Fox Girl (26 page)

 

I had to work harder than the other girls to make myself popular with the Americans. I didn't have the looks the other
yong sekshis
did, but I could read what each GI wanted. The problem with most of the girls in the club was that they thought all the GIs were the same, so they stuck to the same act. But me, I could be either a shy and submissive maiden—looking at them from the corners of my eyes and smiling from behind my hand—or a hair-flipping, loud-laughing, wild-dancing sex queen. I could be their idea of me—at least for the amount of time it took to buy six rounds of drinks and a honeymoon in the backbooth.

I'd been having a good night, entertaining a group of three GIs with two other girls from the bar. The men were trying to teach us a drinking game with quarters that we would bounce onto the table and into the cups. I had been “taught” this game countless times and missed on purpose so I would be forced to drink my glass. That way, they kept adding to the tab and to my commission for the night. Even though the drinks were heavily watered, I was feeling good. Unfortunately, my bladder was feeling bad.

On the way back from the outhouse behind the kitchen, I was surprised to see Bar Mama sitting in a backbooth, away from the stage and bar. She usually liked to stay upfront, keeping an eye on her girls, making sure that the GIs were happy with us.

Bar Mama was sitting across from a woman, and I raised my eyebrows at the platters of food between them—not the small bowls of boiled soybean or salty chicken wings for which she overcharged the
miguk
men, but
kalbi
and
bibimpap,
oxtail soup and kimchee pancakes. We sometimes got women GIs in the club, and no one I knew was so against honeymooning with them that they would turn down an offer, but this woman wasn't a GI. She was Korean—maybe forty, rich-looking. Dressed in a Western suit that looked like a man's except for the long skirt, she looked out of place in Club Foxa, but she didn't look uncomfortable.

“Hyun Jin—” Bar Mama grabbed my hand as I walked past.

“Her?” the lady frowned, looking me up and down. “She ugly. You trying unload the bad ones, keep good ones for yourself ?” I was surprised that the rich woman sounded like she came from the countryside, her accent rough and poor.

“How long have we done business?” Bar Mama huffed. “I promise you, this girl is one of my best workers. You've been watching, so you know.”

I tried not to squirm. I would have been irritated, being kept away from the shy ugly I had marked—even as I stood there, I could see another girl had slid into my place—but I could see this woman was important.

The woman said nothing, just looked me over. I felt like I was seven again, being inspected by my mother—by my father's wife—and found wanting. Finally she nodded. “She clever,” she said. “I never seen anybody work with the audience before—you think quick. In America, we call that ‘think on your feet.' ”

She slid over, motioning me to sit next to her. “Looks're important,” said the woman. “But that can be faked. You know the tricks.”

I nodded, then, to be polite, perched at the edge of the booth. The rich lady grabbed my chin, spit into a napkin, and began to rub at my face.

“Stop!” I grimaced, trying to wrench away.

“Disgusting,” she clucked, looking at my birthmark without its cover of makeup.

I knocked her hands down. “I'm leaving,” I said.

The woman snatched my hair before I could slide out. “Good hair though. Good teeth, too, I think.” She spoke to Bar Mama and tapped her fingers on the table as if considering. “Good teeth important. One girl I brought over a couple years ago had all rotten teeth. I had to take her to the dentist, put in all new teeth—gold in the back, you know. She still working to pay me back.” She sighed and pulled my hair so I was forced to look at her. “Open your mouth,” she ordered.

I kept it shut.

“Hyun Jin,” Bar Mama growled.

The woman tugged my hair until I grunted. “I thought you said she was smart,” the woman accused Bar Mama.

Bar Mama laughed. “I said she was a hard worker. I don't know how smart that is. Go on, Hyun Jin. Say something smart.”

I narrowed my eyes at the woman, then with my lips covering my teeth I said, “Who are you?”

Bar Mama slapped my arm, but the rich woman laughed as she threw the ends of my hair in my face. “I'm Mrs. Yoon,” she said. “I'm looking for girls to work for me in Hawai‘i.”

I gasped, my mouth falling open.

“Okay,” the lady nodded. “Teeth look good.”

I shut my mouth, swallowed. “Is she for real?” I asked Bar Mama. “Hawai‘i? Real Hawai‘i?”

Bar Mama grinned. “Real Hawai‘i. Not Cheju Island.”

The woman lifted her glass and smiled with her lips against the rim. She took a sip, then grimaced. “You know, in my bar—in Hawai‘i, which is in America now, you know—I serve much better whiskey. Seagram.”

Bar Mama ground her teeth like she wanted to say something but couldn't. She looked down at the table to hide her eyes.

“What would I have to do?” I asked, dubious, trying to guess her angle.

“Oh you know,” the woman said, waving her hand in the air. “Same things as here. My bar is just like this, its twin sister. I call it Club Foxa Hawai‘i.” She belched. “But it's better than this, because it is, you know, in America. Hawai‘i. Paradise.”

Bar Mama grunted. “Yes, we know.”

Yoon reached into a briefcase on the seat beside her and pulled out a stack of folders. “See this? Each folder is a man. They good men, but lonely. They cannot find nice girlfriend for themselves. American girls so fussy, hardhead. So I tell them, ‘Pay me. I find you one good Korean girl.' ”

“I can be that,” I told her.

“Maybe,” said the lady. “Maybe not. Maybe they no like you.”

“They'll like me,” I said. “If I want them to like me.”

“I tell you what. I buy you from Bar Mama, take you to Hawai‘i. You work my place, get to know the men. If they like you, you stay in America, work for me till you pay back what you cost me. Including transportation, visa fees, rent, clothes, food.”

“I heard it was very difficult to emigrate to America,” I hedged, even though I knew and she knew I would go. “How come you make it sound so easy?”

