Triplines (9781936364107) (5 page)

A few kids from their class approach. Frankie sees them and pushes Lenny. He says, “You going to pay me back or what?”

“I didn't do anything,” Lenny replies, his voice whiney.

Frankie curls his lip. “Speak English, Chinaman. What'd you say?”

Lenny remembers his speech exercises—Sally sells seashells at the seashore. “I did not do anything,” he says more slowly, concentrating.

“Are you retard or something? Give me my money.”

Frankie moves closer, intending to push Lenny again, but this time, remembering his father's lesson, he grabs Frankie's arms, pulls him off balance, and falls back on the ground, rolling him onto Lenny's feet and kicking him over and onto the sidewalk. Frankie is heavy, but because of the momentum Lenny sends him sprawling onto the concrete. Frankie howls in pain. Lenny jumps up, steps forward and kicks him in the ribs. Frankie starts to cry.

Lenny kicks him again, hard, and then backs away. The three other kids across the street watch this. One of them says, “He knows kung-fu!”

Frankie's elbow bleeds, his books fluttering across the sidewalk, and he curls up to hold his ribs. “I'm telling on you!” he cries. “I'm telling!”

Knowing that the other kids are still watching, Lenny says, “If you tell, I'll kill you.” He then does a kung-fu salute he learned from imitating the movies—fist and open-hand coming together, and a slight bow. He walks away, Frankie still crying, and the other kids whispering how Lenny must be a kung-fu master.

The news spreads quickly, and by mid-day, when he joins the other “walker” students filing out of the school to head home for lunch, he notices a few kids talking to each other and glancing at him. One comes up to him and asks, “What degree black belt are you?”

“What?” Lenny replies, not sure what he means.

“I heard what you did to Frankie. What kind of black belt are you?”

Lenny replies that he isn't any belt. “In my school we don't give out belts.”

“Is it kung-fu?”

“A mix of kung-fu, judo, and tae kwon do.”

“Cool. Just wondering,” the boy says and reports back to his friends.

The teacher's aide opens the door and waves them out. She doesn't check for their passes, and since Lenny doesn't have one he always expects to get caught. But she recognizes him, and greets him with a smile and a nod of a head.

It's spring and the trees are beginning to sprout green, the dogwoods to bloom, and dandelions to pop up on the manicured lawns. Lenny's mother packed him a cold
mandu
sandwich—leftover dumplings squashed in between two soggy slices of bread with ketchup—and juice box and a Twinkie. He bites into the sandwich, which tastes good but the soggy bread crumbles in his hands. He feeds the crows.

The flush of his new notoriety elates him. He wonders what else his father could teach him. The judo flip worked flawlessly, and he's now more convinced of his father's commando background.

Walking a different route, he passes a strip mall on Merrick Road and sees a row of pay phones. He still has another thirty minutes before lunch period ends, so he makes a collect call to another number close to his own.

When the operator asks for his name, he tells her, “Frankie Williams.”

The woman on the other line asks, “Frankie who?”

“Williams,” he replies.

The woman laughs. It's a delicate, tickling laugh, and she says, “Sure, I'll accept the charges.”

This catches him off-guard, and when the operator tells him to go ahead, he stutters with, “Uh, hello.”

The woman says, “Well, Frankie Williams, you sound pretty young. Do you do this a lot, make collect calls?”

“Not really.”

“Is that your real name?”

“No.”

“My name is Nancy. What's yours?”

“Lenny.”

“Well, Lenny, do your parents know you do this? Why aren't you in school?”

“Lunch period.”

“Lenny, you sound like a sweet kid. Maybe you should be more constructive with your time. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“Read a book. Play sports. Study. Okay? If you want to
call me again, you can, but don't call collect.”

“Really?”

“Sure, why not? Do you remember my number?”

“Kind of.”

She repeats her number, and then says, “Be good. No more collect calls, okay?”

“Okay.”

She hangs up, and Lenny recites her number aloud a few times. He decides to have a crush on her.

