Kimchi & Calamari (6 page)

T
he curse of a superstitious Italian mother struck again. No wonder I felt nervous that Friday the thirteenth was C-day, as Frankie calls it when you make contact with a girl for the first time.

That afternoon was Kelly's softball game, and I was asking her to the movies afterward. No matter what. Aunt Foxy's words echoed in my mind: “You make her laugh.” If only I could get Kelly to share popcorn and a box of Junior Mints, who knows? Maybe going to the Farewell Formal together wasn't the impossible dream.

“It's about time you showed up, Joseph!” Frankie
called from the top row of bleachers. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck, and he kept looking through them every few seconds.

I climbed the bleachers reluctantly and sat next to Frankie. He can be really annoying sometimes.

Frankie stood up and pointed the binoculars at our team's dugout. “Yes, folks, the Frankie radar is scanning the playing field. Numbers one and two are in the dugout, and number three is up at bat.”

“What are you talking about?” I squinted as I looked at the players. The batter's jersey number was twelve, not three.

“Sherrie Harrington, Tara Riddle, and Molly Palanski. They don't know it, but they're all finalists in my Farewell Formal date selection.”

I groaned. “What inning is this?”

“Bottom of the third. We're up 3–1. Kelly's pitching great. They only got one hit off her in the last inning.”

I looked over to the dugout. An assistant coach was explaining something to Kelly, but she looked like she didn't want to hear it.

I wiped my forehead, pulled my water bottle from my backpack, and took a gulp. On the lower bleachers I noticed Yongsu, wearing another collared shirt—a white one this time. Like a kid in private school.

He must have sensed someone was staring at him because he looked up and began waving like crazy, as if I couldn't see him from ten feet away. Then he grabbed his flute case and books and climbed up the bleachers to join us.

“Who's this nerd?” Frankie whispered as Yongsu approached.

“Yongsu Han. He's new. And anybody who eats fluffernutter sandwiches in middle school shouldn't be calling anyone else a nerd.”

That zipped Frankie's lips temporarily.

Yongsu sat next to me. He had a bag of Cheetos under his arm. “So you're a softball fan?” I asked.

“My sister, Ok-hee, joined the team.” He pointed toward the bench.

“I thought she was in Flushing. At some fancy music program.”

“She finished. The coach said she was good enough to make the team, but she has to practice before playing in a game,” he said, in between mouthfuls.

This my-sister-is-a-superstar talk was almost too much. “Piano, school, softball…is there
anywhere
your sister doesn't kick butt?”

“Cleaning her room.” He grinned. “She's a slob.”

I looked down at our team. Ok-hee sat on the bench
next to the coach. She had super-long hair. Long legs, too. I could tell she was taller than Yongsu, even though she was younger.

“What are you doing here?” Yongsu asked me.

Frankie blurted out my answer. “Joseph's trying to pitch himself to the pitcher.”

The other team was up at bat now. It was the top of the fourth and Kelly just threw a beauty, a perfect strike. Cheers roared from our section of the bleachers. None louder than mine.

Yongsu's eyes scanned the softball field. I had this hunch that, in Frankie's terms, he was a zero-contact kind of guy. He hadn't discovered the agony and the ecstasy of girls yet.

“Did you find a famous Korean for your paper?” Yongsu asked.

“Yeah. Now I have to write about him,” I said.

“Who'd you pick?”

“Sohn Kee Chung, the Olympic marathoner.” I skipped over how I planned to magically make him my grandfather.

Yongsu nodded. “My father's told me stories about him. He was fast! And brave, too, even when Japan was bullying Korea. Good choice, Joseph.”

“Thanks,” I said. But I wondered if I
was
making a
good choice. Sohn Kee Chung was brave for sure, but was I? Maybe I was taking the easy way out. I didn't want to cheat, and I knew this Korean gold medalist would never have cheated.

But then again, Sohn Kee Chung didn't have an ancestry essay to turn in to Mrs. Peroutka, either.

