The Queen of Tears (26 page)

“Not yet,” he said.

Andy stood up and walked to his turntable. He pulled out a record and put it on. The sudden sound made Won Ju jump. It was a song she’d remembered. It was the Four Tops, “Can’t Help Myself.” She liked the song, but she was still hearing things in slow motion. It sounded like the song was being played at half-speed, and though the voices started crisper, they slowed until the sound became grotesque. It was as if the singers were melting. They were no longer professing love. They were moaning like dying animals.

That’s when she noticed Andy. He was sitting right next to her, putting his mouth on hers. She felt his tongue slide into her mouth. The slimy texture disgusted Won Ju, so she tried to push away. But one of his hands was palming the back of her head, while the other was moving up her white dress. She put both her hands on Andy’s head and pushed with all her might. Finally she managed to get a half a foot of distance between their faces, and said, “Take me home, please.” The tension in her throat told her that she’d screamed it, but it sounded like a whisper to her. Andy smiled and tore her underwear off with the hand under her dress. The sound of moaning animals became unbearable for her, and she knew she had to get out or she would be driven mad. As his face neared hers, she took close notice of his left eyeball. It looked so vulnerable, almost like a grape. She wanted to pop it, so she jammed her thumb into it. The head flew back, then a horrible scream followed. Just as she got up to scramble for the door, a fist came flying towards her. It didn’t hurt. But she found herself dazed on the other side of the room.

She tried to get up, but the screaming was getting closer and closer, so she instinctively crumbled into the fetal position. She felt another stunning blow on her face, and her cheek hit the floor hard. It was linoleum, she noticed. Then there was a weight on her. She fought hard against it, but she felt like she was drowning in the middle of the ocean. Despite how hard she tried to get the water off of her, it was impossible. Before she blacked out, she noticed another voice joined the quartet in the painful moaning. She wondered who it was as her face was being pushed into the sticky linoleum floor.

* * *

When she woke up, she was curled up in the passenger seat of Andy’s car. They were parked outside of her apartment. It was still dark. Her entire body ached. She looked down. There was blood all over her dress. Andy leaned over her. She flinched. He opened the door. “Now remember,” he said, “don’t say a goddamn word. You remember my friend in the casino? I could have you and your brother killed,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Buried out in the desert.”

Won Ju scurried out of the car, ignoring the pain. She ran up the stairs, breaking a heel. She didn’t stop to pick it up. She opened the door and headed straight for the bathroom. Turning on the shower, and looking at the bruises on her arms, legs, and face, she asked herself, how am I going to go to work tonight? She entered the shower and sat down. She fell asleep and felt like she didn’t want to wake up again.

The frantic knocking on the door woke her up. “C’mon, Sis, I really have to piss bad. By the way, where’s breakfast?”

She didn’t answer and closed her eyes, trying to go back to sleep. The water was cold by then, but she didn’t care. The knocking continued. “Are you O.K.?”

It was an interesting question. She felt O.K. as long as she didn’t move. She would be fine if she never had to stand up, open her eyes, and talk ever again. She stayed perfectly still and listened to Donny attempt to break the door down. After several tries, he stopped. Then about a minute later, she heard someone tinkering with the lock. Won Ju opened her eyes. Donny came in holding his shoulder with one hand and a butter knife in the other. He stood over her. “I’m calling an ambulance,” he said, as he ran out of the bathroom. Won Ju couldn’t bear it anymore. She closed her eyes, hoping Donny wouldn’t trip and stab himself with the knife. Then she noticed something peculiar. She was grinding her teeth. She tried to stop, but couldn’t. It was a weak effort, though. Especially after she realized that the slow, methodical, pendulum that was her lower jaw was her only comfort.

-4-

When Soong’s first husband had been brought back to her home, cold and already dead, she hated what she later considered the primitiveness of South Korea during that time. What if there had been ambulances? What if there had been emergency rooms? Who knows? Her husband may have lived for another twenty years. When Soong had first arrived in the United States, that was one of the things about her new country that appealed to her. People could be saved here.

