Re Jane (35 page)

You never heard cheers and whoops for a blackout like the ones thundering around me. But my thoughts leaped to the conjoined associations: looting. The store. Sang.

Immediately my body moved east, toward the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. My whole life the bridge had looked to me like one big industrial eyesore, born from the metal works and steel factories at its base. It had none of the majestic quality of the Brooklyn Bridge, or even the Manhattan Bridge's cool blue-and-white aesthetic.

But as I walked over the bridge, I realized there was a beauty in its perfunctoriness—its interlacing cable work overhead and underfoot, soaring across the East River. It was unglamorous yet sturdy—it was so quintessentially
Queens
.

When I reached the other side of the bridge, I found myself following the same path as the 7 train, bound for Flushing. I traversed neighborhoods I had passed through all my life but never on foot; everywhere were signs of life. Body-shop workers were grilling meat on a portable charcoal grill in front of their garage. Random men off the street jumped into the intersections, transforming themselves into impromptu traffic guards. Perhaps
nunchi
translated into all cultures.

The radio feeds floating from stagnant cars let out minute-by-minute updates in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Korean. All around me people smiled, as if celebrating the happiest blackout in history. The violet Manhattan skyline fell away behind me, and before me—the vista of Flushing, a glowing wasteland.

Finally I reached Northern Boulevard. I passed Daedong Fish Market, Chosun Dynasty Auto Body, Kumgang Mountain Dry Cleaning—all the familiar storefronts I've known for as long as I can remember. Their corrugated metal gates were pulled down. I braced myself for the worst at Food: Bashed storefronts. Broken windows. Battered uncle.

But when I approached, everything looked intact. The fruit carts were still out front. Why hadn't Sang rolled them into the safety of the store? Everything felt strangely calm. I pushed open the automated door—with the power out, it was heavy and resistant—and stepped inside.

Food was suffused with a quiet and controlled chaos. Customers waited on a long but patient line, their arms brimming with gallon jugs of water, canned beans, cereal boxes. None of them squabbled, despite the growing darkness, despite the refrigerated air growing stickier with each swing of the door. Not even Mrs. O'Gall, with her head of iceberg and her jar of Hellmann's, made so much as a peep.

Sang did not see me at first, but I saw him, lit by the dim glow of candlelight. He had set up a makeshift table at the front and was hunched over the change box. The cash register was sealed shut and abandoned. Beside him flashlights and batteries, candles and condoms were corralled in a basket on the checkout counter for easier access. He looked . . . serene. He doled out these supplies in small, gentle exchanges. Hannah stood at his side, handing each person a free pint of ice cream from a shopping cart. Hwan was nowhere in sight.

Where was their panic? Where was my uncle's metal bat? Sang was
smiling.
Hannah, too. My eyes darted to the refrigerated section, teeming with dairy items. My brain computed the tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise that would spoil overnight.

I grabbed a shopping cart. I swept in milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs on top. Ran the cart to the back, to the walk-in box, where the insulation would keep the items refrigerated, even with the power shut off. I stood in front of the door. Muscle memory told me to grip the handle and yank it open with all my might—but that was the old door. Instead a gentle click
popped it open, and I pushed the cart inside. Then I ran to the front of the store again.

As I began filling up a second cart, Sang looked up and met my eyes. I expected his to cloud over in anger. But he looked at me, then gave a single nod. A nod of gratitude. I nodded back.

When I was done with the dairy products, I moved on to the most perishable fruits. Gently I eased pints of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries into the cart. I surveyed the other fruit, the most expensive: the Asian pears. They could weather this, so I let them be.

After I finished packing the walk-in box to capacity, I returned to the front, where Sang was joined by Mr. Hwang of Daedong Fish Market and Mrs. Kim of Kumgang Mountain Dry Cleaning and Mr. Lee of Chosun Dynasty Auto Body, who had all come in to lend a hand. I bowed to them; when I looked up, their eyes were soft with smiles.
“Lucky you, to have such a good niece,”
they said to Sang.

I was even more surprised to hear his response.
“I know,”
he said quietly.

