Re Jane (23 page)

A bridge stretching across that expanse of water glittered in the distance. Later I would learn that it wasn't the old Yeongdo drawbridge, but in that moment I imagined it was. Just as I imagined I was staring out at the little cluster of shacks at the foot of that bridge, where my mother had once lived. And in all of my Korean sojourn, that moment was the closest sensation I'd ever felt to coming back home.

* * *

The next morning, eyes still blurry with sleep, I roused Changhoon, climbed on top of him. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the waves of discomfort.

But they never came. Changhoon flipped me so he was on top, perhaps to save me from doing all the work. The second I began to wince—sex wouldn't start to feel enjoyable until much later, once we became accustomed and attuned to each other's rhythms—he'd ease up with gentler movements.

After he came, his face shone with sweat. Panting, he petted my hair.
“Jane-ah,”
he said.
“Way to end things.”

I started, then realized that my brain had blipped—it was doing that literal-translation thing again.

What I think he'd actually meant was,
That was out of this world.

T
hat summer our national team enjoyed a winning streak. Each victory—each draw, even—was met with an ever-escalating frenzy. We kept advancing until we lost to Germany. Our loss coincided with the anniversary of the Korean War—two tragedies twinned together, palpable in the very air of the streets. And just like that, the revelry ended, the waves of fans ebbing away.

* * *

The monsoon season came and went, followed by a thick, claustrophobic humidity that coated the city like a damp woolen blanket. But when summer reached its end, the oppressive heat lifted. As fall swept in on a cool, refreshing breeze, I received an e-mail from Nina. “
So
over everything here,” she wrote. “Is there a Gino's in Seoul we could catch up at? That is, if your offer's still on the table.”

I didn't think Nina would actually take me up on my offer to visit Korea, though it was one I renewed at the end of each e-mail. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I had dismissed Nina as too provincial. I could hardly picture her leaving the neighborhood to board the subway to Queens, let alone a plane to another country halfway around the world.

“She's your best friend. We
must
show her a good time,”
Changhoon said over dinner one night, with the same dogged determination he mustered for his vocabulary logs and his daily calisthenics (something he did every morning since mandatory military service). He pulled out his phone and furiously punched keys.

“Maybe not
best
friend—”

“Oh! Just heard back from my army buddy Yongsu!”
Changhoon scrolled through the message.
“He just checked with his co-worker, who checked with his foreigner English-teacher friend, who knows all the hot spots. But that foreigner friend hasn't gotten back to us yet.”

“You just sent that text barely one minute ago.”

Changhoon's phone buzzed again, bearing messages from other friends. He'd gone through his entire social network in less time than it took me to compose a single text in Korean. Now I understood why Emo would get so impatient when I failed to respond to her immediately.

“Everyone agrees: We should take her to Itaewon. She'll probably feel more comfortable around other foreigners.”

Itaewon. Where Sang had warned me not to go. Where my mother had met my father.

“Why Nina will want to come to Korea only to see American faces—”
I started to say when Changhoon's cell vibrated once again.

“
Fi-
nally! Yongsu's co-worker's foreigner friend got back to us.”
Changhoon was working himself into a frenzy. I touched his arm.
“No need to go
obuh.
”

Obuh—
presumably from the English “overboard”—was another adopted foreign word that had drifted its way into Korean. It shed its extraneous second half, its harsh Western contours. As it circulated from tongue to tongue, the word grew smooth and round, like a pebble washed up on shore. Now it made its home here, assimilated among its Korean counterparts. But the word was no longer recognizable from its native form.

But Changhoon was pushing aside his bowl of rice, frenziedly typing notes on his phone with his thumbs.
“Here's where we should take her for round one. . . .”

* * *

Nina flew in on the red eye from New York, just as I had. But I had been at my lowest point then. And now I had a new home, a new city. A family. A
boyfriend.
I was nothing like the Jane I had left behind.

“Jane-ah,”
Emo said on the drive to Incheon Airport.
“You know you're responsible for everything while your friend's here.”

I knew what she meant:
Don't let Nina out of your sight.

Emo took her eyes off the road to give me a stern look.
“Did you hear me?”

“Yes,”
I answered.

