by Eugenia Kim
“I’m sure I did. They each said yes,” she said, melting inside. Aunt’s look dared her not to cry. Inja picked at her skirt.
“You can wait a little longer, but I can’t let that soup go to waste. I’ll feed some to the baby.” She went to the kitchen, grumbling to Seonil about waste.
Inja did not check the windows, the gate, the road, or the clock. She sat beside the tray tables she had charmingly arranged with four place settings of lidded bronze bowls in which she’d serve the soup. The light shifted as the minutes of humiliation compounded. She heard movement in the house—Grandfather lying down, asking Uncle to rub his back. Grandmother’s flyswatter slapped the floor now and then, Ara changed and washed diapers, then Uncle went out, and later Aunt returned from an errand with Seonil.
“What’s this?” she said from the kitchen. “Yae-yah! Bring me those bowls!”
Inja crept to the kitchen, bowls in hand. Aunt doled out three portions of congealed soup, and slammed the lids on each. “I won’t have good food wasted in this house. Do you think I cooked all this for nothing? Take these to your friends.”
Inja’s face must have shown her incredulity because Aunt struck her cheek. “Don’t come back until they’ve eaten every bit.”
Aunt had never hit her before. Inja wrapped the bowls in cloths, pulled the ribbon from her hair, and went down the road. She loitered across from Myeonghi’s big house, all its many windows glowing with electric lights. Myeonghi was practicing piano, and Inja wished she were Myeonghi—or anyone but herself. She waited a long time by the gate. The piano keys plunked, then someone else played something short and melodic, and Myeonghi plunked again, but all Inja heard was the smack of Aunt’s hand on her burning cheek and an inner clock ticking despair.
The setting sun touched the rooflines on the hilltop and cast long shadows. She walked down the street to the second girl’s house, the bowls heavy as boulders, and crossed to the back door where the girl usually went in after school. Inja could see her through the kitchen window doing something with her mother, both of them smiling. She thought of Aunt waiting with arms crossed in their kitchen. She gripped the bundles and called, “Hello.” They didn’t hear, so she turned, relieved, but then the girl saw her through the window and came to the door.
“Inja, hi! What are you doing here?”
“I—”
“What’ve you got?” She pointed to the bundles. “Wow, that’s a pretty dress.”
Before the girl could say anything to make it worse, Inja blurted, “My aunt says you should have this soup,” and held out a bowl.
The girl’s face changed. She remembered. They both flushed purple. The girl opened the soup bowl and recoiled at the sight of the tangled, gelatinous mess.
“Never mind!” Inja grabbed the bowl and spun.
Soup slopped on her skirt as she ran from the yard, but not fast enough, for she heard the girl yell, “I’m sorry, I forgot!”
She slipped into an alley and had a long cry. She would never be able to face that girl again. She dumped one soup right there, then wondered if Aunt, with all her strange behaviors, would somehow find it. She scraped out the other bowls in a different alley near a tied-up yellow dog that gobbled it up. He wagged at her expectantly, and his curly tail and eager tongue were so comical she smiled and said, “Happy birthday.” Then she cried again. She wandered the alleys that smelled of rotting trash, waiting for moonrise when Aunt would be settled in her bedroom.
Ara was cleaning the kitchen from supper. Without a word, she washed the brass bowls and fed Inja rice topped with bits of seaweed arranged like a flower, a dollop of bone marrow and red pepper paste in the center sprinkled with sesame. At bedtime, Ara took her dress and removed from its pocket the blue coin purse with the silver dime and put it by her pillow. Inja did not dream of hot dogs made to look like sailors or triangle hats or streamers. But when she woke the next morning, her laundered and ironed dress was laid out beside her bed like new.
