When they return inside, their parents continue fighting. His mother says something in Korean, and from the tone Lenny knows it’s something along the lines of the unfairness of his purchase. Her voice shakes with anger, and she tells Mira and Lenny to go out and play.
Their father slams his hand against the door. He curses in Korean.
Mira and Lenny hurry outside as their father bellows in his deep, booming voice.
They walk across the street to the Presbyterian church, and head to the small playground in the back, a warped slide and monkey bars covered in spiderwebs sitting in rocky dirt. On the other side of the small lot is a spinning platform that gets Mira sick, and two rocking seahorses on large springs.
Tall thick trees shroud the back of the church, the sun setting and casting an orange glow over everything. The red brick seems brown, even black, in the shadows, with the white trim dirty and speckled with spots of peeling paint. The lights above the back door flicker on, and Lenny notices movement inside. Some kind of meeting is going on in one of the back rooms, the fluorescent lighting shining yellow out the windows. When the meeting ends and the dozen or so men and women file out the back and to their cars in the adjacent lot, Lenny sees that the back door to the church is loose, the last woman leaving having trouble with the lock. The two doors rattle closed, and the woman has to push one door into the other for the lock to engage.
Once all the cars drive off Lenny walks to the rear doors and pushes. They’re still loose. He peers down through the crack and sees the bolt engaged. When he pulls on one door he yanks it free from the bolt, and the door swings open.
Mira climbs down from the monkey bars. “What are you doing?” she asks.
He turns to her. “Want to go exploring?”
The church at dusk is eerily quiet. Mira bumps into him trying to stay close, and he has to resist scaring her with stories about ghosts or demons. He once told her about the devil, and because of the bible stories she’s heard from Sunday school, she’s terrified of anything linked to Hell.
They walk through the back halls, the linoleum floors reflecting the shadowy orange light outside, and into the main worship area, the pulpit dark and quiet, smelling of pine oil. The carpet dampens all sounds. The pews have a red glow from an emergency exit sign. The dim red glow spreads over them as they approach the choir section and look up at the stained glass windows, where only a part of the reds and blues are lit from the setting sun. They catch the last bits of sunlight as the room darkens, and Mira says, “It’s spooky here.”
Lenny walks up to the pulpit and stands behind it, looking out over the pews. His sister moves to the choir section, leafing through the hymnal and sheet music. Behind the pulpit Lenny finds an empty, smudged water glass, a bible, and a tangle of microphone wires. In the bible are a few sheets of paper, drafts of a sermon with the typed text edited and scribbled over. It surprises him that the minister would read from a messy copy.
“I could sing,” Mira says.
“Go ahead.”
“No music.”
The organ sits beside her, but neither of them know how to turn it on. They’d both had piano lessons, though Mira seems to prefer the viola. They walk beyond the organ and find a narrow doorway in back, almost a secret passageway because the door is hidden in the ornate woodwork. “It’s so they can sneak in and out without the congregation seeing,” he tells her.
They follow the dark hallway down a few steps and emerge into another hall that opens up to a small office. One of the windows look out the front of the church, and they have a direct view of their house. The large front living room window is lit up. They see their parents still fighting.
Mira says, “It’s getting dark.”
“Scared?”
“I don’t want to get in trouble.”
He leads her back through the narrow hallway and to the rear exit. Now that he knows how to break in here, he wants to explore the church on his own.
When they return to the house Mira immediately goes to her room, while the fight in the living room escalates. His father chases his mother, who screams. Lenny stays in the kitchen as they tumble into a wall in the dining area. When he peers around the corner he sees his father choking his mother up against the wall. He has one hand on her throat, the other hand drawn back in a fist. She clutches at his arm, gagging, and kicks his leg, which makes him grunt and tighten his grip.
Then Yul turns and sees Lenny. He lets go of Umee’s throat and orders Lenny to his room. Lenny’s mother bends over and gasps for air. She waves him away. Lenny quickly retreats to his bedroom and listens to the fight continue.
15
When Ed learns that he was rejected from all the Ivy League colleges he applied to, but was accepted to the New York state schools, their father is so cruel that even Mira understands the dynamics and turns to Ed in sympathy. They sit mutely through dinner—meatloaf and vegetables piled onto the platters, a large foamy beer in front of their father. They eat in the breakfast nook by the kitchen, and the small radio on top of a shelf plays classical music. Their father tells all of them that he will not pay for his children to go to bad schools. He says to Ed, “Why should I waste my money on a stupid boy?”
Umee snaps at him in Korean, and he turns to Lenny. “You get good grades and go to a good school or you will be a garbage man like your stupid brother.”
He then says to Umee in English, “I warned him that I would not p-p-pay for bad schools. I told him years ago! Did he study and work hard? No!”
He then tells a familiar story, how he had to sell apples on the streets to make money, and how he had gone to the Korean Naval Academy and became one of the youngest officers in Korean history. He then was accepted to graduate school in the U.S. on a scholarship, and his children are all so soft and lucky to have everything handed to them. As he tells this he uses the same hand motions for emphasis, a stabbing finger aimed at Ed, and his normally stoic expression becomes more animated, his cheeks red and his eyes flashing.
