Fox Girl (13 page)

“In America,” said Lobetto, flourishing his letter as if proving a point, “a lot of people are like me. Maybe most of them.”

Young Sik looked down, unwrapping his pretzled legs so that his feet stuck out into the middle of the circle and almost touched me. I moved back.

“Could be,” Chung Woo prompted and we all nodded, even Young Sik, in agreement. I kept my mouth shut even though I wondered if that was the case, then why did all the American magazines feature light-skinned girls? I supposed it was possible that in America the men were colored differently than the women. We hadn't covered that in our school lessons.

“Now let me read,” Lobetto said, his words fast and impatient. “I'm coming to the best part.”

Lobetto took a breath and tried to make his voice sound like his father's. “‘I'm thinking of you. I haven't forgotten you. I been working hard to bring you to America, but the man is trying to keep us down.' ”

“The man?” I whispered to Sookie.

Sookie shrugged. “I'm guessing it's the king.”

Lobetto glared at us, but before his eyes returned to the letter, I could have sworn I saw tears in them. “‘When you come,' ” he read, clearing his throat, “ ‘I will show you the America all American kids should see: the Grand Canyon, which cuts to the heart of this world; Yellowstone Park's Old Faithful; Holly-wood with its walk of stars; and Disneyland, where you can ride Dumbo the flying elephant and visit Tomorrowland.' ”

“Still think this is not a fairy tale?” hissed Young Sik.

Chung Woo laughed, but Lobetto just spoke louder: “ ‘And, of course, I'd bring you back home to Maryland. You'd have to see Washington, D.C., and the Lincoln Memorial, the place where great King spoke to me.

“ ‘Be good. I know you're still growing, but twelve years old is man enough. Take care of your mother, Your Father, Sergeant James Robert Williams.' ”

I tried to look at Lobetto's mother as he reread his father's letter—more smoothly this time, after so many years of practice—and wondered if she would be hurt or angry at hearing the words of the American husband who deserted her. She stood half in shadow, just beyond the kitchen doorway. Her body, like her face, remained stiff and expressionless.

“My father said he was building a home for me,” Lobetto said. “He's just waiting for ‘the man' to come and get me.”

“What are you talking about?” I gaped at Lobetto. “That wasn't in the letter.”

“Yes, it is,” Lobetto shot back, waving the paper in my face.

“Then how come you never read that part before?” I challenged.

Lobetto carefully refolded the letter, rubbed thin as onion-skin and taped at the creases where they had split apart years ago. “I understand English better now. I've been working around the clubs, learning from the GIs,” he said as he slipped the letter back into his eel-skin wallet. “When I get to America, I'm gonna be somebody.”

I shook my head at him.

“You know the first thing I'm going to buy with the money I been saving?” He grinned. “A Chevy truck. I heard that's the best.”

“How can you buy a ‘lottery-ticket' truck? Isn't that something you win?” I asked, teasing out of habit.

Just as he always did at such questions, Lobetto scowled, saying I didn't understand the way things worked in America. I suppose I didn't; to me the country that Lobetto's father described seemed an impossible world, where the fantastical was commonplace. You could slip through a crack in the earth and find on the other side a land without a past, a land of the future where elephants flew and the streets were made of stars. It was a place where leftover
gomshis
were crowned king and girls looked like little boys.
Tweggis
posed in magazines and ugliness was beautiful. And in America was Lobetto's dream home: Mary's Land, the Land of Mary—which Lobetto assumed was the name of his father's American wife—the place where his father had disappeared into thin air.

After suffering through another interpretive reading of Lobetto's letter, followed by his analysis of American life—full of excess and worthless immigration officials, chief of which was “the man”—I finally convinced him to take me to Sookie. The word, he said, was that she was living with the darkie who had been her mother's last boyfriend.

“Chazu?” I blurted, shocked.

Lobetto smirked. “Starting to believe what I'm telling you about Sookie?”

I glared at him. “Let's just go.”