For school lunchtime, all the girls brought rectangular tins with two lidded compartments, one for rice and one for banchan, a side dish. Girls like Myeonghi who daily brought a different and delicious banchan—varieties of vegetables, an egg, anchovies, or strips of pollock—compared what they had that day, opening both lids of their lunch containers wide. Ara packed rice for Inja daily, but there was nothing to put in the banchan side except sesame salt. It was tasty but embarrassing, and she dipped her spoon into the rice first, then the sesame salt, and took care to open the tin only wide enough for the spoon so no one could see the paucity of her lunch. Then she’d snap the lid shut. A number of other girls snapped their tin lids, too, and punctuated lunchtime with percussive evidence of poor meals. One day in late winter, Inja happened to see a classmate named Yuna snap her lid shut at the same time as she did, and their eyes met. They smiled at each other a little ashamedly, and that’s when they became best friends.
Because Yuna lived with her paternal grandmother, she was somewhat like Inja—with parents but without them. Her mother had died during the war, and her father had remarried a woman who didn’t want the first wife’s child. Yuna’s father visited every other weekend, and when Inja saw her on the following Monday, she was always sad. Even her two braids drooped. She would walk Yuna home in silence and hold hands. They understood each other. On those days they did their homework at Yuna’s house.
Inja excelled in art, and her pictures often dressed the walls of the classroom. Mathematics also gave her satisfaction, and she was a particular ace in geometry. Math logic brought order, reason, and balance to shifting complexities that seemed to be propelling her toward the unknown and constant abstract of “reunion” and America. No matter how many variables one posited in math, a correct outcome could be achieved.
Some weeks later Myeonghi brought a banana with her lunch. Inja and Yuna sat at their desks on the other side of the room, but it was impossible to ignore the banana with everyone admiring it. Though Inja had only seen pictures of a banana, she wasn’t envious enough to go and inspect it with all those girls attending to Myeonghi. She cracked her lunch tin open and asked Yuna, “Have you ever tasted a banana?”
“Yes! At her birthday party. Mmmm. But why didn’t you go?”
Since they were friends, Inja could tell her honestly that she hadn’t had a decent gift to give to the richest girl in school. “What did you give her?”
“A white patent leather belt from my father. I didn’t want to wear it because he gave one just like it to his wife. It made me sad every time I saw it.” She ducked her head, and one of her braids slipped around her neck.
“That was a good gift,” Inja said to make her feel better. “But tell me about the banana!”
Yuna blushed and made a big show of snapping her lid.
“What? What happened? You said you tasted banana.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s only me.” She snapped her lid in response.
“Okay. Promise you won’t tell anybody.”
“I promise or put a needle in my eye,” Inja said, stabbing at her eye. Yuna had taught her this American saying, which didn’t make a whit of sense but was a witticism just between them.
“She had a whole bowl of bananas cut open like flowers. One for each girl.” Yuna gestured toward Myeonghi and her disciples. “Like she’s peeling it right now.”
Between the bodies of her entourage, Inja caught glimpses of Myeonghi dramatically peeling each strip of banana skin halfway down until it looked like a fat yellow-and-white lily in her hand. “Wow.” Her tongue curled imagining the taste. Maybe it would be like honeysuckle.
“It was the best thing I ever tasted,” said Yuna, almost purring. “Sweet but not too sweet, a mellow fruity taste, not as tangy as Juicy Fruit gum. And the texture matched the flavor exactly.”
“Gosh, you’re making it into a poem,” Inja said, and they giggled. “But what’s so embarrassing about that?”
“I wanted to eat it slow to en
joy every bite. That’s why I can describe it to you like a poem.” She smiled. “But the other girls ate theirs fast to hurry to the dining room for cake. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it when I was done, so I left it on the front room table.”
“Is that all? Did somebody get mad?”
She lowered her voice. “After cake, we all went back to the front room to watch Myeonghi open her presents. She found my banana and said, ‘Who didn’t eat the rest of their banana? Oh well,’ and then she peeled the petals down to the base and ate the bottom half of my banana!”
Inja couldn’t help it and burst out laughing, drawing attention from the smug girls.
“Don’t laugh! I was so stupid.” But Yuna was laughing too.
“I probably would’ve done the same thing. Who knew?”
“I mourned not having that second half of my banana for a long time.”
“So it’s only a half-poem.”
They giggled at everything through the rest of the lunch break, and Inja was so happy to have her friendship, even though Yuna had tasted banana and she hadn’t.
