Chapter 1
I was never sure where danger might lie, but I was on the lookout for it.
I had just bought a small pouch of compostable dental floss at Duane Reade pharmacy on Sixth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street in New York City at five o’clock and walked outside to discover a white child in a green sweatshirt and jeans, with black-rimmed square glasses on his face.
His hand gripped the side bar of an umbrella stroller that had a toddler kicking her legs up, dressed in daisy-print overalls.
The boy was no more than four years old.
I knew this because I had worked as a teacher’s aide in a preschool once.
He and the toddler were directly beside the automatic glass doors.
I looked around for an adult. Surely one was nearby.
Maybe they had gone to the corner to throw out an item in the trash receptacle; maybe they had dashed up the street to pay for parking.
I couldn’t walk away from those children.
People passed us. Some looked at me because I looked at them.
The palms of my hands tingled when I got nervous.
I wiped my hands on my skirt. To get rid of that feeling, I had to do something, take some sort of action.
What should I do? I couldn’t just leave them there.
I asked the little boy about his parents’ whereabouts, but he didn’t answer.
He’d probably been told not to speak to strangers.
Inside the store, an Asian security guard stood with his back to the window.
I wanted to ask him to keep an eye on the children.
Anyone could walk off with them at any time.
But something stopped me. What if he arrested their parent?
Did I want to cause that kind of harm to someone who had stepped away for a second?
Questioning what’s usual was familiar to me.
I didn’t know if I could trust my first reaction.
I’d emigrated from Seoul with my parents when I was five years old, and we’d moved frequently in the United States so that I’d never been able to establish a solid sense of home.
My understanding of what was commonplace and “normal” felt in constant flux.
Even my sense of danger was sometimes murky, like right there on the street in the city.
What to pay attention to? What to dismiss?
Follow the majority of the crowd and leave those children like that or be in the minority and help them?
While I hesitated, out of the groups of people walking by me on the sidewalk that day, a white man in a business suit emerged.
For a second, I thought he was the children’s father, but he walked straight toward me.
He said, “They’re alone?” As if it was obvious to him that they needed help.
He confirmed these children were at risk.
I was relieved on the one hand, though now more anxious.
I wondered if he had some designs on the children, but he seemed perfectly kind.
He offered to go inside and ask the security guard, which I told him might jeopardize the parents.
He nodded. “Good point. I’ll just look around.”
I told him I’d stay there, standing closer to the children now that I had reinforcements.
A few seconds later a white woman walked out of the store, met my eyes, and headed straight for the stroller without hesitation.
“Your kids?” I asked. She didn’t reply and wheeled the stroller, with the little boy trailing, away so fast no one would have heard the children protest.
I could have left, but I waited for the man. What might he think if he walked out and saw all of us gone? When he finally exited the store, I told him the mother had come and taken the kids with her. He shook his head, mirroring how I felt. Oh well, that was that. We went our separate ways.
I was still thinking about those kids when I reached my apartment.
It was a rectangular studio with the bedroom and living area divided by a bookcase.
I wished it were at least an L-shape. I didn’t dare hope for a one-bedroom in Manhattan on my teacher’s salary.
My upstairs neighbor was dragging something across the floor.
That dull heavy sound coming from the ceiling made me go into my tiny bathroom, sit on the toilet seat cover, and phone my cousin Channing.
We were the same age, born hours apart, and today we turned thirty years old.
“Hey, happy birthday!” I said as soon as she answered. “Did you eat noodles yet?”
Noodles signified long life in Korean culture, I was told. In addition to noodles, Channing grew up eating miyeok guk on her birthday. My parents didn’t follow that tradition. I had lived in rural areas of the States where it had been impossible to find ingredients for this soup.
“Happy birthday, Dahee!” she replied. “I’ll have jjajangmyeon delivered later. You?”
“Same,” I replied.
“Good.” She paused. “I was about to call you. How’s your day going?” Over the years, Channing and I had tried to spend our birthday together, but this year, she was babysitting two boys in East End for the month of August while their parents were away in Europe. She was halfway through the job now.
