Although Lenny is eager to show this to Sal, his mother wants him to stay home with his sister because Ed has to drive Grandma to the airport. His mother says bitterly, “I am still recovering and he is sending her away.”
Lenny doesn’t know how to reply to this.
She says, “But I feel better. Stronger. Maybe my thyroid and my anemia kept me weak for many years.”
Grandma appears in the living room with her suitcase. She wobbles toward him and opens her arms. Lenny hugs her, and she squeezes him tightly.
His mother calls to Mira, who also gets a hug.
Ed carries her suitcase to the car, and Grandma gives Mira and Lenny another hug, and says in a sad voice, “Good boy, good girl.”
Umee takes her arm and leaves the house with her. Lenny watches them from the front window, and his mother cries briefly, then rests her head on Grandma’s shoulder as they move slowly down the driveway.
After seeing Sal’s crawl space Lenny wants a secret room. He tells Mira about Sal’s hideout. “It’s a long room with the ceiling only this high.” He holds his hand to his stomach. He asks if she wants to join him exploring, and she does.
They begin in the basement, and find a small cubby in the main room that houses a water meter. His brother’s room has built-in storage benches that contain more of their mother’s books. Other than a sectioned-off area underneath the stairs, there isn’t anything else of interest.
But when they check out the garage, Mira points to a small door at the ceiling. It’s inaccessible without a ladder, so Lenny raises the ladder that sits on the ground, extending it up against the dirty concrete walls. As he climbs up, the ladder shakes, and he tells her to hold it steady.
The door, a piece of plywood painted brown, pushes in without any hinges. Lenny forces it open, dust and grit sprinkling down. He pushes the entire board aside and peers into the hot, empty space.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Attic. Is there a light switch down there?”
“I don’t see one.”
He climbs down, finds a flashlight in his father’s toolbox, and hurries back up. Although he’s initially disappointed to find a regular attic, empty, with shiny insulation strips layered all along the floor and angled roof, once he climbs up into it and walks along the narrow strips of wood, he knows that he’s the first one up here in years. It’s remote and removed from the rest of the house.
“I want to see!” Mira says.
He climbs down and hands her the flashlight. “Be careful. Watch out for demons.”
She hesitates.
“And if the flashlight stops working, don’t panic. It’s dark but if you’re careful you won’t fall through the floor.”
“Fall through the floor?”
“There’s only one piece of wood to walk on. The rest is insulation.”
“Never mind,” she says, handing him back the flashlight.
He replaces the piece of wood, and lays the ladder back on the ground. He keeps thinking about the marijuana pamphlet that would teach him to grow a garden in a closet.
Sal is so excited and impressed with the mail order catalog that he hands Lenny fifty dollars in cash and tells him to order all the pamphlets. He doesn’t want to do it himself because his parents open his mail. “After I almost got sent to juvie for stealing they don’t trust anything I do.”
“Stealing what?”
He laughs. “I used to work at a hardware store. I knew how to turn off their alarm. One night I broke in and stole a bunch of stuff.”
“And they caught you?”
“Not right away. I got busted when I tried to sell a really nice drill. Anyway, I got probation and a fine. If I got anything in the mail, my parents would open it. How come your parents don’t?”
Lenny says that he receives too many catalogs for them to care. He looks at the cash and says, “All the pamphlets will only be thirty-five dollars, not including shipping and handling.”
“Use what you need and keep the rest. How long will it take?”
“Four to six weeks.”
“That long?”
“Sometimes it’s much shorter. I should be getting more catalogs like this one soon.”
“Cool.”
They’re sitting in the crawlspace, and someone bangs on the ceiling. Sal sighs. “It’s my mom. She’s making me clean the yard. You have to take care of the crop today.”
“Watering?”
“We got through the pest stage. They’re okay for that now. Check how dry the soil is first before watering. And they’re getting big. Noticeable. Set up trip wires or something to see if someone goes nearby.” He gives Lenny a spool of thin-gauge copper wire. “Low to the ground, with a log or rocks tied it, so we’ll know if someone other than us has been by. Make it so that you remember how it looks, in case they trip it and try to put it back.”
“Why would they do that?”
“It’s too early to harvest. If I came across someone’s crop, I’d wait until it was close to harvest and then steal it.”
Sal instructs him to set the wires ten feet from the plants, a perimeter tied onto a stack of rocks arranged so that he will know if they’re tampered with.
The ceiling bangs again, louder and more insistent. “I gotta go,” he says. “When will you order those books?”
“Tomorrow. I have to get a money order from the Post Office.”
“Let me know. And show me other catalogs you get.”
Lenny hops on his bicycle and heads to the woods.
After watering the plants, which are now his height, he sets up the trip wire, stringing it one foot off the ground, looping it around sticks he shoves into the ground, and tying it to a stick that keeps a small log propped up. If someone trips over the wire, the log will fall. He makes a mental note of where the stick presses up into the log—two inches from a knothole—and tests it a few times. It will withstand a small animal, but a person should easily trigger it.
