Fox Girl (8 page)

The little girl stared at me as I licked each bit of rice gruel off my spoon. Her eyes were black in the dim light of the tea-house. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she didn't smile or frown. Mysterious, I thought, as I waited for those dark eyes to blink, mysterious as a
Chinke.

 

My mother stopped at the shop with the deer in the window. Not as glamorous as I remembered, its coat was mangy and moth-eaten. And its eye—years older, I could see that it was only a glass marble, black and empty of life and magic. The herbalist, who had a growth the size of my fist bubbling up from the side of his neck, pushed his fingers into my throat. After taking my pulse at points along the meridians of my body—throat, temple, elbow, wrist—to see where my energy faltered, he rendered his verdict. “An overdose of
um,
” he announced. Too much wetness and darkness had seeped into my lungs. I was slowly drowning.

“How come you can't cure your own self,” I gurgled, eyeing his neck.

My mother flicked the back of my head with her fingers, and the herbalist clucked his tongue. “Very dark,” he said, and he and my mother nodded in agreement over my head.

The
hanyak-chesa
then shuffled to the display in the window. He broke off a finger of the deer's antler and threw it into a bowl where he ground it into powder. When my mother turned away, the herbalist narrowed his eyes at me and plucked one of the long hairs sprouting from his neck growth. He blew on it, then mashed it in with the deer horn.

“Hey,” I shouted. My mother flicked me again harder, and the herbalist continued to pound with his pestle. After adding pinches and spoonfuls of various black and brown powders from the jars behind the counter, he poured the mixture into a bag and handed it to my mother.

“Two things,” he instructed. “One, make tea for her before she sleeps each night. Second, make a paste and put it over her birthmark. Slowly, it will fight the darkness coming from within her.”

 

I presented Sookie with the bag of herb dust after a week of choking it down and rubbing it into my skin.

“What's this?” she asked, looking into the bag.

Feeling mean with power, I shrugged. “Breakfast.”

“Not funny,” she said flatly. “I'm hungry.”

“So eat it,” I teased. “It's good for you.”

“Give, Hyun Jin,” Sookie said. “I finished the map of the world for you.” She lifted a scroll from her book bag and carefully unrolled it. “See? I colored it in special.”

Frowning at her, I didn't bother to glance at the map. “I didn't get a perfect score on the last assignment.”

Sookie looked down, rubbing one foot over the other. “No?” she said.

“No. But I saw you did.”

Sookie bit her lip. “It was a mistake. I didn't mean to.”

“Hah, I'm on to your tricks,” I said. “I'm the one who taught them to you.” I grabbed the map from her and studied the mosaic of neatly labeled countries and continents vibrantly bordered by ocean blue. It was better than what I could have done, and this irritated me.

Sookie's stomach rumbled. “Didn't you bring me real food?”

Her whining made me feel meaner, because in truth I had forgotten about bringing her anything to eat. I had just wanted to show her what, in my mind, I had to endure for her. I wanted to tell her stories about Chinatown, about the herbalist who stored poison in his neck. But instead I told her: “Take it or leave it.”

She weighed the bag in her palm for a moment, then threw it to the ground. “I'm not so desperate I would eat your dirt.”

“Fine,” I said, shrugging. “See you at school then.” I walked away from her. I thought she would catch up with me, give me a thump on the head for my crankiness. But when, without slowing, I glanced back, I saw her kneeling on the ground, sniffing the bag of herbs.

 

The next morning, I came to her front door bearing two boiled eggs. Feeling guilty, I had sacrificed my own breakfast as a peace offering. “No thanks,” Sookie said airily, waving away my offer. “I just drank my breakfast. The herbs filled me up quite nicely.”

She marched down her steps, pushing me slightly as she went by. I held the eggs tighter in my fists. One of them cracked. I wrestled with my book bag, shoving the eggs into one of the side pockets, and followed her.

“Ho Sook, wait!” I commanded, my neck prickling at the echo of my dream as I ran to catch up.

