Fox Girl (3 page)

“Mmmm,” I said, “then you just have to go to America where you can buy all you want.”

Sookie's reflection lowered its arms, stopped smiling. “Yes,” the mouth said. “That's what I am going to do.”

 

It turned out that Sookie did not need Pond's Cold Cream to cover up her ugliness. Her ugliness turned into beauty without her having to do a thing. She didn't grow into beauty with womanhood—her boyishness developing into lush curves. Her body stayed long and thin, what the old grandmothers still call unlucky. Her skin didn't lighten with age; her face did not grow into her overly large eyes. In fact, she looked much the same as an adult as she had in childhood. There were times when we were grown that I saw her as I did when I was younger, and was shocked into remembering that she was as ugly as she always was. And I would be reminded that what had changed was not so much how we looked, but how we looked out of our own eyes, our perceptions of beauty and of ourselves.

When the Americans first ventured off the base and into our neighborhoods, we though that they—with their high noses, round eyes, and skin either too white or too dark—were ugly.
“Kojingi,”
we would squeal, shielding our faces from the Big Noses. Or, holding our own noses as we ran away from soldiers who smelled like decaying boots, we sang out,
“Shi-che nemsei!”

Slowly, though, we began to view their features as desirable, developing a taste for large noses, double lids, and cow eyes just as we had learned to crave the chocolate candy and cakes we had once thought sweet as dirt.

On Thursdays, after her tests at Dr. Pak's Love Clinic No. 5, after she had washed and hung the sheets which snapped and murmured like giant gossiping tongues on the line outside her apartment, Sookie's mother taught us ways to protect ourselves.

“Never depend on a man,” Duk Hee said one Thursday, drinking and watching us eat
jajie
dogs she had placed on the Western-style table. Sookie's mother had set up the table and chairs for her boyfriends; their bodies could not fold under normal tables. I liked eating American-style, my back pushed straight against the backboard, even though my legs sometimes fell asleep as they dangled above the floor. I had to shake them as I chewed.

“Use one of these,” she said, holding a thin packet that could have been candy in front of her. She tore the square open with her teeth, reached in with two fingers and plucked out what looked like a large plastic coin.
“Kondom.”
Duk Hee flicked “the reliable choice” onto the table in front of Sookie, then poured more
maek-ju
into her glass. She swirled her fingers in the beer, then, after sucking them dry, lifted her glass against ours. This was our cue to shout out, “Cheezu!” and “Down-da hat-chi!” in English.

I was the only one to toast that round. Sookie refused to lift her cup—which was just water anyway. She only drank beer if her mother brought home an American brand from the PX. I took a sip of my drink, choking as I worked through my second cup. The fumes from the alcohol made my head ache with its stink.

Sookie poked at the translucent disk her mother had tossed across the table. Grimacing, she nudged it away from her with the nail of her index finger.

I leaned over, squinting at it. “Use it for what?” I asked.

Duk Hee laughed and I knew she was feeling good. This had been a profitable month for her; she had three boyfriends who loved her so much she had almost paid off what she owed her bar mama. Sookie's mother reached for the last fried hot dog. She pointed it at her daughter, where it wobbled and bobbed like a swollen, accusatory finger. Sookie's mother concentrated on squinting at it, then announced: “This is about the size of it. They don't call them penis dogs for no reason.”

I wanted to hear more, but Sookie scolded: “You're drinking too much,
Omoni.
Maybe you should eat that instead of waving it around like a flag.”

Sookie's mother pretended to shudder. “No thanks. I eat enough of them at work.”

I remember thinking how lucky that sounded, to work in a place where you could eat as many hot dogs as you wanted. I hadn't tasted anything so good, except for maybe American burga-fries and Spam—which I assumed Sookie's mother could also have whenever she wanted.

Sookie glared at her
omoni.
“Then why don't you go to bed? Hyun Jin and I have to study for school.”

“You're a good girl.” Sookie's mother, attempting to reach out and pat her daughter on the shoulder, lurched forward and fell against her. The hot dog hit Sookie in the head, splattering her hair with animal fat.

Sookie scowled, but I burst out laughing. The laughter pushed bubbles up into my throat; I burped and laughed some more. Sookie narrowed her eyes at me and her mother as she began to stack plates to carry to the kitchen.

Sookie's mother and I looked at each other, her eyes focused only on my good side, and smiled. She scratched at her kinky head. She'd just had her hair permed, to be more like the darkies at the clubs where she worked, and her head still itched from the chemicals. As she scratched with her free hand, the hot dog, like the hind leg of a real dog, quivered in sympathy. It was the last one and I wanted it, but could not ask someone older to hand over such a prize.

“Yeah, my Sookie is a good girl,” Duk Hee muttered. She looked at me and her gaze sharpened. “Have you gotten your period yet? It should come soon.”

“Ah, ah,” I gaped, my tongue too thick with beer and embarrassment to answer. I had started bleeding the year before. Too afraid and ashamed to approach my mother, I had turned to Sookie for help. “You're not a baby anymore,” is what she told me. “Now you have to be careful.”

“Of what?” I had asked.

“Of everything,” Sookie answered.

With the onset of blood, the world seemed a more menacing place.

“Just be careful,” Duk Hee said, echoing my memory of Sookie's warning. “Blood changes everything.” She turned to face the doorway to the kitchen. We heard Sookie drop the plates into the plastic washtub, heard the water from the hose hit the side of the tub like the fast-beating drum in a shaman dance. Then, when it stopped, we heard the rush of water hit the floor and the squeak of Sookie's rubber slippers pushing the lingering puddles into the floor drain.

