Kimchi & Calamari

by Rose Kent

  Sohn didn’t want to wear Japan’s colors on the Olympic team. But what choice did he have? He could either run representing Japan, or stay home, give up his dream, and pick apples forever.

  I wrote that Grandpa Sohn stuffed his sneakers and a pair of chopsticks in his gym bag. Then, with the rally cry, “This one’s for Korea,” he headed to the 1936 Berlin games. It was the first time he’d ever left Taegu. But he never forgot he was Korean. Even during the Olympics, when the Japanese forced him to use the name Kitei Son, he protested in his own way—by sketching a tiny map of Korea next to his signature.

  The library book described Sohn’s butt-kicking victory over the other marathoners in Berlin, including a heavily favored Argentinian named Juan Zabala. Adolf Hitler, who people called the führer, was rooting for Zabala—probably because Zabala looked more like him than Sohn did. But Hitler didn’t know he was dealing with one quick Korean.

  Just past mile seventeen, Sohn whizzed by Zabala, who was so stunned by Sohn’s speed that he actually fell, which probably made the führer furious. For the last five miles, Sohn pulled away from the next closest competitor and won the gold medal. He became the first Olympic marathoner to run the race in less than two-and-a-half hours.

  One of my favorite parts of my story—and I swear I didn’t make it up—was when a Korean newspaper got angry about their star being forced to represent Japan. Just to make a point, they airbrushed the sunburst, Japan’s national symbol, off Sohn’s jersey on the front-page photo. The staff was thrown in prison and the newspaper was shut down for ten months as punishment.

  But I bet it was worth it.

  Word count check: 1,496. Closing time.

  I never met my grandfather, but thinking about how tall he stood has inspired me. Beneath Sohn’s Japanese jersey was a true Korean: proud of who he was and determined to achieve.

  Finally I was finished. I’d told Sohn Kee Chung’s story, and he was one awesome Korean. If only our family connection were true.

  I waited for the yahoo-I’m-done! exhilaration to hit like it usually does when a paper’s finished, but it didn’t. Sohn Kee Chung was proud and true to himself, but I didn’t feel that way.

  I looked up. Dad had gone upstairs. I hit Save and signed off. This wasn’t the kind of document I wanted Mom or Dad to see.

  My sisters were still in the kitchen as I searched the cupboard. Dad had let me skip dinner to finish the essay, and now I was craving something cheesy with tomato sauce.

  “Did you two reach a truce?” I asked.

  Only Sophie nodded, so I figured she ate the last Popsicle. Gina was distracted, playing some sort of stack ’em game on the kitchen counter with the spice containers. She’d gotten eight of them on top of each other and was attempting to add the dried rosemary to make it nine, but it was wobbling.

  “The leaning tower of flavor,” I said in an accent just like Nonno Calderaro’s.

  Gina giggled.

  I poured a glass of orange juice and looked in the fridge, only to discover leftover pizza in the back, behind the margarine. Yessss. Heaven in tinfoil.

  “C’mon, Gina and Sophie, bedtime. Brush your teeth,” Dad called from upstairs. Gina got off her chair just as Sophie reached over and knocked the tower down. Plastic spice jars started rolling across the counter. Green flecks of oregano spilled everywhere.

  “I saw you, Sophie, you brat!” Tears filled Gina’s eyes.

  Sophie grinned and then glanced at me.

  “Why are you so mean?” I barked.

  “Who says it was me?” she said, dashing out of the kitchen with guilt and Popsicle juice smeared across her face.

  “That’ll be five seventy-five,” the pizza guy growled in a cartoon bulldog voice on Sunday afternoon. I handed him a ten-dollar bill and stuffed the change in my shorts pocket. Kelly was already walking to a booth in the back of the pizzeria.

  “You didn’t have to pay for me, Joseph,” she said, poking a straw in her cup. She was drinking diet soda, though I doubt she weighed a hundred pounds. I can’t stand diet anything.

