Unidentified Suburban Object

by Mike Jung

  “Mandu? Really.” Mom didn’t exactly stop smiling, but her smile did get a little frozen-looking. “Where’d you get the recipe?”

  “The K-Chow Goddess,” I said, still looking Mom straight in the eye.

  “It’s a cooking blog,” Dad said.

  Somehow I was always surprised by how tech-savvy Dad is. He talks and acts like this very mellow Zen master person who only likes fish and trees and stuff like that, but he knows way more about the Internet than Mom.

  I guess my traitor face gave me away again, because Dad laughed in that way of his, where it’s more like he’s hissing softly.

  “You always look so surprised when I talk about the Internet,” he said, reaching over and brushing a few stray hairs back from my forehead. I blew at his fingers as he pulled them away from my head.

  “I know about the K-Chow Goddess too.” Mom tapped Dad’s chin with her fingernails. He reached up with one hand, palm turned toward his face, and gently clasped his fingers with hers. Blech, but I wasn’t fooled: Mom was about to change the subject. Three … two … one …

  “Are you all ready for tomorrow?” she said. “We can make a last-minute trip to Wallingford’s tonight, if you need to.”

  “Wallingford’s, also known as The House of Conformity? Thanks, Mom, but no thanks. I wish there was a real thrift store in this stupid town.”

  “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Do you know how to make mandu, Mom?”

  Mom burst out laughing.

  “Me?” Her shoulders hitched up and down, and she rested one hand on her forehead.

  “Didn’t your mom teach you? Isn’t that what they did back in, you know, the old country?”

  Mom got up from the table, bent over me from behind my chair, and kissed me on the top of my head, which I knew meant she was about to ignore my question.

  “Honey, you know I’m not very good in the kitchen — I’m an astrophysicist, not a chef. Your dad probably wishes he married someone else twenty times a day.”

  “Not even once,” Dad said as he started clearing the table.

  “But you must have — ”

  “No, sweetheart, I’m as American as you are.”

  “Can you answer my question?” I barked. Mom leaned the top half of her body away from me.

  “Hey, hey,” Mom said. “You don’t need to raise your voice.”

  “I’M NOT RAISING MY VOICE,” I said. “Shelley’s parents actually like it when she asks questions about her family, but with you guys it’s like banging my face against a wall.”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other with their crinkly eyebrow, Chloe’s-on-a-rampage faces, which always makes me want to chew on a rock.

  “Oh, forget it,” I said. “I’ll be in my room.”

  “Dishes in the sink,” Mom said. Smiling! Why was she still smiling?

  “Yeah, yeah.” I stomped into the kitchen and put my plate and glass into the sink, instead of giving in to my urge to hold them a foot above the sink and let them drop.

  I didn’t have any rocks in my room to chew on, so I split my time evenly between reorganizing my school supplies, trying on a few different combinations of stuff for my first-day-of-school outfit, and wondering if this year would be any different from every other year. After deciding to stick with the outfit I’d shown Shelley, I flopped down in my chair, slumped down on my desk, and stared at my ball python, Kaa, in his tank on the desktop. He looked a little depressed in there.

  “I know how you feel,” I said.

  According to Dad, who has a bookshelf in the living room completely filled with books about fish, Primrose Heights is a really good habitat for koi. It’s not too hot or cold, and there are enough trees to provide shade but not enough to make it like a forest. So yeah, that’s why we live in this tiny, middle-of-nowhere, whiter-than-white-bread town. Because it means my dad can have a pond full of goldfish in the backyard. It’s a special kind of koi that he breeds himself, but still. They’re big goldfish.

  I dug my schedule out of the folder of school papers in my backpack and held it in front of my nose, looking at the list of teachers one more time.

  Su-Hyung Lee. Was she Korean? Maybe I could talk to her about the stuff my parents always blew off. Maybe things actually would be different this year.

  I was really hoping the first day of seventh grade wouldn’t end up being the best day of the whole school year like it was in fifth grade — breaking your arm on the second day of school, combined with the worst homeroom teacher ever, will do that.

