8
Solace
Los Angeles
Dear Mido,
What a mess we’re in, you and me. It’s not a contest, but I don’t know who’s doing worse. It’s almost laughable.
Your parents lost their jobs, and my father has now left us to go to Brazil.
I’ve no idea what this will mean for my mother and me.
Mom says she’d go back to Korea if she could.
I want to stay here. Dad’s older sister who sponsored our family for our green cards won’t return Mom’s calls.
So it’s only Mom and me. Aunt blames Mom for letting Dad leave and says we’re ungrateful.
Mom said she resents how well I’m doing.
In high school, her son Jimmy got involved in a gang, then went to jail for stealing a car and drug possession.
I don’t see how me going to UCLA has anything to do with Jimmy’s problems. Anyway, thanks to Aunt, we got our green cards right away, but we still need to get our citizenship.
Lion’s sister Sarah, the immigration lawyer, said we can file soon. She can’t file for Dad because he’s not here, and if he doesn’t return, he’s messing up his continuous residency requirement. I can’t believe he’s gone.
Dad said he’d rather die than work a day longer at Shrimp Castle. He didn’t go to work for a whole week, saying he had a terrible headache. It turned out he was preparing to leave for Brazil.
He didn’t sneak off, though. At the end of the week, we had a family discussion, sort of. He talked, and Mom cried a lot and yelled.
“I’m never going to S?o Paolo. If you can’t wake up from your fantasy, that’s too bad. I’m going to stay in California until Yun finishes school. We have a lease, we own a business, and I’m not starting again. Go. Go, chase your dream.”
Mom thought at first that there might be another woman, but I don’t think so. She watches too much television. Dad pleaded with us.
“Yun-ah, there might be some luck left in my life. My cousin thinks there might be. Every morning when I walk into that kitchen, the smell of the oil makes me want to throw up. A man cannot be chained to that stove. I owned three stores and two buildings. If it wasn’t for that son of a bitch who took everything—”
You can just imagine how that went. Anyway.
I should’ve told you all along how terrible things were, but I was embarrassed.
Dad was thinking of going back to Seoul, but then the IMF happened.
In America, no one cares about the crisis, but most of the Koreans in California are paying attention to it, of course.
Many of the UCLA students from Korea are having to drop out because their parents back home can’t afford to send money anymore, the dollar being too strong.
I’m complaining too much. I’m sorry. You and Lion are the only ones who know what’s going on. Mom won’t tell anyone that Dad left. Anytime anyone asks at church or at the store, she just says he went to visit his family in Brazil, which is sort of true.
My mother thinks he’ll return. Just like in the dramas.
He’s going to make a fortune and somehow come back and rescue us.
I hope she’s right. I used to think my parents knew everything, but I don’t think they do.
I used to think they were so wise. How do you live a wise life, I wonder.
Mido, do you doubt your parents, too? They’re more educated than mine are. I wonder if that makes a difference.
I cannot imagine what you and your parents must have been going through. I’m sorry you have to move again, but I’m really happy that you’re coming here. Finally, we’ll have a reunion before five years have passed.
Bo has been so great. Lion says your brother is a wonderful teacher.
He works really hard, and the students at Exodus love him.
He’s making a decent salary now, but he lives like a monk.
I have never seen a person work like that.
Your parents should be proud of him. Lion knows that Bo intends to go to college, so he’s trying to figure out a way to help him, too.
He’s sad that Bo will move out once you get here, but of course, he understands.
Lion’s brother Ray has already reached out to our landlord and found an available unit in my building.
The unit is not big, but Bo said that it fits the budget. He said once things get better, you’d get a bigger unit. He has everything figured out. You and I have never lived in the same place before, so that will be fun.
I’m sending you my heart, my dearest friend. Finally, I will see you in a month.
Yours,
Yun
The remodeled church basement of Gospel Presbyterian was a cavernous multipurpose room with high ceilings.
The enormous space was used for coffee hour, church meals, and assemblies.
In the back of the room, facing the north side of the highway, was a highly varnished platform stage with six steps on each side.
Yun felt happiest on that sturdy wooden stage.
She enjoyed going to school and helping out at Shrimp Castle, but she loved Wednesday praise team rehearsals and service on Sundays.