At the airport I almost didn't recognize Nina when she came through the gate. She wore dark-rinse fitted jeans, a T-shirt with a printed design, and a pair of dark leather sneakers that looked like Sam Surati's bowling shoes. The old Nina used to wear light blue flared jeans and chunky-heeled Steve Maddens during the day, spandex minidresses by night. That Nina also wore heavy makeup. But instead of the usual dark liner tracing her mouth, her lips were now nude. Gone, too, were the thick gold hoops that hung heavy from her earlobes. Her once iron-straightened hair now framed her face in loose waves.

“What the . . . !” I said, throwing my arms open to her.

“Oh, God, please don't say hipster,” Nina pleaded as we hugged tightly. “I was going more for Banana Republican.”

When we broke apart, she looked me up and down. “Whoa, what's with the makeup and heels at three in the morning, or whatever time it is over here?”

I spun around. “How do I look?”

“You look!” she said.

I felt a little slighted that she didn't actually offer a compliment, but Nina was already turning to greet Emo. She tucked her body stiffly into a bow as Emo held out her hand. Seeing Emo do this, Nina changed course and stuck out her hand as Emo retracted hers and tipped her head slightly into a bow. They laughed.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Re,” Nina said. I was surprised by the nervous tinge to her voice. “Thanks for letting me stay with you. I'm sorry you had to come get me in the middle of the night.”

I wasn't sure how much English Emo actually understood, but she had a wide smile plastered across her face. She kept nodding and saying, “No purobohlem! No purobohlem!”

“Oh! Before I forget—” Nina reached into her backpack (Nina with a backpack instead of her usual fake black leather tote?) and pulled out a white pastry box tied with red-and-white string. It was from Gino's. “They're cookies. From a very famous bakery in my neighborhood,” she said in slowed-down speech.

“You know the way to my aunt's heart,” I told her.

Emo accepted the box from Nina and took a whiff. “I diet!” she said, but she was smiling.

“You? Nah!” Nina swatted the air. “You look like a woman.”

Emo said to me,
“Your friend, even though she's a foreigner, you can tell she had a good family education.”

I pointed to the Gino's box. “There better be cannolis in there,” I said to Nina. My tongue found its natural footing in English—I'd forgotten how much it had atrophied during my time in Korea.

She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “First off, Jane, it's ‘canno
li,'
no
s.
Second, smuggling cannoli fourteen hours out of Brooklyn? That's just . . .
wrong.
”

“Man!” I feigned annoyance. “That's the only reason I invited you.”

“I ain't your cannoli mule,” Nina said, index finger swaggering through the air.

I jerked my thumb at the loudspeaker. “You hear that? That's them calling your return flight.”

Nina and I both broke into laughter—deep, rumbling laughs. We hugged again.

“I missed you!” she said.

“Me, too!” But when I looked over at Emo, she was shaking her head at me. I didn't know what I'd done exactly that she disapproved of, but I could read her expression. And it said,
You, on the other hand, did
not
receive a good family education.

* * *

When we arrived at the apartment, Emo insisted on heating up some fish stew. Nina politely finished the whole bowl. After she unpacked her things and freshened up, I took her to Café Michelangelo.

“I still can't believe you're here,” I said over our cups of caffe latte. “You've changed.”

“Look who's talking,” she said, fluttering a hand at me. “Jane, it's just me. You didn't need to get all dolled up.”

“Like I did it for you,” I said at first. Then, glancing around, I lowered my voice. “Honestly, though—people here expect you to dress up more.”

Nina's eyes swept the room. “But that girl's not. And that one. And that one.”

I knew what Emo would have said:
Those girls aren't making the most of their potential.

I made my voice light and airy and changed the subject. “So what do you want to do? Get some sleep so you don't crash later? Or power through the day? Or . . .”

Nina fished out a book from her bag. A million little Post-its fluttered in the wind. Its cover read
Seoul for New Yorkers: The Definitive Guide.
A picture of Namsan Tower was sandwiched between the Twin Towers.

“What an awful cover,” I told her.

“It came out right around 9/11,” she said, shaking her head with pity. “What could they do? Retract the thousands of copies after the fact? You can't help but feel bad for whoever published it.”

“So you bought it anyway.”

She pointed to the orange price sticker. “It was in the bargain bin,” she said. Then she let out a laugh; it sounded bitter. “Speaking of bins: Joey Cammareri and me split up last month.”

“What!” Nina's last e-mail—the one before she wrote about flying over to Korea—had gushed about him. “Why didn't you tell me sooner?”

“I wanted to tell you in person.”