  The pizzeria was warm and crowded. A herd of Little Leaguers had just walked in. The smell of garlic floated in the air like it does when Mom’s making her Bolognese sauce. It was almost four and I was starving, even though I’d eaten most of the popcorn at the movie theater.

  Subtly, I watched how Kelly handled her pizza. Pizza-eating technique reveals a lot about a person. First Kelly placed a napkin on top and sopped up the grease. Then she pricked the cheese with a fork to release the heat. When she finally dug in, she took teensy bites and dabbed her chin with a napkin.

  Me, the moment we sat down I reached for the Parmesan and the red pepper shaker and covered my pepperoni slice like sand on the desert. The more kick, the better. I’m convinced my spicy craving is genetic. Even in kindergarten I preferred ballpark chili dogs over plain franks.

  Still, I didn’t want to be a slob around Kelly. I was careful to not chew with my mouth open—which, according to Mom, is a bad habit of all us Calderaros.

  We talked about how the movie creeped us both out. “My sister Sophie would have liked it,” I said. “She loves getting scared to the brink of wetting her pants.”

  Kelly said she was the only child in her family.

  I told her how I have five cousins on my dad’s side, and six cousins—or cousins once removed, I get it mixed up—on my mom’s side. “Italians have Rolodexes full of relatives,” I added.

  “Italians?”

  “Yeah, most of my relatives on both sides moved to Florida. The warmer weather reminds them of Italy. We’re the only family members who still own snow shovels.”

  Kelly started to speak, but then stopped. She seemed to be confused, about my being Italian, I guessed.

  “I’m adopted.” I shrugged, as if that explained it all.

  “Really?” She looked surprised. Maybe she thought my dad was white and my mom was Asian. But I guess she never met my parents.

  “Yup, I was born in Korea,” I said, as though I could map the entire country. Under the booth I slapped my hands against my knees to the beat of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

  Kelly put her drink down and perked up. “Do you know your story? I mean, who your parents were?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe to impress her. Or maybe because I felt dumb not knowing.

  “So you’ve searched for your birth mother? I saw this Russian girl on a talk show who did that. She put a posting on a website and was reunited with her relatives.”

  “Sort of,” I said. Inside my head I thought I heard that tiny angel Mom calls your conscience calling, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

  Kelly stared at me wide-eyed, like a curious cat. I wanted her to think I was interesting, but I didn’t really want to get into all this adoption stuff.

  “Did you meet your birth mother?” she asked.

  I shook my head no.

  “Have you talked to her on the phone?”

  “We’re, uh, writing letters,” I said. If only it were true. And now I felt like that tiny angel was smacking the inside of my brain, furious.

  Just when I dreaded saying another word, one of the Little Leaguers ran past our table, tripped on his shoelace, and sent his paper plate flying.

  Splat! His slice of meatball pizza landed cheese down on the linoleum, and he started wailing. I got up to hand the poor kid napkins. I hate hearing squirts cry.

  Soon his mom took charge, and the boy calmed down. Kelly and I sat quietly for a few minutes after that. I slurped my soda. It was empty, and I wanted a refill.

  “I give you credit, Joseph. I don’t know if I would have searched,” Kelly said.

  I looked up, surprised by her words. “Why not?”

  “Because I like my life,” she answered carefully, as if thinking it through. “You probably like yours, too. I’d be afraid of the skeletons in the closet, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t. I wanted to know ev
ery single thing I could. What my birth parents looked like, what kind of jobs they had, their favorite foods and colors, even what songs they hummed in the shower. Knowing nothing is worse than knowing the truth. But I didn’t tell that to Kelly. Mostly I wanted to change the subject.

  “Be right back.” I walked over to the counter and filled my soda to the top.

  Since my plate was empty and Kelly’s just had pizza crust, we went outside. It had started to rain lightly, and the sky was covered with dark cauliflower-shaped clouds.

  “I’m supposed to meet my mom next door,” she said, pointing to the florist. “She has to pick up centerpieces for a dinner for their restaurant suppliers tonight.”