The woman picked up a sliver of beef and popped it into her mouth. “You ask a lot of questions,” she said, her cheeks bulging. When I continued to stare at her, she swallowed her food. “All right, you want to know: I get you a tourist visa. You come in, but you don't leave. Easy.”

“Easy,” I repeated, narrowing my eyes, thinking it through. “Except I've got to hide, stay quiet,” I said. “I've got to live like your slave, under your thumb.”

“Shut up, Hyun Jin,” Bar Mama snarled. “This could be good for all of us.”

“No slaves in America,” the woman said, waving her chop-sticks in the air as if in dismissal. “If you not happy at this chance . . .”

“How long will it take to pay you back?” I asked. Only after the words were out of my mouth did I realize I spoke too quickly. I sounded desperate.

Yoon smiled, a green onion wedged in her front teeth. “Some girls, they get some man to love them so much, he pays for them right away. Other girls work two, three, five years maybe.”

I inhaled, blew out sharply. “That's it?”

The woman drained the rest of her whiskey, then rattled the ice. “That's it.”

I laughed, giddy at the prospect of getting out of America Town. I would be able to start over, make something of myself. And then I stopped laughing, guilty that even for a moment I had forgotten about Myu Myu. I reasoned it would be best for her, too, if I left, to make a new life for the both of us. Once I established myself I would call for her, fit her back into my life. Five years was not so long. In that time, I would find that small place in the country for the two of us, only it would be in a new country.

On the walk home, my mind continued to trip over what to do with Myu Myu until I was dizzy with guilt. I didn't want to leave Myu Myu behind, but I knew that my taking Yoon's offer would be the best chance for us both to escape America Town. I just needed to convince someone to care for the child in my absence. I would pay the guardian well, and once my debt to Yoon was repaid in full, I would send for Myu.

Sookie was Myu's birth mother, the natural choice; I was counting on her having some basic maternal feeling for the child. I didn't let myself think about Duk Hee, about how easily she was able to give me up. I wouldn't let myself wonder if Duk Hee's daughters inherited the talent for walking away. I dragged my feet, bending like Kitchen Auntie under the baby's weight. Myu Myu felt like a rock, heavy on my back.

When Myu Myu cried, I tried to harden myself to her in order to prepare for leaving. I pictured myself moving away from her and, looking at her through the distance of that long tunnel, I began to see that she looked more and more like Sookie each day. Her skin darkened into the same chocolate brown; her hair sprouted into the same frazzled black-cherry nimbus surrounding the moon of her face.

“Sookie,” I said. “Don't you care that Myu Myu is crying?”

“Why should I?” Sookie wouldn't even look up from her magazine.

But I felt the baby's cries cutting into my own heart. “She's your blood. Don't you feel anything?”

“Why should I feel anything?” Sookie said. “I didn't want her in the first place.” She held up a hand to stop me from arguing. “Look, if I pick a scab off a cut, I'm not going to cry over that scab, mourning because I miss it.”

“It's that easy for you, isn't it?” I said, suddenly angry. “To cut away from this baby, just like you cut away from your own mother.”

“What? What did I do?” Sookie grumbled, then shuddered. “Duk Hee, living in the fish tanks. I'm embarrassed she's my mother.”

“I'm not talking about Duk Hee.” I turned away from her to tend Myu Myu, who was choking on her own screams.

“Yes, you were—” Sookie called after me.

I grabbed Myu from her nest of blankets and plopped her onto my shoulder. “No, I wasn't,” I said to Sookie, jiggling the baby. Her crying eased into hiccups.

Sookie eyed the child, then grinned. “Are you mad because you've changed your mind about the kid?”

“No!” I snapped, but looked down, fussing with Myu Myu's coverings so Sookie couldn't read the doubt in my face.

“You are changing your mind.” Sookie nodded, smug. “I knew having her was a mistake. You should have let me get rid of it when it was still nothing. It's not too late to get rid of it,” Sookie said. “Remember Apple?”

“Yes,” I said. Apple had been four years ahead of us in school, so we hadn't been close. But she was someone I would never forget. The girl's real name, Sang Won, sounded like the word
apple,
but we called her Sagwa mostly because she looked like one. She never lost the red-cheeked roundness she had had as a child; in fact, if anything, she had grown redder and rounder with each year.

“You know what happened to her, right?” Sookie asked.

“Everyone knows.” I fidgeted and licked my lips. “She married her Joe and went to America.” Apple was one of America Town's success stories. Pretending to be a student at Ewha University, she had been set up by a matchmaker who found girlfriends for GIs.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sookie waved her hand, impatient. “But remember what happened to her baby?”

I frowned and turned away. “I'm done talking about this,” I said.

“Well, I'm not.” Sookie smiled a big cat smile. “She killed him.”

“No! I don't—” When Myu Myu whimpered, I crooned to her: “Shh-shhh-shhh.”

“Apple, that big fake, playing such an innocent. She couldn't tell her Joe she had a throwaway baby, so when it came time to leave, remember what she did?” Sookie didn't wait for me to answer. “Drowned that kid in the bathwater at the
moyokton.
”

“Stop!” I spun away from Sookie, as if to shield Myu Myu. “I still don't believe she did it on purpose. She loved that boy.” I remembered how Apple doted on her son when he was born, how she showed him off—that fat and shiny-faced boy. She didn't even pretend to be ashamed that he didn't have a father. She loved him so much that, like a mother dog, she would lick him clean with her own tongue.

I felt light-headed, disoriented as if I was in the steam room too long. I used to love going to the bathhouse. My father's wife and I would go almost every weekend so that she could relax in the steam room and I could swim, alternating between the cold and hot pools. I would paddle between the clusters of women, dodging breasts and hips and floating hair, ducking under the clouds of steam that hovered above the surface of the water.