The Queen of Tears (27 page)

Cold rage was a funny feeling to her. It seemed like a contradiction. She was sitting there knowing that her mind was not clouded. It was sharp. In fact, she felt as if it were sharper than usual. The heat on the rims of her ears was gone, and she could calculate. What now? She would get her daughter out of this place. Police? No, her daughter would never forgive her. How could she make it up? She never could. But something had to be done; her rage demanded it. Kill him. It was the only option Soong had been thinking about since she’d received the phone call from her daughter. But her energy had to go elsewhere. It had to be spent putting her daughter back together.

There were at least a hundred and fifty Martinezes in the phone book. More than twenty started with some form of the letter “A.” “A.” “A.” “A.” “A D.” “A E.” “A R.” “Abraham.” “Al.” “Albert.” “Alfred.” “Alex.” “Alma.” “Andrew.” “Ann” “Anthony.” “Arlo…” She looked back up at “Andrew.” There was an address. Soong took out her address book and wrote it down. She closed the book and walked back to the chairs in the lobby. She curled up, hugging her purse. She suddenly felt very tired, and was soon learning that there were two places she could never fall asleep: hospitals and planes. She’d been up for two days, and was sure that her daughter had been awake longer than she had.

-5-

The doctors wouldn’t release her. Soong was the only person that Won Ju would talk to, which the doctors decided was insane. Soong moved out of the hospital and got a room at the California Hotel and Casino. And though she wasn’t a big drinker, she found herself at the bar every evening, sipping a scotch on the rocks, her husband’s drink, peering at the thick-necked bartender whom Soong found intolerably loud, obnoxious, and unrepentant.

She committed his schedule to memory. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 11 PM to 5 AM. She wondered whether this is what her husband had done as an American military intelligence officer in Korea. Spy. Spy with detachment, caution, and thoroughness. She still hadn’t called her husband since she’d been back in the States; in fact she talked to no one except Won Ju. She didn’t even talk to her son, whom she also saw at the hospital every day. She was proud of him. He loved his sister. But she didn’t know what to say to him. He hated her, but right now, she could not be concerned with that. She could not be concerned with any of her children except the first now. Soong realized then that she had only so much room in her heart, as if it could only concentrate on one thing at a time. How can one actively love more than one person at a time? She did not feel that it was possible.

At that moment, she was loving her daughter, and watching very closely the man that might have destroyed her. Immediately, she knew why he’d won his daughter’s confidence. He was friendly, outgoing, in fact, charming. He genuinely cared about those around him. It took Soong a half an hour of surveillance to discover his true talent: he was an actor. He was one of the millions walking the world with the talent, but not the luck. Besides, he was not handsome enough. He was dark, thick, and brutish. To Soong, he was disgusting. He lacked class. He looked to her like one of the lazy Mexican field hands that worked on her husband’s grape farm, disguised in a coatless tuxedo. She was aware of her racism, but it didn’t shame her. It was funny to her that she had to come and live in the United States to become a racist. Looking at the man who had nearly killed her daughter, Soong decided that all of Mexico could be wiped out in nuclear holocaust, and she would not care one bit.

She never spoke to him, except to order her drink. He’d tried to start up a conversation a couple of times, but she just looked at him blankly, communicating to him that she spoke no English. On this night, like every other night, Soong finished her drink, thought about it, reached for her wallet instead of her knife, and looked at him one last time before walking through the dullards that populated the casino who were hoping for luck, trying to force luck, which to Soong was as pointless as trying to force gravity to allow you to fly. She looked at him for the last time that night and smiled. She looked around the casino, listening to the promises made by the sirens and the sound of coins falling on stainless steel. Does he know how close to death he is? Does he know, as the Americans love to say, that his luck is about to run out?

Andy Martinez’ luck ran out the next day, the moment Soong found out that Won Ju was pregnant, and that she’d already decided to have an abortion. It amazed Soong that the same doctors who were proclaiming her daughter insane consented to the abortion immediately. When Won Ju told her, still curled up in the fetal position, Soong sat in the chair, shocked. Was anybody more unlucky than her daughter? A grandchild. Or as Won Ju called it, “An abomination.”

She saw hate for the first time in her daughter. It made Soong glad. She knew that her daughter would find strength enough in her hatred to leave the hospital. But the child had to go. Soong understood it. She understood that in order for her daughter to live, the child must die. An abomination. Soong herself was an abomination. She was an unwanted child of rape. Perhaps that was why the mother she’d never known died. In a situation like this, one often had to go. If Won Ju had decided to choose as Soong’s own mother might have done, Soong would’ve begged her daughter to reconsider. Yes, the child had to go. There would be other grandchildren. Soong and Won Ju would feed these future grandchildren with love as great as the rage they felt now. They would make up for it. But this one had to go. Soong looked at her daughter. They were thinking the same thing. Without saying goodbye, Soong walked away knowing that one would not be enough. Two had to pay the price for this. Because, though Soong was sure it would sound irrational to others, it made perfect sense to her. The one who created her grandchild also destroyed it. The destruction came before the conception. Time, for Soong at that moment, became a very complex, but very clear thing. Why not destruction before birth? The lack of the linear made perfect sense to her.