  End-of-date rituals, can anything be more awkward? I thought about kissing her, but it didn’t feel right, what in the rain and with the Little Leaguers standing by the door eating Italian ices and staring at us. Besides, after all that crushed red pepper on my pizza, my breath might have set a class A fire on her lips.

  “Let me know if you hear anything about your birth family, okay?” she said.

  “Sure. So, um, do you wanna go out again sometime?”

  “Maybe, but call me way ahead of time. The next couple of weeks are crazy busy. You know, commitments,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  As I nodded and waved good-bye, I tried to think of one thing in my life that qualified as a commitment. But I could only hear Mom yelling at me to hurry with that sack of towels before the Jiffy Wash closed.

  I ran back to the CinemaPlex in the rain and sat on a bench inside, waiting for Dad. He’d taken Gina and Sophie to buy sneakers, and so I still had another twenty minutes to kill. I watched a few older guys standing in the ticket line with their arms around girls. It made me think about my afternoon. In Frankie-speak, I’d made contact with one of the hottest girls in school. We’d had fun together. She’d actually spoken the two victory words, “Call me.”

  Then why wasn’t I having those heart-pounding, firecracker-exploding feelings? My mind wasn’t even on Kelly. Instead, my thoughts bounced from my essay about who I wasn’t, to wondering about who I was. I needed to solve this MBA puzzle. Like why I always sneeze five times in a row. No one else I know sneezes more than three times. Or my constant craving for spicy food. Or my never-ending wondering about who came before me in that long line of ancestors Mrs. Peroutka talked about.

  Maybe my birth mother sneezes in sets of five. Maybe my birth father loads his plate with hot peppers too. Who knows? Maybe some of my Korean relatives resisted the Japanese occupiers the way Sohn Kee Chung had.

  I really wanted to know. No, I needed to know. There had to be a way to find out, I decided, even if the essay was already finished. I know Nash would help me. I’d tell him what Kelly said about that adopted Russian girl posting a note on the Internet. Maybe we could try that!

  That’s what was on my mind more than anything else. Even more than Kelly.

  Finding Your Ki-bun

  A few days later, I rang the doorbell at Nash’s house less than ten minutes after he called. I licked my lips. They still tasted like the spice from the barbecue chips I’d wolfed down.

  “You found something out about me, didn’t you?” I asked as we ran upstairs.

  “You bet I did,” he said.

  While we waited for the computer to boot up, Nash told me about his new lab partner in science. “I think she’s Korean, Joseph, no kidding. She’s really pretty and smart.”

  It had to be Ok-hee. I reminded him about Yongsu being the new kid in band and told him that was her brother. “The Hans bought the Jiffy Wash, near my mom’s shop,” I said.

  “I’ll carry towels for your mom whenever she wants,” said Nash, “as long as Ok-hee’s there.”

  Nash sounded slick, but I knew him well enough to know he probably acted shy around Ok-hee.

  The computer screen finally lit up. With a click Nash called up a website called “Finding Your Ki-bun.”

  “What’s ki-bun?” I asked.

  “It sounds like good spirit, inner peace, that sort of thing. This website is for Korean adoptees tracing their family connections.”

  I wanted to do this, but my hands still trembled as I looked at the screen.

  “You’re not alone, Joseph. Check out these messages,” Nash said.

  The listings reminded me of newspaper classifieds, only sadder:

  Please help me find my sister: We were left in the terminal at Kwangju Airport on July 16, 1978. I was three months old and my sister, Ji-Kun Lim, was four. She probably has an American name now. I’d give anything to see her.

  Looking for leads to my Korean past: I traveled from Seoul to Minneapolis in ‘86 when I was five months old. I have a small Mongolian spot birthmark on my left elbow. I want to meet someone I’m related to. I promise not to interfere with your life. I just want to know my other side.

  Need answers: My wife and I recently had our first baby, and it’s made me wonder about my early years. I was found in front of the American Embassy in Seoul on Christmas Eve, 1982. I was two years old and I had a tag on my wrist with my birth name, Oksu. Does anyone know my story?

  Nash broke the silence. “Some stories, huh?”

  “Do we know if any of these people found their families?” I asked.

