Fox Girl (6 page)

Thinking we must have overlooked clinic No. 5, we turned back toward the gate, determined to search more carefully. I reasoned it had to be a smaller clinic hidden behind the No. 3 or No. 6. Only after walking the road a second time, circling each building, did we realize that the numbers were in no particular order. We trudged on until, wedged against a chain-link fence between clinics No. 13 and No. 2, we found Dr. Pak's Love Clinic No. 5.

The clinic, an old-fashioned village house hidden amid modern wood and brick buildings, looked small and somehow vulnerable with its straw roof and dirt walls patched with the
Il Bon News.
I imagined that if I kicked through the newspaper bandages, into the building's intimate wounds, I could bring the whole clinic down.

Sookie grabbed my elbow and edged us into the cluster of women hanging around the clinic's entrance. “Act like we belong here,” Sookie hissed into my ear. As we approached them, I wished we had thought to put on makeup; the women, lounging against the wall, squatting on the steps, smoking cigarettes, and talking about men and America, seemed confident and sophisticated.

“We come here once a week, fine,” a woman seated on the bottom step said, talking to a woman with her back to us. “But I don't see why we got to miss a whole day's work.”

“It's not the day's work I mind missing,” another woman snickered. “It's the night's.”

The woman facing away from us rubbed her lower back. “Well, I'm glad to have a day off.”

“Mi Ok, sit.” The lady on the step frowned as she scooted to the higher step, pushing someone else closer to the doorway. The woman who was pushed looked up from her knitting and scowled.

“Sorry, sorry,” Pushy Lady said. “But let's make some room for the one with the condition.”

Knitting Lady looked at the one called Mi Ok and then cleared more room by pulling her knees up. “How far are you?”

As Mi Ok turned to sit, I saw the soft bulge of her stomach between the stretch of her T-shirt and her unbuttoned jeans. “Four, maybe five months,” Mi Ok answered. “I'm getting it fixed today.”

Pushy Lady nodded. “Good. Any longer, it'll be more painful for you. You cannot work for a long time.”

Knitting Lady picked up her needles and began to click a row of yellow. “Me,” she said, “I've had two so far. Next one I think I'm going to keep. Three's a lucky number.”

Another woman snorted just before someone from inside the clinic shouted “One-one-seven!” The numbers were carried like a wave, echoed by several women looking at the tickets in their hands.

The snorter was the one who saw us first. “What are you girls doing here?”

Knitting Lady squinted up at us. “You're too young to be here, you guys don't even have any
chi-chis
yet!”

Pushy Lady laughed. “Some men like that!” she said. “Did you see the styles in the American magazines?
Cosumo, Vo-gu,
all have that Twiggy girl who looks like a boy.”

“Tweggi?”
I asked, shocked. “Her mother is Korean? She is a half-half girl?”

The women erupted into laughter. “Are you really that stupid,” Pushy Lady taunted, “or are you just faking it?”

Knitting Lady made a big show of wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “In American language,” she gasped, wheezing out an explanation as she caught her breath, “Twiggy means
changaji.
So this girl is skinny as a stick from a tree.”

I could feel the flare of heat in my cheeks. “I knew that,” I retorted. I side-eyed Sookie so I wouldn't have to look at the women's smirking faces, and for the first time realized that Americans might see Sookie's dark angularity as appealing.

“That girl's funny.” Pushy Lady pointed at me.

“What she is is scary,” Snorting Lady said. She cleared her throat and spat on the dirt near me. “What's wrong with your face? How'd you get that scar?”

“It's not a scar,” I said, but I looked down, hoping enough of my hair would fall over the birthmark.

“Sure it is,” Snorting Lady cackled. “From the evils of a past life.”

“Stop teasing,” Pushy Lady said. “That's only superstition. And GIs, they go for any
yong sekshi
—doesn't matter the face so much.”

Mi Ok rubbed her stomach. “Shouldn't they be in school now?” she asked no one in particular.

Snorting Lady guffawed. “Maybe they are bringing kids here for field trips nowadays? That'd be a different sort of education!”