Lobetto led me through the maze of streets that he worked, insisting on giving me a tour of the clubs he ran for. We ended up at Club Foxa, his favorite, he said, because Kitchen Auntie often gave him a small bowl of chicken wings and a bottle of soda after closing. Lobetto lifted an empty crate from a stack against the wall, turned it upside down and invited me to sit for a while.

“No, Lobetto,” I grumbled. “I just want to find Sookie.”

“She'll end up here sooner or later,” he said. He had cracked the club's back door open and stuck his head in, clucking to get the attention of Kitchen Auntie.

“Shh, shup, Lobetto!” Kitchen Auntie scolded as she pushed Lobetto's head out of the doorway. “You know no Korean men are allowed in the clubs.”

Lobetto laughed and tried to pat her bottom. “A lot of people don't think I'm Korean.”

She knocked his hands away and blocked the entrance with her wide body. “You like to play with the women just like a Korean man.” She looked him up and down. “Any man, for that matter—you're not a boy anymore,” she said, shaking her head. “Tell your mama, now that she's back, to feed your skinny body so I don't have to.”

Lobetto winked. “Can we get a Coca-Cola?”

“Hah, you're worse than a beggar.” She slammed the door.

“Come on, Lobetto.” I pulled on his arm.

Lobetto waved me away. “Just sit and wait,” he said.

Before I could ask “For what?” Kitchen Auntie came back with a bottle. “What're you doing here this early?” she asked.

Lobetto flicked the top of his Coke against the door frame, knocking the cap off, then tilted his head toward me. “Her,” he said.

“What's this? I'm jealous,” she teased. “You bring me your girlfriend?” Kitchen Auntie, squinting at me, announced, “She's ugly.”

“That's it,” I said, standing up. “You're a pig,” I spat at her, then added to Lobetto, “So are you!”

Kitchen Auntie cackled. “Just joking, just joking.” Turning to reenter the kitchen, she threw over her shoulder, “Catch her, Lobetto, that one is strong enough to make something out of you.”

I thought I heard Lobetto groan, but when he caught up to me, he didn't say anything. He nudged my shoulder as he passed, his way of telling me I should follow him. I trudged behind him in silence, cursing him each time he tilted the bottle to his lips. I waited for him to offer me a sip, but he didn't.

When we reached a squat row of hillside apartments, Lobetto threw his bottle into the railing of one of the second-story balconies. It shattered and the sliding glass door screeched open. “Hey you shit head!” a woman yelled. When she poked her head over the railing, I saw that it was Sookie.

Lobetto yelled back, “I brung you a guest,” and without saying goodbye, sauntered down the hill and into the streets of America Town.

“Come back for me later,” I yelled after him, but he just put up his hand and waved; whether it was an agreement or a dismissal, I couldn't tell.

Sookie stared down at me from over the railing. “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to . . .” I stumbled over my words. “Say hi.”

“Hi,” Sookie said, her voice hard, careless.

“Your mother says ‘hi,' too,” I offered. “She's worried about you.”

“Right,” Sookie scoffed. “She's worried about the competition.”

“She wants you to go back to school,” I said, rubbing my neck where it was starting to ache from looking up.

“I bet she does,” Sookie smirked. “Wants me out of the way.”

I threw my hands into the air. “I give up,” I said. “I'll leave you alone now.” At least I had fulfilled my promise to Duk Hee about talking to Sookie about going back to school. I looked around, hoping to see Lobetto lurking in the shadows, waiting to take me home.

“Hyun Jin, wait!” Sookie leaned further over the railing. “I . . . I . . .”

“Are you okay?” I called up.

Sookie grinned. “Come see for yourself. I've been wanting to show you my new place.”

When I trudged up the stairs, Sookie had the door open for me. “Come in,” she said, “but we're done talking about my mother, okay? I'm fine right where I am.”

“How can you live with a GI?” I frowned. “Don't they stink? Don't they clomp around leaving big messes? And you can't even talk with them.”

“We communicate good enough. I tell him I need something, he tells me to get it. He tells me he wants something, I do it.” She stopped me as I reached down to slip the rubber sandals off my feet. “We don't take off our shoes here,” she bragged. “This apartment is American style.” Sookie pulled me onto the carpeted floor. “Chazu taught me to keep the shoes on.”