When the last customer left the store, my uncle took the contents of the change box and locked them in the safe in the basement, while Mr. Hwang and Mr. Lee stood watch by the front doors. When Sang returned, he pressed a box of fruit each on Mr. Hwang and Mrs. Kim and Mr. Lee. He ordered Hannah to walk Mrs. Kim home, but Mr. Hwang offered to drive everybody. We saw them off. Then it was just Sang and me.

The silence between us was thick, the darkness palpable. Then, almost too softly for me to hear, Sang spoke. “I not know.”

“About what?”

He hesitated a beat. “About your mother.” Then he took up a broom and began making curt, efficient sweeps across the floor.

Reader, I forgave him on the spot. And he forgave me. Maybe he couldn't understand it, but he acknowledged how much that revelation about my parents had meant to me. And that was the last time we talked about my mother—or my father, for that matter.

I reached for the mop and followed my uncle with broad, swirling strokes across the floor. I thought of the painstaking effort we'd taken in laying down each of those floor tiles. The hairline cracks were still there, visible even in the thin wisps of moonlight.

Sang stopped sweeping. “This yours, if you want,” he said plainly. When I didn't immediately answer, he said, “The store. Uncle thinking long time. We do this together.”

A not-so-long time ago, I would have read the worst in my uncle's offer.
That's so presumptuous of you. Stop forcing me to keep working here.
But
I didn't see it that way anymore.

“Thank you, Uncle. That's so generous of you,” I said. “But I need to do my own thing.”

The moonlight struck his cheekbones at the severest angle. I braced myself for Sang's reaction. No doubt he would have felt put out—insulted, even. But it was too dark to make out the expression in his eyes.

To my surprise he said, “Okay. You do own thing.”

He swept and I polished the floors of the store. Our relationship would always be flawed, but it still worked, in its own jerry-rigged way. It was guided by a logic that was neither purely Korean nor purely American, perhaps a bastardized blend of both. But it was
ours
—it was New York. It took not a natural disaster but a Con Ed one to bring the two of us together.

When we were done cleaning, he asked, “You gonna come home?”

I nodded. “Yeah. My roommate's gonna worry.”

“Okay,” he said. “I give you ride your home.” He instructed me to pack some food to take to Nina. When I returned to the front of the store, he handed me a six-pack of beer.

“Wow, thank you, Uncle.”

“Don't be selfish,” he ordered. “You suppose to share. Drink while still cold.”

On the walk to the car, I did not mention my breakup with Ed. We did not talk about the weather, my work, or how I'd navigated my way from work to Food in the blackout—not even why I'd decided to return. My uncle and I communicated in the bare minimum of prose, our language reduced to the lowest common denominator.

On the passenger seat, there was a receipt with something scribbled on the back:
“Juan Kim (718) 555-9876.”

“Who's Juan Kim?” I asked my uncle.

Sang's tone grew instantly impatient
.
“How long you working Food you still not know Juan?”

Oh.
Hwan.

“He Korean from Argentina,” my uncle explained. “Just like you Korean from America.”

This explained why his Korean, though far better than mine, was always shrouded in hesitation.
I wondered if it was also why he looked at me frankly, unwaveringly, when most Koreans didn't make much eye contact.

“All this week Juan not show up. Uncle calling, calling that number, nobody pick up. Today again he not show.” He tapped the side of his head. “Always Uncle think something not right with Juan. Maybe happen because of immigration. Lot of people, they get broken after. Never they be the same.”

“When did Juan come to Ameri—” I started to ask when my uncle interrupted me.

“You know that lady?”

He pointed to a woman whose back was to us, shuffling along Northern Boulevard. One arm was up in the air, trying to flag down a taxi. Yet when a battered sedan—a gypsy cab—slowed down in front of her, she instantly lowered her arm and faced forward, pretending she hadn't seen it. But she wasn't going to find any yellow cabs in this part of Queens. Over one shoulder was draped a cloth tote bag. A WNYC tote bag. After the car in front drove away, she stopped in her tracks and looked behind her—her stricken face gazing not at us but at the forlorn road. It was definitely Beth.

Immediately I scrunched lower in my seat.