Later in the spring on an unseasonably hot day, Inja andYuna decided to visit the army base after school. Everything seemed accented with yellow from the sun’s warmth, especially a yellow kerchief wrapped around the forehead of an ice-pop man hawking cold treats in a circle of sunlight. He had positioned his straw-lined box in the courtyard just beyond the checkpoint and before the main gate, where Korean vendors and shoeshine boys were allowed to ply their trade. “Ice cakee,” he called. “Ba-na-na i-ce cakee!”
Inja still had the Mercury dime in her coin purse at home, more than enough for two ice-pops, and enough to lure the vendor outside the courtyard, which was off-limits to children. “Let’s go home and get my money,” she said to Yuna.
Her friend shifted her books from one hand to the other.
“You wouldn’t have to pay me back,” Inja said. They dawdled, but the idea of tasting the poetic banana, and especially in the form of a cooling ice-cake, made Inja grab her elbow. “It’ll only take a minute.”
When they turned to go, a red-faced soldier who sat on a broken section of wall gave them a cupped-hand wave meaning come here—a gesture Americans didn’t know was obscene. Yuna stepped back, but the GI’s fat yellow eyebrows made Inja think it was a good omen, so she tugged Yuna to approach. He rummaged in his pocket. Maybe he’d give them gum, and Inja could save her dime for another time. The GI was so big and craggy, she thought there might be troll in his ancestry, but he had an enormous smile that made his eyes crinkle into fans at the corners. He said in broken English, as if they were idiots, “Girls, come look-see?”
They hid nervous smiles behind their books.
“I buy you ice-cakee, you likee?”
Inja and Yuna looked at each other and nodded.
The soldier made an exaggerated display of buying two ice-cakes. He returned to the broken wall in the sunshine and pointed to the narrow space beside him for one of them to sit. Inja pushed Yuna forward, and she squeezed in next to his big thigh. He gave her an ice-cake on a stick and held the other one out to Inja, patting his knee.
She took a step and reached for the ice, its tip thawing white to yellow. The soldier said something friendly, closed his knees, and patted them as if enticing a toddler. Yuna was fully absorbed in biting down on her ice, not offering any assistance. Inja knew she wouldn’t tell, and as a bead of banana-yellow formed and slid down the ice-cake, temptation overrode taboo. She had already broken several rules: don’t beg, don’t go to the American base, don’t talk to soldiers, don’t take gifts from strangers, don’t dawdle after school, and show the utmost respect to your elders—especially men. Faced with the melting ice on a hard paper stick, Inja rationalized that no one had ever said, “Don’t sit on a soldier’s lap,” and with that thought, she scooted onto his knees, her back stiff and as far away from his chest as she could manage. Yuna still refused to look at her and gobbled her ice, braids swinging.
Inja licked the drop that cut a slow path through the frosty surface, and all her taste buds turned to gold. It was as coolly flavorful as she had dreamed, as rich as the color yellow. She stuck the ice entirely in her mouth, eyes closed to absorb its delicious round sweetness.
“I’m done!” said Yuna, jarring her reverie. “Let’s go.” She jumped up and tugged Inja’s hem.
The soldier said something, put his hands on Inja’s hips, and jiggled his knees. Her insides turned and grew very still. He said things in a strange tone, as if his teeth were clenched. Inja twisted to release his grasp and glance at him, both dreading and drawn to see his expression. He blinked, eyes so pale as to look empty, his nose enormous and mottled with tiny red veins.
“Come on!” Yuna tossed her paper stick and ran without looking back.
The GI said something wheedling and bounced his knees, his hands firm on Inja’s hips, making her bite the ice and slide deeper into his lap. She threw the ice-cake in the dirt and pushed at his unmoving hands, then kicked her legs against his shins as hard as she could. He let go, laughing, saying something lewd, she was sure, and she ran and spit out the melting shard in her mouth that now tasted like metal.
Inja and Yuna avoided each other for a day until a game of rubber-band jump rope reunited them. Neither said anything about the soldier, nor did they ever return to the military base. Inja lost her desire for ice-cake or other treats from “chee-ais,” and she forever disliked the color yellow.
