13
Austerity
It was a Saturday night, so the last customer of the day was also the last customer of the week.
Helen had already shown Deacon Sobin Ha all the suitcases they carried at the Emporium.
Finally the deacon settled on a model, but she wanted a red one to match another bag she’d bought years ago at Mrs. Chung’s.
Sobin Ha was not quite forty years old. She wore her dark hair very short, which complemented her lovely oval face.
Born and raised in Seoul, she had moved to California at age seventeen to attend UC Irvine and graduated as a chemistry major.
A devout Christian, she’d once considered missionary work but didn’t like it when she tried it for a year in Bangkok.
Her family came from a great deal of money, and Sobin’s father was a successful real estate developer.
Sobin’s husband, George Hong, a popular elder at Gospel Presbyterian, worked for her father.
Her maternal uncle, Elder Fred Byun, was the founding president and chairman of Taegeuk Bank in Garden Grove, and when Sobin shopped, she patronized Mrs. Chung’s Emporium, since Mrs. Chung was one of her uncle’s oldest customers.
Like her own frugal mother, Sobin refused to spend extra on personal items like clothing, handbags, shoes, and luggage, which were quickly depreciating assets. She’d been taught that status markers were indicative of social insecurity and the downfall of many Koreans.
A person of a good breeding lives in the best neighborhood, owns his own home, attains the best education, and never carries any debt.
There’s no need to show off. Your address and résumé are everything, her mother had taught her.
Sobin did not agree with everything her conservative mother believed; however, she never bought designer clothes or bags or drove an expensive car.
Sobin and her husband, George, owned a $5 million house with a forty-foot-long pool in North Tustin, where they hosted church gatherings twice a year.
Each day, she wore a four-and-a-half-carat, emerald-cut, flawless, colorless diamond ring—a tenth-anniversary gift from George.
They drove only used Honda Accords and tithed more than 20 percent of their income.
They had four children, two girls and two boys, who attended private schools.
Sobin wanted a red suitcase. Of this model and make, Mrs. Chung stocked only black and navy. Helen had made the mistake of telling Sobin that it was manufactured in red but they just didn’t carry it.
“Couldn’t it be ordered?” Sobin asked, looking hopeful.
Helen smiled and shook her head.
There was no way Mrs. Chung would order six red bags, the minimum number the wholesaler required of each color.
If Mrs. Chung had her way, they’d no longer sell bags like this one, which took up a great deal of inventory space and had such modest margins.
The collapsible suitcase with swivel wheels cost $200 retail, and there were nine in stock—six black and three navy.
The wholesale price was $100, and Mrs. Chung had marked it up by another $100. Helen would make $20 on this sale.
Almost half an hour ago, Mrs. Chung had already closed up the register and wanted Helen to wrap up. No doubt Sobin would buy a bag, but she would not be rushed.
“I prefer the navy, but my husband George doesn’t like the color blue. He loves red,” Sobin said, opening and closing every zipper. She prided herself on never having been cheated on a purchase, not even as a girl at a no-name stall in Namdaemun with the canniest of hawkers.
“I can’t understand why anyone would buy a black suitcase when everyone has one.
It’s confusing when you go to baggage claim and every bag looks exactly the same.
Sometimes my husband will pull out the wrong one from the carousel, and another person gets angry, and it’s nobody’s fault. Isn’t that right?”
Sobin chattered on in Korean as if no one else had ever made the same remarks to Helen before. She had a wide-eyed innocence about her, and if Helen weren’t tired and it weren’t so late in the evening, she would not have minded any of this.
Helen smiled and kept her breath even. She was exhausted.
In the past few months, it had been increasingly difficult for her to sleep and keep her food down.
Her neck felt warm all the time, and at night, she perspired, which she’d never done before.
Sonya said she’d had similar menopause symptoms, especially the difficulty sleeping.
Helen also had stomach pains and had been taking antacids, and even though she didn’t eat much and avoided spicy meals, her stomach looked bloated.
Sobin rolled the navy bag to and fro in front of the mirrored wall. Trim and clean-cut, she wore a simple white T-shirt, jeans, and white tennis sneakers.
“Are you taking a trip?” Helen said, and when Mrs. Chung glanced in her direction, she immediately regretted having asked.
“I’m going home to a wedding. We have to bring so many things. It’s my older cousin’s son.”
It was late, and this was no time for small talk.
Mrs. Chung kept checking her watch. She liked Sobin Ha enough but disliked how little she spent.
In her experience, very wealthy people could be terribly cheap in places like hers.
They could throw money around in fancier establishments, but with Koreans, they would haggle down to the last nickel.
She wished Sobin would shop elsewhere. That said, Sobin Ha was the niece of her banker, Fred Byun, and her husband, George Hong, was a fellow elder at the church.
“The wedding is in two weeks,” Sobin said, checking the wheels below the bag with great care. “I can’t miss it.”
“Congratulations,” Helen said.
“My cousin’s son is marrying a pediatrician. They met in college. The bride’s father’s a surgeon and so is the girl’s brother. Some families have all the brains.”