The Valley Stream Methodist Church sits near a freeway, a steep driveway descending into a narrow parking lot with a view of the small cemetery, tombstones propped up in front of the parking spaces. The church has an American congregation that finishes at eleven, and when Lenny's family arrives in the middle of the shift change, they see the Caucasian churchgoers in their Sunday suits and dresses climbing into their cars as the black-haired Korean congregation begins filtering in.

His parents head to the main worship service, while Lenny and Mira walk tentatively into the children's service upstairs. Ed conveniently disappeared earlier in the morning.

A few Korean American kids stare at Lenny and his sister as they take their seats in the back. The young woman with thick eyeglasses at the front of the room speaks in English with a heavy Korean accent, and Lenny has trouble understanding her. She switches to Korean, and he's completely lost.

Then a boy with a crew cut stands up and begins reciting something in Korean. Mira looks at Lenny, puzzled. He shrugs his shoulders. When the boy finishes, he sits down and a girl next to him wearing a white and blue summer dress stands up and recites the same thing. This continues down the row, and Lenny realizes that everyone seems to know this. He turns back to the doorway, wondering if he can leave without attracting attention.

Mira whispers, “What are they doing?”

“I think they memorized a bible quote.”

She looks stricken, her face turning pale. A few of the kids stumble with the memorization, but everyone has to speak. Mira becomes more anxious as her turn approaches. She balls her hands into small fists and presses them into her thighs. The girl next to her stands up and recites the quote flawlessly.

When it's Mira's turn she looks to Lenny desperately. He stands up and tells the teacher, “My sister and I are just visiting today.”

The teacher asks something in Korean.

He shakes his head. “We don't speak it. We're just visiting.”

“Can you say the Lord's Prayer in Korean?” she asks.

“No.”

“Can you say it in English?”

Even though Lenny once learned it at the Sunday school across the street from his house, his mind blanks. “We're just visiting. Let the next people go.”

He sits down. Everyone stares. He turns to the boy next to him and says, “You go.”

The boy stands up and recites the prayer in sing-song Korean.

After this ordeal, Lenny is eager to start the tae kwon do practice, but everyone is then shepherded into their Korean language classes, and because Mira and Lenny know nothing, they are placed in the Kindergarten section in the kiddie room, the chairs and table miniaturized so he sits uncomfortably with his knees up to his chin. The kindergartners look at him with confusion.

Lenny doesn't even know the alphabet, and when the other kids read out the letters, he feels stupid. Mira seems to catch on quickly, imitating the others and connecting the sounds with the consonants after only a few minutes.

Lenny becomes annoyed with her, and glares at her when she recites the consonants after only two prompts by the teacher.

The class lasts for forty-five minutes, and the only thing he learns is how little he knows. The teacher gives him a workbook to practice, but he has already decided he isn't coming back.

He leaves the class in a hurry, and finds that the main church service has finished. His parents are downstairs at a buffet lunch, platters of Korean dishes laid out on long tables. Dozens of conversations in Korean fill the basement auditorium, the clanking of chopsticks mingling with the sounds of rice cookers whistling steam. A woman announces something on the loudspeaker, and Lenny recognizes the word “tae kwon do.” Some of the parents shoo their children, and the girls file out toward the basement, while the boys walk out of the church. Lenny turns to his mother, who motions for him to follow the boys.

They walk along the cemetery to a small white building that has an open, dusty hardwood floor with folding chairs stacked to one side. It looks as if funeral services are held here: a podium stands next a large, low platform near the front that can only be for a casket. Next to the podium is a small, balding Korean man in a tae kwon do uniform with a black belt. His scalp glistens. The lapels have red and black embroidered Korean lettering, and a dragon on the left sleeve. Lenny is greatly impressed. The man yells at them
in Korean, and the other kids quickly begin changing into their gi's.

Lenny approaches the teacher, who looks him up and down, and not knowing what to do, Lenny bows.

The teacher speaks to him in Korean, but Lenny shakes his head. The teacher sighs. In English he tells Lenny to follow along as best he can. “Have you studied tae kwon do before?”

“From books.”

