Kimchi & Calamari

by Rose Kent

  “We’re making chocolate chip milkshakes!”

  “Bring one up to me. I’m busy.”

  I heard Gina run downstairs and then back upstairs again. “Mommy says no food out of the kitchen. You know the rule. Come down,” she pleaded again.

  “Maybe later.”

  After scanning a hundred pages in the book, my yellow notepad was still wordless. The “I’ve Got Nothing to Say Korean Heritage Tale” by Joseph Calderaro.

  Dozens and dozens of Korean faces stared up at me from the pages. People from the Yi Dynasty all the way to the Korean War, and yet I couldn’t find a way to get started. To stick me in the story.

  A couple of pictures showed Koreans who led this surprise counterattack when Japan invaded in 1910. I never knew that Japan invaded Korea. Or that these scrappy Korean nationalists waged such a fight against the odds to resist. They reminded me of minutemen from the Revolutionary War, except with black hair, buttonhole eyes, and swords instead of rifles.

  A few pages later I saw this faded photo of a short, muscular Korean runner. He wore a medal around his neck and he looked serious, like most people in old pictures. Yet there was something bold about him, with his defiant eyes, spiky hair, and puckered lips, ready to take on the world. He had something to prove.

  The photo caption said his name was Sohn Kee Chung. He won a gold medal for the men’s marathon at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. They called it “Hitler’s Games” because it was right before World War II, when Hitler used the Olympics to show off his power.

  Sohn Kee Chung represented Japan, which occupied Korea. He probably looked mad because he had to wear a Japanese team jersey, the trademark of the invaders.

  Now here was a Korean who inspired me. Someone I could relate to…and be related to? Maybe Sohn Kee Chung could be my grandfather, and I could write my essay about him! Why not? It was a harmless idea. Mrs. Peroutka would get all gaga when she read my saga, I’d get a good grade, and my parents and I would avoid any more painful pangs caused by talking about adoption.

  “Last chance for a milkshake, Joseph,” Gina called from downstairs. “And just for you, we used real chocolate bars and Lactaid milk to make them!”

  Real chocolate bars? “Okay, okay, I’m coming!” I saved my place in the book. Now the essay actually seemed doable. Still a pain in the butt, but at least I had a cool name and face to relate to.

  “Not too short around the ears,” I told Aunt Foxy as she snipped away at my hair.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. She knew I didn’t want my ears sticking out like a Chihuahua’s.

  Aunt Foxy has cut my hair ever since I started middle school. That’s because Mom can’t resist the temptation to style my hair like an upside-down bowl, the way she did in my preschool days. So Mom and I struck a deal. Aunt Foxy is allowed to cut my hair any way I want and Mom can’t say boo—as long as I don’t pierce any body parts.

  Aunt Foxy was snipping along my neck and talking with Mom, who was at the sink rinsing Mrs. Bertolotti’s body wave.

  “What a jerk Walt turned out to be,” Aunt Foxy said. “Cheap, too. He actually expected me to pay for the cheesecake and espresso last night. This, after he told me we were through!”

  “Good riddance to him. What’s that saying? A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” Mom said.

  “Without two bicycles,” Aunt Foxy added, laughing. Then she looked down and smiled. “A friend of yours came in for a cut and blow-dry the other day, Joseph.”

  “Who?”

  “A blonde with natural highlights. Hair past her shoulders and no split ends.”

  “She have a name?”

  “Kelly, I think it was.”

  Wow! Just days ago, Kelly Gerken had sat in this very chair. I felt starstruck, like when you go to a restaurant and see a framed photo of a celebrity dining there.

  “She said we were friends?”

  “She said a lot more than that—how funny you are and how you make her laugh. She’s a looker all right, and very picky about her hair. If she weren’t your friend, I would’ve told her to chill out, what with all her bossy orders about evening out her layers.”

  She thinks I’m funny? I make her laugh?

  Mrs. Bertolotti shuffled back from the sink to Mom’s cutting station. The lady walked so slow it shouldn’t even be called walking, but she’d had a stroke a few years ago and was way up there in years.

  “Since when does Kelly come here for haircuts?” I asked.

  “Since Tiffany, that wenchy hairdresser at Beau Coup, ran off to LA and deserted her customers.” Aunt Foxy ran the razor across what I call my sideburns.

