, I’m picking up aspirin for my mom because she has a splitting headache. Better yet, she has her monthly period, and I was sent to buy maxi pads. That would shut them up and make them leave me alone.

  I walk down the snack aisle. I don’t want potato chips or Doritos or pretzels. Pass, pass, pa
ss. What stops me is the Duchess glazed honey buns with the white icing suffocating under the plastic wrapping. They stand at attention in single file, as if saluting me. I take the one in the back. My mother taught me to always take from the back for the freshest selection. She should know. She works at a grocery store. The plastic crinkles its gratitude. I hold the bun gently in my hand, careful not to squeeze.

  Last year for my birthday, my parents put a candle in the center of a Duchess honey bun, sang the happy birthday song in English, and watched me blow out one candle. This kind of shocked me because they never made a big deal out of birthdays. For Koreans, unless you are a one-hundred-day-old infant or a one-year-old or really, really old, birthdays just don’t matter much. You don’t get a party. You don’t get cake and ice cream. You don’t get balloons. You don’t get presents. You just get seaweed soup. It’s what all the mothers eat to make breast milk. Seaweed soup accelerates milk production. In a way, this soup is your very first meal. And like it or not, it’s going to be your birthday meal for the rest of your life. I like it just fine. The broth reminds me of creek water. The dark strips of seaweed flow like the hair of mermaids and slide down your throat like warm Jell-O. But what I don’t like about it is that after having a bowl of this magical, milk-making potion, I always feel a little nervous that I might squirt milk.

  With my Duchess in hand, I rush past the shoelaces and walk down the cosmetics aisle, where it’s all about splash, spray, fresh, tingly, and ready for action. The sample bottles chant, Try me! Try me! I feel sorry for them. They look used and left behind, while the new bottles get picked by warm hands and taken home. Try me, pretty please. I’m sorry. Maybe later. No, thank you. I don’t have money. I know it’s free. Leave me alone. I’m here to get aspirin for my mom, who has a splitting headache.