Just like in my dream, Sookie waited without turning to look at me. But unlike in the dream, the real Sookie spoke. “The colors are so bright today, aren't they?” she said. Her voice sounded far away, as if we were living her dream, not mine. She spread her arms, embracing the sky. “That blue fills me,” she said, squinting at the clouds. “It hurts my eyes.” She started to cry.

“Sookie,” I said. I touched her shoulder.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she said: “The colors are tearing me apart.” She lay down on her back, her chest arching upward over the hump of her book bag. Her head lolled back, the top of it touching the ground, her chin angled toward the sky.

“Don't look anymore.” My voice sounded harsh because I was so worried.

“Yes, we're not supposed to look at the sky, at the sun. It's too bright. It's too full of color. But look around, Hyun Jin—at the dust we kick up as we walk. Look how it sparkles as it floats through the air, like little diamonds. Like tiny suns full of light and color. That's me now, Hyun Jin. I'm a tiny dust sun, exploding with colors, and soon I will be blown away. Breathe a part of me in, okay?”

“Please, Sookie, get up.” I pulled her arms. She was limp as a doll. “School's starting. I hate to be late.” I tried a threat: “If I leave you lying here, Lobetto and his gang will find you, and then what? They'd probably stomp on you; he still has to pay me back for the time I cut his eye. It scarred, you know,” I said, fingering my own face. “He probably hates us more now.”

She allowed me to pull her up and together we hobbled to school. Sookie didn't say anything else, but her head swiveled all the way there as she tried to watch each speck of dust smote by a shaft of light.

I got her into her seat before the teacher arrived, but when we were asked to stand for our lesson, Sookie fell back down. She crashed into two desks on her right, knocking them onto their sides. Her head smacked the corner of one of the desks, so that as she lay on the floor a bump the size of a baby's fist rose from her forehead. One of the girls whose desk was overturned screamed, “Sookie's dying!”

The teacher rushed to Sookie's side and poked at the bump with his long fingers. “Nothing seems cracked,” he murmured. He pushed harder. “Does feel squishy, though.”

“Ow,” Sookie croaked.

The teacher looked into her eyes. “Do. You. Know. Who. I. Am?” he asked.

“Ow,” Sookie said again. “Your voice is very loud.” She closed her eyes for a breath and when she opened them, told the teacher, “You are a sun,” and closed her eyes again.

The teacher looked up and frowned. At me. “Kong Hyun Jin, come forward!”

I panicked when he used his reprimand voice. The only thought in my mind was a defensive refrain: I didn't do it I didn't do it. “Yes, Respected Teacher,” I answered.

“Take Cho Ho Sook home. Stay with her. Make sure she doesn't sleep. If she becomes sick, or if she falls asleep and you cannot wake her, run to the doctor.”

On the walk home, Sookie explained her fall this way: “The colors rushed into my head, like the rockets Americans shoot into the sky the night before their new year. I had no choice but to fall down and enjoy the show.”

“I think we better keep walking,” I told her. Instead of heading straight to her apartment, I turned to follow the inside wall that surrounded America Town. I figured by the time we walked around the perimeter of America Town, it would be all right to let Sookie sleep. Teacher didn't tell me how long she should stay awake. Sookie leaned against me, and I leaned against the wall as we shuffled along.

We passed the building where two missionary women had set up a school for the throwaway children of the neighborhood. We passed the open window and heard the children roaring their answers to each of the teacher's questions:

“American!”

“Our fathers are American!”

“America!”

“America!”

I looked in at the group of chanting children and saw Lobetto staring out the window at us. Our Respected Teacher had suggested Lobetto change schools after Lobetto's father left for the United States. When Lobetto saw us looking, he pointed to Sookie and, holding a hand like a cup, tilted his head back like he was drinking a beer.

I shook my head and mouthed, No.

Lobetto made a rude gesture by poking his index finger in and out of the cup of his other hand.

As I gasped, he shuffled his fingers so only one finger stuck up.

I pointed a finger back at him.

“Wrong finger,” Sookie commented. I thought her eyes had been closed while we walked, but she had been watching me.

“What?” I grumbled, looking at my index finger.