  “Chloe Cho-ee,” Ms. Borland called during the first, pre-broken-arm day of fifth grade. It wasn’t the first time a teacher had totally put me in the spotlight because of my name, but the idiotic rhyming thing was new.

  “It’s Cho,” I said, quietly but loudly enough to be heard.

  “Oh, I know, I’m just having a little fun with you!” Ms. Borland did a little ha-ha-I’m-so-funny laugh, which was funny because she was so not funny.

  “It’s not Cho-ee,” I muttered.

  She did it on the second day of school too. The only reason she didn’t do it on the third day of school was because Chase Edwards blew through a stop sign on his skateboard and made me crash my bike, land on the curb arm-first, go to the hospital, and miss the third day.

  That was the past, though, and I felt optimistic as I walked through the front doors with the rest of the new seventh graders. It was a new year, my biggest enemy on the soccer team had moved away, and there was a new teacher with a Korean-sounding name who was probably guaranteed to not make fun of my last name. It was already the most interesting first day of school ever.

  It wasn’t like having a maybe-Korean teacher in school was ALL good, though.

  “Hey, Chloe, do you know the new teacher?” a girl said right after the third-period bell rang.

  Shelley and I walked through the halls with the rest of the seventh graders (everyone who wasn’t going to the bathroom, comparing outfits, or superintensely texting each other, anyway) and headed for social studies.

  Predictably, it was Lindsay Crisp. Lindsay doesn’t bother me that much, even if she’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, so I tried not to sound too annoyed. I probably sounded annoyed anyway.

  “Why would I?”

  The thing about Lindsay that’s both horrible and awesome is how she’ll just say whatever she’s really thinking, no matter how annoyed the person she’s talking to might be.

  “Well, you know. My mom says the new teacher’s Korean, and …” Lindsay trailed off as I stared at her.

  “Yeah, Chloe, don’t all you Korean people know each other?” Shelley said it with a totally straight face, which is one of her greatest talents.

  “We do, actually,” I said, totally deadpan. “We hang out at all the same places and stuff.”

  “Yeah, I thought … wait, are you making fun of me?” Lindsay’s hazel eyes (I was totally jealous of her eye color) suddenly drooped down at the corners. I felt a little pang of guilt.

  “We’re just kidding around, Lindsay.”

  “I didn’t mean … I just thought you might know her, that’s all.” Lindsay’s expression made her look like a ponytailed puppy dog.

  “I don’t.”

  Oops, there was Angry Chloe again. Sigh …

  “I’m sorry, Chloe, geez! You’re such a Crabby McCrabberson!”

  “I … just forget it, Lindsay. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Sheesh. The thing is, I’m the only Asian kid in the whole school. In the whole town, actually. Rumor has it a bunch of Japanese kids flew over the town in an airplane once, but other than that it’s just me, waving my freak flag solo.

  “Did she seriously call you Crabby McCrabberson?” Shelley said under her breath as Lindsay walked off in a huff.

  “Yeah, that’s a new one. Chloe Crabby McCrabberson Cho. Lots of C’s in that name …”

  “Su-Hyung Lee’s a pretty name,” Shelley said as everybody lined up at the door t
o room 117, which was still closed.

  “It’s definitely prettier than Crabby McCrabberson.” We cracked up.

  The door opened, and Shelley and I looked up to see the mysterious Ms. Lee in the doorway.

  Ms. Lee looked a lot like any other teacher, with the exception of definitely being Asian. She wore a white, buttoned shirt (nicer and more tailored than the ones my dad always wore) and a black skirt that ended a couple of inches above the knee. She had superglossy black hair that fell around her face in a pageboy cut, and earrings with some kind of light green stone in them. She looked younger than any of our other teachers — she almost looked like a teenager, in fact. If she wasn’t a teacher, I might have thought she was in high school.

  It was really strange to see an Asian adult who wasn’t my mom or dad.

  “You must be Chloe,” Ms. Lee said with a smile. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a quick, precise motion.

