10
Orange County
At only eight hundred square feet, this apartment was the smallest place the family had ever rented, and if DH came home for the summer, Bo thought he would have to return to Lion’s garage apartment if the family could figure out the transportation situation.
For now, they had only Bo’s used Subaru, but if there was any room in the budget, they had to get another car, and Mido needed to learn how to drive on the freeway.
When Bo first arrived in Orange County, he’d tried taking buses to get around, but it was not like Seoul. You needed several extra hours a day to make the buses work. No one they knew took them.
Bo had cleaned and furnished the apartment for his family’s arrival.
For his parents, he purchased a queen-size mattress set, and for Mido a full-size mattress.
For himself, he bought the floor-model sofa bed from a furniture warehouse in Buena Park, which was owned by a deacon at their church, who had given him a discount.
Lion loaned the family a collapsible conference table and six folding chairs from the hagwon storage facility.
Yun had driven Bo to the Costco in Garden Grove to buy the most necessary things for the kitchen: waste bins, a dish rack, dishes, bowls, a set of pots and pans, and cutlery. From Sharon Mart, he bought a Japanese rice cooker that Yun’s mother, Nari, had recommended.
Every item had to be essential and within budget, and Bo was proud to have managed it, but when his family walked into their new home—sleepless from the long, noisy flight and even more exhausted after an interminable wait for their luggage—he realized that nothing here was beautiful.
Through their eyes, he saw how shabby and dismal everything looked.
He had forgotten to wash the small windows in the living room.
“You did a nice job,” Helen said, doing her best to hide her disappointment. “It must have been difficult to find all these things. Son, you’re all grown up: You know how to set up a household.”
John patted Bo on the back, and Mido smiled at him.
He knew they were just being polite. The kitchen walls, once painted gray, were grimy with grease, no matter how much Bo had scrubbed them with diluted bleach.
The baseboards along the walls were cracked, with pieces missing, like a gaping underbite.
The linoleum floors, possibly once yellow, were a depressing indeterminate color; there was no sense in buying wall-to-wall carpeting for a rental, he’d reasoned.
It occurred to Bo now that perhaps he should have bought the rugs that the church deacon who owned the warehouse in Buena Park had tried to sell him, but it would’ve pushed him well over his budget. He’d refrained as much as he could from borrowing on his recently issued credit line.
“Next weekend, I thought I’d paint the apartment white. There wasn’t enough time this week,” Bo said to his family.
“Are we allowed to do that?” Helen asked with hope in her voice. Over the years, she’d read a number of leases and deposit terms, and renter’s alterations were often not permitted.
Mido put her arms around her mother, wanting to make the ugliness disappear somehow. At her high school in Sydney, she had read a British novel about coming down in the world, and though she had understood then what the words meant, she felt them now for her parents, and this grieved her.
“We won’t be here long,” Mido said, and John and Helen looked at one another, silently resolving to move as soon as possible.
The first guest to visit the Koh family was Yun’s mother, Nari.
The morning after their arrival, the doorbell sounded twice, and when John opened the door, Nari was balancing a thick stack of brightly colored floor cushions on top of a flat box of pears and a box of ramyeon.
In one hand, she clutched a full shopping bag.
John relieved her of the heavy load, and Nari rushed in, slipping off her kitchen clogs. She bowed quickly to the family, then sat down on the bare floor to pray.
In silence, Helen, John, Bo, and Mido watched her.
Yun’s mother had aged visibly in only a few years. Her hair, pulled back with a banana-style hair clip, was dyed brown, a shade lighter than her natural color, and the roots along her side part were white.
In Seoul, Nari’s nails had always been vermilion, but here they were clipped short and unvarnished. She wore the tan-and-brown uniform shirt for Shrimp Castle and matching brown polyester slacks, which smelled lightly of frying oil.
Her mumbled prayer ended in a few minutes, and Nari rose to her feet. Helen approached her, and Nari took Helen’s hands in hers. She looked around the almost bare living room.
“It’s small, isn’t it? Our apartment is the same, and I may try to get into a smaller one. Yun moved in with her husband after the wedding.”
“Congratulations,” Helen and John said at the same time. “Your son-in-law is wonderful. We met him last night when he picked us up. Yun looks very happy.”