The teacher frowns and motions him to move to the back row. Almost everyone is a white belt, but there are a few yellow and greens. Lenny is the only one in jeans. The teacher begins yelling out warm-up exercises, and Lenny follows along. Then they move on to punches and blocks. When the teacher demonstrates the punches, his uniform snaps loudly from the force. He yells for them to feel the air explode from their punches. Their bare feet slide and thump over the dirty floor, their yells bouncing off the high ceilings. Lenny notices the other kids' feet are blackened, and then looks down in surprise at his own black feet.

After a sequence of kicks, the teacher stops everyone. He looks at Lenny, and says in English, “Do that again.”

Lenny does the side kick, and the teacher walks over to him and tells him to turn his body more. Lenny tries, but the teacher grabs his shoulders to keep from pivoting.

“Where did you learn that?” the teacher asks.

“From a book.”

“The form is all wrong. You must forget everything you learned and start over.”

Some of the other kids snicker. Lenny's face heats up, and when the teacher orders him to try the kick again, his foot
slips on the dusty floor, and he falls to the ground, banging his elbow. Everyone laughs.

The teacher says, “No more books.”

He walks to the front of the class. Lenny pulls himself up, shaking, and tries to get through the rest of the practice.

That night he checks his book and looks at his form in the mirror. He then tries it the teacher's way, but it doesn't feel right. He hears his father yelling at Ed for disappearing this morning. Ed yells back, “I can do what I want!”

Their father bellows in a deep and angry voice, “Ungrateful boy!” and there's a smack. Ed cries out. There's the sound of a scuffle, and then the screen door slams. Outside, Ed yells “You're crazy! I can't wait to get out of here!”

Lenny runs to the window and sees his brother holding his cheek, his eyes murderous, as he storms away.

His father curses in Korean.

His mother murmurs something, and his father barks at her.

Lenny returns to his tae kwon do book, and after studying it for a while he throws it across the room, angry that the practice was such a failure. Lenny had fantasies of excelling, of his self-teaching somehow making him better than the others, and now he doesn't want to return. They had all laughed at him, and the memory of this sears. He wonders if the teacher focused on him because he was new and can't speak Korean.

Lenny's mother checks on him, and she says in a weak, tired voice that she's going to bed early. Her face is pale and drawn, but she smiles and asks if he had a good day at church.

“No,” he replies. “I don't like it. I don't want to go back.”

“Your sister had a good time.”

“I didn't.”

She tells him to get ready for bed, because of school tomorrow. He realizes that he forgot to do a school project—a presentation on a current events topic. There are no newspapers in the house, and it's too late to go to the store. This will be the third project he'll miss, and his teacher, Mrs. Trilly, had said she would write his parents a note if it happened again. He decides to buy a newspaper first thing in the morning and write up the report before class.

He puts in a different cassette tonight—
Drunken Master
—and falls asleep to the lull of fighting sound effects, reminding him of the tae kwon do teacher's punches. But the tape sounds better than the real thing.

Late at night Lenny finds his mother studying her large annotated bible at the kitchen table. The gilded pages glint under the lights, and a thick velvet bookmark hangs limply over the side. She sips from a mug of ginseng tea, tendrils of steam rising up. She turns to him, bleary-eyed, and asks him why he's up.

“I can't sleep,” he tells her as he sits down at the table. She asks if he wants anything to drink, but he says he's okay. They sit quietly for a while. The plaid vinyl tablecloth has intricate patterns that occupy him. He traces the lines with his fingernail.

“Do you remember when I used to tell you stories?” she asks.

“About Korea.”

“They helped you sleep. Do you want to hear them?”

“Not yet. Why are you awake?”

She studies him, and tells him about her doctor's visit. She has been losing weight, feeling tired all the time, and looks thin and sickly. Finally, after a few weeks of this she went to the doctor, who diagnosed her with anemia, and prescribed iron pills. But he also found some irregularities with her thyroid, and wanted her to come in for more tests. She sips her tea and adds that her older sister died from breast cancer, her father from leukemia, and one of her two brothers died from lung cancer. “It's just me and your uncle Jimmy.”