Sookie laughed, a quiet laugh. Through the window I could also see Lobetto holding his sides in laughter as well. “Doesn't matter,” she mumbled. “Can we go home now? I'm tired and I want to eat.”

Guiltily, I realized Sookie hadn't eaten that morning, and I didn't know if she had had dinner the night before either. Or, for that matter, when she had last eaten at all. I thought of the two eggs in my bag. “It's your own fault for skipping breakfast,” I grumbled. Though I was hungry now too, I still planned to give her both eggs. She could eat them at her apartment, then rest. But if she looked like she would fall asleep, I would make her get up and walk again.

We cut through the courtyard between two apartments, ducking under a line of sheets hanging to dry. On clinic day, lines of laundry zigzagged throughout America Town: large flags of men's shorts, tiny butterfly wings of black and red lace, and diaphanous wraps and gowns—peach and pink ghosts—flapped and quivered in the wind.

On the wall of the apartment next to Sookie's someone had scrawled: “GOMSHI. SIR NIGGER, GO HOME.” And under that, as if in response, another someone had scribbled in English, “FOK YOU. I AM.” I thought that it could have been Lobetto; at his new school, he had learned to write English swear words better than anybody.

At her place, Sookie fumbled for the key around her neck. Pulling the chain out of her shirt, she leaned over and stretched it to jiggle the key in the lock. “I'm stuck,” she croaked.

With Sookie's head bumping against the door, I twisted the key and the knob. The door opened with a quick jerk, yanking Sookie—still attached at the neck—over the threshold and onto her knees.

“Sookie!” I pulled on the key, trying not to jostle her further. “Are you all right?” The lock finally released the key with a scraping sigh while Sookie, kneeling on the ground with one hand cradling her head and the other her neck, groaned in short, hiccuppy bursts.

When I ran to hold her, I saw that she was laughing, not crying. She dropped her hands, and I saw her lump was now accompanied by a long rash on her neck. “Let me take a look,” I scolded. Gingerly, I held her head in my hands and peered at her wounds while she tried not to laugh in my face. “You're messed up,” I announced.

We both started laughing.

When we were exhausted, sides sore from struggling to draw a clear breath free of laughter, we clambered to our feet. “Come on,” I said, taking her elbow to lead her to the kitchen. I lifted the book bag from her shoulder and pushed her into a chair. “Sit. Time to eat.”

Swinging my bag onto the table, I sprawled into the chair next to hers and sifted through worksheets and notebooks for the eggs. I fingered the shattered shells, testing their rubbery bodies, then plucked them out. “See what I have for you?” I presented them to Sookie with a flourish, as if they were jewels.

She didn't smile. She stared at the eggs and, hands shaking, accepted my gift. Bringing them to her nose, she sniffed at the eggs, then placed one on the table. The other, she cupped in both palms and began to peel, rubbing her thumbs against the bits of shell that fell onto the table. When the egg looked clean and naked as a newborn, she held her palm up, offering it back to me.

I shook my head. “No, you eat it,” I told her. “I'm not hungry.”

“Liar,” she said. “I heard your stomach rumble.”

“Really, eat it,” I said. “I brought them both for you.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, not at me but at the shivering egg, and bit. She ate the white first, exposing with each nibble the heart, until she held the marble of yolk between her fingers. After examining its perfection, she popped the yolk into her mouth. She sucked on it like it was candy, closing her eyes to savor the richness.

My stomach grumbled again. As I watched her peel the second egg, I decided that if she offered this one, I would eat it. She didn't. I couldn't watch her eat the last egg. Instead, I went to the kitchen for water. When I opened the cabinet for a cup, I found an American package. Blue with a picture of some kind of spotted biscuits and the words
Chips Ahoy.
I shook the bag, heard the rattle of a few biscuits left.

Without dropping the package, I opened the other cabinet and found more things American: an empty carton decorated with pictures of oranges; two tins with pictures of miniature hot dogs; a small, yellow-checkered bottle with no picture so I didn't know what it was; thick white envelopes that contained what felt like ground herbs. American herbs, I thought, were surely much better than the Koran weeds I had been forced to drink.