He smells the marijuana leaves, which are beginning to have that sweet pot smell he recognizes. With summer approaching, the days are growing longer, and he realizes that he’s missing dinner. He races back, and finds everyone at the kitchen table, including his father, who is drunk.
His father lectures Ed, who leaves for California the day after graduation, in only three weeks. Yul barely pauses as he glances at Lenny and says that the next time he’s late for dinner he will miss it. Then Yul continues with his story about being a student in Florida during the mid 1950’s, when there had still been segregation.
“I had to be better than everyone, black and white. Which b-bathroom could I go to? There was a black one and a white one. I couldn’t use either!”
Ed stares down at his plate, his jaw tense. He holds his fork in his fist. Umee wears a scarf around her neck, and stares blankly ahead.
Yul continues, “I have to be b-better than my American coworkers because I am Korean. You have to better than everyone.”
“If you’re better, why are you about to get fired?” Ed asks.
Their father hesitates, and then reaches forward to smack him, but Ed pulls away quickly. Yul then yells that Ed is worthless and stupid, and deserves to be a bum. Ed stands up and walks quickly out of the house.
Umee says in Korean something about how Ed is leaving soon and he should be nicer.
They argue. Lenny tunes out. Mira plays with her rice, drawing designs with her fork. Lenny plans his day tomorrow, including going to the Post Office during lunch period for the money order.
Then his mother says in English, “You are the one who is stupid. You pretend to be much more than you really are. It’s sad.”
Lenny and Mira look up. Both are startled, because to say that in English meant their mother wanted them to understand.
Yul promptly picks up his plate of rice and beef and dumps it on her.
She jumps back, yelping, and he throws his drink at her, the glass missing her and clunking against the wall and clattering to the
floor. Bits of rice fall off her face and down the front of her blouse. She turns to the children, sauce dripping off her cheek, and tells them to go.
“You want them to hear this,” he says. “You want them to see what a bad man I am? I will show them.” He swipes everything on the table at her, the serving platters, the bowl of rice, the glasses—everything crashes around their mother, who backs into the wall.
Mira gulps air, about to cry.
Lenny grabs her arm and pulls her away. They hurry out of the kitchen as their father says, “Do you want them to see this?” and they hear him hitting her. She cries out.
Mira’s face scrunches up, and Lenny grabs her arm. “Don’t cry,” he tells her. “Don’t.”
She nods her head quickly but her lips tremble. Lenny is about to send her to her room, but something about the tenor of the fight in the kitchen worries him. Their mother fights back, yelling about how badly he had treated her mother. Lenny hears him punching or kicking the wall, the thudding almost shaking the entire house. He tells Mira to grab her jacket and shoes, and they leave through the front door.
“The church?” she asks.
He feels like climbing the maple tree, and tells her to follow him up. She says, “I don’t know.”
The hardest part is getting off the ground, so he gives her a boost to the first branch, and she struggles to climb it. She hugs the trunk. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. Just hold on.” He climbs up after her, and settles in on the higher branch near her. They hear their parents fighting in the living room, then the bedroom, then the kitchen again. They track their parents’ movements from the noise. When their parents move back to their bedroom, their voices fly out the window near the tree. Lenny hears his mother cry in pain, and she screams about wanting a divorce. His father laughs and says she has no job, no money, and there is no way he is going to support her. She will lose her children. She will lose everything.
This is all in Korean, and yet Lenny understands it.
Mira asks if they have to stay out here for long. “I’m getting cold.”
“You should’ve brought a better jacket.”
“You didn’t say what kind.”
“Just until it quiets down.”
After thirty minutes, the stereo begins playing classical music. Lenny tells his sister that they can probably go in now. She says, “I can’t get down.”
He jumps to the ground and reaches up. “Come on. I’ll help.”
“I can’t!”
“It’s only like five feet.”
“I can’t! It’s too far! I’m stuck!”
“I’ll catch you.”
“You won’t!”
“I’ll leave you here if you—”
“You better not! I’m calling Mom!”
“Wait, wait. Shh. I’ll get a chair or something.”
“The ladder! I want the ladder!”
Lenny hurries to the garage, and finds it difficult to lift and carry the large wooden ladder around the Cadillac. His sister calls out that he better not be leaving her there.
“I’m coming!” he yells.
Finally he manages to carry the ladder to the tree, and leans it up against a high branch. Mira can’t reach it without letting go of the trunk, and says, “It’s too far.”
“You have to let go of the other hand.”
“I can’t.”
He climbs up the ladder and reaches over to her. She clutches his hand and scrambles over him and to the ladder, hugging it. He laughs and tells her to climb down. As she does, their father opens the front door and demands to know what’s going on.
“Nothing,” Lenny says, jumping down. “We just wanted to see something.”
“Put that back,” he says.
“I am.” Lenny carries the ladder to the garage, and his father appears in the doorway leading to the kitchen. He turns on the light and waits. Lenny has to lift the ladder up onto his shoulders again, and struggles with it.