  “Did Kelly say anything about having a boyfriend?”

  “Nope. Besides, Joseph, it doesn’t matter. At your age boyfriends are like credit cards. A girl can switch any time she gets a better deal.”

  Aunt Foxy sprinkled talc on my neck and unfastened the plastic smock. I got up and saw Mrs. Bertolotti was still only halfway to Mom’s station. I took her arm and helped her along. She smiled through thick glasses that made her blue eyes look like giant gum balls.

  “You’re going to make one fine husband, Joseph,” she said. Her bony hand trembled, and she smelled like roses.

  “I hope Mr. Bertolotti doesn’t catch us arm in arm like this,” I said, and she chuckled.

  I smiled back. I liked making Mrs. Bertolotti laugh. And I’d finally gotten my foot in the door of Kelly’s world.

  Courting Miss MVP

  The curse of a superstitious Italian mother struck again. No wonder I felt nervous that Friday the thirteenth was C-day, as Frankie calls it when you make contact with a girl for the first time.

  That afternoon was Kelly’s softball game, and I was asking her to the movies afterward. No matter what. Aunt Foxy’s words echoed in my mind: “You make her laugh.” If only I could get Kelly to share popcorn and a box of Junior Mints, who knows? Maybe going to the Farewell Formal together wasn’t the impossible dream.

  “It’s about time you showed up, Joseph!” Frankie called from the top row of bleachers. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck, and he kept looking through them every few seconds.

  I climbed the bleachers reluctantly and sat next to Frankie. He can be really annoying sometimes.

  Frankie stood up and pointed the binoculars at our team’s dugout. “Yes, folks, the Frankie radar is scanning the playing field. Numbers one and two are in the dugout, and number three is up at bat.”

  “What are you talking about?” I squinted as I looked at the players. The batter’s jersey number was twelve, not three.

  “Sherrie Harrington, Tara Riddle, and Molly Palanski. They don’t know it, but they’re all finalists in my Farewell Formal date selection.”

  I groaned. “What inning is this?”

  “Bottom of the third. We’re up 3–1. Kelly’s pitching great. They only got one hit off her in the last inning.”

  I looked over to the dugout. An assistant coach was explaining something to Kelly, but she looked like she didn’t want to hear it.

  I wiped my forehead, pulled my water bottle from my backpack, and took a gulp. On the lower bleachers I noticed Yongsu, wearing another collared shirt—a white one this time. Like a kid in private school.

  He must have sensed someone was staring at him because he looked up and began waving like crazy, as if I couldn’t see him from ten feet away. Then he grabbed his flute case and books and climbed up the bleachers to join us.

  “Who’s this nerd?” Frankie whispered as Yongsu approached.

  “Yongsu Han. He’s new. And anybody who eats fluffernutter sandwiches in middle school shouldn’t be calling anyone else a nerd.”

  That zipped Frankie’s lips temporarily.

  Yongsu sat next to me. He had a bag of Cheetos under his arm. “So you’re a softball fan?” I asked.

  “My sister, Ok-hee, joined the team.” He pointed toward the bench.

  “I thought she was in Flushing. At some fancy music pr
ogram.”

  “She finished. The coach said she was good enough to make the team, but she has to practice before playing in a game,” he said, in between mouthfuls.

  This my-sister-is-a-superstar talk was almost too much. “Piano, school, softball…is there anywhere your sister doesn’t kick butt?”

  “Cleaning her room.” He grinned. “She’s a slob.”

  I looked down at our team. Ok-hee sat on the bench next to the coach. She had super-long hair. Long legs, too. I could tell she was taller than Yongsu, even though she was younger.

  “What are you doing here?” Yongsu asked me.

  Frankie blurted out my answer. “Joseph’s trying to pitch himself to the pitcher.”

  The other team was up at bat now. It was the top of the fourth and Kelly just threw a beauty, a perfect strike. Cheers roared from our section of the bleachers. None louder than mine.

  Yongsu’s eyes scanned the softball field. I had this hunch that, in Frankie’s terms, he was a zero-contact kind of guy. He hadn’t discovered the agony and the ecstasy of girls yet.

  “Did you find a famous Korean for your paper?” Yongsu asked.

  “Yeah. Now I have to write about him,” I said.

