Chapter 37
I believed Channing. If she said we couldn’t trust Ames, then I knew to be cautious.
We had the more pressing problem of Kent’s charges against her.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about Kent’s black canvas bag that Mai had given us.
Why did it look familiar? While Channing searched on the computer for legal ways to fight Kent, I lay down on the couch in Paul’s apartment and found myself turning over memories in my mind.
Years ago, my parents and I drove to East End on a Tuesday after summer vacation had started because my parents’ business was slower on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
My aunt’s health had been declining for months by then, and no one knew how long she was going to last. The expectation was she had only a few weeks left.
We’d been told by Channing’s father that if death was near, he’d tell us right away.
So, this was just a trip like others during that time, for my parents to offer emotional support.
My father worried about his brother, saying a spouse’s illness was hard on anyone but for Albert it would be doubly so.
He said Channing’s father was prone to depression.
“But he’s a genius,” Appa continued. “He’s made a fortune.”
“Maggie is really the one who was key to the deal. She’s good at bringing people together,” my mother said.
“No, you’re right. The two of them. Always together. How will he manage without her?” my father replied.
My mother glanced at me in the back seat of the car before returning to the conversation with my father. “He’ll be fine. And who knows? The treatments might turn things around for Maggie. She sounded good on the phone today.”
Once we arrived, we were ushered into the house by my uncle. He had wavy black hair, same as Harabeoji. Channing was in her room playing video games as usual, but it was past dinnertime, so we went to bed. I slept with my parents in a guest room.
I’d woken early, maybe by the commotion of Channing and her dad walking past our door on their way down to the car to drive to the town park for day camp. My parents didn’t stir.
I remembered sitting in a window seat at the top of the stairs, watching my cousin’s small figure with a blue backpack over her shoulder, just one strap, walking down the long driveway.
Below me, our gray minivan was in the driveway along with a small orange hatchback. My mother had told me it belonged to the nurse who looked after my aunt.
I settled into the window seat to read Rivers in Korea with a dictionary.
It was a nonfiction book with words I had to look up.
I liked to read there because the cushion was thick, and it made me feel like I was in a treehouse.
It was also a good perch to watch the goings-on around the house along with birds and the weather.
It was June so the birds were really going at each other.
They collided in the air and twisted together.
They streaked across the yard in and out of the young trees.
Even through the panes of glass, I could hear them calling to each other.
The sun was out and shining bright. East End was never gloomy like the towns we lived in.
I saw a delivery truck make its way up the driveway by and by, and a woman left a cardboard box by the front door.
She looked up before she got back into the brown paneled truck and must have seen me, because she raised a hand in greeting.
I waved back, feeling shy but glad. She was Asian.
During the afternoon, my mother came out to the hallway and called to my father to phone his brother.
My father ran downstairs, and in a few minutes, my uncle’s black car careened into the driveway and he jumped out with a black bag.
I could see him through the large window.
A few seconds later, he and my father bounded up the stairs.
His hands were free because he had one hand covering his eyes as if he didn’t want to see, and the other was over his mouth.
I was surprised he could find his way to my aunt’s door, but when he passed me, I noticed my father guided him by the elbow.
The wail that seeped out into the hallway didn’t sound human to me. It frightened me so much I threw my books on the window seat and hurtled down the stairs.
I felt better as soon as I got outside. The front yard didn’t have as many trees as the rear yard, so I was trying to decide which one I wanted to climb when a car came up the curving driveway. I hid so I wouldn’t have to talk to an adult.
This vehicle was a silver Jeep, and it stopped well before the entrance to the house.
A young man sauntered out. He was Korean, tall like an adult, but he had the face of a kid.
Even the way he walked, he appeared to be a hesitant child.
He held his head tilted toward the ground as if he was afraid of obstacles in his path, the way I’d often entered a classroom.
I remembered thinking my mother would tell him to stand up straight, the way she told me, and how my aunt slouched, too, though not in the same way this man did.
You wouldn’t really call it slouching because he wasn’t bent; only his neck hinged his chin downward.
He made his way to the front door and then leaned down.
Above my head, I heard a loud flap—as if someone had shaken a blanket in the air.
A large black bird shot out of the branches above my head, cawing as it soared.
I ducked, clutching the trunk of the tree.
The wings of the bird created a current of cold air that dissipated as it flew farther and farther away.
When I looked toward the house, the young man was running back the way he had come, down the curving driveway.
This time he took a shortcut across the lawn and swerved to avoid running into the tree I was hiding behind.
To his midsection, he clutched a black bag as if he had a stomachache.
His mouth hung open, taking big heaving gulps of air as he ran.
I could hear his ragged breath. Looking down as he did, he stumbled and dropped the bag.
When he lifted it to his white shirt and started running again, I saw the black bag had a wide yellow stripe across it.
