Re Jane (6 page)

“Daddy says the neighborhood's changed a lot since he was a kid.”

“Your father grew up here?” I asked.

Devon gave a knowing nod. “Daddy was
born
in our house. And when Grandma Francesca died, she gave it to us. But then Ma had Daddy fix it up, and afterward he said it looked nothing like when he grew up there.”

And then I started to see: Peppered among the older Italian storefronts, there was an upscale-looking coffee shop. A clothing boutique that looked like it belonged in SoHo. A yoga studio.

When we reached her school, Devon said, “The final bell rings at two twenty-eight. The parents and nannies usually wait here in the lobby.” She pointed to the smudged map. “If you want my advice, I wouldn't follow that if I were you. It'll only make you more confused.”

When I retraced my way back to 646 Thorn, I pried off my heels and undid the confining top button of my blouse. Beth was probably right—I'd have to get some comfortable clothes. Then I flopped onto the bed. I expected to be met with the same firm resistance of my mattress back home, but this bed absorbed my impact. I opened
The Mazer-Farley Household: A Primer,
and
I was only on chapter two by the time I had to pick up Devon.

Devon took me on a different route home, through a quiet residential stretch with the occasional pop of a commercial storefront. I passed a candy store, a faded pharmacy. I passed old men sitting in aluminum chairs outside an unmarked building. Then a grocery store that looked like an old Gothic church. A distinctly Korean-looking man was talking into his cell phone, pointing at the store's roof. I wondered if he knew Sang.

Devon was brimming with news of her first day back. She was not the only fifth-grader to “take issue with” the summer reading list, and the literature teacher would now compile a supplemental list for the winter break.

Devon pulled me along by my arm. “This is Gino's,” she informed me. We were standing in front of a hybrid pizzeria–coffee shop. “It's where we get our Italian ices after school. My favorite's rainbow. What's yours?” She looked up at me with sweet, adoring eyes.

“Mine's rainbow, too,” I said. It was. The last time I'd had an Italian ice was at the place on Roosevelt that served kimchi pizza. But that had been more than ten years ago. I indulged each of us in a treat.

That night I lay in my new bed listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house settling. Suddenly I heard a squeak from Beth and Ed's room next door—a telltale squeak, like the springs of a mattress. I willed the sound to go away, hoping it was just one of them shifting in the bed—but no. It was followed by another, then another.
Please
don't let them be getting it on. How would I ever look them in the eye the next morning? And then I heard Ed murmur,
“My wife . . . my wife.”

I placed a pillow over my head, trying to drown out their sounds. Eventually, long into the night, the squeaks ebbed. Reader, one thing seemed certain: Ed Farley was really into his wife.

* * *

With each passing day, I tried to learn the rhythms of the Mazer-Farley household. My once hyperactive
nunchi
dulled, grew disoriented. At 646 Thorn it was
do
ask stupid questions.
Do
act like you're special. Instinct was becoming overridden.
Lose the
nunchi.
Maybe Eunice had it backward; maybe the
nunchi
loses you.

Slowly I made my way through the primer.
Its opening pages detailed the backstory of Devon's “alternative birth plan.” She was three when Beth and Ed had adopted her.
“When I think back on that first day in that Beijing hotel lobby, this little girl scared and shivering in my arms, it breaks my heart,”
Beth wrote. The other pages of the section were filled with official documents in both English and Chinese.

But it was hard to make much headway through the book—it was bloated with information. In some chapters the footnotes took up more than half the page; I had to squint to read the tiny text.

I took Devon to her daily roster of after-school activities. Mondays she had art club. Tuesday was violin. Wednesday was swim team. For so young a person, Devon had a very busy schedule.

On the fourth day of my Brooklyn sojourn, the phone rang. Sang's voice blasted through the receiver. “Why you not come home!”

“How did you know I was here?” No one had any way of calling me—I had not included a phone number in the note I'd left on the kitchen table. That note had read,
“I'll call when I'm ready.”
It did not read,
“Call
me
when I'm
not
ready.”

“What that matter? Uncle keep waiting you come back. But you too stubborn to know you doing stupid thing.”

“I
told
you that
I'd
get in touch with
you.
” My tone was tinged with a whine; I sounded like Devon.

“Why you act like baby?”