Frankie left for the late bus at the top of the sixth, just after the other team scored. But then our team caught a hitting fever. Janice Reed slammed a double, and then Kelly hit a line drive for a single, bringing Janice to third. I started whooping and hollering and even shouted out some rhyming raps. I thought I saw Ok-hee glare at me. Maybe I'd interrupted her Zen concentration on the game. Or maybe she was just looking for her brother.

Just as I shoved a handful of Cheetos in my mouth, Yongsu tapped my shoulder.

“About my mom,” he said, “she doesn't understand adoption. She says it's not natural for parents to raise other people's kids. Sorry if she hurt your feelings.”

He was staring down at the ground under the bleachers. I could tell he felt embarrassed.

“Let's forget it,” I said, reaching for more Cheetos. What did I care about Mrs. Han? There were plenty of Americans, including my own family, who didn't understand adoption either.

 

Our team won 7–2. Kelly brought in two runs in the top of the seventh with a triple to right field. I stood outside the exit of the locker room afterward, ready to ask her out. Yongsu hovered nearby, waiting for his sister. He was doing yo-yo tricks like Walk the Dog and Around the World, and even got the yo-yo to land in his palm.

Kelly's parents were talking to Coach Durrey. Mrs. Gerken had diamond earrings as big as peanut M&M's, and the shine on Mr. Gerken's shoes was visible from ten feet away. And even I could tell the peach fuzz on his head was probably from an anti-balding drug.

Dad's bald spot is double the size of Mr. Gerken's, but the only thing he puts on it is sunscreen.

Watching them, I wondered what they'd think about me if I walked into their mansion with Kelly. Maybe they'd recognize the name Calderaro and realize I was a window washer's son.

Nah, they wouldn't get the Calderaro connection. I bet they'd never talked to a kid who looked like me before, except maybe someone washing dishes in one of their restaurants.

I was starting to get antsy when Robyn and a couple of other band kids appeared, swinging their instrument
cases. They shouted for me to come over—they were tossing a water balloon around—but I said I couldn't. I had business to attend to. Then Yongsu's sister came out, her arms full of books. Yongsu ran toward her.

“Ok-hee, this is Joseph, my friend I've been talking about,” he said.

She nodded and looked me up and down. Like mother, like daughter. Nothing about Ok-hee suggested she'd been Flushing's Miss Congeniality.

“Is Coach Durrey going to let you play in the next game?” I asked.

“I need a full week of practices,” she answered coolly.

“Good luck.” I gestured like I was swinging a bat. “New Jersey pitchers try to get you to swing at wild balls, but you just need to hold your ground.”

She looked at me like I was a moron. What, did you have to be a major-league coach before you could offer advice?

Ok-hee dropped a book as she walked away. I picked it up and recognized the title:
A Spell for Chameleon
.

“That's the best of the Xanth series,” I said. “Did you get to the part where Bink meets up with Evil Magician Trent?”

She gave me a doubting glare like she didn't expect anyone with below a Mensa IQ to read anything but easy
readers. Yongsu shrugged like he was used to his sister's moods and waved good-bye cheerfully.

Watching Yongsu and Ok-hee walk away got me wondering again. Maybe I had a snooty know-it-all sister in Korea who was a foot taller than me. Maybe I had a couple of brothers and sisters. Now I wanted to know if I did. I
really
wanted to know. And not just for a social studies essay, either.

Another five minutes passed and I almost left too, because I figured Dad was waiting to pick me up and getting grouchy. But finally Kelly came out of the locker room. She'd pitched five tough innings and still looked like a model. Wow.

I intercepted her before she reached her parents. “Awesome triple, Miss MVP!” I called.

“Thanks, Joseph.” She flashed a grin.

Her smile sent me soaring. Go for it, Joseph. I pumped myself up. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the movies tomorrow,” I began. I couldn't stop now. “Maybe we can get some pizza afterward. At Dom's across from the CinemaPlex. We could walk there.”

She didn't look horrified. A good sign.

“Dom's has free soda refills and the best Sicilian pizza in New Jersey,” I added.

“I like regular pizza.”

“Their regular pizza is twice as good as their Sicilian. Trust me, my record is five pieces.”

