Fox Girl (10 page)

At least this is what she told me when I found her the next day. The apartment gaped open, the door swinging on its hinges like a broken tooth. “Sookie?” I called before entering. From the doorway, the room looked chewed up, half-digested. Beyond the upturned kitchen table and toppled chairs, Sookie sat calm as the Buddha in a sea of garbage.

 

Months later, Lobetto would tell me a story that would make me question what Sookie told me that morning. But then, I believed in her enough to want to help her. After brushing the silver foil from her—some of which stuck to her head—I stood her up. I braided her hair and wiped the sleep from her face, just as her own mother would have done. I righted the table and chairs and sat her down. Scanning the floors, I found a packet of unopened milk and poured it into a cup. I added water, mixing with my finger, until it resembled the sweet
chat juk
my father had once bought for me in Chinatown, and placed it in front of her.

Sookie drank without expression. Only her throat moved with each swallow as she held the cup to her lips. When she put the milk down, a ribbon of white lined her lips; the rest of the milk stuck like clumps of clay to the bottom of the cup. Sookie sat like a doll, her body stiff, her eyes fixed and unblinking as I gathered bits of rubbish from the floor, trying to corral them into neat piles, and folded her blankets into the bedroom chest for the day.

“If I were you, I would sleep on the bed while your mother is away,” I said. I sat on the edge of the bed, then fell back against the pillow. The mattress was not as soft as I thought it would be, and the pillow was too soft. It also smelled musky and feral, like an animal. I sat up again, holding my nose. “Maybe not,” I said, then waited for her to speak.

As I debated whether or not to leave for school without her, she said, “I have to find my mother.”

“I don't want to be late for school,” I said. If I was late the teacher would find someone else to be leader for the day, and whoever it was would certainly call on me, as payback, to answer the most difficult questions.

“Please, Hyun Jin,” Sookie begged. “I have a plan.”

“Ummm,” I grunted, edging toward the door. “Why not just wait for her to come back?”

Sookie grabbed my hand. “I told you what they said to me. Don't you understand? Don't you believe me? I can't just sit here waiting—no food, no money!”

I pulled my hand back. “Okay, okay. You can tell me your plan on the way to school.”

“Wait, Hyun Jin!” Sookie scrambled through her book bag for a pencil and paper. “Let me write a note to our teacher. I'll say I'm still sick and that you need to take me to the doctor. Then you could come with me.”

I frowned at her. “Where? Why can't we go after school?”

“I don't have time.” Sookie started scribbling on the paper. Without looking at me she said, “And speaking of time, you're already late as it is—”

I wanted to grab that pencil away from her and stomp on it for spoiling my flawless attendance record. Instead I tapped my foot. “I'm not waiting for you much longer,” I grumbled.

“If you're this late, isn't it better not to go?” Sookie asked. When I shrugged, she talked fast. “We can get Lobetto to deliver the message for us, and then we can go find my mother.”

I pulled on my lip, pretending to consider. I had already made up my mind to go with her when she had said that it was better to miss school than to arrive after the start of lessons. Sookie, who knew how I thought, smiled at the paper as she finished writing the letter.

 

Lobetto hustled goods and information throughout Chollak, crisscrossing America Town, Harariya Base, and Chinatown for the GIs, their
yong sekshis,
and the black marketeers. This early in the morning, however, he'd be done with work and heading home.

“No,” Lobetto grumbled. “Why should I do anything for you?” He squatted outside of his doorway, squinting up at us.

“What do you mean?” I scolded. “It's your job to deliver messages.”

Lobetto continued to look up at us, his curls corkscrewing into his eyes. He yawned. Then he spat at our feet. “A job means money.”

Spittle flecked the top of my right foot. Grimacing, I pushed my toes into the dirt to dry them off. Then I peeked over at Sookie. Money was the weak part of her plan.

She stepped forward. “We're going to pay you,” she started. Lobetto laughed. “With what? Everyone knows your mother left you with nothing! And you—” he said, glaring at me. “You going to get money from your mother to help Sookie? Everyone knows how your mother feels about her.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Lobetto opened his mouth to shoot out his answer, but Sookie spoke first. “We're getting money from Duk Hee.”