“I'm
not
acting like a—”

“Fine,” Sang interrupted. “Uncle come get you. Even though is inconvenience. Where you are?”

“I'm not telling you.”

“I already know. You in Brooklyn.” His tone became quieter, more solemn. I could hear his mind conflating those three B's.

“I'm not coming home, Uncle,” I said.

“Why you throw away everything to be nothing but the baby-sitter? Make no sense!” he said. “What kind of people they are, getting stranger to watching their child?”

Sometimes Sang had a way of putting things so plainly it only made you feel stupid to try to defend yourself. But he was always black and white, with no gray in between.

Then I remembered what Beth had said the night before at dinner, about wanting to do a tour of Queens neighborhoods. She found Flushing in particular
fascinating—
and not only because she was a Mets fan. I'd demurred, not wishing to risk running into Sang and Hannah, or anyone else in Queens.

“What if I introduced you to the family I work for?” I said to Sang. “I can bring them by the store. That way you can see them for yourself. The parents went to
Columbia.
They're
professors.
” Well, really only Beth was the professor. But my uncle was such a sucker for name-brand colleges.

I heard him softening over the phone. “When?”

We made plans for the coming weekend. But after we hung up, the rest of the day felt a bit off, thrown from its natural rhythms. That afternoon, when Devon and I returned home from our now-routine Italian ices, I finally reached a chapter of the primer called “In Matters Vegetable, Animal, and Mineral.” And there, under the subheading “Forbidden Foods,” was the following entry:

Devon is absolutely forbidden to eat refined sugar; artificial sweeteners, colorings, or flavors; products with high-fructose corn syrup; and others (see footnote). They are toxic to the system. Such “food” products are permitted only on weekends on a case-by-case basis (e.g., a classmate's birthday party).

And that was the afternoon Ed Farley came home early from school. He spied my mouth, stained with artificial everything; then he spotted his daughter's. “What's going on here?” Devon let out a guilty yip before scurrying up the stairs. Then Ed and I were alone.

For the past four days, Ed had been polite but curt with me. I couldn't tell if he was just a distant and somewhat sour man or whether my particular presence irked him. His temperament was such a contrast to his wife's, whose effusiveness made you feel instantly welcome. In the rare moments when it was just Ed and me—when we were passing in the hallways or on the stairs—his cold eyes would alight on me for an instant before dismissing me. In short: Ed Farley made me uneasy. I took to bowing my head to the floor, averting his (however brief) gaze.

“Are you responsible for this?”

“Yes,” I said. It was my fault that I hadn't finished the primer.
And if I blamed his daughter for tricking me, it would just sound like I was making excuses. My uncle
hated
excuses. An ax murderer could have chased you out of the house, but still Sang would punish you for not turning down the thermostat on your way out.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since . . . I started.” I couldn't bear to look him in the face.

“You're telling me four days?”

I froze; Ed Farley's tone was exactly like Sang's. We could have been back at Food, standing in front of the broken walk-in.

I braced myself for a heated outpouring. The lights streaming from the hallway struck his cheekbones at a severe angle and glinted off his set jaw. He could have been carved from granite—cold, unfeeling. But when our eyes met, his flickered, softened.

His tone thawed. “It's just . . . it'll ruin her appetite for dinner.”

“I'm so sorry, Ed,” I said.

“Just make sure Devon brushes her teeth.
Thoroughly.
” Then he lifted his finger, pointing to my mouth. “You might want to as well.”

I nodded, heading to the stairway. Just then I heard Beth enter the kitchen. She, too, had returned early.

“Why is Devon's mouth that
abhorrent
shade of purple?” she said.

I paused at the foot of the stairs.

I could tell that Ed was stalling for time. “Relax, Bethie. I've got it under control.”

Beth chuffed. “Just like you have everything
else
under control, too, don't you, Ed?”

I froze again. Beth was using a tone of voice I had never heard before. It was a sharp departure from her usual warmth.

Ed's voice boomed. “She's just a kid! If I can't treat my daughter every once in a while, then I don't see the—”

“
Your
daughter?” Beth interrupted.

“Whatever, Beth.” Ed stalked out of the kitchen, his heavy footsteps reverberating through the house. I heard the rattle of keys, then heard the front door open and slam shut.