  Nash highlighted a message from a twenty-four-year-old graphic designer in Phoenix. “Look, Joseph. This lady made a connection.”

  Family reunion in Phoenix: My deepest thanks to those who cared enough to read my story. Because of you, I’ve been reunited with my father. The funny part is that we look alike, speak alike, and even laugh alike! He will be coming to Arizona to visit next month.

  I tried to imagine meeting a Korean relative for the first time. Somebody who looks just like me. Would I crack a joke? Would my voice quiver when I introduced myself? Would we hug?

  Nash roamed around the website. He clicked the e-form for making a posting and waited for me to say something.

  Then Chicken Calderaro started clucking. “I don’t know what I’m getting into, Nash. Maybe this was a bad idea. What do you think?”

  “I’d want to know my story. But what do you want?”

  I stared at the computer screen and reread the message from the lady in Phoenix. Then I looked right at Nash. “I want to know,” I finally replied.

  “Then let’s go for it.”

  Well, if I was going to search, my message was going to get noticed. “I’ll talk, you type, Nash. Here’s the lead-in:

  New Jersey Italian Stallion looking for Korean connection: Clue lies in the basket a little old lady found at the Pusan police station in May fourteen years ago….

  Too Tangled for Spider-Man

  “Why would anyone name a band Chicago?” Steve whispered from the bass drum.

  “It sure beats calling it Hoboken,” I said.

  “Hey, watch what you say, Joseph. I was born in Hoboken.”

  “Yeah, I can tell by your bad breath,” I shot back, and we both laughed.

  Mrs. Athena had summoned us for a special early-bird session. We were working on “Saturday in the Park,” a seventies hit that leaned heavy on drums and trumpet. This was supposed to be the kickoff song for the concert, but Mrs. Athena said it needed some TLC. Personally, I think it was those can’t-reed-to-save-their-lives clarinets that needed help, not the rest of us.

  Jeff was absent, so Steve and I were multitasking most of the percussion instruments. It felt like circuit training—intervals of banging mallets on the xylophone, whacking the timpani, and then running to the snare, all while handling cymbals, too. Here’s one of many band myths: people think cymbals are the musical equivalent of wrecking balls that crash into each other randomly, but there’s more of an art to it than that. If you play them right, cymbals should slice each other like you’re cutting cheese off a pizza.

  I sang along as I banged out the beat. Dad owns Chicago’s Greatest Hits, so I knew all the lyrics.

  “Yo, Joseph.”

  “Wha
t, Steve?”

  “When do you think Mrs. Peroutka will hand back our essays? The odds are fifty-fifty that I’m going to summer school, and I really need a decent grade in social studies.”

  “Should be any day now.” I wanted to get a good grade on the essay too. That way I’d make high honor roll again. Right now my grade was a B+. But thinking about my essay got my stomach fluttering. What if Mrs. Peroutka caught me in the act of re-creating history? I actually lost my place worrying about it and came in a half measure late on xylophone.

  “Everything okay, Joseph?” Mrs. Athena called. She never misses a beat.

  “Any day now” turned out to be the next day.

  “Welcome, class,” Mrs. Peroutka cawed when we filed into social studies.

  There was no mistaking me for Sammy Sunshine that Friday morning. My déjà-vu dream returned again last night, and this time it felt more like a nightmare. I was back walking on that dirt road and pulling that wagon, only this time I was by myself. It was dark and pouring rain, and I could hear animal noises in the distance. I woke up in a cold sweat.

  Then, after another burned Pop-Tart breakfast, a bird pooped on my Yankees cap at the bus stop, and someone stole my shorts from my gym locker. In the words of a true Korean, I was not feeling good ki-bun.

  But Mrs. Peroutka was all smiles as she stood in front of the classroom. She was wearing a shiny green dress that made her look like a waxed lime.

  The bell rang, and she picked up a stack of papers.

  “I’m delighted to return your essays,” she began. “I was impressed by the quality of your writing and moved by the emotion you all conveyed in your stories.”

  Twenty-five deep sighs of relief followed.