A Cab Called Reliable (6 page)

On the seesaw, Torpedo Tits Tammy was laughing while holding poor Ruthie up in the air. It wouldn't be too long until Tammy got off and Ruthie came crashing down. The Chinese girls played Chinese jump rope, chanting the days of the week in Chinese. I tried to join them once, but they told me they were already an even four, and it was impossible to play with a fifth. The black girls double-dutched to
ma name ma name ma name ma name is Jolisa Jolisa ma boy ma boy ma boy ma boy is Lalarnie Lalarnie.
After they sang their names and their boyfriends' names, they broke into a chant about eating sardines with pork and beans. Eddie and Mitchell swung on the monkey bars all recess, trying to get blisters the size of silver dollars on their hands so they could show off and make money from the stupidheads who would pay a dime to touch the bubbles and a quarter from the dum-dums who wanted to pop them. Next to the monkey bars were the tetherball people, and next to them the four-square people, and the hopscotch people and the relay-race people, and the people who swung on swings and slid down slides.

I watched them all and continued to dig the toe of my shoe deeper into the grass. When I saw that my shoe was turning green, I wiped the leather with my sweaty hand, walked back toward the school, and sat against the brick wall where Sun Joo, the new Korean girl, read her Korean comic books. When she first walked into our class two weeks ago, she was wearing the same white blouse, dark blue pleated skirt, and pink sneakers labeled “Star Runner,” and I was embarrassed to have been born in the same country. She had large teeth, which made her mouth stick out like a horse, and she smelled of soy sauce and fermented beans. When Mr. Albert told me to sit next to her and talk in Korean because she hardly spoke any English, I told him I was unable to help because I had forgotten all my Korean words. Sun Joo, Ahn Joo. We shared the same middle name, and the others asked if we were from the same family. When I told them my name was Ahn Joo, and she was a Moon Gentile, the smart ones understood my joke and laughed.

In Korean I asked, “What're you reading?”

She looked up, startled. As she pushed her glasses back, she leaned against the brick wall and said, “Oh, so you do know how to speak Korean. And all along I had you for a dumb immigrant. How many years have you lived in America?”

“Long enough to know that those are ugly sneakers you have on,” I said.

As she gathered her comic books in her arms, she called me a deaf-mute and told me to go follow my American classmates around. She stood up, walked to the flagpole, sat near the daisies, opened her book on her lap, and laughed out loud. I wanted to stuff her open mouth with clumps of grass. I pulled some out and threw them in her direction.

From around the corner of the building, I could hear the voice of Stephanie Fenno. She was telling Lisa, Debbie, and Melanie a really funny story.

“Listen. Listen. There was this girl named Matilda. She was really fat. I mean
really
fat, and she was walking home from school. But these three boys, they were standing next to the flagpole, and they called her over. They said, ‘Hey Matti, come over here. We want to ask you something.' Matilda went over to them because she thought one of the boys was cute. He told her he'd give her a quarter if she climbed the pole. So she climbed it halfway and shouted, ‘Is this high enough?' And the boys said, ‘No, go higher. To the top.' So she climbed to the top and got her quarter.

“This happened for three days, and each time more boys came to watch Matilda climb the pole. When she went home and showed her mom the quarters, her mom got angry and told her to stop because the boys were only doing that to see her underwear.

“But the next day, when the boys told her to climb the pole again, she climbed it anyway. She showed the quarter to her mother, and her mother slapped her. ‘I told you they only want to see your underwear!' Then stupid Matilda said, ‘But Mom, I wasn't wearing any this time.'”

The girls broke into roars of laughter, and I imagined Debbie poking her elbow into Stephanie's side and Lisa covering her pretty mouth with her pretty hand. I crawled into a cool shade so that the girls' laughter sounded far away and Sun Joo could not see me. I pressed my knees together, wondering how the pole must have felt between Matilda's legs. I slowly squeezed my forearm between my thighs and pulled it up close to my crotch. Matilda wasn't so stupid. She knew what she was doing. I pressed my forearm harder against myself, but once I started to feel something down there, the bell rang.

*   *   *

“Ahn Joo, didn't you hear me? I was calling you,” Boris shouted, looking up at me.

“Nope.”