When I returned to the kitchen—teeth and mouth freshly scrubbed—Beth was unloading vegetables from a cloth bag. Ed was gone. She looked at me and smiled. I could tell, by the way her laugh lines strained, that it was forced. “I swear, my husband insists on spoiling our daughter. God only knows what goes on around here when I'm not home.”

T
hat Saturday I took Devon to her Mandarin lessons in Chinatown. Afterward we planned to meet Beth at Forty-second Street to ride the subway to Flushing. Ed was staying home to do work—he was, as Beth called it, “ABD”—All But Dissertation.

I'd decided to have a talk with Devon after the Italian-ice incident. She'd tricked me into buying her the ices, had done it only for me to get in trouble with Ed, and Ed to get in trouble with Beth. (I still didn't understand why he took the blame for me.) It was a problem to be nipped in the bud.
Set the precedent early,
they'd taught us in Career Services, when “managing down.” “Listen,” I said to Devon the next morning. “You
knew
you weren't allowed to eat those Italian ices.” She played dumb. I went on. “If you ever, I mean
ever,
try that again—”

There was a moment of true, genuine fear that flooded Devon's eyes. But then it quickly dissolved. “But you ate one, too!”

She was right, but that was beside the point. “I'm an adult. I'm allowed to.” I could feel myself breaking into a sheepish grin. I bit down on my lip.

She pointed to my face. “See? You went behind Ma and Daddy's back, too!”

I forced my face to go straight, stoic. “They're not
my
ma and daddy—”

It was too late. Devon was already overcome with a fit of giggles. Sang thought
I
was “wild girl,” but look at her! I knew what he would do. He'd tell me to show her who's boss
—

But a burst of laughter escaped from my lips. Then another. I could not maintain my stern front. I let go. We had both erupted into peals of laughter.

I'd like to think that with that moment something shifted for us; it brought us closer together. Without anticipating it Devon and I had formed a new alliance. Or maybe it was simply that we became friends.

Devon's Chinese school occupied the top floor of a squat building on Elizabeth Street. Below the school was a Chinese herbal-medicine doctor, and at first it reminded me of John Hong's father's herbal-medicine practice down the block from Food. Both had the bitter aroma of burning herbs, but Mr. Hong's place smelled spicier and sweeter. This one gave off a muskier, staler odor.

Some of the children were dropped off by their parents: women in mismatched, bright-colored synthetic clothes and men in white button-downs and black polyester pants. Both wore the same thick-rubber-soled shoes. Other children were accompanied by their grandmothers. But a surprising number of students would file in unaccompanied—pint-size Chinese children with enormous schoolbags strapped to their backs. They reminded me of baby turtles, toddling their way to the ocean.

The grannies and I sat in the waiting room. One pointed to Devon as she slipped into her class. She asked me something in Mandarin or Cantonese or some other dialect I didn't know. When I told her I wasn't Chinese, she switched into English, in a heavy, almost unintelligible accent. “Sister?”

I shook my head and answered, in overenunciated English, “Baby-sitter.”

Devon had taught me the Chinese character for “Korean,” so I scribbled it on the back of a receipt and handed it to one of the old ladies. (I did not know the word for
honhyol.
)

The granny shook her head and smiled, waving a hand away from the receipt. I figured my character strokes were too messy for her to understand. But another granny took the paper from her and studied the character. She nodded. Then she said something to the other grannies. They all nodded and smiled, and I nodded and smiled back.

Then the first granny held out a greased paper bag filled with some kind of herbal candy. She smiled again and shook the bag at me, offering me one. I bowed my thanks, figuring that the gesture was some kind of universal one between our two cultures. The candy tasted of bitter ginger; we sat there chewing in comfortable silence.

When the students filed out of the classroom and into the lobby, their grandmothers rushed at them, smoothing down their mussed-up hair, their rumpled clothes. There was something so sweet about these fussy gestures. When Devon emerged, she frantically scanned around the room. “Devon! Over here!” I called. Her eyes alighted on me, flooding with relief. She hurried toward me. The air was filled with excited chatter. Devon and I were the only ones not speaking Chinese.