Mi Ok, her face without makeup and her hair cut short below her ears, looked like a schoolgirl not much older than Sookie and me. She tugged at her shirt, a splash of colors that strained to cover her midriff, then folded her hands across her belly.

“I'm looking for my mother,” Sookie announced.

“It's not me!” Snorting Lady joked.

“Why don't you go home to wait for her?” Mi Ok said. She sounded kind, but tired.

“I waited, but she never came home,” Sookie said, her voice small as a rabbit's.

Snorting Lady sneered. “She probably owed the club too much money and ran away to Cheju Do—the Korean Hawai‘i!”

“She did not!” Sookie shouted. I think only I heard the fear laced between the words, because I knew that it was true her mother owed money.

“Really, Hae Cha!” Mi Ok scolded. “What mother would leave her babies behind?”

“Mine did,” Snorting Lady said. She turned away from us and walked into the clinic.

“Oh her,” Pushy Lady said. “She's always stomping off for some reason or another.” She fumbled through her purse and pulled out a square of white paper which she waved at us. “Here, you might as well take my number. I'll tell that witch at the front desk I lost mine and need another. I don't have anything else to do today, so I might as well hang out here and socialize.” She grinned and when Sookie reached for the ticket, Pushy Lady added, “When one-two-nine gets called, go in and ask the doctor about your mother. He might know.”

“One-one-eight!” I jumped each time a number was called. Knitting Lady and Mi Ok both entered before us. Knitting Lady came out quickly, shuffling a sheaf of papers as she walked out. “More papers, another office to visit. Like rats in a maze,” she grumbled as she passed us. When number one-two-nine was called, Sookie and I hooked elbows and, leaning against each other, entered the dark doorway.

Dazed by the sudden change in light, I had to blink before I could see. We stumbled into a narrow front room lined with more women waiting to visit the doctor. I spotted Snorting Lady squatting in the corner smoking a cigarette, but she didn't look at us. A white-capped nurse stationed behind a large Western-style desk blocked the entrance to the inner room.

Holding the ticket in front of us like a talisman, we approached the nurse. “Our number was called,” I whispered.

The nurse pursed her thin lips like she was eating unripe persimmon. “Where's your ID tag?” she spit out the soured words.

“T-tag?” I stuttered. Sookie and I swiveled to look at the other women in the room and noticed for the first time the plastic cards around their necks.

“Are you new?” The nurse shoved two sheets of paper at us. “If you're new, you each need to fill out a form before you see the doctor.” I scanned the papers as Sookie tried to explain to the nurse that we only wanted to ask the doctor a few questions, not receive the exam or shots.

“Not allowed,” the nurse sniffed. “The doctor is here only to give clearance examinations for women working as patriots of the Republic of Korea.”

I pulled Sookie away from the desk, telling the nurse, “Just give us a minute to fill out the forms.”

“One-three-zero!” the nurse shouted.

Borrowing a pen from a woman near us, Sookie and I scanned the questions. After filling in Sookie's name and address, we invented the rest: identification number, club name, club owner, date of last VD clearance, date of last menses. At the bottom of the sheet was the question, “Did you attend the American etiquette education class?” I scribbled “yes” on mine, assuming etiquette—identified as American—was a good thing.

I handed the papers to the nurse, feeling like I was turning in a school assignment. The nurse frowned, as if we had a wrong answer—which we probably did—but jerked her head toward the door. “Wait!” she grabbed me as we edged around her. “One at a time.”

“But—” Sookie stammered, trying to convince her we must go together, just this once. The nurse looked away from us, as if she couldn't hear our voices.

“Oh, Sookie,” I said, trying to pry her off me. “Just go. I'll wait out here.”

“No, don't leave me!” Sookie cried and continued to beg the nurse. “I need my friend to come with me,” she said, her voice breaking. “She's my sister—just like—to me. Please, Auntie, please, let us go together just this once.”

The nurse grumbled, “You'll go to hell together, too, I suppose.” But she let go of my arm. When she sat down behind the desk and turned her attention to another woman, another number, Sookie and I hurried past.