18
* * *
Illegal Aliens
Miran spent ten days of a two-week school vacation in April at Sarah Kim’s house, which meant a pine-paneled recreation room all to themselves with television and Barbie dolls. Mrs. Kim was either busy with her bridge club or shopping downtown, and the girls had the run of the house. Since they were, at age eleven, borderline too old to be playing with dolls, they compensated by making up elaborate stories inspired by Sarah’s discovery of dirty magazines and paperbacks with shocking covers in Dr. Kim’s closet. Using three Kens and a half-dozen Barbies, they cut black electrical tape into strips they positioned over the Barbies’ eyes, breasts, and crotch, like in the magazines, and Sarah tittered when Miran tied the otherwise nude pointy-toed ladies up against chair legs and had the Kens beat them. Miran couldn’t say where she got such ideas, which weren’t depicted in Dr. Kim’s pulp books, but the play was exciting and both their cheeks would be rosy after hours of planning and staging stripteases by the Barbies that devolved into beatings by the Kens. By the third night, Miran felt bold enough to sneak the dark-haired Ken doll into the guest room and pretend he was Daniel Walczak. Her imagination took over, and she’d find herself sweaty with wet underpants even though she hadn’t peed the bed.
All kinds of treats and snacks were readily available, and explained why Sarah was chubby—something kids at church made fun of. This made Miran attach to Sarah the underdog all the more, like she had earlier with Janet. Potato chips were delivered weekly in tins bigger than her head; a porcelain container shaped like a cat was always filled with store-bought cookies; Hershey bars stacked in the freezer sat next to three quarts of ice cream; and piles of fruit went rotten on the living room coffee table.
While visiting Sarah, Miran got to skip church and watched so much television her glasses fogged. They dressed up in Sunday clothes, and Sarah’s dad took them to the movie theater, with popcorn, Coca-Colas, and Milk Duds, on Friday and Saturday night. They went out for dinner almost every night, and she experienced Hot Shoppes, White Castle, Kresge’s soda fountain, and Ledo’s Pizza, plus Chinese food delivery, and on Sunday night turkey TV dinners on folding trays in front of The Ed Sullivan Show. Sarah’s parents had cocktails and made Shirley Temples for the girls, garnished with cherries from a jar and little paper umbrellas saved from restaurants.
Miran was utterly spoiled by the time Calvin came to drive her home, and she sulked in the front seat, a position she rarely sat in and would normally have been t
hrilled to occupy.
“It seems you had a good time,” said Dad.
“Um-hmm.”
“What was your favorite part? Dr. Kim told me about all the many things you did.”
“I liked everything.”
“Learn anything?” This was his usual question about her activities, and at the moment it irritated her and prompted a thoughtless response. “Yes—that it’s dumb to be poor and have no television. Mom would like The Ed Sullivan Show. And since she read that LIFE magazine over and over again about Grace Kelly’s wedding in Monaco, she would’ve loved watching it on TV, like everybody else in the entire world did but us.”
A cold silence emanated from her father’s side of the car. “Not everyone,” he said, quiet. “Not your sister in Korea; have you considered that?”
If Miran could’ve thrown something she would have, but Dad had put her things in the trunk, even the hand-me-down leather purse Sarah had given her—her first purse ever. A girl should not be separated from her purse. She said nothing to prevent an outburst of frustrated tears. The threat of childish tears made her reassess her attitude, and she took a few surreptitious big breaths, lips tight. She felt stubborn, ugly, and closed-up—far from the feelings of freedom from the previous week, which she’d mistakenly attributed to the Kims’ being rich. It wasn’t that their generosity of things had opened up her heart to Sarah and her parents—and thus to herself. It was the generous attention she’d received in that house, from outings to being asked questions at the dinner table, to witnessing Sarah and her mother talk about clothes and shoes—in English—like girlfriends, her own opinion sought after, and an unprecedented privacy in her guest room that would never be invaded by an inquisitive mother who was too busy to keep track of her daughter except by snooping through her things.