He gained speed as he progressed, glanced back once.
Did he spy me peeking out at him from the other side of the tree trunk?
I hoped not. The grimace on his face scared me.
The crow wheeled in the air above him before flying away.
He looked up at it and then got into his car.
Instead of driving forward on the curving driveway to exit and passing the entrance on the way, he reversed his car, backing up to the street.
Someone driving in could have hit him. I knew this because my parents always drove forward when we left Channing’s house for that reason.
I remembered to spit three times into the grass, teh-teh-teh, the way my mom always told me whenever a crow called out.
The only way to chase off any bad luck that fell on me.
I returned to my perch on the second floor outside my aunt’s bedroom.
The awful keening had stopped. There were murmurings now.
Groups of people arrived after that. They milled around the kitchen and the stairs.
They chattered and spoke in hushed tones.
There seemed to be an invisible rope cordoning off the upstairs, for which I was glad.
Harabeoji had not arrived yet in the States.
My mother brought me a plate of food and a glass of water. “You have your books?” she asked, and I told her I did. “You’re fine then,” she said. I nodded. She told me she was going to get Channing from summer camp.
A few minutes later, my mother returned with her arm around my cousin. They stopped at my aunt’s room. I remember Channing refused to go in. She stood in the open doorway a second before turning and dashing down the hall. It was a day I wanted to forget.
I sat straight up and called to Channing now in Paul’s room.
“I have to ask you something,” I said. My heart was racing.
Had I witnessed the thief stealing my uncle’s bag full of the Korean community’s money?
If Mai had given me the bag that Kent had left behind in the apartment when he lived there, did that mean he knew the person who had stolen the money?
Or had Kent taken the cash himself? He had worked for my uncle.
He could have seen the bag and taken it.
Channing was scrolling through her laptop, propped up on her raised knees. “About what? You know, I keep having dreams of Harabeoji,” she said. “He keeps telling me to keep searching. But what does he mean?”
“Was your dad’s duffel bag—the one with the cash in it—was it black?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied, and sighed. “But why are you still talking about that? We’re not going over the past, remember?”
“Plain, without any other logos or markings on it?” I continued.
“We bought it that way—I know because I used it sometimes for overnight gymnastics meets. It could fit my laptop. They used to be really big, remember? My dad asked to borrow it that week for work.”
My stomach dropped. Kent could have bought one like Channing had. “Then anyone could have bought a bag just like it,” I said.
“Yeah, it was from a store in town. Everyone had it.”
I remembered the yellow band of dried paint across the side. “Was there anything special about it, anything at all?”
She shook her head. “Pocket inside. He did get mad at me because he brought it home and I was painting everything with my new acrylic set and painted the bag, too.”
My heart stopped. “What color?”
She thought a moment. “He was always leaving things everywhere and it was my bag to begin with so I could paint it what I wanted, but he took it from me and didn’t let me finish.”
“What color, Channing?” I persisted.
“I was in my yellow phase. I painted everything yellow.”
I rubbed my hands on the top of my skirt. “Channing, I know where that bag is.” I told her about Mai giving us the duffel at the market. “She said Kent had left it in his apartment.”
She closed her laptop, slid off the bed, and followed me out to the living room. “It was in the car with us?”
I nodded.
“I might recognize it if it really was my dad’s bag,” she said.
“It would mean Kent stole the money or knew who did.”
We couldn’t get to the Yuns’ kitchen fast enough. The house was empty, and the bag was nowhere to be found.
When we reached Paul by phone, he said he was driving back from the town waste center. He had thrown the bag away.
“But I just saw you, how could it be gone already?” I said. “Is it in the trash? We could go through it; it might be the evidence we need against Kent.”
“You were so upset by it that I took it to the town dump along with old boxes and things my grandparents had been asking me to throw out for weeks. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Can we go pick through—” I began. Channing was pacing the kitchen frantically.
“I’m sorry, it’s a huge place, they just took the bags and I saw them throw them into a truck, it was crushed, I’m sorry,” Paul said. He sounded so sad that I had to tell him it was okay.
Channing saw the look on my face when I hung up and said, “It’s gone?”
I nodded.
“We need that bag to prove Kent stole the money.” I was so mad at myself for reacting so strongly. If I hadn’t, then Paul wouldn’t have gotten rid of it so fast, and we’d have our evidence.
Channing sighed again. I was pounding my fists into the sides of my legs. “Dahee, it’s not your fault. There’s another way. There has to be.” She shook her head as if to clear it and hugged me. I couldn’t let it go as quickly as she could.
I didn’t go up to the apartment with her.
Instead, I took a long walk around the block, trying to calm myself down.
Reminding myself as my hands tingled that there had to be another way.
The duffel would have helped clear my uncle’s name.
Focus on Channing, I told myself. We were running out of time.