  “Who’d you pick?”

  “Sohn Kee Chung, the Olympic marathoner.” I skipped over how I planned to magically make him my grandfather.

  Yongsu nodded. “My father’s told me stories about him. He was fast! And brave, too, even when Japan was bullying Korea. Good choice, Joseph.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But I wondered if I was making a good choice. Sohn Kee Chung was brave for sure, but was I? Maybe I was taking the easy way out. I didn’t want to cheat, and I knew this Korean gold medalist would never have cheated.

  But then again, Sohn Kee Chung didn’t have an ancestry essay to turn in to Mrs. Peroutka, either.

  Frankie left for the late bus at the top of the sixth, just after the other team scored. But then our team caught a hitting fever. Janice Reed slammed a double, and then Kelly hit a line drive for a single, bringing Janice to third. I started whooping and hollering and even shouted out some rhyming raps. I thought I saw Ok-hee glare at me. Maybe I’d interrupted her Zen concentration on the game. Or maybe she was just looking for her brother.

  Just as I shoved a handful of Cheetos in my mouth, Yongsu tapped my shoulder.

  “About my mom,” he said, “she doesn’t understand adoption. She says it’s not natural for parents to raise other people’s kids. Sorry if she hurt your feelings.”

  He was staring down at the ground under the bleachers. I could tell he felt embarrassed.

  “Let’s forget it,” I said, reaching for more Cheetos. What did I care about Mrs. Han? There were plenty of Americans, including my own family, who didn’t understand adoption either.

  Our team won 7–2. Kelly brought in two runs in the top of the seventh with a triple to right field. I stood outside the exit of the locker room afterward, ready to ask her out. Yongsu hovered nearby, waiting for his sister. He was doing yo-yo tricks like Walk the Dog and Around the World, and even got the yo-yo to land in his palm.

  Kelly’s parents were talking to Coach Durrey. Mrs. Gerken had diamond earrings as big as peanut M&M’s, and the shine on Mr. Gerken’s shoes was visible from ten feet away. And even I could tell the peach fuzz on his head was probably from an anti-balding drug.

  Dad’s bald spot is double the size of Mr. Gerken’s, but the only thing he puts on it is sunscreen.

  Watching them, I wondered what they’d think about me if I walked into their mansion with Kelly. Maybe they’d recognize the name Calderaro and realize I was a window washer’s son.

  Nah, they wouldn’t get the Calderaro connection. I bet they’d never talked to a kid who looked like me before, except maybe someone washing dishes in one of their restaurants.

  I was starting to get antsy when Robyn and a couple of other band kids appeared, swinging their instrument cases. They shouted for me to come over—they were tossing a water balloon around—but I said I couldn’t. I had business to attend to. Then Yongsu’s sister came out, her arms full of books. Yongsu ran toward her.

  “Ok-hee, this is Joseph, my friend I’ve been talking about,” he said.

  She nodded and looked me up and down. Like mother, like daughter. Nothing about Ok-hee suggested she’d been Flushing’s Miss Congeniality.

  “Is Coach Durrey going to let you play in the next game?” I asked.

  “I need a full week of practices,” she answered coolly.

  “Good luck.” I gestured like I was swinging a bat. “New Jersey pitchers try to get you to swing at wild balls, but you just need to hold your ground.”

  She looked at me like I was a moron. What, did you have to be a major-league coach before you could offer advice?

  Ok-hee dropped a book as she walked away. I picked it up and recognized the title: A Spell for Chameleon.

  “That’s the best of the Xanth series,” I said. “Did you get to the part where Bink meets up with Evil Magician Trent?”

  She gave me a doubting glare like she didn’t expect anyone with below a Mensa IQ to read anything but easy readers. Yongsu shrugged like he was used to his sister’s moods and waved good-bye cheerfully.

  Watching Yongsu and Ok-hee walk away got me wondering again. Maybe I had a snooty know-it-all sister in Korea who was a foot taller than me. Maybe I had a couple of brothers and sisters. Now I wanted to know if I did. I really wanted to know. And not just for a social studies essay, either.

  Another five minutes passed and I almost left too, because I figured Dad was waiting to pick me up and getting grouchy. But finally Kelly came out of the locker room. She’d pitched five tough innings and still looked like a model. Wow.