“When I was little,” Sookie's mother announced, “I always dreamed of water.” Her voice, loud and sudden, broke the stupor I had fallen into with the rhythmic squeaking of Sookie's slippers.

“Ugnnh,” I grunted and nodded my head. I forced my eyes to open wider.

Duk Hee closed her eyes. “Always water. Rain. Rivers. Puddles, cloudy and full of tadpoles. Waterfalls. The hot springs at Tongnae-gu that bubble with the smells of yellow.” Her eyes snapped open and she grinned. “I wet my bed until I was almost your age! Drove my mother crazy until the dreams finally stopped.

“Then when I became pregnant with Ho Sook, I started dreaming about water again. But this time, it was always the same body of water: Chonji.” She frowned at me. “You know Chonji? The Lake of Heaven at Paekdu-san?”

I nodded, unsure. “The Paekdu Mountain in the north?” My father had told me that Paekdu Mountain was the place where the Prince of Heaven was lured to earth by the bear woman; they mated on the slopes overlooking the lake and their children became the people of Korea.

Sookie's mother picked up the soggy hot dog and tapped me on the hand like a good student. “Good!” she said. “When I first started dreaming my Chonji dreams, I had to hike the steep cliffs of Paekdu-san. I traveled paths where I had to hug the mountain's white face, my feet shuffling bit by bit along icy narrow ledges. Only after falling to my death once, twice, three times was I able to look down and see—between the forest trees and mist—the Lake of Heaven below me.

“Each dream brought me closer and closer to the lake, till finally one night I stood at the edge, its waves lapping at my toes. When I looked into the water, I saw, just under my own reflection, a flash—a small movement made by a water spirit. I jumped in after her and as soon as the water closed over my head, I awoke to my own rush of water: my water bag had burst.

“First I thought I was a girl again, that I had once more messed my bed in the night. But before I could call out to my mother in shame, waves of pain hit and I knew I was giving birth to the water spirit in my dreams.”

Sookie returned with a bowl full of peeled and sliced apples and pears, her face looking blank. I could tell she didn't want to hear anything else from her mother, but her mother added: “That is why I named her Ho Sook, Clear Lake. When I held her in my arms, I could see my own reflection just under her skin.” Duk Hee grabbed at Sookie's hands, jostling the fruit bowl, but Sookie snorted and dodged away.

I cleared my throat and asked, “What's going to happen to that last
jajie
dog?”

“This?” Duk Hee waved the hot dog at me. I tried not to drool. “I want to teach you something.” She waited until Sookie settled into her chair at the table, then held her empty hand to me. “Pass me the
kondom,
” she said.

Wrinkling my nose, I pinched the slimy ring and dropped it in her palm. The tips of my fingers felt greasy where I had touched the rubber so I rinsed my fingers in my beer as I had seen Sookie's mother do.

“I learned this at the clinic when I was about your age,” she said. She frowned, looking first at the hot dog, then at the
kondom
as if trying to puzzle out a knot. Then, drawing her knees to her chest, she gripped the
jajie
dog between her knees. With a grin, she flourished the rubber disk as if about to perform a magic trick and placed it on top of the hot dog. “Pinch the end,” she instructed. “And smooth it down.” The
kondom
slipped over the meat like the pantyhose she wore to the clubs. “There,” she said, dropping her knees and holding the covered hot dog vertically on the table. “Protection.”

It looked like a small red soldier standing at attention in his coat and hat. I tried to hide a giggle behind my hand, but when Sookie raised her eyebrows at me, I laughed with mouth open wide. “It looks like it's going to war,” I sputtered.

Sookie's mother chuckled. “It is a war,” she said, wiggling the tube of meat like a marching soldier.

I clutched my stomach in laughter and fell off my chair.

“Stop it,” Sookie growled.

“I'm trying,” I panted, but when I rolled onto my back and peeked a look at my friend, I realized she had been talking to her mother. I pulled myself back into my seat. “What's your problem, Sookie? Your mother is just teasing us.”

“It's no joke,” Sookie said, staring at her mother.

Duk Hee's lips stretched open in what should have been a smile, but wasn't. She gazed at her daughter with red-rimmed eyes and said, her voice so soft I almost didn't hear: “No, it isn't, is it?”

The hot dog lay on the table between Sookie and me. I poked it and it rolled unevenly toward Sookie. “Uh, anyone want this?” I asked.

Startled, Sookie looked down at the table, then pushed the penis dog back to me. She shuddered and reached for a sliver of apple.

“I'll have it then,” I said, grasping the uncovered tip of meat.

I rolled the thin plastic back up the soldier's body, and when he was naked, bit the head off.

I almost spit it out, the taste and smell of new rubber coating my mouth.

“Don't eat it!” Sookie shouted.

Meat smashed in my teeth, I smiled, then swallowed and took another bite, in part because Sookie told me not to, in part because it was American and I didn't want it to go to waste.

 

Weeks later, exploring the apartment when Duk Hee was at the clubs, we found a drawerful of those protection packets. She hadn't seemed to have used any. Sookie and I both took one. I figured we could use all the protection we could get from Lobetto and his gang.

Thinking the
kondoms
were like the talismans the shaman
mudangs
gave out to protect the wearer from bad luck and evil ghosts, I punched a needle through one corner of mine, widening the hole with a pencil until string could struggle through, and wore it around my neck, under my school uniform. During tests, I would touch my chest and feel the packet crinkle against my skin.

I don't know what Sookie did with hers.

 

I started walking Sookie home every day, not just every Thursday. Sometimes, in the place where sheets hung to dry, a row of lacy underclothes waved to each other and to passersby. When we saw this, we knew we would be welcome inside. Sookie's mother would not wash clothes if a boyfriend was home with her.