Back in Seoul, she had disliked piano practice and her teacher, whose clothes had smelled of cigarettes and mothballs.
But if she ever ran into Mr. Kong again, she would thank him because she had turned out to be a skilled pianist, able to play almost anything on the Yamaha keyboard.
After Wednesday-evening practice, Yun tidied her sheet music and prepared to leave.
She didn’t want to go home, where her mother, Nari, would be watching her rented drama videos.
If Nari wasn’t in the middle of a drama series, she would be talking back to the television screen while the Korean news aired.
When Yun’s family first moved to Orange County, her parents had been stunned by the immense difficulties of their new life.
Her father, Joonho, was angry all the time, and her mother was morose, disappointed by how far they had fallen in the world.
Now her father had taken half their savings, bought a one-way ticket, and left for a country that seemed as unreal to her as the moon.
He’d asked Yun to understand that this would save his life, and in a way, she believed him.
“You can visit me,” he’d said at the airport. Yun had driven him there. Nari had gone to work.
“I’ll write to you, but you know I’m not much of a writer. Thank you for being such a good daughter,” he’d said. “You and your mother deserve better than an idiot like me who lost everything. Your father will work hard in Brazil. Maybe it’ll be easier for a man alone.”
“Appa, I think I understand,” Yun said, and wished him the best.
He sent a postcard, and then they did not hear from him for a very long time.
At church, more than anywhere else, Yun felt lighter and more capable.
Surrounded by other Koreans, she felt like the middle school classroom president again.
When the person she liked best at church, the praise team leader, Lion Han, asked her to be his girlfriend, Yun felt like life in America might turn out okay for her, though it had not for her parents.
She enjoyed college, and she was in love.
When rehearsal ended and everyone else cleared out, Yun stayed back and waited for Lion, who would drive her home. Everyone knew they were a couple, but in the church building, they still felt shy around each other.
“Want an ice cream?” Lion asked.
They headed to his car.
At Blinky’s, Yun selected a vanilla soft serve and sat down on the red stool and faced the plate glass wall in front of the asphalt-paved parking lot.
Almost every car was parked neatly inside the painted white lines.
Lion brought their cones over, and as she ate hers, he put his arm around her shoulder and studied her face, lit up by the pink glow of the neon sign of the ice cream shop.
“You’re getting prettier.”
She smiled.
“It’s not easy dating you,” she said. “I’m doing my best to keep up my appearance so no one feels sorry for you, dating such a plain girl.”
Lion laughed. His physical beauty had been commented upon throughout his life.
With dark eyebrows, mahogany-brown eyes, a clean jawline, and a straight nose, he had what most Koreans considered an ideal face.
He was just shy of six feet tall, with the wide shoulders of a tennis player.
Even Yun’s mother, Nari, said Lion was nice-looking enough to be a film actor.
If not for his strict upbringing in a long line of pastors and missionaries on his mother’s side, he might’ve been more vain. When anyone mentioned his looks, Lion would frown and change the subject.
Yun was an attractive girl, almost as striking as her boyfriend.
Lion’s girlfriend in college, another Korean girl, a brilliant chemistry major and fairly ordinary in appearance, had ended up breaking up with him, and one of the reasons she cited was the frustration she felt when everyone made it seem as if she was the lucky one to date such a deity.
Lion had learned that some parity in physical and intellectual gifts might make for a more harmonious relationship.
“How’s the ice cream?” she asked, still staring at the rows of neatly parked cars. One filthy gray car was parked askew.
“It’s fine,” he said. “But I’ve been dying to tell you my news. I found a bigger space!”
“Really?”
“I signed the lease. Exodus now has a larger home. I went with Bo today, and he liked it, too.”
Yun tapped her cone to his like she was making a toast.
“How many rooms now?”
“Seven. Lobby, office, and five classrooms. I plan on hiring three more tutors at least. I’m already too busy.”
“And light? Is there more light?” This was something he’d wanted, believing that children needed to be in a brighter space with natural light.
He smiled before becoming suddenly serious. He put what was left of his cone on a napkin on the counter and shifted to face her fully.
“What are you looking at?”