His father says, “You are too weak.”
This annoys Lenny, and he hoists the ladder higher, walking carefully around the Cadillac, but because he’s off balance he trips and swings the end of the ladder hard against the car, making a thud. He loses his hold on it. The ladder bangs against the side of the car as it crashes to the ground. His father lets out a surprised bark.
Lenny stares at the ladder, thinking, Oh, no. His father hurries into the garage and looks at the car, running his hand over a deep dent.
“You stupid boy! Look what you did!”
“Sorry. It was too heavy.”
“You will pay for this!”
“It was an accident!”
“You shouldn’t be playing with the ladder. It’s not a toy! You will pay for this!”
“I don’t have the money.”
“You will do yardwork,” he says, pushing the metal around the dent. “Starting this weekend.”
Lenny kicks the ladder and storms inside. His mother appears in the kitchen in a new blouse and her face clean, asking what happened, and he replies, “Ask him.” He glances at the food and broken dishes and glasses on the floor, and goes to his room, hearing his mother beginning to argue with his father again, who yells something about how stupid the entire family is. The fight grows in volume as it moves around the house.
Lenny hears him chasing her down the hall. His mother opens his bedroom door and grabs him. She says, “Get your sister and go into the basement.”
His father pushes her away, and she tells Lenny to go. She runs into the living room, his father going after her. Lenny opens his sister’s bedroom door, and she’s standing there in the center of the room, frozen. He tells her to follow him.
They hurry downstairs, and hear their father beating their mother, who sobs and begs for him to stop. The basement door opens—a flimsy folding door on rollers that squeak—and she tumbles down the stairs, crying out and grabbing the banister to stop her fall. The door closes. She struggles down the last few steps and sits on the floor, crying quietly.
Lenny and his sister remain still. Finally, after a few minutes, his mother looks up.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
She nods and pulls herself up. She limps to the old sofa, and sits down. She touches the side of her face gingerly and readjusts her scarf. She says, “We will sleep here tonight.”
“On the sofa?” Mira asks.
“It’ll be like camping.” Their mother pats the cushions. “Sit.”
They hear their father upstairs, talking to himself.
“Sleep here?” Mira asks.
“Just until later,” their mother says. “Do you want to hear another folk tale?”
“No,” Lenny says. “Tell us something real.”
She smiles. “How about when we had to escape the Communists?”
“The who?” Mira asks.
“Chinese and North Koreans wanting to take over the country.”
“How old were you?” Lenny asks.
“Mira’s age. No, even younger. The Communists took my mother’s house and everything in it. I was the youngest. I was too tired to walk, so someone carried me on his back. Many, many miles on his back. I remember breathing into his neck. But during one of the times everyone was running, the man carrying me was separated from my family and couldn’t find them.”
“What happened?” Mira asks.
“We were separated for two weeks. I thought they were dead. I thought I was all alone. But then we made it to Seoul, and my mother found me. I was so happy. After that we moved around every few months. It was hard because there were so many refugees and the war was going on. But I never left my mother’s side after that. I didn’t want to lose her again. And now I don’t get to see my mother at all anymore.”
They sit quietly until one by one they all fall asleep.
23
Umee has a large bruise on the side of her face that spreads over her cheek and up to her eye, and because of this she doesn’t want to leave the house. She
asks Lenny to buy a newspaper on his way home from school—she wants to start looking for jobs.
Lenny has so many things to do today that he barely pays attention in class. They’re preparing for some kind of achievement test, but he can’t concentrate on this. He just doesn’t care. Instead he wonders which Post Office to go to—the one near the train station always gives him a money order, but he can go to the one near the school during lunch, and send off the order right there, since he has forms with him. He worries that the clerks at this new Post Office might think he’s too young. He also worries about which newspaper to buy, and does it matter if it’s a morning or afternoon edition? He worries about the trip line in the woods, hoping he set it correctly. He worries about the dent in the Cadillac and how much yardwork he’ll have to do to pay it off. He has been grinding his teeth more every night.
During lunch he leaves the school and walks to the Post Office on Merrick Road, waiting in line with a few others on their lunch break—a man in a tie, women in blouses and skirts—and when it’s his turn the woman behind the counter looks down at him with a smile. When he asks for a money order for forty-two dollars, the clerk says, “Of course, honey.” She puts the order in a small machine and types in the numbers. The machine spits out the money order.
Lenny asks, “It doesn’t matter how young I am?”
“As long as you have the cash, honey, you can have a money order. That’s forty-two fifty, please.”
He pays this, and fills out address forms, making sure the carbon duplicate is legible, then sends off the top copy with the order form. Every time he does this he’s amazed at what kind of information he can find. He’s expecting more martial arts catalogs any day.
At the nearby drugstore he finds two newspapers, News-day and the New York Post, and also sees a copy of Merrick Life, which he buys too. He’s already used up his lunch hour, and he hasn’t even touched his sandwich. He takes a few bites while hurrying back to school, and feeds the crows.
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