She had been sitting on the porch for hours. After the hospital visit, after the unceremonious death of her first grandchild, after she’d watched her daughter sit up and eat solid food for the first time since she’d been in Las Vegas, after she’d gone back to her hotel room and stared at the address of the near, undearly departed, after she’d showered and dressed as she would on any day, after she’d gone to the bar marching past the slot machines that were in soldier formation and watched Andy Martinez enjoy his final day of work, after she took a taxi to the latest address scribbled in her address book, she’d been sitting on the second step of the porch of the small, unassuming white house, staring at the neatly cut, dying light-brown grass on the tiny lawn divided in perfect halves by a flat, cement walkway, waiting for that time of day when it was not quite day, but not quite night either, when she knew Andy Martinez would walk up, shoes clicking on the hard, gray path, past the dead grass, the shoes clicking like a crisp heartbeat, stopping when they reached her. She imagined it without passion, glee, or fear. In fact, to her, it was not imagination, really, it was the clairvoyance she’d felt when she realized that time was not only linear, that it did have more than one dimension. This was going to happen as if it had happened already.

At five-thirty five, the grass had no residue. It was the first thing Soong noticed as Andy pulled up to the curb in front of his house. It was odd to her, the lack of morning dew. It was like the beer bottles she’d noticed in the casino. They didn’t sweat. The entire city seemed to lack condensation. She, herself, was not sweating one bit.

The second thing she’d noticed was the color of the sky. The sun was not visible, but present. The blue-black of night was being bleached by the approach of the star. Soong saw purple. It was a brilliant, cloudless, windless, starless purple that was all around her. These are the times when things happen, she thought. Sometimes you see it, and sometimes you don’t, but these are the times, the times of transition, the times when two giant forces such as day and night, heat and cold grate together, when things happen below.

Andy approached her frowning and without apprehension. “Who the hell are you? Oh, you’re a guest at the hotel? But what the hell are you doing here?” He was obviously both irritated and shocked, though he tried to hide it with shoddy acting.

Soong stood up and gave him her most radiant smile. One hand was in her coat pocket while the other waved him in closer, like she wanted to whisper a secret into his ear. Andy shrugged, leaned over, and moved in closer. He wasn’t that tall, but he was a lot taller than her. He casually moved the left side of his head to her mouth. His neck bulged like ripe fruit.

Soong was a little surprised by the fragility of human flesh. She’d cut open rotten oranges that had given more resistance to the blade.

-6-

In high school, in English, Donny had to read
The Great
Gatsby
. It was not as difficult for him as it was with other books in English. He couldn’t even get through one page of Shakespeare. But he finished
The Great Gatsby
. It was the first book he read in English in its entirety.

But when the teacher, an old white-haired woman who talked in whispers, told the class what the book was about, it was as if he hadn’t even read it. To her, it was a book about the danger of dreaming falsely, the danger of dreaming of money and beautiful girls, the danger of dreaming of becoming American. He knew better. The book was about the danger of being a big man and not having the gate locked to your swimming pool. In America, you must protect what is yours, and your own life is cluttered with the rest of your possessions. Lock them all in a closet. That was what
The Great Gatsby
was about.

They were not staying in Las Vegas, and he didn’t have any say about it. He never had any say about anything. Did he want to go to those snotty private schools in Korea? No. Did he want to have that old, bent-back servant woman raising him, the one who would eat chicken legs with one foot perched on the rim of a garbage can, looking ridiculous, like she was a warlord enjoying her booty? No. Did he want to come to America? No. Now, he did not want to leave Las Vegas, but his mother was taking control again. She was talking about Hawaii. It was crazy. She was packing up her belongings, which included her children, neatly folding them into a suitcase, locking everything up, and taking only what she wanted. Sometimes she wanted the kids, sometimes she didn’t. Donny thought of himself as one of her pets. He only went for the permanent moves.

And what happened when she’d left the last time, and like Jay Gatsby, didn’t lock the gate? His sister was hurt. And since she had been here, had she even spoken to him? No. She’d kicked him in the head instead. He was treated like a dog who urinated on the carpet one too many times. In public, no less.

He thought they could’ve had a happy life in Korea. His mother was a star. He would have been the child of a star. He could have been Tom Buchanan, the rich, well-respected man with the beautiful wife. Instead he felt like Jay Gatsby, or actually Jimmy Gatz. He was a tourist and had to fight on his own for everything he felt he should have had already. How can one be expected to do such a thing? How can you create a closet of your own when you yourself are locked in a closet?

Yes, Donny thought, he stole from his own mother. Yes, it was wrong. But did she not owe him that much? Did she still not owe him? It was like she kept borrowing and borrowing from him, and he didn’t have anything. It was like she kept borrowing, and he believed they both knew she would never be able to pay him back.

But I will get it back, Donny thought. He would squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until that rag of a woman would be so dry that she’d be stiffer than she was already. He would have his own closet with things locked away safely. In America, he supposed, considering what he’d read about and see on TV, these things are possible. A beautiful wife that others envy, a beautiful car that others envy, a beautiful life that others envy. He would become a big man. And he would lock the gate. Is it wrong to hate your mother? Probably. Is it relevant? He did not think so. Become a big man by any means necessary. He would do it, no matter how much it cost her. And as the Americans say, he mused, “So sue me.”

LEARNING TO FLY

chapter nine