“What's wrong you?” my uncle said, slowing down and pulling over to the curb. He honked. Beth jumped with fright and, as if on instinct, waved her hand at us to go away.

But Sang did not drive off. He opened the window—
my
window—and called out over me, to Beth. “You needing ride?”

When Beth recognized our faces, relief flooded her features; but then, when her eyes caught mine, she tightened.

Sang repeated the offer, and she mumbled, “If it's . . . not an inconvenience . . . I'd really appreciate it.” She reached for the backseat door handle.

“No!” Sang shouted through the window.

Beth, alarmed, froze. “I'm sorry, I don't have to—”

He ignored her and jerked his head at me.
“Nunchi-do umnya?”

That was my cue to
yangbo
my seat to Beth. When I stepped out of the car to move to the back, Beth lifted her arm (trembling with hesitation? with exhaustion?) and touched my shoulder. Then, just as quickly, she pulled away.

When Beth stepped inside, the car suddenly felt very small. She had that effect; her presence was all-consuming. From the backseat I could smell her oily, sweaty scalp. I expected, too, for her words to take over. But instead her voice came out in an enervated warble. “Dropped off Devon at Ed's school. Got on the subway, and it stalled. For hours. We had to. . . . climb through the tunnel.”

I waited for more of Beth's words, which were never in short supply. I saw roadblocks ahead, the miles of potential spiraling conflict—not conversation—between her and Sang, between her and me.
Shut it down, Jane. Shut it down.

My uncle gestured for me to give Beth some water—he kept a jug of Poland Spring in the backseat. I poured some into a plastic cup and passed it up to her. “I take you home first,” he said to Beth. “You live Thorn and Henry Street, right?”

I remembered it was Sang who had retrieved my things from the house when I was in Korea.

“Good memory,” Beth said, revived from the warm water. “But Jane”—she turned around to face me—“lives in Astoria, right? We'll drop her off first, and then you can hop back on the BQE.”

“I take you first,” he said. “Is okay, we not be inconvenienced.”

“No, no. I insist.” Her tone was so firm that it made my uncle demur.

We lapsed into silence for maybe half a minute; my uncle was never one for chitchat. When customers at the store would say things, he'd nod wordlessly at them with crescent-moon eyes, a smile forced across his face. If words were required, he'd pull from his repertoire of stock phrases:
So sorry. No problem. Thank you very much. Having nice day.
For the sales vendors and union reps, he reserved his more choice vocabulary:
Is your fault delivery late! You say nine case one case free, but now you trying cheat me?

But he looked over at Beth and said, “I use to owning fruit-and-vegetable, not far you. So terrible back then, Smith Street!”

I expected Beth to bristle. Beth, the biggest cheerleader for Brooklyn, took the slightest remark about her adopted borough as a personal affront. But I was surprised by her reaction. “Even now you still have to be careful,” she said. “I don't let my daughter walk down Smith Street alone at night. I can only
imagine
what things must've been like back then.”

“So, Beth,” my uncle began. “How is . . .
guh
Chinese girl?” I braced myself for Beth's indignant reaction—
My Chinese girl? How dare you!
—but it never came.

“My daughter, Devon? She's doing . . . good, not great. You know.
Teenagers
.”

Sang shook his head knowingly. “But she must be very smart, too. Chinese people . . .” He paused. In that pause I feared all the possible things that would spill out of his mouth:
Chinese people so cheap. Chinese people not having bathroom. Chinese people like next Mexicans.
Sang went on. “Chinese people,” he repeated, “they know how to using this.” He tapped his temple.

I breathed a sigh of relief but braced myself for Beth's retort.
I take issue with your comment. You're a culturally insensitive boor.
Beth would lecture him on his sweeping generalizations, his outdated theories of eugenics. She'd quote Stanley Obuheim, Sam Surati, or her own work, to bolster her arguments.

Instead she turned toward Sang, her left cheek lifted by a grin. “You're right, she's very smart.” Beth tapped her own head. “She goes to Hunter. Thanks to Jane's help.”

“Eh?” went my uncle.

“Jane helped Devon study for the exam. Your niece is a very bright young woman. You're a lucky man, Sang.”