However, when her second husband took permanent residence in a Long Island hospital, she began to consider her first husband’s death a merciful one. It had been then that she’d realized hospitals and emergency care did not prolong life; they prolonged death. They also cost a fortune. Medicare covered eighty percent of her second husband’s medical bill, but even with that, as the bills came piling in, it was as if they were staying at the Ritz Carlton. After her second husband died, and the bills continued to roll in, Soong realized that things needed to be liquidated. The store had to go. The house had to go. By the time she’d been ready to fly to Hawaii, she only had four bags of belongings. It seemed to Soong that in America, death was not only a black-hooded figure holding a scythe, he had a calculator hidden somewhere in that robe, too: the patron saint of repossession.

But she’d learned to hate hospitals years before that. When Soong arrived in Las Vegas, she hated the hospital before she even saw it. She did not even want to be in the country. Things had been good in Korea. She ran a restaurant that practically ran itself; she appeared in several movies in supporting roles; her star power, which she told herself she never liked anyway, was long gone because of the fickleness of audiences and the army of younger actresses that rose after her time. Chung Han was supportive, never oppressive. And she kept up her responsibilities. She sent money to Henry bimonthly. It was enough to keep the farm aboveground and support Darian. Why would she come back? Her two eldest children were adults, at least she’d been an adult at their age, and her American daughter was being taken care of by her American husband. What could she contribute to the life of that child but money? Darian had the adoring and ever-present love of one parent and the financial support of the other. Soong supposed that this would be enough for her. It was more than she’d ever had. It was more than her two eldest children ever had. Soong had begun telling herself that she did not need to return. They were all better off with her in a place where she could make money.

But with one phone call, she’d been boarding a plane in Seoul. Now, two days later, she was in Las Vegas, dodging the merciless sun rays, attempting to find a shaded path to the entrance of the hospital, where her daughter needed her. And when she located the room, which she would later realize was in the psychiatric ward, and saw her skinny son with huge hair, making a ridiculous and futile attempt to grow sideburns, leaning against the bed where her broken daughter lay, she knew that she would probably not get back to Seoul ever again.

Donny stood up, “I think she was mugged,” he said. Then he shrugged, not looking at his mother. “I don’t know why she’s like this. She has only spoken once since I found her. She asked for her purse, and that’s when she called you.”

Nobody had told Donny what had happened. Soong took a chair and dragged it next to the bed. “They only let me visit an hour a day,” Donny said.

She sat down. “Leave,” she said.

Donny quickly responded. “You have your nerve. You leave us and go back home. Now you come back and think you can tell me what to do. I’m surprised Won Ju even called you. You have been dead to us. We were doing just fine without you. You should leave. We do not need you.”

It sounded rehearsed. Soong wondered how much time her son had spent thinking about what he was going to say to her. He’d probably also spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not he was going to say it at all. She was glad that he’d said it. It demonstrated strength to her. She turned to him. “Please, son. Just wait outside. I need to talk to your sister alone.”

Donny was about to say something else, but seemed to change his mind. As he walked out, he said, “Hurry up. The nurse will kick us out soon. This is a crazy ward. We cannot stay here too long.”

Soong turned to her daughter. She was curled in a fetal position with her back facing her mother. Her hair was sprawled out on the pillow. The strands looked so stiff, like fossils on the white pillowcase. She had an IV tube running from her arm. Soong knew that she probably wasn’t eating, and she was overcome by one feeling: rage. She stood up and walked to the other side of the bed. Won Ju was staring vacantly at the wall. “Who?” Soong asked.

Soong was surprised that her daughter responded immediately. Still keeping her eyes focused on an empty portion of the white wall, she said, “Andy Martinez. He works with me at the California. I don’t know how I am going to go back to work. I have to go pretty soon, though, or they will fire me.”

“I will call the police.”

Won Ju’s eyes rolled up at Soong. “Please, don’t. Please, don’t. Just take me home, please.”

“I will kill him.”

Won Ju didn’t say anything. She closed her eyes. Then she said, “If you call the police, he will kill us. He said so. He knows some important people.”