“You won’t believe someone left two kids alone on the sidewalk—” I said.
“Dahee, was it really that bad?” she said.
“Anything could have happened. It was rush hour. Those kids were scared, I could tell.” This last bit was added for emphasis.
Those children hadn’t seemed frightened to me, not visibly anyway.
But I knew you couldn’t always tell how stressed a child might be on the inside.
I offered her proof I wasn’t the only one concerned.
“A man stopped to help. He agreed they shouldn’t have been left alone like that,” I said.
“Parents also need a break, just a few minutes without those kids—”
“Have you done that? Left Edison and Austin by themselves?” Those were the names of the children in her care.
“No, I’m talking about their parents. They needed a break, which is why they hired me.”
“Okay, but you do know you can’t leave those boys alone somewhere, right?” I had to ask because Channing had never had a job like this before, had never been responsible for children.
“How can you even say that?” she said. “You teach little kids at school, but at the end of the day you get to leave. I’m here with them twenty-four seven.” Her voice dropped. “Anyway, I need to talk to you about someone. Let me close the door.”
I waited and then she was back. “I’m having problems with a guy here. I don’t know what to do.”
Channing got approached by men a lot and usually handled them with ease. I was surprised at how rattled she sounded by this one.
“What happened?” I said now.
“Yesterday this man let himself in and was drinking coffee in the kitchen at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Wait, what?” The palms of my hands tingled.
“The night before, he was in the living room.”
“I don’t understand. Did you leave the door unlocked?”
“No—yes, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Wait, are you going on dates while you’re babysitting the boys?” I asked.
“What? No!”
“Then he’s a random stranger? Did you call the police?”
“That’s the thing, I can’t. He’s close with the boys’ parents. He’s their friend. They gave him the code to the door for emergencies. Everyone knows him; he works for the mayor,” she said.
I was speechless, and then a thought occurred to me. “Do you think the parents told him to check up on you? I deal with parents all the time, and they worry—”
“I doubt it. They talk to the kids every day,” she said.
“What if you changed the code? You know all that tech stuff. You could figure it out.”
“It’s not my house, I wouldn’t do that. There could be a real emergency.”
The tingling in my hands increased. I rubbed my free hand on my shirt.
The bathroom floor seemed to tilt. I focused on a single corner of a black tile in the diamond pattern.
“Have you told Harabeoji about him?” I asked.
Thinking of my grandfather often helped me.
At eighty-eight years old, he was younger in spirit than my parents and didn’t make me doubt myself.
The sensation in my palms dissipated. The bathroom came back into balance.
“I’ve been meaning to call him. Dad’s in rehab again, so Harabeoji’s alone.”
The phone line went silent, so I wondered if we’d gotten disconnected. “Channing? Are you—” I said.
I heard muffled voices before she returned to the phone. “I have to go. He’s here again.”
“Who’s there?”
“Kent Cho, the guy I’ve been talking about.”
“Do you think he could be dangerous? I can be there in four hours if I leave right now,” I said.
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s more annoying than anything.” There was another pause. “Maybe you’re right. Just to be safe.”
“I’m calling Harabeoji. We’ll come for a few days. If I leave in the morning—” I began.
“I have to go,” she repeated. “Dahee, thank you. You have my location, right?”
I checked my phone and told her I did. Besides attending a few non-essential meetings and setting up my classroom, I had nothing urgent on my to-do list before my teaching job started in September.
A calm settled over me, then I felt a flicker of excitement.
I’d always idealized East End. Unlike my nomadic parents, who moved every few years, Channing’s family had settled in this town with a large Korean community and put down roots.
Her father was my dad’s older brother, so they’d arrived in the United States first and then helped us when we came.
Channing had lived in East End until eleventh grade when she’d been forced to move to Boston.
Now she was back after fourteen years for this temporary job.
If I had a home base anywhere, it was this place.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon,” I told her.