  I intercepted her before she reached her parents. “Awesome triple, Miss MVP!” I called.

  “Thanks, Joseph.” She flashed a grin.

  Her smile sent me soaring. Go for it, Joseph. I pumped myself up. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the movies tomorrow,” I began. I couldn’t stop now. “Maybe we can get some pizza afterward. At Dom’s across from the CinemaPlex. We could walk there.”

  She didn’t look horrified. A good sign.

  “Dom’s has free soda refills and the best Sicilian pizza in New Jersey,” I added.

  “I like regular pizza.”

  “Their regular pizza is twice as good as their Sicilian. Trust me, my record is five pieces.”

  She laughed. Then Mr. Gerken called her. He sounded like he was in a hurry.

  “I’ve got a softball lesson tomorrow. How about Sunday?” she asked.

  “Lucky for you I’ve had a cancellation. I’m available on Sunday, say twelve thirty?” I had no idea what movie would be playing, but it didn’t matter. Even a Disney cartoon would do.

  “Sounds good. I’ll meet you at the CinemaPlex then,” she said as she flung her hot pink gym bag over her shoulder and walked off.

  I waited until the Gerkens’ car drove off before letting loose with “Woo-hoo, I’m the man!” Then I danced a touchdown dance in the parking lot, just as Dad’s truck pulled up.

  Run, Grandpa, Run

  Peck, peck, peck, peck.

  My fingers hacked away at the keyboard Saturday night. I clicked the mouse to check the word count: 1295. Roughly two hundred words away from the essay finish line. And just in time, too. It was due Monday, but tomorrow was my movie date with Kelly.

  The freezer door slammed shut. From the computer desk in the family room, I watched my sisters battle by the kitchen counter. Their hair was wet and braided and they were already in their pajamas. Mom was working at the beauty shop later than usual, leading new product training for the hairdressers. Dad was in his recliner, reading another classic that you’d expect to find in the hands of a pipe-smoking professor, not a window washer who looks tough in a tank top.

  “Give that to me!” Gina yelled. “Daddy, Sophie took the last Popsicle!”

  Sophie sat on a kitchen stool
gripping the Popsicle like a weapon. “I grabbed it first. Fair and square.”

  The air was thick as oatmeal. No matter how many times I wiped my forehead, it felt greasy. My glass of fruit punch sat in a puddle next to the mouse pad.

  “Bully!” Gina wailed.

  “Both of you have cookies if there aren’t enough Popsicles,” Dad growled from behind The Brothers Karamazov.

  “I don’t want cookies,” Gina whined.

  “I’m eating this Popsicle. I got it first.” Sophie ripped the wrapper off just as Gina started crying.

  “Maybe there are more in the back of the freezer.” Dad put his book down and walked into the kitchen.

  I hit my mental button to mute the sibling static. I was on a roll, two-finger punching at the keyboard.

  The title of my essay was “A Medal for Speed and a Life of Honor: My Grandpa Sohn.” I wrote how Sohn Kee Chung was my father’s father. Since I couldn’t find where he was born, I picked Yongsu’s birthplace, Taegu. Dad’s atlas listed Taegu as the third-largest city in South Korea, right along the Naktong River. It was a city that used to be famous for apples—” Best in Asia,” according to the atlas—so I gave Grandpa Sohn’s family their very own orchard.

  A young man can only pick apples for so long. Out of sheer boredom, young Sohn began challenging his six sisters and brothers to footraces in the orchard.

  Racing became a nightly ritual, I wrote, after the day’s picking was done. Sohn’s father always served as judge at the finish line, though none of his siblings could catch up with Sohn. Afterward the Chung family would sit down together to eat rice and kimchi, a spicy pickled cabbage. It sounded like Koreans eat kimchi the way Italians eat pasta. All the time.

  When Sohn was older, people started noticing how fast he could run. His father realized that Sohn had talent and encouraged him to train, which was pretty decent considering that meant one less set of hands picking all those apples.

  As I unwound this story, I felt like I’d gotten into the real Sohn’s head. Like I understood how outraged he must have felt about the Japanese taking over his country. How lousy it must have been to represent Japan, the invader, in track and field—his sport. The Japanese government looked down on the Koreans like the Nazis did the Jews, wanting to kill off everything Korean. Clothes. Tradition. Even their Korean names.