  “Uhhh …” I said. I closed my mouth with a snap. “Uh, I mean, yes, I’m Chloe.”

  “Come on in.”

  Ms. Lee opened the door all the way and walked into the classroom. The rest of the class was in line behind me and Shelley, and there was a lot of whispering as we filed into the room.

  “Is that our new social studies teacher?” “What happened to Mr. Dowling?” “Is she Chinese or Japanese?”

  Oh for crying out loud, like Chinese and Japanese were the only choices. Idiots.

  Shelley grabbed me by the elbow as we took our usual seats — the front row, halfway between the windows on our left and the center of the room. Ms. Lee was writing her name on the chalkboard, and as she turned to face the class a beam of sunlight came through the windows and hit her, casting her shadow on the wall behind her.

  “Good morning, class. Who can explain the relationship between a primary source document and a secondary source document?”

  Dead silence. Huh?

  Ms. Lee smiled, twisting up the right side of her mouth.

  “Okay then, who can tell me the best method for understanding the historical context of a research topic?”

  Holy cow. Was this what the class was going to be like? One of those really HARD classes? Awesome.

  Bring it, I thought.

  “Anyone?” Ms. Lee crossed her arms and slowly scanned the whole room, tilting her head just a little bit to the side in an oh-come-on way. I looked at Shelley, who had a big grin on her face. I caught her eye and silently mouthed “Teacher’s pet” at her. She flicked her eyes at Ms. Lee and made a very subtle wing-flapping motion with her elbows.

  Was she calling me a chicken? Oh no. No WAY was I letting her get away with that. I raised my hand, and Ms. Lee immediately pointed at me.

  “Chloe!”

  Rule number one about asking questions in class: Teachers love students who take chances, like answering a question when everyone else in the class looks like they’re about to hide under their desks.

  “Reading,” I said. I was totally guessing, but I’m a good guesser. “The best way to understand a topic’s historical context is reading books about it.”

  Ms. Lee smiled. It was a good smile, lots of teeth, very cheerful-looking.

  “Yes! Very good! To be more precise, you should read background material — books on related topics during the same historical period. That’s a taste of what we’re going to explore in the first quarter of this year: how to do historical research.”

  I looked sideways at Shelley and waggled my eyebrows. Shelley twirled her index finger in the air. Ms. Lee started walking back and forth at the front of the classroom, pointing her toes like a ballet dancer for just an extra half second in the middle of each step.

  “My name is Ms. Lee, and as you’ve no doubt already noticed, I’m new to George Matthew K through 8 School. Last week the school gave me a box full of your files, which I’ve read, so I know you’re a quality group of students who’ve been together a long time. I also think you’re ready to take a big step forward with your studies, particularly in social studies.”

  There were some very quiet mutters around the room when she said that part — kids were definitely worried Ms. Lee was a hard teacher. Slackers.

  “I’m going to show you how global history and personal history aren’t separate things, but always connected, whether your ancestry is German, Venezuelan, or Korean.”

  Ms. Lee passed by my desk as she said “Korean,” and she didn’t look at me or wink or anything like that, but she did put her hand on my desk for just a second, and when she took it away there was a small, folded piece of paper there.

  Was that a note? I quickly slid my own hand over it, and as Ms. Lee turned away from my desk I shot a look at Shelley. Her mouth was actually hanging open, and I was sure she was thinking the same thing I was:

  A note from a teacher?

  Ms. Lee stopped pacing and stood in the center of the room with her arms crossed and one hip stuck out to the side.

  “We’re going to work hard in this class, and I do mean we. History is partly about achievements that force people to remember you, and that’s the standard we’re going to strive for. I want you to remember me — hopefully because I’ve made you learn and think about history in a new way. And I want to remember you for what you’ve learned about world history, and what you teach me about your personal history. Make me remember you.”

  She paused, then smiled.

  “Ready to get started?”