Nari smiled weakly. When Yun and Lion came to tell her about eloping, Nari had been upset, but it didn’t change anything.
They would’ve gotten married later anyway, Lion had explained, and it did make some sense to do it now for Yun to be independent.
Marrying an American could help Yun get citizenship faster, and Lion was a good young man.
Nari knew Yun had wanted to move out and had always felt sorry that her daughter couldn’t live in a dorm like many of her classmates from high school.
Later, when they were alone, Nari asked her daughter if she had eloped because Joonho had gone to Brazil, and Yun said she didn’t think so. Yun insisted that she loved Lion and that she was ready to be his wife.
“She’s not pregnant,” Nari said, as if this explanation were needed.
“Yun is going to finish UCLA. Lion is a kind boy. He thought of being a minister, but he changed his mind. He wants to be a songwriter. He sings well. He put himself through Princeton in only three years. Now he’s a hagwon director.
He earns good money.” She shrugged. “But it’s a waste of such a good education. ”
Helen smiled. “Lion seems like a wonderful young man, and he is fortunate because Yun is the best.”
Nari shook her head, unable to accept praise for her child, though it felt nice to hear it.
“My husband is in Brazil. I think Yun told you. I have to get to work now.”
“Are you running the store all by yourself?” John asked her.
“I just hired a nice student. Part-time. Alex is a good boy and very strong, but he can only work fifteen to twenty hours. I still have Lenny, who helped my husband, but he can’t work more than thirty-five hours.
The new cook quit after a week. Koreans won’t work this job, and Americans can’t work like us,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” John said.
“Labor laws. Lion said I’d need at least two workers to replace my husband.” She sighed. “I better get back.”
“It was nice of you to stop by. Thank you for all these things. What is this?” Helen pointed to the shopping bag.
“Roach traps and steel wool.”
“Roaches?” Mido turned to Bo.
“I haven’t seen any,” he said.
“They come out at night. You’ve only had one night.
Put out the traps in all the cupboards, and if you see any mice, then you have to plug up the holes with steel wool.
They’re usually behind the refrigerator or beneath the sink.
I should’ve given this to Yun last night when she picked you up, but I forgot, and I got home late from church. ”
Helen rubbed her arms. Mido knew her mother was scared.
“You’re so kind to think of this. I don’t like mice,” Helen said, trying to sound natural. “I remember them from when I was a child. They were always in the house. Getting into everything.”
Bo was mortified. It had never occurred to him that where Yun and Nari lived, there could be bugs and rodents.
When he was renting Lion’s garage apartment, he had never even seen a mosquito inside, which reminded him to check the living room windows: There were no mosquito screens, either. He’d never considered bugs.
If Lion’s brother, Ray, hadn’t mentioned the air conditioners, he wouldn’t have known to check if they worked or not.
In the kitchen, there was no dishwasher, but his parents rarely used it even when there was one.
The refrigerator worked, and he had to buy a small microwave.
The coin-operated washing machines were in the basement.
“Are there many mice?” Bo asked Yun’s mother.
“Oh, once you plug up the holes with steel wool, they’ll move on to the next place.
They live in the walls. You can hear them at night,” Nari said.
“I don’t have them inside my apartment anymore.
But we did the first month or so. No matter how clean you are, these buildings that you share with people have problems.”
John stooped over the shopping bag and pulled out the roach traps. He separated the individual traps from the large packet.
“I better go,” Nari said. “I’ll bring you some large pots and pans tonight. For soup.”
“Oh, we’re going to the store soon. That’s okay,” Helen said. “You’ve already done so much.”
“We’ll see each other on Sunday, then. I’m so glad you’re here, especially since Yun moved out.
That bad girl,” Nari said, smiling, and then she grew serious.
“It’s terrible being poor here, but you’ll work hard, and things will get better.
When we first got here, my sister-in-law rented us a spare bedroom from another family.
She had no space. We were trying to save for a down payment for the store.
It’s not easy, but we have strong bodies and even stronger minds,” Nari said, looking at Mido and Bo.
“Remember that we are very strong people and we are good learners. I wasn’t the best at school, but life is also a school, isn’t it? Living can sharpen us.”