She laughed. Then Mr. Gerken called her. He sounded like he was in a hurry.

“I've got a softball lesson tomorrow. How about Sunday?” she asked.

“Lucky for you I've had a cancellation. I'm available on Sunday, say twelve thirty?” I had no idea what movie would be playing, but it didn't matter. Even a Disney cartoon would do.

“Sounds good. I'll meet you at the CinemaPlex then,” she said as she flung her hot pink gym bag over her shoulder and walked off.

I waited until the Gerkens' car drove off before letting loose with “Woo-hoo, I'm the
man
!” Then I danced a touchdown dance in the parking lot, just as Dad's truck pulled up.

P
eck, peck, peck, peck.

My fingers hacked away at the keyboard Saturday night. I clicked the mouse to check the word count: 1295. Roughly two hundred words away from the essay finish line. And just in time, too. It was due Monday, but tomorrow was my movie date with Kelly.

The freezer door slammed shut. From the computer desk in the family room, I watched my sisters battle by the kitchen counter. Their hair was wet and braided and they were already in their pajamas. Mom was working at the beauty shop later than usual, leading new product
training for the hairdressers. Dad was in his recliner, reading another classic that you'd expect to find in the hands of a pipe-smoking professor, not a window washer who looks tough in a tank top.

“Give that to me!” Gina yelled. “Daddy, Sophie took the last Popsicle!”

Sophie sat on a kitchen stool gripping the Popsicle like a weapon. “I grabbed it first. Fair and square.”

The air was thick as oatmeal. No matter how many times I wiped my forehead, it felt greasy. My glass of fruit punch sat in a puddle next to the mouse pad.

“Bully!” Gina wailed.

“Both of you have cookies if there aren't enough Popsicles,” Dad growled from behind
The Brothers Karamazov.

“I don't want cookies,” Gina whined.

“I'm eating this Popsicle. I got it first.” Sophie ripped the wrapper off just as Gina started crying.

“Maybe there are more in the back of the freezer.” Dad put his book down and walked into the kitchen.

I hit my mental button to mute the sibling static. I was on a roll, two-finger punching at the keyboard.

The title of my essay was “A Medal for Speed and a Life of Honor: My Grandpa Sohn.” I wrote how Sohn Kee Chung was my father's father. Since I couldn't find
where he was born, I picked Yongsu's birthplace, Taegu. Dad's atlas listed Taegu as the third-largest city in South Korea, right along the Naktong River. It was a city that used to be famous for apples—” Best in Asia,” according to the atlas—so I gave Grandpa Sohn's family their very own orchard.

Racing became a nightly ritual, I wrote, after the day's picking was done. Sohn's father always served as judge at the finish line, though none of his siblings could catch up with Sohn. Afterward the Chung family would sit down together to eat rice and kimchi, a spicy pickled cabbage. It sounded like Koreans eat kimchi the way Italians eat pasta. All the time.

As I unwound this story, I felt like I'd gotten into the real Sohn's head. Like I understood how outraged he must have felt about the Japanese taking over his country. How lousy it must have been to represent Japan, the invader, in track and field—
his
sport. The Japanese government looked down on the Koreans like the Nazis did the Jews, wanting to kill off everything Korean. Clothes. Tradition. Even their Korean names.

I wrote that Grandpa Sohn stuffed his sneakers and a pair of chopsticks in his gym bag. Then, with the rally cry, “This one's for Korea,” he headed to the 1936 Berlin games. It was the first time he'd ever left Taegu. But he never forgot he was Korean. Even during the Olympics, when the Japanese forced him to use the name Kitei Son, he protested in his own way—by sketching a tiny map of Korea next to his signature.

The library book described Sohn's butt-kicking victory over the other marathoners in Berlin, including a heavily favored Argentinian named Juan Zabala. Adolf
Hitler, who people called the führer, was rooting for Zabala—probably because Zabala looked more like him than Sohn did. But Hitler didn't know he was dealing with one quick Korean.