“I can’t take this,” Ed says, and leaves the table.
“I did not excuse you!”
Ed says something under his breath, grabbing his jeans jacket, and walks out the back door. Yul then lectures Lenny and Mira about the importance of education and studying hard. He says, “Look at me. I am a professional b-b-businessman.”
Lenny sees his mother frown.
Later that night when Lenny finds his mother doing a crossword puzzle in the kitchen, he asks her about the tests with the doctor.
“I go this weekend. And your father and I are closing the store soon.”
“The candy store? Why?”
She sighs. “If your father loses his job we can’t keep losing money with the store. I might have to get a job too.”
“Is he going to get fired?”
She shrugs her shoulders. She studies him, and then walks to kitchen counter and shows him a yellow legal pad with scribbled notes. She says, “Your father was supposed to write a report. He made me write it, and then he handed it in like this.”
Lenny skims the pages. His father had written in broken English, his script messy, and Lenny makes out a few lines that read “transfer data from lupe tape to cartige tape…” He stares at the words, and asks, “What’s lupe?”
“L-o-o-p.”
“He spelled it wrong?” Lenny says, shocked.
“And didn’t type it. He also made some big mistakes with backing up something, and they lost a lot of information.”
Lenny stares at his father’s handwriting, and is amazed by this. Even as a kid he knows to type something up and check the spelling. “That’s why he’s in trouble,” he says.
“He’s already looking for a new job.”
“Why is he so mean to Ed?”
“Maybe because your brother reminds him of himself too much.”
“He’s not going to pay for Ed’s college?”
“You don’t worry. When you go to college I will help pay for it.”
/> College seems far away, but the idea of it already burdens him. “How much does it cost?”
“Ivy League schools can be twenty thousand dollars a year.”
This amount, twenty thousand, would slowly begin to obsess him. Lenny is a worrier, and has already begun grinding his teeth at night, with headaches and a sore jaw in the mornings. He learned what he was doing only after his mother heard him once and woke him up. She told him that it sounded as if he were chewing on rocks.
His mother said that if he did well in school, a scholarship could pay for tuition, and she could always take out loans. Up until then Lenny has never taken school seriously—it’s easy and routine, and his grades are average. He begins wondering if he should pay more attention.
So when he goes to school the next day he feels a new sense of responsibility, of purpose, and tries to pay attention to Mrs. Trilly. She’s teaching them geometry, and this appeals to his visual sense of order and structure. Using a compass, with its deadly point, also is fun, and the day goes by quickly.
When he looks for his sister after the last bell, he finds her near the playground, with Frankie and one of his friends blocking her way. He can see them teasing her, and he walks quickly over there, hearing Frankie tell her that she’s a chubby chink. He notices Lenny, and a brief look of fear passes across his face.
Lenny drops his book bag and breaks into a full-out run toward Frankie, who backs away, glancing at his friend, and then, when he realizes Lenny is coming straight for him, he turns and bolts.
Lenny tackles him at the waist, bringing him down and landing on top of him. Frankie cries out in fear, wheezing, until Lenny punches the back of his head, hammering down, and Frankie howls in pain. Lenny keeps punching and kneeing him in the back. He screams, and when one of the teacher’s aides runs toward them, Lenny rolls off Frankie and stands up. Frankie sobs on the ground. The teacher grabs Lenny’s neck, hard, squeezing, and says, “You’re coming with me, you bully.”
Mira yells, “It wasn’t his fault!”
But the teacher yanks Lenny back to the school.
Lenny’s mother has to close the store and pick both kids up, and the vice principal explains to her that fighting on school grounds is an offense that can result in suspension. Mira waits outside, and Umee says, “Both of them? What did Mira do?”
“No, just your son.” But he explains that because it’s Lenny’s first offense, and the administration has had trouble with Frankie in the past, Lenny will be let go with a warning. “Another fight will mean an immediate two-day suspension.”
Lenny watches his mother’s expression, which is calm, and she asks him what happened. Lenny tells her what he told the teacher’s aide and the vice principal, that Frankie had been picking on Mira, and had bothered both of them for weeks. Knowing that this will elicit a reaction, he says, “He called Mira a chink.”
His mother’s cheeks redden and she asks the vice principal, “What will happen to the other boy?”
“I’ve already talked to his parents. Frankie has been suspended from school next week. It will be on his permanent record.”
“My daughter is upset. I have to take them home now.”
“I apologize for taking you out of work, but the late bus has already left.”
She stands up and touches Lenny’s shoulder. They walk out, meeting Mira, who stands anxiously by the door, her eyes wide and fearful, but their mother says everything is fine. She then looks down at Lenny and says, “Good boy.”
When she drives them home, she asks if this kind of thing happens often. Lenny eventually tells her that it was worse when they first moved here. He explains how he had seen Ed fighting with someone from the neighborhood, he and the other boy rolling on the cement sidewalk, grappling and punching. The kids looking on taunted his brother with cries of “chink” and “jap”. Lenny was halfway down the block, not sure if he should get closer, and when he heard this he backed away.
“How come you never told me this?” she asks.
“Ed told me not to.”