“I called you pretty loud,” he said, but I didn't answer him. Boris placed his hand on the twelve-foot pole in the center of Burning Rock Court. Trying to shake it, he called out, “Ahn Joo, what are you doing up there?”

“Can't you see for yourself? I'm hanging,” I shouted back.

“What are you hanging there for?”

“Because it feels good. This is how you make yourself go to the bathroom. I'm busy, Boris, so why don't you just go home and do whatever you do?”

“Don't you want to come over and play?”

“Boris, you don't have a leg, and two people can't hang together on one pole.”

As I watched Boris walk to his apartment, I told the pole that Boris was stupid to have a crush on Mrs. Chambers just because she listened to handicapped boys say tongue twisters all afternoon. She was married, too old for him, and probably had children our age. What did they talk about today? Old MacDonald moving mountains on Mondays?

I clung to the pole, smelled the metal, and picked at the rust with my thumbnail. Mr. Albert, Miss Martin, the librarian, the secretary, Mrs. Lubbock, the guidance counselor; they were all so damn nosy. What's it to them if I throw up my breakfast eggs all over their desk while I hand them my lunch money? What's it to them if I wear the same jumper every day of the week? What's it to them if my father can't meet them for conference time? I wish they'd stop asking me about my mother. How many times do I have to tell them that she's on vacation and can't chaperone those stupid field trips to the Kennedy Center, where everyone has to bring a bag lunch. How was I supposed to know that once I opened the foil, the
kimbop
would stink and leave seaweed pieces in my teeth?

I remember how my second-grade teacher stooped down and blinked her eyes when she asked me about brushing my teeth. Ann, have you been brushing your teeth? Do you know what I mean? She made a fist and shook it left and right next to her exposed teeth. And I smiled at her while answering in my head, No, Miss Martin, I don't know what you mean. We don't brush teeth in our country. We let them rot. See? I saw her. I saw how Miss Martin's eyes looked over at me when the lice inspector told her the entire class was clean except for one student. I saw how her eyes grew big with surprise when he whispered the description of the little black boy sitting at table four, instead of the Chinese girl at table six. I'm not Chinese. My father's not Chinese. My mother's not Chinese. Loo Lah's not even Chinese. She's my father's girlfriend.

My father wants her to be my new mother because the real one left. He found Loo Lah behind one of the cash registers in Arirang Market. She used to sell rice cakes, green and pink fish cakes, instant noodles, rock candy, and sacks of rice. Loo Lah used to bring my father and me food from the store. But once she came to live with us in our apartment, she quit her job at Arirang Market. Loo Lah now takes long hot baths, shortens and takes in the waist of the dresses my mother left behind, covers our beds with sheets—American style—listens to love songs, and watches television to improve her pronunciation, while my father welds silver fences around parking lots all morning and all afternoon. She cooks bean cakes, makes rice wine, pickles radishes, and makes rice with sweet corn, my father's favorite. He calls her Lah-yah. He tells me to call her Sister or Little Mother. But I can't.

I try not to call her at all. But when I find her hair, long and permed, all over the bathroom floor, I become angry and say, “Little Mother, clean up the bathroom floor or shave your damn head.” She cannot mother me. Loo Lah's only twenty-five years old. Although she feeds me, she cannot press her lips together as she chews her gum. She falls asleep on our sofa to the noise of the television. After eyeing me, she suggests I condition my hair with hot oil, pierce my ears, pluck my brows, and if my father is willing to pay, have folds surgically formed on my eyelids. She croons popular Korean songs about how a lover could so easily leave her beloved with the excuse of teaching him the sadness of love or with a good-bye note tucked in a bouquet of chrysanthemums or a drawerful of un-mailed love letters. When my father leaves us alone in the apartment, he hopes that on his return he'll find me sitting on the floor between her knees, while she brushes and braids my hair. But my hair is too short for braids. He hopes to find her frying bean cakes while I stand behind her stirring the batter. Instead, he finds a snoring Loo Lah lolling on our sofa.

All she knows how to do is bathe, shampoo, feed, and groom herself. Her nails are painted pale pink. Her brows are plucked and drawn in. Her face is massaged. She has the awful habit of picking at the mascara clumped on her eyelashes, which look to me like the legs of an ant. Loo Lah's not my mother. No matter what, she never will be. Loo Lah will have to pack her things and leave when my real mother and little brother return.