The inner office looked modern: tiled floors, metal chair in one corner, metal table in the center, an installed sink and faucet, a glass cabinet next to the sink filled with materials—cotton balls, wooden sticks, needles. The doctor, in a white knee-length coat instead of an old-fashioned black hat and suit, seemed modern as well. I remember wondering how often his maid had to wash his coat to keep the white that clean, and if the government paid him enough to wear a fresh coat each day of the week.

The doctor started when he saw us at the doorway, his eyebrows arching toward his hairline. I supposed he was surprised at seeing two girls instead of one. Then his eyebrows slammed downward. He paced away from us and muttered to himself, just as my father did when he was angry at something my mother did.

“Too young,” he said under his breath. “Shouldn't be on the streets or in clubs. Their own mothers will put them to work right out of primary school if the money's right. ‘Personal goodwill ambassadors,' my ass.” Later, on the walk home, Sookie and I argued over whether or not the doctor had said “my ass.” Sookie insisted that I made that up, along with the rest of his tirade. We couldn't hear him clearly, she claimed; he mumbled and his back was toward us.

We had tried to inch closer to hear better, but the doctor suddenly whirled and marched back to us. This time his face sagged as he looked over our heads. “One of you sit on the chair. Wait.” He jerked his head in the direction of the metal chair as he spoke. “The other one, take off your clothes, even your undergarments. Lay down on the table.” He stomped to the sink to wash his hands.

Sookie and I didn't move. We didn't even look at one another, too embarrassed to imagine ourselves doing what the doctor had ordered. I wondered if Sookie was also embarrassed to know that her mother did this each week.

“I don't have all day!” the doctor stormed when he turned around to find us still dressed, slack-jawed and big-eyed. “Don't you know how many of you I have to see in one day?”

I wanted to run out, but Sookie found a voice, weak as it was, that came out in a choppy rush between gulps of air: “Sorry, but. I but. We. Are looking. For my mother she came here last. Week and hasn't. Come home yet we thought you. Might. Know where. She. Is.”

The doctor left the room. Sookie's panting sounded loud and harsh in the empty room. Without meaning to, I started to match her breaths. When I began thinking I should sit down before I fainted, the doctor came back into the room. “Here,” he said, handing Sookie a brown paper bag. “Put it over your head and try to breathe slowly.”

“Now you.” The doctor touched my shoulder, bending toward my face. “Tell me what you need.”

I chanced a glance at his face, then looked quickly down so as not to be disrespectful. But that quick look into his eyes helped me not to be afraid. I saw not only that he wasn't angry anymore, but that in some ways—the greased style of his black-pepper hair, the brown fullness of his cheeks, the sweet-tea warmth of his eyes—he reminded me of my father.

“We're looking for her mother,” I said. “She never came home from here.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Sookie nod her paper bag head.

The doctor straightened, rubbing his eyes. “I'm sorry, girls. I wouldn't know who your mother is. I see so many women a day, I can't remember the person behind the number.”

Sookie grunted under her bag.

“She said her mother's name is Cho Duk Hee,” I translated.

The doctor shook his head and started to speak. “Like I said.” Then he looked at the bag squared on Sookie's shoulders, saw the darkened dampness where her wet lips pushed at the paper with each breath. “But, if she checked in here and failed the exam, she'd have been taken to the Monkey House.”

 

Pushy Lady was still on the steps when we walked out. She had brought lunch with her and now ate under the strip of shade provided by the roof's thatched overhang. “Find your mother?” she asked, her mouth full of
kimbap.

Sookie looked at the dirt in her toes.

“They sent her to the zoo,” I stomped my foot, answering for her. “She's not an animal.”

Pushy Lady chewed slowly, puzzled, then suddenly choked on the rice ball she was eating. Grains of rice and seaweed shot out of her mouth as she laughed. “The zoo! That's a good one! You are so funny!” She shook her head, dabbing at her mouth for the rice she lost. “I'm guessing you mean the Monkey House?”