Fox Girl (20 page)

Lobetto's back was to me. As I approached, I saw him tuck the money the Joes gave him into a plastic bag, then shove it elbow deep into the rice jar. Suddenly he jerked his arm out of the jar, scattering a few grains across my path, and spun around, startled by my presence. He scanned my face.

I concentrated on my feet, watching them inch past the minute pellets of rice. I looked up only when I had crossed the kitchen to stand directly in front of him. I kept my expression blank, pretending not to see his hiding place. “I won't do this anymore. “I-I can't.” The words cracked my throat, came out as sobs. “I'll die, Lobetto. I want to die now.”

Lobetto opened his arms, guided me away from the rice jar. “The first time is always the hardest,” he murmured. “I know it hurts, but soon you won't feel it at all.” He led me to the hose, positioning me over the drain, and grabbed the nozzle.

Bow-legged, blood and semen smeared across my belly and dripping down my legs, my hair tangled and sticky with bodily fluids, I waited for Lobetto to hose me down. I couldn't stand the feel of my own skin.

“Those pricks should have paid full price,” he complained when I didn't answer. He turned on the water and squirted me. “Next time,” he said, “wear makeup. Cover up your face so they won't have anything to grumble about.”

I picked up the wire brush they used to clean vegetables and scrubbed between my legs. “No more,” I growled as I ground the metal into my flesh. “No. No. No.” My skin, already raw, broke open and bled.

At first we ignored each other, Lobetto's mother and I, as we orbited around her son. Stalking the apartment—wary, watchful—we were careful never to confront the other directly. I waited until she had prepared and eaten her dinner of rice and soup before I left the shelter of Lobetto's tent. She waited until I washed myself before cleaning the dishes. I waited until she turned on her television soap opera before eating her leftovers. She waited until I snuck out the door before mopping the floors.

And we both waited for Lobetto, who came home sometimes with the sun, and sometimes not for days. With Sookie in the Monkey House, I didn't go into the clubs, so when Lobetto ran jobs outside of America Town, I didn't talk to anyone for almost a week at a time. And Lobetto's mother didn't leave the house as long as I was there, so who knew if she talked to anyone either. When Lobetto came home, we both jumped at him, eager to exercise our rusting voices. I made mental lists of things to talk about, things that might have happened days before. Lobetto's mother stored her grievances about me in a similar way.

“Lobetto,” she'd say as she served him rice, “that girl ate the last of the steamed fish you like so much.”

“Lobetto,” I'd say, “I saw Mousie on Market Day. She was looking for you to run something to Pusan.”

Lobetto would shrug, shovel the rice into his mouth, and say something like: “Fine,” or: “It's handled.” Which both Lobetto's mother and I, smirking over his head, would take as a response to our own comments.

 

“When do you think you'll be ready for another job?” Lobetto asked one morning, waking me when he returned.

“When do you think your mother will be ready for another job?” I retorted, pulling the blanket to my chin.

Lobetto flopped down beside me. “Try to be patient with her,” he said. “She's getting too old to work the clubs.”

“Sookie says grandmothers work the clubs,” I said, without adding that I didn't think it was age that kept his mother from being successful at the clubs, but her weight. For someone who constantly complained that she was hungry, she was enormously fat. GIs didn't like fat women.

“Sookie!” he barked. “The same girl who pushed her own mother out of work?”

I sat up, picked at a thread in the blanket. “Did you know,” I asked, “that Duk Hee is my mother, too?”

Lobetto rolled onto his belly, wiggling until I began to rub his back. “I hear stuff,” he mumbled into the pillow. “But I don't pay attention if it doesn't involve me.” He groaned as I elbowed a knotted muscle. “What's it matter anyway?”

“What's it matter?” I gritted my teeth and pinched his skin, trying to make it hurt. “That's what she said, too.”

“That feels good,” he sighed.

“Duk Hee abandoned me,” I sniffed. “I was a baby and she left me.”

“No,” Lobetto grunted. “She gave you to your father.”

“Sold me.” I pounded on his back with my fists. “I was a baby, her baby, and she should have loved me!”

“Ow!” Lobetto sat up and grabbed my hands. “She made sure you had a better start than most,” he said. “Now the free ride's over and you've got to work. Speaking of—”

“You don't understand.” I wrenched away from his grip, bitter.

“I understand,” he answered. “It was hard when my father first left, but not anymore. Now I'm doing good.”

I stared at him, then let my eyes roam the dingy makeshift place he called home. “You think you're doing good?” I scoffed.

“Yeah, I do.” Lobetto leaned back on his arms and thrust out his chest. “I got my running jobs, I got my mother working, and you, too. Soon I'll have enough money to buy my way into America.”

“Me?” I croaked. “I'm not working. I'm not doing that again.” I felt dizzy, out of breath. Speaking used up too much of the air in the tent. I grabbed onto Lobetto.

“I know, I know,” he crooned. “That was a hard job—too much, too fast. Next time—I'm not pushing you yet—it'll be better.” Lobetto pried my fingers away from his arm. The nails left a cluster of indentations—half-moon eyes peering out of a darkened forest.

 

Time seemed flexible, rippling and doubling so that each day passed with excruciating tedium but the weeks disappeared without notice. Lobetto's mother and I were like fish in a tank, endlessly circling, both joined and divided by the medium of water that was Lobetto.

One morning she asked me to chop the vegetables for the breakfast soup; I thought she was trying to build a friendship. Grateful for the overture, I cooked the way I was taught; I cleaned the parsley, peeled and cubed the turnips, minced the garlic, and set everything to boil.

“Ugh,” she grumbled at the first spoonful. “The turnip is still crunchy raw in the middle—cut too big to cook through.”

