Chapter 34
The next day, officially Labor Day, Paul called and brought over a tray with a pot, two bowls of rice, and a plastic container with separate compartments of banchan.
Mrs. Yun had made kalbigim. Those tender braised short ribs brought memories too painful to examine.
I breathed in the aroma and tried for Paul’s sake, but couldn’t bring myself to eat it.
I didn’t want him to think we didn’t appreciate his efforts, so I moved bits of spinach, the pickled white turnip side dishes around one plate to another.
He looked at the laptop and blankets on the floor.
“You know we could cast the show on the big screen,” he said, pointing to the video monitor on the wall.
Our first response was to decline, but he kept saying it would make our viewing experience better, so we relented.
As he set up the account, I asked about his assistant coaching job.
“I got it,” he answered. “Not sure there were a lot of candidates to choose from.”
“I’m sure you were the best in the group.
The kids will love you. Congrats,” I said, and just because it was something to celebrate, I reached over and embraced him.
It was becoming a pleasant habit. Paul’s arms were comforting.
Channing hugged me while I hugged him. It was a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy series of days.
He stayed and watched a few episodes of the Chunhyang series with us.
He’d never heard of it or the original tale.
I was shocked and told him so. We were skipping the prison part when Paul told us to stop.
“I’m so confused, what happens here?” he asked.
So we had to rewind to the beginning before the evil magistrate threw Chunhyang in prison.
“Looks like a terrible story,” he said, watching the magistrate’s soldiers flog Chunhyang for refusing to obey.
“You sound like Dahee,” Channing said.
Paul asked about the servants’ scenes, and we had to see if Bangja would make it to the capital city to tell Mongryong that Chunhyang was held captive.
His exploits along the way were the comic relief, while Chunhyang suffered.
Chunhyang’s mother and her servant implored the evil magistrate every day to have mercy, to no avail.
Her mother begged Chunhyang to accept her role in life, to be the evil magistrate’s kisaeng and forget Mongryong, her love.
This version showed the townspeople admiring Chunhyang’s determination to stand up to the magistrate.
The more she suffered, the more they cheered her on.
“Do we live just to survive? I mean, is that what this show is saying we should do?” Paul said.
“I’d fold. I couldn’t wear one of those around my neck,” I said, and pointed to the cangue.
Paul asked Channing the same question. “Never,” she replied.
“Just surviving isn’t a life.” She was quieter in her reply, and I knew she was remembering her days alone in the cold jail.
She insisted on sleeping with the door to Paul’s bedroom open when I’d made her take the twin bed while I crashed on the couch.
And I’d seen her go outside to the landing of the apartment several times during the day and take gulping big breaths of air.
“Why doesn’t Chunhyang agree to be his kisaeng and then stealthily kill him in his sleep?” Paul asked.
“What?” I said, startled. That thought had never occurred to me.
“Then she would be no better than the magistrate. She’s standing up against the whole unjust system. It’s not right what they made people do back then,” Channing said.
“I thought she was being true to Mongryong; she calls him her husband,” Paul said.
“Yes, but society gave the magistrate Byeon the power to put her in prison like that. It’s those rules that have to change,” she said.
That took me aback. I thought she was going to say Chunhyang wouldn’t live unless she had her love with her. She wouldn’t compromise her need for real love.
I was going to reply, but then Channing said, “Paul, have you heard from Minjae?”
I knew she’d been waiting to ask him, and I was afraid of the answer.
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything,” Paul replied. “I’ll keep trying.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. Don’t bother.”
A couple of years after my aunt died, I woke to Channing’s voice outside my window.
“Is that all you got?” she called. I saw my cousin standing with a baseball in her hand and a baseball glove in the other.
Three boys who were the bullies of the neighborhood stood a few feet away from her.
I hadn’t realized that she’d woken up before me and gone outside.
It was Thanksgiving Day weekend. Harabeoji, Channing, and her dad had driven to upstate New York to be with us for the holiday.
We no longer went to East End often after my aunt’s death.
I ducked down when one of the boys looked up at my window.
As much as I wanted to remain hidden, I knew I had to make my way down to Channing and get her away from those kids.
They were mean. If they’d invited her to play catch with them, it was likely that one of them would throw the ball so hard it would hurt her.
Maybe even smash into her face. They’d done that to another kid at school.
I got outside just as one of those boys threw a ball at Channing.
I flinched and covered my face, sure that it would crush me.
There was a whoosh, and when I stole a glance at my cousin, I saw her stick out her arm with a large leather mitt, like one of those lizards that snatch flies out of the air.
She caught it soundly in the pocket of the glove and folded it neatly around the ball.
Then without a moment to lose, she spun that ball with a side arm that landed it squarely in that boy’s glove—the one who had thrown it at her.
He yelled and dropped the ball as if it were on fire.
It landed by his feet and rolled away. Then that boy shook his wrist until his glove slid off. “What the hell,” he exclaimed.
The other boys laughed, which made that first boy angrier.
One of them walked over to Channing and chatted her up about baseball teams. “So, do you like the Red Sox if you live near Boston?” he said.
She said they were okay. When she saw me, she waved me closer.
“Dahee, which team do you like best?” I didn’t know any baseball teams, so I didn’t know what to say.