One of my favorite parts of my story—and I swear I didn't make it up—was when a Korean newspaper got angry about their star being forced to represent Japan. Just to make a point, they airbrushed the sunburst, Japan's national symbol, off Sohn's jersey on the front-page photo. The staff was thrown in prison and the newspaper was shut down for ten months as punishment.

But I bet it was worth it.

Word count check: 1,496. Closing time.

Finally I was finished. I'd told Sohn Kee Chung's story, and he was one awesome Korean. If only our family connection were true.

I waited for the yahoo-I'm-done! exhilaration to hit like it usually does when a paper's finished, but it didn't. Sohn Kee Chung was proud and true to himself, but I didn't feel that way.

I looked up. Dad had gone upstairs. I hit Save and signed off. This wasn't the kind of document I wanted Mom or Dad to see.

My sisters were still in the kitchen as I searched the cupboard. Dad had let me skip dinner to finish the essay, and now I was craving something cheesy with tomato sauce.

“Did you two reach a truce?” I asked.

Only Sophie nodded, so I figured she ate the last Popsicle. Gina was distracted, playing some sort of stack 'em game on the kitchen counter with the spice containers. She'd gotten eight of them on top of each other and was attempting to add the dried rosemary to make it nine, but it was wobbling.

“The leaning tower of flavor,” I said in an accent just
like Nonno Calderaro's.

Gina giggled.

I poured a glass of orange juice and looked in the fridge, only to discover leftover pizza in the back, behind the margarine.
Yessss.
Heaven in tinfoil.

“C'mon, Gina and Sophie, bedtime. Brush your teeth,” Dad called from upstairs. Gina got off her chair just as Sophie reached over and knocked the tower down. Plastic spice jars started rolling across the counter. Green flecks of oregano spilled everywhere.

“I saw you, Sophie, you brat!” Tears filled Gina's eyes.

Sophie grinned and then glanced at me.

“Why are you so mean?” I barked.

“Who says it was me?” she said, dashing out of the kitchen with guilt and Popsicle juice smeared across her face.

 

“That'll be five seventy-five,” the pizza guy growled in a cartoon bulldog voice on Sunday afternoon. I handed him a ten-dollar bill and stuffed the change in my shorts pocket. Kelly was already walking to a booth in the back of the pizzeria.

“You didn't have to pay for me, Joseph,” she said, poking a straw in her cup. She was drinking diet soda,
though I doubt she weighed a hundred pounds. I can't stand diet anything.

The pizzeria was warm and crowded. A herd of Little Leaguers had just walked in. The smell of garlic floated in the air like it does when Mom's making her Bolognese sauce. It was almost four and I was starving, even though I'd eaten most of the popcorn at the movie theater.

Subtly, I watched how Kelly handled her pizza. Pizza-eating technique reveals a lot about a person. First Kelly placed a napkin on top and sopped up the grease. Then she pricked the cheese with a fork to release the heat. When she finally dug in, she took teensy bites and dabbed her chin with a napkin.

Me, the moment we sat down I reached for the Parmesan and the red pepper shaker and covered my pepperoni slice like sand on the desert. The more kick, the better. I'm convinced my spicy craving is genetic. Even in kindergarten I preferred ballpark chili dogs over plain franks.

Still, I didn't want to be a slob around Kelly. I was careful to not chew with my mouth open—which, according to Mom, is a bad habit of all us Calderaros.

We talked about how the movie creeped us both out. “My sister Sophie would have liked it,” I said. “She loves
getting scared to the brink of wetting her pants.”

Kelly said she was the only child in her family.

I told her how I have five cousins on my dad's side, and six cousins—or cousins once removed, I get it mixed up—on my mom's side. “Italians have Rolodexes full of relatives,” I added.

“Italians?”

“Yeah, most of my relatives on both sides moved to Florida. The warmer weather reminds them of Italy. We're the only family members who still own snow shovels.”

Kelly started to speak, but then stopped. She seemed to be confused, about my being Italian, I guessed.

“I'm adopted.” I shrugged, as if that explained it all.

“Really?” She looked surprised. Maybe she thought my dad was white and my mom was Asian. But I guess she never met my parents.