Lobetto stood, his knees crackling as he stretched upward. He pushed his nose into Sookie's face. “How? She's at the Monkey House.”

“So?” Sookie shrugged like it was no big deal. “That's where we're going.”

Biting his thumbnail, which was already torn past the quick, Lobetto frowned at Sookie through his bushy hair.

“You should cut your hair,” I told him.

He sneered at me, his lip flipping up over his teeth, but as he turned to address Sookie, he wrapped his bangs around his ears. A faint scar snaked above his eyebrow. “You know how to get to the Monkey House?” he asked.

Again, she shrugged. “No, but I know people who know.”

“Who?” Lobetto challenged.

“Mi Ok,” said Sookie quickly, naming the pregnant girl we had met at Dr. Pak's Love Clinic.

Lobetto folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall. “That girl's already an inmate there.”

Sookie looked at me. I shrugged. “There are others we can ask,” she answered, though she sounded unsure.

Lobetto grinned. “You'll never find it on your own.”

Sookie grabbed my arm. “Forget it,” she said to him as we turned to leave.

“Yeah, we don't need him for anything,” I said, though I was worried that without the note, the teacher would inform my parents that I had skipped school.

Lobetto jumped in front of us. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Never mind,” said Sookie.

“I'll deliver your note,” said Lobetto, too quickly, I thought. “And I'll take you to the Monkey House. I need to drop some cigarettes there anyway.”

Sookie nodded, but I asked, “What do you get out of it?”

Lobetto smiled. “Sookie's mama carries her purse with her, right? With all the money she made from the GIs?”

Sookie said nothing, knowing he already knew the answer. Everyone, especially Lobetto, knew the
yong sekshis
never went anywhere without their money.

“For one-half of the purse,” Lobetto continued, “I'll deliver your note and take you to the Monkey House.”

“Half ?” I shouted. “That leaves Sookie and me with only a quarter each.”

“What?” Sookie gasped. “I have to pay you, too?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I am missing school for you. Or,” I sighed, “I could always go to class late.”

Sookie's eyes flickered quickly at my face. “One-third,” she grumbled. “I'll give one-third to you, Hyun Jin, and one-third to Lobetto.”

When Lobetto nodded, I pouted. “I don't trust him,” I said.

“What?” said Lobetto. “I'm the one who's got to trust you. You don't pay me till after we get to the Monkey House.”

I pulled Sookie to my side. “It could be a trick,” I whispered. “He could jump us afterward and take everything.” To Lobetto I growled, “Maybe you want to get back at me for beating you up when we were small.”

“You never beat me up,” he said. “And this is not a trick. I swear it in blood and spit.”

From his back pocket Lobetto pulled out a Swiss army knife, a prize from his father, and sliced the palm of his hand. He spit into the cut, closed his fist and waited for us to present our hands.

Sookie and I glanced at each other, then down at our hands. I almost told him that linking our littlest fingers together would be promise enough for me, but Sookie gave Lobetto her hand. I had to follow.

“I don't usually do this for girls,” Lobetto mumbled. “But I guess the money will be worth it.” He nicked our palms across the line fortune-tellers read for love.

Sookie and I cupped our hands and spit, watching the blood ooze into the bubbly saliva. Then the three of us took turns pushing our palms together in a promise of blood and spit.

 

Lobetto delivered the note quickly, swaggering into class while Sookie and I watched at the window. When his father still lived in Korea, Lobetto swaggered everywhere. One of the smartest children in school—as well as the richest—he was able to present Respected Teacher with weekly gifts of coffee, cigarettes, and nuts dipped in chocolate. Lobetto was chosen leader of the class almost as much as I was.

But when his father left for the States and did not return, Lobetto stopped swaggering. The teacher stopped calling him to the front, then stopped seeing him at all. Eventually, Lobetto joined the other
ainokos
at the missionary school for children of GI whores.