I remember when my father worked overtime all week and finally when Friday came around, he came home early, about four o'clock, with his paycheck. My mother turned off the stove, untied her apron, and went into her bedroom to change into her brown dress with the pink baby umbrellas on it. When she came out, her hair was long and wavy, and I could tell she had just brushed it. She was wearing red lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Min Joo and I put our shoes on and waited at the door, while our mother and father got ready. She walked from the radiator in the kitchen to the one in the living room, then to the one in our bedroom, looking for her pantyhose. The water in the bathroom was running, and we could hear our father humming. Min Joo and I, tired of waiting, played
Gahi Bahi Boh,
which the stupid kids at school called paper, rock, scissors.
Gahi Bahi Boh.
Min Joo held out a fist. I held out two fingers. Our mother and father came into the living room. Father was slapping his shaven cheeks, smiling and singing,
Hurry, let's go.

Min Joo always sat behind Mother, and I always sat behind Father. Min Joo wanted to play
Gahi Bahi Boh
some more, but I told him no. Then he wanted to play
Mook Jji Bbah,
but I told him no. I simply wanted to sit still and watch Pershing Market, Buckingham Theater, Rosenthal, AOK TV move along outside while I listened to the Carpenters singing about rainy days and Mondays always getting them down. When Father whispered how much he made this week, Mother smiled, so I thought this would be a good time to tell her what Mina's mother had said about Min Joo and me. She said Min Joo had Mother's personality, but looked like Father. I had Father's personality, but looked like Mother. When I said that, my mother turned her head toward me and snapped,
So you really believe you look like your mother?
I sank into my seat and sang,
Hanging around, hanging, nothing to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

When we got to the restaurant, Father ordered four Gino Giants, four medium french fries, four medium Cokes, and a small coleslaw for Mother because she had to have a side dish with her meal. Father wanted to sit at a table next to the men's room so that he could watch his Ford Fairlane from his seat, but Mother said the smell was making her lose her appetite. So Min Joo and I moved to another table, and I waited for her to give me my Gino Giant. She picked up the tray of food. Father lit a cigarette. She walked toward the table Min Joo and I had chosen. Mother's purse slid off her shoulders and landed on her forearm. The tray shook. One of the Gino Giants, which was still in its wrapping, fell to the floor. She picked it up, blew on it, and put it in front of me. That was the only time she ever served me first.

I was born first. The firstborn was supposed to get everything first. So why? Why did she always buy him new pants and shirts? Why did she feed him first? Why did he get the cotton quilts, while I slept with sheets? Why did he get a two-wheeler when he didn't even know how to ride? I knew the plums were hidden for him.

I remember when Min Joo broke the vase Grandmother sent from Korea. Mother had told him not to bounce balls in the living room, but he did. When she heard the vase crack, she rushed in, leaving the water running, and she yelled,
Ahn Joo-yah, go find the back scratcher!
I knew the stick was on her dresser, so I quickly fetched it for her. I said,
Here, Mother.
She looked at me and said,
That was awfully fast. So you want to see your brother beaten, huh?
And she pushed me against the closet doors.

Why did she give me the broken pancakes? Why did she thin my milk with water, not his? Why did Min Joo get to eat some of Joon's applesauce, not me? Why did she brush his hair and not mine? Mine was longer. Why did she take Min Joo with her, and not me?

I remember when I turned nine, my mother made me seaweed soup with mussels. I wanted to thank her by eating it all up while it was steaming hot, but I did not know the steel bowl would burn my fingers. I dropped the bowl, and the soup spilled all over my lap. My mother struck me across my right ear and told me I was an ungrateful, clumsy daughter. That evening I saw her knitting in front of the television. I sat near my mother's feet, watched with her, waiting for the right moment to tell her how sorry I was for spilling her soup. We sat quietly for a while, until she jerked my shoulder back to take a look at my face. My mother saw me crying, and she pointed the knitting needles at my nose and asked,
What did I ever do to make you so miserable?
When I didn't answer, she yelled,
Ahn Joo-yah!