“Yup, I was born in Korea,” I said, as though I could map the entire country. Under the booth I slapped my hands against my knees to the beat of “You're a Grand Old Flag.”

Kelly put her drink down and perked up. “Do you know your story? I mean, who your parents were?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I don't know what made me say it.
Maybe to impress her. Or maybe because I felt dumb
not
knowing.

“So you've searched for your birth mother? I saw this Russian girl on a talk show who did that. She put a posting on a website and was reunited with her relatives.”

“Sort of,” I said. Inside my head I thought I heard that tiny angel Mom calls your conscience calling, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

Kelly stared at me wide-eyed, like a curious cat. I wanted her to think I was interesting, but I didn't really want to get into all this adoption stuff.

“Did you meet your birth mother?” she asked.

I shook my head no.

“Have you talked to her on the phone?”

“We're, uh, writing letters,” I said. If only it were true. And now I felt like that tiny angel was smacking the inside of my brain, furious.

Just when I dreaded saying another word, one of the Little Leaguers ran past our table, tripped on his shoelace, and sent his paper plate flying.

Splat!
His slice of meatball pizza landed cheese down on the linoleum, and he started wailing. I got up to hand the poor kid napkins. I hate hearing squirts cry.

Soon his mom took charge, and the boy calmed down.
Kelly and I sat quietly for a few minutes after that. I slurped my soda. It was empty, and I wanted a refill.

“I give you credit, Joseph. I don't know if I would have searched,” Kelly said.

I looked up, surprised by her words. “Why not?”

“Because I like my life,” she answered carefully, as if thinking it through. “You probably like yours, too. I'd be afraid of the skeletons in the closet, if you know what I mean.”

I didn't. I wanted to know every single thing I could. What my birth parents looked like, what kind of jobs they had, their favorite foods and colors, even what songs they hummed in the shower. Knowing nothing is worse than knowing the truth. But I didn't tell that to Kelly. Mostly I wanted to change the subject.

“Be right back.” I walked over to the counter and filled my soda to the top.

Since my plate was empty and Kelly's just had pizza crust, we went outside. It had started to rain lightly, and the sky was covered with dark cauliflower-shaped clouds.

“I'm supposed to meet my mom next door,” she said, pointing to the florist. “She has to pick up centerpieces for a dinner for their restaurant suppliers tonight.”

End-of-date rituals, can anything be more awkward?
I thought about kissing her, but it didn't feel right, what in the rain and with the Little Leaguers standing by the door eating Italian ices and staring at us. Besides, after all that crushed red pepper on my pizza, my breath might have set a class A fire on her lips.

“Let me know if you hear anything about your birth family, okay?” she said.

“Sure. So, um, do you wanna go out again sometime?”

“Maybe, but call me way ahead of time. The next couple of weeks are crazy busy. You know, commitments,” she said, rolling her eyes.

As I nodded and waved good-bye, I tried to think of one thing in my life that qualified as a commitment. But I could only hear Mom yelling at me to hurry with that sack of towels before the Jiffy Wash closed.

I ran back to the CinemaPlex in the rain and sat on a bench inside, waiting for Dad. He'd taken Gina and Sophie to buy sneakers, and so I still had another twenty minutes to kill. I watched a few older guys standing in the ticket line with their arms around girls. It made me think about my afternoon. In Frankie-speak, I'd made contact with one of the hottest girls in school. We'd had fun together. She'd actually spoken the two victory words, “Call me.”

Then why wasn't I having those heart-pounding,
firecracker-exploding feelings? My mind wasn't even on Kelly. Instead, my thoughts bounced from my essay about who I
wasn't
, to wondering about who I
was
. I needed to solve this MBA puzzle. Like why I always sneeze five times in a row. No one else I know sneezes more than three times. Or my constant craving for spicy food. Or my never-ending wondering about who came before me in that long line of ancestors Mrs. Peroutka talked about.

Maybe my birth mother sneezes in sets of five. Maybe my birth father loads his plate with hot peppers too. Who knows? Maybe some of my Korean relatives resisted the Japanese occupiers the way Sohn Kee Chung had.