We met Beth on the 7 platform as planned and boarded the subway. The other passengers were slouched in their seats, with their bags placed in their laps or carefully suspended between their ankles, so as not to touch the floor. But not Beth. Beth sat with the straight posture of a yogi, one hand clutching Devon's, the other the straps of her WNYC tote bag. She let her load spill carelessly into the empty seat next to her despite the standing passengers. Either they were too polite or they lacked the English to shout,
Hey lady, move your stuff!
The only sounds were the rickety racket of the train grating against its tracks and Beth's chatter.

The row of old Chinese ladies across the aisle looked from Devon's face to her mother's and back again. They looked like the grannies in the school lobby. Between us Devon squirmed under their gaze, but Beth remained oblivious, prattling pronouncements to me over her daughter's head—“My colleague's doing some
fascinating
research on Queens. She'll just ride your trains for
hours.
”
Your trains,
I thought.
Your trains.
The Chinese grannies, clutching red plastic bags brimming with bitter greens between their ankles, regarded Devon with amused curiosity. They watched as she freed her fingers from her mother's grasp and wormed her arm through mine.

* * *

When we got to Food, Hwan was out front restocking fruit. Beth marched up to him with an extended hand. “Beth, Beth Mazer. A real
pleasure.
”

Hwan tentatively took her hand with his own, and Beth proceeded to squeeze the life out of it.

“Jane's told us
so
much about you.”

“Eh, about me?” Hwan's face broke into a funny grin.

I realized Beth had mistaken Hwan for Sang. “Beth, that's Hwan, not my uncle.”

Hwan smiled wider with embarrassment. He had one of those compact bodies that radiated entirely whatever he was feeling—this day it was nervous energy. Beth looked mortified. At that point I knew her well enough to guess what she was thinking: that we all looked alike
.
It was the same expression she'd made during my interview. “I didn't mean to—I mean . . .”

Flustered, she looked at me helplessly.

“It's okay, Beth. It happens all the time,” I had the
nunchi
to say, even though Hwan was much younger than Sang. I led Beth and Devon inside.

Hannah was at the register. We exchanged a brief hello—there was a long line of customers, and they didn't like it when you chitchatted. I felt a pang of guilt for not helping out. Beth and Devon oohed
and aahed, as if they were staring at dioramas in the natural history museum.

Sang was over by the refrigerated beverage cases with Mrs. O'Gall. He'd abandoned his hand truck, loaded with boxes. Sang did not like to be interrupted when he was with customers, and Mrs. O'Gall, shaking a head of iceberg lettuce at my uncle, did not like to be interrupted period.

Beth looked tentatively at me, and perhaps thinking I'd given her the go-ahead, she once again charged forward. “
You
must be Sang Re! Beth, Beth Mazer.” Beth inserted her hand over the head of wilted iceberg.

Sang blinked at her. “Who you are?”

Beth took a literal step back. “I'm Jane's . . . well, the mother of the family Jane works
with
. You know,
Jane,
your niece.”

“Lady, get on line. I was here first.” Mrs. O'Gall shooed Beth away with her lettuce. “Like I was saying, Re. You won't get away with selling this rotten stuff in your store.”

“My dau— Jane gonna help you out, Mrs. O'Gall.” Sang jerked his head at me, while he slid over to talk to Beth.

“How are you, Mrs. O'Gall?” I jumped in. “Did you bring your receipt this time?”

This was part of Mrs. O'Gall's routine—she plucked a few leaves of lettuce from a head before returning the whole thing. I once asked Sang why he didn't try to fight her, but he just shrugged his shoulders.
She not do like this if she not have to.
She fished in her pocketbook and handed me a crumpled receipt dated two weeks back. “Here. You happy?”

I couldn't fight her either, and I ran to get a new head of iceberg. Behind me Beth introduced Devon to Sang. I heard my uncle's voice ring out: “But she not look like you!”

“Because we developed an ‘alternative birth plan.'”

“What that means?” Sang said.

I hurried to finish up with Mrs. O'Gall.

When I returned to Sang and Beth, my uncle was saying, “Then you near Mr. Park. He own grocery Henry Street. But he not my friend.” Sang peered over Beth's shoulder, keeping watch on the store.

Beth's eyebrows pinched together, the way they did when she explained—or rather tempered—the news headlines to Devon at the breakfast table. I was coming to learn her gestures, her coded expressions. “Sorry, I'm not
terribly
familiar with it. . . .”