I stuffed a turnip into my own mouth to keep from snapping at her. As I crunched, she slurped from the bowl, muttering, “Tasteless.” But when it was empty, she held the bowl to me and waved her jiggling arm toward the stove for a refill.

I should have knocked that bowl from her imperious hand. I should have ignored her. My mistake was that I took that bowl, carried it to the stove, ladled in a second helping, and placed it back on the table in front of her like a dutiful daughter-in-law. She didn't say thank you, didn't even look up to acknowledge me, but when she bent her head to smell the steam, I saw her secret smile.

From then on, she lorded it over me. Lounging on the mat in front of the television Lobetto had scavenged or stolen from somewhere, she continually ordered me to refresh her glass of water, to cook and bring her her meal on her tray, to rub her tired calves. If she could have, I believe she would have ordered me to piss for her.

After I complied with each order, she would say, “You are not good enough for my son.” Her eyes never left the television screen as she needled me. “When he goes to America, do you think he will take you?”

Inside, I thought: “Witch! Fox demon! Hag! Do you think he will take
you?
” But I never said anything. I never believed any of us would go anywhere. We were drowning, dying in America Town and it was all I could do to hold on.

 

I tried to hide in Lobetto's tent, but his mother would bang the dishes together and hose off vegetables so that the water sprayed against the blanket, leaving it damp and musty-smelling. And all the while, she'd complain about having to support a pretend daughter-in-law too lazy to work.

Flushed from my retreat, I spent more time out of the house, first sitting on the step, then, when boredom set in, venturing farther. With Lobetto's house the center, I spiraled away until I was walking the perimeter of America Town—following the wall past the school for the throwaway children, past the tombs where Duk Hee pushed her buttocks against the transparent door, toward the row of apartments where Sookie used to live. The back of Sookie's old place brushed against the wall which enclosed America Town—I could just wedge my body in the space between. Turned sideways so that my discolored cheek scraped the side of Sookie's old house and my back rubbed against America Town's wall, I forced myself along that narrow pathway.

I stumbled through, but didn't break contact with the wall until the wall itself broke away. Through the gap was my father's candy shop and the life I could have had as a shopkeeper's daughter. I craned my head, trying to catch a glimpse of my father, then ducked. I didn't want him to see me, to see what I had become. I looked instead toward Chinatown and beyond, at the docks and the water littered with boats. Then I stepped through.

When I felt people staring at me, I assumed it was because of my ugliness. I ducked my head and covered my face with hair which, loose and tangled, felt sticky with sweat. Then I noticed my clothes, borrowed from Sookie: blue tank top that tied at the waist; skirt that ruffled above the knee; orange sandals open at the toe. I was dressed like a
kichiton
girl. An America Town whore. But instead of cowering beneath their glares and smirks, I threw back my head and looked each passerby in the eye. I could almost hear the mothers whisper behind their hands: Dirty. No class. Throwaway Korean.

I wandered toward the pier and watched the slow queue of boats vie for position at the docks. Seagulls screamed at the boats and dived for the trash thrown overboard. Once tethered, the vessels coughed up their loads of fish and crab, shrimp and squid. Squatting in front of one of the boats, I watched two women drag nets full of what looked like squiggling silver fingers onto the shore. I studied the way these women—possibly mother and daughter—worked together, easy in each other's company, efficient in their routine of culling anchovies, of laying them in the sun to die and dry.

 

The days without Lobetto, I filled with the sea, walking to the ocean to watch the harvest of fish. Disguised in a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of Lobetto's pants, I found and followed that same family as often as I could, so often that the daughter pointed me out to her mother. The daughter, close to my age, put up her hand to wave as if she knew me, but, suddenly unsure, she tucked her hair behind her ear instead. Her mother scolded her without lifting her head to look at me; I couldn't hear the words but her tone was sharp.

One afternoon I saw the daughter without her mother. This time the girl waved. I looked behind me, then back at her. She waved again, motioning me toward her. “You, do I know you?” she demanded.

I shrugged.

“You must be in love with me then.” The girl laughed.

I scowled, then laughed with her. “You remind me of someone,” I said.

The girl stared at my face, and when I tried to hide myself from her, she announced: “My mother said you were a GI girl. But I told her you were too ugly. I was right.”

I spat at her feet.

She jumped back and huffed. “Don't get mad.”

“I'm not mad,” I growled, hating her shining bob of hair, her neat clothes, her rubber shoes that somehow stayed bright white even walking through the muck of fish.

“Good.” The perfect girl smiled. “Then do me a favor—watch the fish for me. I need to go somewhere.”

“I don't do favors,” I snarled, and turned away.

She caught my arm. “Of course I'll pay you,” she said.

So I stayed and patrolled the small army of anchovies lined up like troops. Stepping between the rows of baking fish, I waved a rolled newspaper at the determined flies swimming through air thick with heat and the stench of the sea.

Occasionally I rested in the shade of the girl's makeshift tent, where she had a bucket of octopus soaking for the night's dinner. I crouched over the bucket, poking desperate tentacles back into the cold, murky soup. Every once in a while, I pulled out an octopus by the head, giving it a taste of freedom. Its legs twining about my arm, sucking at my skin, I would look into its purple, lidded eye, the same eye—with its tail of guts—I would later pluck out. The eye and entrails, a bucket of guts and leftovers, this was the payment the girl offered me for a day of work.

 

Like a cat with her half-devoured prey, I dragged that bucket up the hill into America Town, back to Lobetto's house. I should have dumped it over that girl's head, but I was so tired that all I could think was that I had earned it without lying on my back. Exhausted, I stumbled into Lobetto's house and spilled the fish guts onto the steps.