Helen pressed her hand against her abdomen. The dull pain had returned. It came and went. This afternoon she had eaten only a quarter of her ham and cheese sandwich, which Mrs. Chung had ordered her for lunch.
“Are you all right?” Sobin looked up from the bag and examined Helen’s face, from her neck to her forehead.
“Your coloring isn’t good. Your eyes look a little yellow.” The deacon leaned in and whispered, “Have you been to the doctor? Maybe you should get a liver function test. You’re perspiring. Are you warm?”
Helen removed her left hand from her abdomen, touched her brow, then placed both hands on the counter as if to steady herself.
From across the shop, Mrs. Chung glanced at the two women, who were whispering.
“I’m fine,” Helen said.
One of the hallmarks of a high-level service worker was that she never drew attention to her own needs. Whether it was at a store in a Garden Grove shopping mall or the finest department store in Sydney, Helen wanted to present competence and fine service. Then she had a thought.
Helen turned and rooted around in the glass cabinet behind her. She pulled out an attractive red canvas luggage tag from the bottom drawer.
“If you put this tag on a black bag, then your husband can get the color he wants, and you’ll be able to tell that it is your bag.”
Sobin smiled.
“Is the tag included?”
“It’s $20, but I’d be happy to include it as a gift,” Helen said, smiling through her discomfort.
Mrs. Chung nodded. The wholesale price for the luggage tag was $7, and she wanted to go home.
“Oh, no. I could never accept that,” Sobin said, fingering the modern-looking tag, which she liked. It was exactly the right color. “Oh, I know. I’ll accept this one as a gift and buy another red tag for my bag at home.”
Helen smiled and began to write up the purchase on her sales pad.
The lights were still on at Shrimp Castle, but the shop was closed. Helen knocked on the glass door, and Nari let her in. John was still cleaning the range.
“You look tired,” Nari said.
“Yes, it’s been a long week. I want to get home and take a bath.”
“He’s almost done,” Nari said, peering into the kitchen. “I feel so bad at how hard he works. What a smart man, and what he has to do now.”
Helen didn’t know what to say. Her husband had done nothing but work hard all his life, and now he was frying seafood and cleaning an oil-splattered range six days a week.
There might be white-collar jobs that would consider him, even at his age, but the starting pay would be less than half of what he made here.
Already Nari had increased his salary to $1,300 a week.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you two hadn’t come and saved me. After my husband went to Brazil, I thought I’d die.”
Helen shook her head, leaning on the chair near her. “No, no. We’re grateful to you. You and Yun have helped us so much,” she said. Then, suddenly, the pain in her abdomen grew more intense.
“Are you okay?” Nari said. “Sit down, sit down.”
Helen exhaled. Beside her was a table with four chairs, and she slumped into the chair closest to her and put her head on her forearm.
When Bo returned to the apartment around ten o’clock, no one was home. It wasn’t like his parents not to be there on a Saturday night. Once every few months, John and Helen might go out to eat, but they would come home first to wash up, and his father’s uniform was missing from the laundry basket.
He called Fortress and Peter answered. He and Mido were about to head back.
Bo went to his room and took out his seminar assignment.
He had photocopied the assigned pages at the library because the textbook was so expensive, and he hadn’t been able to purchase a used copy.
As he read, he underlined the important concepts so he could create an outline of them later, but, worried about his parents, he couldn’t focus.
Half an hour passed, and Bo wasn’t sure what to do. He phoned Yun’s mother, Nari, and got no answer. When he phoned Yun to see if she’d heard from her mother, she hadn’t.
When the phone rang, it was Peter, who was at the gas station, filling up.
“Mido is asleep, but she asked me to call to see if her parents were home.”
“Not yet. It’s odd. They should have been home a while ago. It’s not like them.”
“Okay, I’m not far from you. I’ll bring Mido home. Maybe it’s nothing,” Peter said.
Bo hung up and went to the kitchen to make coffee. As he waited for the water to boil, he put a teaspoon of instant coffee into his mug. Silently he prayed, Help, God. Let them be okay. Please.
Mido woke up when Peter got back into the car.
“Can I help pay for the gas?” she asked, even though he never let her.
“I called your brother, and your parents still aren’t home.”
“What?” Mido rubbed her eyes. “Where’s the pay phone?”
Peter pointed.
“I’m going to call Yun.”
“Do you want to wait until you get home? It’s only ten minutes from here.”
Mido agreed, and when they reached her house, she invited him up.
Bo was drinking coffee and sitting in the living room without a book in front of him.
“You haven’t heard anything?” Mido asked.
“No,” Bo said. “It’s so strange. I can’t reach Yun’s mother, either.”
Straight after taking off her shoes, Mido went to the phone and called Yun, and as they were talking, she paused when the call waiting beeped.
“Hang on. There’s a call,” Mido said, picking up.
Bo and Peter saw Mido’s eyes widening. “I’ll be right there,” she said in Korean.