His mother grips the steering wheel. She shakes her head. After a while she tells them that tomorrow she is going to the doctor with their father.
Mira asks, “Can we come?”
“To the doctor? No. You stay home with your brothers.”
She pulls up to the house. Before they climb out she tells them that she will eventually be much busier. “You two have to be good. I can’t do this if I am working in an office.”
“We didn’t start it!” Mira says.
“I know, but you’ll have to figure it out yourselves. What do you want for dinner tonight?”
Lenny and Mira say “McDonald’s” in unison.
16
Lenny dials Nancy’s number from the kitchen telephone, his hand shaking from nervousness. When the familiar voice answers he tells her who it is. She’s quiet, and then says, “Oh, the collect call boy!”
“You gave me your number.”
“I certainly did. It’s funny, your calling me. How are you?”
“Okay. How are you?”
She laughs that whispery delicate laugh, and Lenny smiles.
“I’m good,” she says. “I’m writing a paper for my psych class. Did I tell you I’m in college?”
“No,” Lenny says.
Nancy is a junior at Hofstra University, and lives in one of the high-rise dorms near the highway, working nights as a waitress at an Italian restaurant. She tells Lenny she hopes to specialize in child psychology, which is why she accepted his collect call. “Any young kid who calls strangers like this has got be interesting. What’s on your mind?”
Lenny doesn’t know what to say, and after a few moments she asks, “Okay, tell me one interesting thing that happened to you today.”
He tells her that he was almost been suspended from school.
“That is interesting. Why?”
When Lenny describes his fight with Frankie he finds it easier to talk to someone he doesn’t know. She asks about what Frankie said to Mira, and when Lenny tells her, she says, “Oh! You’re Oriental?”
“Korean.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Merrick.”
“I didn’t know there were any Orientals in Merrick.”
Lenny suddenly doesn’t like her knowing too much about him, and he hangs up.
After practicing his kicks and punches in the back yard, he heads up to the train station but sees one of the neighborhood kids on a minibike, riding fast in the middle the street. They recognize each other, and the boy rides up onto the sidewalk to say hello. He introduces himself as Sal, short for Salerno, and asks Lenny if he wants a ride.
Sal is tall and lanky, with an underbite that seems to slur his words. He wears an AC/DC concert shirt and dirty jeans with holes on the knees. Long scratches cover his arms, as if he fell into a thorn bush, and his fingernails have grease under them.
The minibike looks like a lawnmower engine in a basic metal frame, the tires small and bald, and he controls the throttle with a shoelace tied to the springloaded switch on the engine. A thick cocoon of duct tape attaches the seat to the frame. Lenny asks him if he built this himself, and he replies, “Most of it. My dad helped. Get on.”
Lenny climbs onto the back. Sal tells Lenny not to drag his feet, and they take off. There are no shock absorbers, so the ride is bumpy and erratic, and the shoelace throttle jerks them forward. Sal speeds down Wynsum Avenue, the engine whining, and Lenny grips the back of the seat tightly. Sal yells, “Hold on! I’m opening it up!”
He yanks on the shoelace and they lurch forward and speed about twenty miles an hour. Lenny starts laughing hysterically because he’s scared, but he’s also enjoying this, and when Sal brings them to a slow stop, using his sneakers as brakes, Lenny calms down. His hands hurt from holding the seat so hard. Sal shuts off the engine.
“Thanks,” Lenny says.
“I saw your brother smoking weed last week.”
“Yeah?�
�
“You go to school with my sister?
“No. I go to Birch.”
“How come you go to Birch? We live right near each other.”
“I’m on the dividing line.”
“Too bad. You could’ve just walked across the highway to go to school. Take it easy. I gotta run.” He climbs back onto his minibike, yanks the engine alive with the starter cord, and then slowly tugs on the shoelace, the bike drifting forward. He says, “Let me know if you ever need to buy some weed.”
Lenny asks, “What?”
But Sal is already speeding away, his shirt flapping up his pale, bony back.
Because this weekend is Umee’s doctor’s appointment, the mood in the house is strangely subdued. Yul, although drinking as usual, is solicitous with her, cleaning up the McDonald’s wrappers and washing the glasses in the sink. They talk quietly about closing the store, and Lenny hears them discuss other job options for her. They speak a mix of English and Korean, and his mother mentions her graduate work at Northeastern, and how that might help her get a secretarial job.
Umee’s favorite novels are on the bookshelves in the basement, and until Lenny overhears her talking about graduate school he doesn’t connect these novels with her schooling. He leafs through her paperback copies of Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner and Steinbeck. In the margins are notes in Korean script, and when he brings The Scarlet Letter up to the kitchen he asks her what the notes are.
She skims them, smiling to herself. “Some words I needed translations of.”
Lenny then understands that she read these in a second language.
She says, “That’s one of my favorite novels. I must have read that twenty times over.”
“Really?” he asks. The only books he ever rereads are his martial arts manuals. “Should I read it?”
“Try Mark Twain. Maybe Charles Dickens. Have you been going to the library?”
“For karate books.”
“Oh, you should read fiction. It’s more fun.” She flips through the novel and says, “Books saved me.”
“What do you mean?”
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