“You not say you living right there?”

“No, we do, but . . .” Beth stopped to gather her thoughts. “I usually shop at the farmers' market in Union Square. They have
quite
the selection of organic produce.”

Sang frowned.

Beth had the
nunchi
to see Sang's displeasure. “Support local!” she said, shooting her fist in the air.

“They getting produce same place everybody else. Hunts Point Market in the Bronx.”

Beth drew her lips into a tight smile. Then, as if groping for words, she looked up and around the room. “What a . . . nice store you have.”

Sang again glanced over her shoulder. “I be right back.”

Suddenly I saw it all from Beth's eyes. Our faded green awning. The shabbiness of the wooden carts out front. The perfunctoriness of the products we carried. The non-organicness of our produce. How humble Food must have looked to her. How utterly Queens.

Sang returned, carrying a bag of fruit. Through the plastic I could see he'd selected strawberries, raspberries, and Bing cherries. All the fruit he never brought home.

“Please take,” he said. “Because our Jane is like burden for you.”

Beth bristled. “Mr. Re. Jane is
not
a burden. She's become part of our family.” She squeezed an arm around my shoulders.

A look of disapproval flickered across my uncle's face. “Either way, I feel so sorry for you. You take while still fresh.”

“Beg your pardon?”

I realized why Beth had shifted her tone. What Sang had said about feeling sorry for Beth made sense in the Korean. It did not translate into English.

Since Beth was rummaging through her WNYC bag and not accepting the proffered fruit, Sang handed it to me.

Suddenly Beth held out two bills—both twenties—to Sang. “At least let me pay you for it.” With her other hand, she pointed not at the bag of fruit itself but at me, holding the bag of fruit.

Sang's face broke into a deep frown. “I say just take! Is gift!”

There were many things I could have—should have—done, like jumping in sooner. I should have acted as a simultaneous interpreter—
No, Beth, in Korean culture a person's expected to refuse an offer a few times before accepting it. No, Uncle, she felt bad taking your fruit for free
.

Lose the
nunchi,
Jane.
It was tiring, straddling the two cultures.

“Stop
forcing
the fruit on her, Uncle,” I said. “She doesn't want it!”

Devon, who'd been quietly watching the exchange, looked up at me, eyes wide with disbelief at my outburst. My uncle looked away. I'd embarrassed him in front of everyone.

Beth relented. “You know what? Thank you, Mr. Re. I'd be honored.” She took the bag from me. “Devon, thank Jane's uncle for the fruit.” Devon did as she was told. Beth squeezed my shoulder, staring at me the way she'd stared down at her organic fruit peels on my first day. “Jane, we'll wait for you outside.”

When Beth and Devon left the store, Sang returned to his abandoned hand truck. He took a box cutter from his breast pocket and sliced open the top carton. I moved to help him, but he waved me away. “That woman making Uncle high blood pressure go up.”

I didn't say anything. I felt a pang of guilt for not taking my uncle's side.

“You, too,” he added.

The guilt was immediately replaced by irritation.

“So you met them,” I said impatiently. “Aren't you going to tell me to come home now?”

Sang put down his box cutter. He spread his arms wide, palms up, as if the matter were out of his hands. “You want to make mistake, what I care? Is your life now.” He jerked his head to the back office. “And don't forget your clothes.”

I had asked Sang to ask Hannah to pack some of my old jeans and T-shirts. Later, when I would unpack the bag at the Mazer-Farleys', it would burst with the smell of 718 Gates, of the plasticky linoleum tiles, of Hannah's
dwenjang
bean paste and toasted barley tea.

On my way out of Food, I passed Hwan. He gave me a knowing look, tapping his temple. It was a small exchange we'd shared for years, a way of commiserating about the fussiest of customers. At first I thought he was referring to Sang. But he whispered,
“Loca.”
Loca,
not
loco.
Then I realized: He was referring to Beth.

* * *

The next morning, after breakfast, Beth asked me to come up to her office for a “conversation.” The unspoken rule of the house was that Beth's office on the fourth floor was off-limits; it was where she went “to retreat from the nonsense of the world” (her words). As I followed her up the steps, I wondered whether I'd done something wrong again.