Note gripped in his fist, Lobetto stood at the inside of the door, waiting for a break in the lesson, for the teacher to recognize him. The teacher glanced at him, then above him and kept talking. Lobetto flashed us a look; we pantomimed delivering the note, mouths open wide in silent and exaggerated instructions. After watching the teacher a few more minutes, Lobetto shuffled to the teacher's desk, head bowed, dropped the note, and slunk out.

 

We ran—away from the school and my father's shop, away from the GI girls draped in the windows and the hard-luck whores who danced in the “fish tanks,” away from Chinatown herbalists and opium dealers—not stopping for breath until we reached the last butcher shop on Chinke-Chanke Road, at the edge of Chinatown. We puffed in front of the window where red ducks hung by their webbing and pig heads grinned on sharpened stakes. Around the corner from the butcher shop, the ocean opened before us, filling our eyes and noses: boats escorted by screaming gulls queued toward the pier where fishermen unloaded nets streaming with fish and eel and squid and clam. Wives and daughters squatted in the midst of the haul, hooking fingers under heaving gills and wriggling bodies, separating species into various baskets that they would later carry on their heads into the market tents.

Instead of continuing toward the docks, Lobetto veered to the train tracks, toward the coal factory that coughed its black smoke out to sea. Some days, when the wind stilled, a blanket of cinder hung over the pier, tinging the air with ash. “We'll follow the tracks north,” Lobetto said as he stooped to pocket bits of coal.

“The Monkey House is in Seoul?” I gasped. It would take a week to walk that far.

Lobetto sneered. “They got Monkey Houses all over,
Dongg-
face. With all the GI girls in Korea, you think they got only one?” His pockets full, he began throwing chips of coal into his canvas bag, which was already packed with Lucky Strikes. “They probably sent Sookie's mom to the closest one, outside Pusan.”

 

We walked parallel to the train tracks for a short while. The dust hung in the heat, and with the sun glinting off specks of rock, it was like walking through a glittered dream. I wished we had brought water. Sookie and I held hands until sweat pooled in our palms, salting the cuts Lobetto had made. Shaking the sting out, we dropped hands and continued to plod behind Lobetto. “He could kill us with his knife,” I mumbled. “He could abandon us to die like dogs. He could have a gang of boys hiding in the hills, ready to beat us up. He could be plotting to sell us to Chinatown bandits or American slave owners.”

Sookie kept her head straight, eyes on Lobetto's back, on the sway of the bag as it bumped against his hips. Without Sookie joining in, I dropped my game and became quiet. Finally, we crossed into a field of rice, a quilt of green and yellow. Mud squished between our toes and soothed our battered feet. Light shivered above the stalks like undisciplined rainbows. Sighing, the three of us knelt between the furrows to splash water into our faces, cup our hands, and drink.

“Watch for broken reeds,” Lobetto warned as we stomped through the fields, up to our knees in the cool, brackish water. “They can slice into your foot like a spear.”

“It's worth the risk,” said Sookie. “After the tracks, this feels like heaven.” But after a short while those fields became purgatory; the mud pulled at our legs, sucked them into the earth, and only reluctantly spat them out again as we trudged endlessly on.

 

We took only one break on the eternal trek to the Monkey House. Spying a small grape farm behind the rice fields, Lobetto motioned us out of the mud and onto our knees. We crawled in among the staked and stunted rows of twisting vines, glad for whatever shade was available during the hottest part of the day. Bellies to the ground, Lobetto and Sookie twisted cone-shaped clusters of grapes off the vine and shoved them—stems, curling tendrils, pits, and skin—into their mouths. Juice the color of blood dribbled down their chins and necks to stain the tops of their shirts. I nibbled at one, but gagged; grapes still tasted like vomit to me.

After eating his fill, Lobetto dug a shallow hole in the valley between two stakes, curled his body inside, and slept. Sookie and I lay head to head in the next row. The grape leaves only partially filtered the sun, dappling our skins. Under the leaves, I imagined Sookie and I—and even Lobetto—must look like siblings, their faces like mine always was, a pattern of light and dark.