She was like a child. Soong was shaking. She fought with herself to maintain control. She wanted to rip the entire world apart, even her curled-up daughter. She closed her eyes. Then she realized that she’d been holding her breath since she last spoke. She let out a powerful breath. “You and your brother will go back to California. I will take care of things here, and meet you there.”

Won Ju’s eyes remained closed. “Why can’t we go and live someplace nice. I want to live someplace nice. Like maybe Hawaii.”

“Wherever you want to go. We will all pack our things, me, you, Chung Yun, your stepfather and Darian. And we will go wherever you want to go.”

“Hawaii.”

Soong bit her lip. She remembered something. It wasn’t a thing that could have possibly prevented this, but it suddenly became very important to her. “Now you have to listen to me carefully. Years ago, I gave you something. It was a silver knife. Do you remember? I left it at your stepfather’s house for you.”

“I remember.”

“Where is it?”

“You have to promise me you won’t get mad.”

“I promise.”

“I mean it.”

“I promise.”

“Chung Yun brought it here with us. Then he sold it. We needed the money…”

Soong was heading out the door. She pushed it open and saw her son sitting on the floor. She began to kick him as hard as she could. He curled up, yelling, “What did I do?”

One of her heels broke on his head. She continued to kick violently. She was screaming, “You did this! You did this!”

The nurses came running, attempting to restrain her. Despite the fact that these nurses were experts in restraining, and twice her size, it took three of them to get her off her son. She heard her daughter screaming from behind the door, “You promised! You promised!”

The voice was hoarse and a lot softer than Soong’s. It took a couple of seconds for Soong to soak in her daughter’s words. Suddenly, they sent a chill through her. She had promised. She had promised years ago that she would not let this happen to her daughter. She had lied. A feeling of crushing self-hatred filled her. She felt faint, but managed to remain standing, with the help of the nurses. Donny stood up. He glared at his mother. “I didn’t do this, you did. And you know it. You know it.”

Soong looked at the nurses who held her against the wall. They were obviously disoriented because they couldn’t understand a word the three of them were saying. For all they knew, Soong, Donny, and Won Ju could have been threatening to kill each other. Donny shook his head. Blood was trickling down his forehead. One of the nurses approached him. “I hate you,” he said.

“Where did you sell it? Where?”

Donny smiled. “You are mad because I sold some of your jewelry and old trinkets. You greedy bitch. Always money.” He reached into his back pocket. The nurse approaching him paused. He pulled out his wallet. He threw a slip of paper at Soong. Despite the fact that he seemed to throw it as hard as he could, the slip only traveled a foot from his hand, then floated downward like a feather. “Take it. Your daughter is sick in there and all you care about is your stuff. I hate you.”

Soong broke loose from the nurses, limped toward the slip on her one broken heel, and picked it up. She walked back into her daughter’s room, while the nurses gently tried to restrain her. She picked up her purse, looked at her daughter who was now sitting up and staring at her. Soong walked out. “I’ll be back for you,” she said.

Donny was holding gauze on his forehead. She shook her head. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t. She began to walk out of the hospital, with the nurses following her. She ignored them and made it to the exit. She marched out into the sun, calling the first taxi she saw. She gave the cab driver the slip of paper. “Right away, ma’am,” he said.

By the time she’d gotten the silver knife back, and returned to the hospital, Soong had cooled down. She was glad that she only had to pay two hundred dollars for it. It didn’t really surprise her, though. How could he know that he had sold a priceless Korean antique older than this country for two hundred dollars? It wasn’t a neoclassical painting, nor was it a doubloon from a sunken pirate ship, it was a slightly tarnished, unassuming silver knife, worn down by time.

After regaining most of her composure, she was also amazed at the need she’d felt to get the knife back. Why? she asked herself. She felt like a child awakened in the middle of the night, looking frantically for that doll or blanket that had been with her all of her life. Soong considered it very pathetic. An old woman feeling the need to have a symbol of security in her hands when security had already been decimated by a rude awakening, a nightmare that did not disappear with the arrival of consciousness. But despite the fact that she knew she was being irrational, she could not help but be comforted by the knife in her purse as she sat in the hospital lobby.