Necessary Roughness (16 page)

She was
not
dead.

She
couldn’t
be dead.

I am going to contest this play, I was thinking. Show me the instant replay. I am going to contest this play.

I kept repeating that, over and over and over. It was the only way I had of keeping my head from blowing apart into a million pieces.

We had to go to the hospital to identify the body. Young and Donna had been in a car accident. The doctor said she was going to be hard to look at. He suggested only Abogee go in.

“She’s my daughter too,” O-Ma said. I took her hand. We all went in, as a family.

We met Donna’s parents outside her hospital room. Donna had broken her back, but she was in stable condition. Thank God for small favors and seat belts, I was thinking with one side of my brain. The other side was practically screaming with jealousy. Why did Donna get to live, and not Young? Why?

Abogee and O-Ma were on the phone constantly, to L.A. and Korea. When they hung up, the phone rang again. Once, Mikko called; once, Rainey did. I told them I couldn’t talk right now, and I acted like I had
something pressing to do. Of course it was a lie. Nothing was pressing anymore.

The doorbell rang. I made the mistake of answering it, thinking it might be flowers or someone bringing food.

But no. It was
ALL-PRO.

“I don’t want to talk right now,” I said, starting to close the door.

He put his hand in the jamb.

“But I do.”

I hadn’t talked to
ALL-PRO
since before the accident, I realized. The last time he was actually
inside
the house was when the three of us watched TV that time. I couldn’t believe it. I let him in.

“Have you seen Donna?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Did she tell you what happened?” He looked different, like his cheekbones poked out more or something.

“She said she swerved to miss a deer and the car hit a slick patch. The deer lived.”

“What were they doing on the highway?”

“Cruising, I guess. She just got her license.”

“Was she a good driver?”

“How should I know?” I said. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“I just want to know. I don’t know a thing about what happened except what I saw in the paper. So
was Donna a good driver?”

“Hell if I know,” I said. “It’s not like things will change if you figure out exactly what happened. My sister’s gone, Mikko, gone.”

“I just have to know,”
ALL-PRO
said. His eyes were red. He slammed his fists into each other.

“Young’s dead,” I said. The tonelessness of my voice surprised even me. “The end.”

ALL-PRO
grabbed me by my shoulders.

“Goddammit, Chan! You’re not the only person who’s lost someone. What about your parents? What about
me?”

“So I’ll put you out of your misery too. My father owns a gun.” I put a nice layer of sarcasm on top of everything, to hide my true intentions, whatever they were.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Chan.” ALL-PRO’S eyes were practically boring through my head. His nostrils were white. I tried to put myself in his shoes, to experience
his
loss of Young, but I couldn’t. Mine loomed too large. Way too large.

“I’m sorry” was all I could say to him.

Suddenly Mikko leaned over and touched my hair, like you do with a little kid who needs soothing.

“We gotta be there for each other, buddy,” he said. “That’s all any of us can do.”

The house was beginning to fill with people. The Kims, the Lees, the Parks—Sujin’s parents. And Sujin. Those were the people who could afford to come out here. None of the people in Korea could.

Abogee had called his brother, Bong, now living in Milwaukee. He was supposed to be coming too.

All of them brought food. Korean food. I had basically stopped eating since the accident—we all had—but the longed-for smells of
kimchi
and
namul
vegetables were too much for me.

“My, you really like that, don’t you?” Mrs. Knutson put one birdlike hand on my shoulder as she peered at the red peppery, garlicky, sesame-seedy expanse of veggies, meat, and rice before me.

“Glug,” I said, mouth full.

Mrs. K. had been amazing in all of this, arranging the funeral at her church, cleaning the house, holding O-Ma’s hand for hours on end. O-Ma had barely come out of her room since the accident.

Now Mrs. K. was going to stay with a friend so we could have more room, especially when Bong showed up. We would all be meeting at the funeral.

Bong arrived by bus right into Iron River, at the Gas ’n’ Carry. Abogee and I went to pick him up.

He was the same old Bong, hair sticking up like a rooster’s comb, watery smile. He didn’t say anything other than “Hi” when we picked him up. Abogee didn’t say anything either.

O-Ma asked me if I might say a few words at Young’s funeral, but I refused. How could I possibly begin to tell anyone what it was like to lose a person who was more than just a sister—who was more like half of me? I didn’t know what to tell myself.

I said I’d let Sujin speak for me. She was good at putting things into pretty words; she’d be able to tell people what a good person Young was.

The house rustled with people moving to and fro, but there was barely a murmur of voices. I put on my sports coat and khakis, my one good outfit. As I dug around for my good shoes, I came across my soccer shoes, still covered in mud from the last game. That game seemed an eternity ago, and so small somehow. I couldn’t believe I had put so much time and energy into chasing after a stupid football.

When everyone was downstairs, I slipped into Young’s room. I almost held my breath when I was in there, panicky that I’d detect some scent, some trace of warmth from when my sister was alive. But there was none.

Her room was impeccable: the bed made, the desk clear with her books stacked, pencils neatly gathered in a
GO MINERS!
mug. The Korean quilts were completely smooth.

I spied what I’d come for, grabbed it, and ran, shutting the door tightly behind me.

O-Ma began to cry before we even reached the church steps. Abogee and I had to help her into the sand-colored building, the First Lutheran Church of Iron River. Her arm felt as light and fragile as a bird’s wing in my hand.

Donna’s parents were there, but Donna was still in the hospital. Mr. Goeske, our math teacher, kneeled in a pew, apparently praying. Rainey waved sadly at me when she saw me. So did
ALL-PRO.
I waved back, got into the viewing line.

I didn’t want to see my sister dead. The idea of an open casket is barbaric to me.