I crinkled my nose. “How dirty,” I said, but I liked the way my feet bounced on the carpet. I liked everything she showed me: the living-dining room with its glass-and-metal table and chair set, its sofa and television; the bedroom with its American-sized mattress and its connected bathroom with toilet and shower and soap that smelled like lemons; and finally the kitchen, where she turned on all of the appliances as she named them—
blendah, toastah-oben, hotu-platu, erectric can-openu.
“In America,” she boasted over the whirl of noise, “it's too much work even to turn your wrist.”

I looked away, uncomfortable. For the first time in our lives, she had something I didn't, and I was surprised by the shift in our positions. I snuck a peek at her, trying to see if the months apart had changed her. She looked like the same old Sookie: skinny and ugly as me. But things had changed between us, throwing me off balance.

“Want a soda pop? Coca-Cola or ginger ale?” Sookie pulled open a refrigerator as tall as she was, to show off the shelves stocked with cheese and milk, beer and more American soda than my father could ever hope to afford. “Canada Dry. Real American ginger ale. Not cheap Korean
cidah.
”

I selected a brown bottle. “What does it feel like?” I asked.

“What?” She wrestled with the fancy can opener, clanging the Coke against the metal sides. I thought Lobetto's way was easier, and almost told her to pry the cap off against the door-jamb, when she handed me the bottle.

I took a sip. The overly sweet bubbles burned my throat and I could feel the sugar on my teeth. I licked my gums and belched. Feeling a sudden meanness, I repeated: “What does it feel like? Being a GI whore.”

Blanching, she sucked in her breath and turned away from me, abruptly switching off all her cooking toys. “I love it,” she said, her voice high and quick. “It's an easy way to get what I want.”

I put the soda on the counter. “I heard it hurts when he puts his . . . soldier into you.”

She grabbed a warm beer from the counter and, gulping it, moved toward the TV room. “You still believe my mother's stories?” she teased. Avoiding my eyes, she tried to laugh. “It only hurts the first time, and that happened so long ago, I can barely remember.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “It's only been a couple of months since you left school.”

“A couple of months?” Sookie screeched. “It's been more like a year.”

I looked down at my hands. “I'm sorry,” I began. “I should have—”

“Besides,” Sookie interrupted, “you think Chazu is my first man?” This time Sookie did laugh, tight and bitter. “I've been doing this since I was eight years old. One of Duk Hee's boyfriends thought it would be fun to have me join them.”

“What do you mean? I don't understand,” I stammered. “Duk Hee let—? Eight? Why didn't you tell—”

“What could my mother do? She kept me out of it as much as she could, for as long as she could.” Sookie shrugged and, with a feral grin, pushed past me. “But I guess it didn't work; here I am with another one of her boyfriends.”

Not knowing what else to do, what to say, unable even to look her in the eye, I guzzled down more of the soda. “Maybe I should go,” I mumbled.

Ignoring me, Sookie waved me over. “You've got to try this,” she said.

When I walked to her, she pulled me to a big chair in front of the television. “Here, sit,” she commanded, nudging me toward the seat. “In America it's called a ‘Racey Boy.' ” Caressing the vinyl, she added: “I'm learning the American names for everything.”

I climbed into the large chair, gingerly easing into the soft cushions. As I leaned back, Sookie pushed down on the headrest. I yelped, jumping up so I wouldn't fall.

“You did that on purpose,” I yelled.

Sookie laughed. “I did that the first time, too.” She pressed me back into the chair. “Relax.” She rubbed my shoulders and I closed my eyes.

“The first night I worked at Foxa, I didn't know what to do,” she said. “Bar Mama kept pinching me, telling me to ask one GI for a drink, another one for a dance.” Sookie laughed and pretended to pinch my arms. “I had so many bruises from that night.

“The whole night she told me to smile, introduce myself, walk in front of their eyes, act pretty. I tried, but I was scared. Most of the time, I kept asking the GIs for Chazu.” She laughed. “Lesson number one: Don't ever ask a man about another man.”