So that was why she had come. Not to see me but to run away from her ex-boyfriend. Nina looked from my face to the book down on the table.

“So . . . what happened?” I asked.

She scraped away the price tag with her fingernail. “Whatever, it doesn't matter anymore.” Abruptly she opened her book again. “Anyway, these are the neighborhoods I want to go check out.”

I flipped through Nina's flagged pages, marveling at her organization. Here were her marked entries:

MYEONGDONG
:

A toss-up between Times Square and Rockefeller Center, this shopping mecca is packed with more Japanese tourists than a Hello Kitty store. Stop for lunch at Myeongdong Kalguksu for its famed knife-cut noodle soup . . . but you'll have as much luck finding the “original” as you will Ray's Famous.

INSADONG
:

Combine Greenwich Avenue's quaint nod to the Motherland (think:
Tea and Sympathy, Myers & Keswick
)
with Montague Street's landmarked charm and you get Insadong Road. Come here for the traditional teahouses, where one thimbleful of persimmon-and herb-infused
cha
will set you back eight bucks.

SAMCHEONGDONG
:

Sleek SoHo galleries mingle with ye olde
hanok
architecture in a surprising East-meets-West, yin-yang harmony.

HONGDAE
:

Pratt types and Chelsea club kids alike hang in this wannabe East Village hood (read: Williamsburg). Strut down Gutgosipungil, aka The Street You Want to Walk Down. (
Really.
) You'll get some serious Astor Place déjà vu.

DONGDAEMUN
MARKET
:

Buyer beware: Four-for-a-dollar socks and China-made trinkets galore await in this ginormous flea market.

“So,” Nina said, rubbing her hands together. “I can't wait to meet your new man! What's he like?”

“Changhoon's great,” I said. “He's planned a huge night out for you featuring not one, not two, but
five
rounds of funnery! Spreadsheets may or may not have been involved.” I threw my hands up in the air for added flourish. I was laying it on thick—deliberately—and Nina knew it.

“God, you're such a cornball,” she said. “At least that hasn't changed.”

Nina knew that about me, and I realized how refreshing it was to talk to someone with whom I had a shared history. “But seriously, Changhoon—well, you can call him Chandler—might've gone a tiny bit
obuh
—overboard—but it's all good.”

“Who knew having fun would be this much work?” Nina said. “But . . . it's all stuff
you
want to do, too, right?”

I shrugged. “I'm up for whatever.”

“Okay, but I'm warning you—not sure how much steam I've got left in me.” She downed the last of her cup. “Coffee here's
expensive.
” They had cost six dollars apiece. “This stuff better last me all day.”

* * *

That evening, after Nina and I checked out some of the tourist sites marked in her book, we made our way to Itaewon. I had yet to check out the neighborhood, and not just because I was dutifully heeding Sang's warnings. The truth was, after my trip down south with Changhoon, I'd started to create a more forgiving portrait of my mother. Busan had been a time of her innocence, and I didn't want to sully that image. So I kept putting it off, putting it off, the way Devon used to push her Chinese textbooks to the bottom of her homework stack.

Here was what
Seoul for New Yorkers
had to say about Itaewon:

This “foreigner-friendly” nabe is now chockablock with the latest fusion lounges, clubs, and restaurants more multi than a Benetton ad. Recently spotted: Pae Byun and Ahn Jaeni (the Korean Brad Pitt + Jennifer Aniston) canoodling at JJ's. Duck into the back alleys for your fake Prada fix or bootleg K-dramarama videos.

And then, as a postscript:

Those seeking carnal pleasures, worry not: Hooker Hill can still be found in the back alley across from the Hamilton Hotel.

When Nina and I emerged from the 6 train station, here was what Itaewon actually looked like: pops of white and black and brown faces, mixed into the sea of Korean. Here and there soldiers in camouflage sprinkled the crowds—rough-necked, clean-shorn, and impossibly young. African men in suits spoke softly into their cell phones. It was the first time since my arrival that I saw anything other than a steady stream of Korean people. The low, squat cement buildings were smudged with smog, and their old tarp awnings bore a mixture of Korean and English writing. The wooden stalls selling decorative fans, chopsticks, and leftover World Cup paraphernalia spilled onto the sidewalks. The occasional sleek coffee shop or bistro dotted the stretch of tired façades. There was a familiar grittiness in the air. I could have been emerging straight from the 7 train station: Itaewon looked just like Main Street, Flushing.