But there was something I knew I had to do.

When my turn came, I kept my eyes on the brass handles of the casket, and carefully laid Young’s flute in it.

*  *  *

The wailing.

Mrs. Park and Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Lee just started wailing,
“Aiii-gu!” “Aiii-gu!” “Aiii-gu!”
and flailing their arms around.

Other people in church, including the Reverend Mr. Hanson, jumped, then stared, like they weren’t sure what was going on.

“Aiii-gu!” “Aiii-gu!”

O-Ma had done this at Halmoni’s funeral, but not this loud, this intense. The air-raid noise went on without stopping for even a second, and I started to feel like it was going to burst my head from the inside.

“Aii-gu!” “Aii-gu!”

Make them stop! I wanted to shout. But when I looked over at O-Ma and Abogee, half expecting them to have their hands over their ears, I saw that they looked strangely calmed, as if these women were doing the noisy and messy grieving they couldn’t themselves.

Finally the Reverend Mr. Hanson ascended to the pulpit, and the women stopped.

The reverend said some words on death and dying, but I didn’t listen. He didn’t know Young at all. Everything he said reeked of fakeness—especially when he said things like “this young woman meant so much to all of us.”

Sujin got up next. She was carrying a Korean-English Bible, just like Abogee’s. She was pale, her black eyes liquid. She opened the Bible on its ribbon and began to read.

Jesus. Sujin. Corny, even in her grief.

I wished it would rain, or snow, or do something as we filed out for the trip to the cemetery. But the sky was clear. It wouldn’t be long, though, before the ground was completely frozen.

We all stood and stared at the casket. Everyone in our family was going to bow, in reverse order. The women started wailing, but more quietly this time, as I walked in front of the casket. Since I could remember, I had bowed to my parents every
Saebae,
New Year’s, so I sank to my knees and performed a bow without even thinking about how to do it. If Young’s spirit was truly around somewhere, she’d probably be laughing at me, practically shoving my face in the dirt for her.

O-Ma and Abogee went next, together. O-Ma, supported by Mrs. Park and Mrs. Lee, did a small dip; I could see tears silently flowing down her face. I was thinking of this Korean proverb that Halmoni had told me:
“When parents die, you bury them in the ground. When children die, you bury them in your heart.”

All of a sudden Abogee jumped up from the ground and threw himself on top of the casket. A few people gasped.

I was stuck to the spot. I was half hoping Abogee would howl and moan and shout and curse the gods so loud that the sky would split open.

But he was just crying, making tiny animal noises. I’d never seen his face look so shattered, so broken. The whole world seemed to stop. No one knew what to do.

Finally Mr. Park went up to Abogee and touched his shoulder. Mr. Park murmured something and then
gently supported Abogee as he led him away from the casket.

The casket was lowered, and each of us was given a chance to put a shovelful of dirt on top of it.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped. I looked, but no one was there. O-Ma and Abogee were both watching the casket, the tears now dry on their faces. There was no breeze.

Then it was over. Mikko came and gave me a bone-crunching hug. I held on to him like he was a tree. I was grateful he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t stand any more words.

“Who’s that guy?” Mikko stared at Bong, who was shoveling hotdish into his mouth about as fast as it would go.

“My uncle Bong, the first owner of Froggie’s.”

ALL-PRO
picked apart a piece of
potica
, this layered dessert bread that someone had brought.

“How come you guys came up here after he left?”

“Like I told you, Bong went crazy for some other get-rich-quick scheme and took off, leaving us holding the bag with the franchise.”

“So you didn’t know, then.”

“Know what?”

“That the cops were planning to raid the place. For drugs.”

“Holy—You’ve got to be kidding.” So that explained the nervous, edgy guys who kept coming into the store asking for Bong, or asking for some unknown product that we were supposed to have and know by its code name, huh-huh-huh or whatever.

“I guess when he skipped town, he ticked off the druggies who had outstanding orders. So they trashed the store.”

“Ah,” I said. “The cinderblocks.”

“What?”

“Oh, there were a bunch of cinderblocks in the middle of the store. I’d always wondered how they got there.”

“I can’t say for sure if there really was something going on,”
ALL-PRO
said, “but you know how word travels in town. So when you guys showed up, a lot of people thought we were in for more of the same—someone from the outside bringing drugs and stuff in.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Is that what you thought?”

“No, not after I got to know you,” he said. “Honest. Like I said, when you play on a team with someone, you end up knowing what their real character is like.”

“And?”

“I wouldn’t be your friend if you were a craphead drug dealer.”

Bong left later that day. What he had to rush back to, I didn’t know. On the car ride to the bus station I casually mentioned to him that people had come into the store looking for him. He ignored me.

“People keep asking for this stuff, if we carry it,
huh-huh huh,
or something like that.”

“I am very tired,”
Bong said.
“It has been a long day.”

“What about the rent?”
I pushed. “
We came here and found out you owed two months’ rent on your apartment.”

Bong smoothed his greasy hair, lit up a cigarette, and blew smoke out the window.

“Stop bothering your uncle,”
Abogee said.

“Did Uncle ever explain why the store was in such bad shape?” I asked Abogee on the drive back. His jaw tightened.

“I think he had some enemies in town.”
“The less you speak, the better,”
he said.

O-Ma and Abogee drove the L.A. guests to the airport in the next town, and then we were all by ourselves again.

Our house looked like a greenhouse. Even though we’d put a little notice in the obituary not to send stuff, people we didn’t even know brought enamel dishes wrapped up in white cloths that said
SWEDISH LADIES’ HOTDISH CLUB.
Some people sent cards to Mrs. Knutson with cash in them.