Which teams did people like in this town? I didn’t know.
“Hey, there’s Duhhhh—heeeee,” the boy who had been stung by Channing’s ball leered at me.
And then there was silence. I looked up. Channing had run over and was standing over the meanest boy, holding the baseball up with her arm cocked back.
“Go ahead, keep talking shit about my cousin. She’s a hero.
You aren’t even a second as brave as she is.
You don’t know shit,” she shouted. The boy ran off.
One of his friends followed, and then that last who obviously wanted to talk more with Channing looked wistfully at her and said, “See you around.” She said, “Yeah, see ya,” but kept her arm poised like a slingshot.
He didn’t seem scared. He smiled at her, and she used her left arm to throw the baseball mitt at him.
“Thanks for letting me borrow it,” she called to him.
When they’d disappeared into the next yard, Channing started laughing. Big bellyfuls of laughs doubled her over, which made me laugh, too.
“Who showed you how to throw like that?” I said between laughs.
“Harabeoji, of course,” she said. “I think it’s unfair my mom’s gone, and I put all that anger into the ball.”
Hearing about her mom reminded me again that she had died.
I had just said, “It sucks,” when I got hit by something hard right in the middle of my back.
“Watch out,” Channing called, and dropped flat to the ground.
I did the same. Two crab apples came flying past, missing me this time.
They had been aimed at me, nowhere near my cousin.
She rolled toward a small green-and-red orb, picked it up, stood in front of me, and threw it fast and low in the direction it had come.
I saw the first boy whom Channing had embarrassed slip around the side of my neighbor’s house.
“Come on. Fight,” Channing urged.
I crouched and grabbed an apple they had thrown.
It was crushed from hitting the ground and smelled.
I must have been staring at it with uncertainty because Channing said, “Pick up another one, there are others,” and pointed to a trio nearby.
I marveled at her. She was the same girl who still lived in East End in her house.
Even without her mother, her life hadn’t completely changed yet.
Another few years and she would be forced to move to Boston.
But right then, she still had her mother’s confidence and a grandfather who had taught her how to wield her weapons.
“How?” I said, falling to the ground as another apple whizzed by.
“Like your arm is a whip. Take a step and just whip it hard,” she called, out of breath.
She was hurling those apples as fast as they were coming in.
I heard a shout of pain, so I knew she’d hit her target.
And then one of theirs made contact with her leg and she let out a screech.
“You’re going to get it now,” she said, and started throwing even faster.
I’d flung a couple and they’d fallen, but when she got hit, I was on my fifth try and this time I let them have it.
Those losers. How dare they? I knew before I heard the crash that it had flown above the heads of those children and through the living room window of the house.
The boys looked over their shoulder and then ran inside.
I collapsed on the ground in shame. What would it cost? I knew those people would make my parents pay for that window and whatever else I broke. I covered my eyes.
“They started it,” Channing said.
Easy for her to say. She and her father could afford to pay for the entire house probably, I thought.
Never mind a dumb window. But what could my parents do?
If I’d just taken it, accepted their insults and blows, it would not have come to this.
Instead, I’d opened the door to my fury and inept throwing arm.
My parents came outside and walked to the neighbor’s front door after Channing explained.
Harabeoji joined us, but he hung back between the houses and looked up at the windows.
The door to the house opened and a man and a woman came outside, and my parents retreated, stepped backward without turning around, their faces turned eagerly toward the neighbors’.
Even from this distance I could tell the boy’s parents were upset.
The kid who had talked with Channing about baseball teams stood between his parents and said something to them.
Channing walked right up to see. I kept my distance.
Channing said something to the boy’s parents, and the boy who had clearly liked her agreed.
I saw him nod. The boy’s father pushed him back inside and closed the door in Channing and my parents’ face.
When my parents returned to our house, I saw they were worried.
But Harabeoji went into action. He called the police, and minutes later they arrived.
“It was an accident,” he told them, and never mentioned my name.
He told my parents, “When you have a car accident you call the police, this is the same.” They listened to his report, and then we all walked over to the house next door.
Back then Channing stood next to me, keeping guard.
She was convinced there might be more wayward crab apples incoming.
With the police inspecting the damage in the house, which was only a single pane in one of three windows that faced the front of the house, the matter was cleared up.
After the police left, Channing and I sat outside and roasted marshmallows in a fire pit Harabeoji made for us.
Two of the boys, the one who liked Channing and the other one who had followed the mean one, joined us.
We didn’t talk about what happened. Instead, it was all Red Sox and the Yankees.
We lived four hours from New York City, but it was still New York, so I guess I was supposed to choose the Yankees.
“Or the Mets,” the one who liked Channing said.
He’d gone to one of their games. When we were called in to sleep that night, Channing and I stayed up talking about those three boys.
“Do they all live in that one house?” she asked.
I said no, they lived in various houses.
They were a group though, always together. The school bullies.
“That one kid. He was the leader, the other two should have stood up to him,” she said.
“It takes just one rotten one. Not in a good way or bad. Just rotten bad like these apples in their yard. Too bad the other two aren’t brave enough to stand up to him.
” I wished Channing could stay longer than Thanksgiving break.