  It wasn’t a big shock that the class didn’t yell “TOTALLY!” all at once, but a bunch of kids said yes, including Shelley and me. We might have said it a little louder than everyone else. Ms. Lee nodded, and as she turned and walked to the chalkboard I unfolded her note, keeping it cupped in the palm of my hand.

  Hi, Chloe, would you meet me after class for a few minutes? Thanks.

  Ms. Lee wasn’t lying — she spent the first day of class talking about how to do research, which was way more interesting than it sounds — and she ended class by giving us our first assignment: Ask an older family member, preferably someone from our parents’ generation, to tell us an old family story, then write it down.

  Simple, right? For some people, anyway.

  “Think of it as your first attempt at using a primary source,” she said as the bell rang. Most of the class sprinted for the door as if the room were on fire — next period was lunch — but I stayed at my desk and packed up my things more slowly.

  “Can you save me a seat?” I asked Shelley as she stuffed her books into her backpack.

  “You’re not coming? You have to show me the, you know …” Shelley hitched her backpack up on one shoulder and made a scribbling motion on the palm of her hand.

  “I will, but I have to talk to the teacher for a minute.”

  “Oh really?” Shelley did a silent smooching thing with her mouth. I grinned back and pretended to punch her on the arm as I stood up. She dodged out of the way and headed for the door, leaving me alone in the room with Ms. Lee. She was writing something in a notebook, but looked up and smiled just a little as I approached her desk. I’d been all whatever, no problem with Shelley, but I actually was a little bit nervous.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi, Chloe, thanks for — oh no, you look so worried!” Ms. Lee started laughing, but not in a mean way. She leaned back in her chair and looked me in the eye, laughing with her mouth open and her shoulders shaking. I also started laughing — it was impossible not to.

  “So I’m NOT in trouble?” I said. Ms. Lee shook her head, her shoulders still going up and down with silent laughter.

  “No, no, I’m so sorry, how could you possibly be in trouble on the first day of class?” She sat up straight again and folded her hands on the desk in front of her, but she still had a twinkly sort of look in her eye, and she stopped smiling, but it looked like she was really trying to not smile. She wore a ring on each of her hands, and one of them was a silhouette of a rabbit’s head with orange and black stripes.

  Was
that a Tiger Rabbit ring? Did Ms. Lee like my favorite K-pop band too??

  “I’m sorry, I should have said so anyway. I also hate to take time away from your lunch period, but I just wanted to spend a few moments chatting more privately. You have a very good reputation at this school, you know — the teachers and administrators all have great things to say about you.”

  “Thanks.” I wasn’t dumb enough to say Of course they do, but I thought it.

  “I had a good conversation with Mr. Dombrowski.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling cautious. “Um … what did he say?”

  Ms. Lee cracked a tiny smile, curling her mouth up on one side.

  “He said that you were quite upset about your grade on an essay written for his class.”

  Upset was one way to describe it. Mr. Dombrowski was my sixth-grade English teacher, and the only teacher who’s ever given me less than an A on anything. He gave me a B- on my personal narrative essay, which totally deserved an A, maybe an A+, and I never forgave him. I had fantasies about watching him get stampeded by a rhino, or having a tow truck dropped on his head.

  “It’s the only B minus I’ve ever gotten,” I said, trying not to show any rage.

  “So he told me!” Ms. Lee said, raising her eyebrows and smiling a little more broadly. “I didn’t want to talk to you about that grade, however — I’m more interested in the paper itself. What was the title again?”

  “A Day in the Life of a Pseudo-Korean,” I said. “Did Mr. Dombrowski tell you why he gave me such a low grade?”

  I didn’t know why that made Ms. Lee smile — if she didn’t think a B- was a low grade, she had to be a lousy teacher.

  “He did, and — ”

  “How does anybody think I was being insensitive to Koreans?” I blurted out, the frustration coming back all at once. “What does he think I am, a Martian?”

  Ms. Lee held up her hand, palm facing me, but she also nodded.

  “I get it, Chloe. Mr. Dombrowski’s a qualified teacher, so I know he was grading you as fairly as possible, but I understand why it bothered you.”