18
Independence
After the morning meeting ended, the tutors headed to their first-period classrooms while Mido compiled the test materials and Peter lingered in his chair near the whiteboard.
He could’ve gone to his office but took his time jotting down reminders in his spiral notebook, which was filled with song fragments and a growing list of tasks.
Sad and exhausted, Mido cradled her head in her left hand, elbow resting on the table.
She didn’t want to talk about her mother or how nothing made any sense now that she was gone. She wanted to work.
“There’s a rising junior if you want another student,” Peter said. “A tough cookie, but I think you might click with her.”
“Sure,” she said indifferently. “Which kid?”
“Susie Yoon.”
“Oh, right. The cool customer.” Mido raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t she working with Joe for verbal? He’s really good.”
“Yeah, Joe is terrific, but his nice-guy methods are not working on her. Her mom called me last night. She wants to quit.”
“Can’t we just let her quit?” Mido didn’t believe in making kids do things they didn’t want to do.
Peter gave her a hard stare and pointed to his black T-shirt with a heavily made-up image of Robert Smith.
“Remember me? I wanted to be a punk rocker when I was in middle school. I know I sound like some sort of boss person, but you know me by now, Mido—”
Peter thought most kids should be learning how to surf rather than being stuck in an office park all weekend memorizing SAT words they’d likely never use in a sentence or solving math word problems.
He stood up from his chair and mussed up his gelled hair, raising it a good two inches from his scalp. He played air guitar, rocking his hips back and forth, and started to sing “Just Like Heaven.”
Mido laughed out loud. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. To you especially.”
“Of course she should quit if she wants to. I don’t believe in forcing kids to study here.
But her mom called me at almost eleven p.m. last night to plead her case.
Apparently they’re going through a divorce, and Susie, who was on track for all the fancy college things, decided to throw her academic life to hell to get back at her dad, who went to Wharton and wants her to go there. ”
“Wharton? That’s the business undergrad at UPenn, right?”
Now that she was also a college consultant, Mido had been researching the Ivy League schools that Fortress kids talked about all the time. She’d never visited any of them, so it was hard to understand how they were different from each other. Of course, she’d heard a lot about Yale from DH.
She’d grown up in Australia, so the names confused her, let alone the sheer number, variety, and costs.
UPenn was an entirely different college from Penn State, she’d only learned recently.
UMass Amherst was distinct from Amherst College, though they were in the same town.
There were over a dozen schools in the University of North Carolina system.
Higher education in America was nothing like Australia or South Korea—countries with far smaller populations.
“I guess Susie doesn’t want to study business?”
“Wharton’s a professional school. Not for everyone.”
“This is Susie Yoon with the blue hair?”
“Wharton could use a little color,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, thank you for taking her on, and I’m going to send her to your office after lunch.”
He’d checked the master schedule, and he knew Mido was clear in the afternoon.
Peter didn’t ask why she’d returned to work so soon after the funeral.
Both Yun and Lion had tried to encourage Mido to take more time off, but she had insisted on coming back and taking on her full load.
Bo was also teaching his private students and going to school.
He’d had to give up the van driving because the hours didn’t work, but he taught every weekend.
Fortress now had 150 students—in SAT boot camps, subject test tutoring, subject tutoring, and now college counseling.
They had to turn students away. Tutors left other hagwons to work at Fortress because Lion paid the highest salaries, although he didn’t charge the highest tuition fees.
The owners of competitive Irvine hagwons didn’t mind, but Fortress’s growth upset the owners of the struggling ones.
Mido had a good-size windowless classroom in the back of the building for private tutoring and college consulting.
On two of the walls, she’d put up whiteboards, and on the narrow remaining space beside the glass door, she’d hung up postcards, posters, and drawings of American writers: Toni Morrison, Anne Sexton, F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, John Dos Passos, James Baldwin, Stephen King, John Cheever, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Steinbeck, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Zora Neale Hurston.
She stored copies of their novels and stories on a library cart next to a beanbag chair and reading lamp.
Mido sat at her desk with a legal pad and Susie Yoon’s latest SAT practice test results. Her verbal scores were significantly lower than on her initial diagnostic test in September, which made no sense.
The door opened and Susie entered tentatively.
Mido gestured for her to sit in the chair beside her.
“Heard you want to quit.”
“Yes.”
The girl was fifteen, and besides her blue hair, she had a nose ring and two piercings in her left earlobe.
“What does the rest look like?” Mido pointed to her inked forearm, half hidden beneath the sweatshirt.
Susie pushed up the sleeve to expose a skinny right arm that had a beautiful image of a weeping willow.
“Cool. Did it hurt?”
“Like a motherfucker.”
Mido laughed.
“Heard about the divorce.”
“Yup.”
“Listen. You can quit if you want to. I know I’m supposed to talk you out of it, but I’d rather hear why you want to quit.
If you tell me why and convince me, I will persuade your mother myself.
I have nothing better to do than to act as your fake free lawyer.
You can quit. It will not affect our bottom line.
I’ll still pull in a great salary. In fact, it would be less work for me. ”
This time Susie laughed, and Mido felt glad because life was shitty, but it felt bearable if you could still laugh.
“My dad cheated on my mother. He’s marrying some West Hollywood bitch with gigantic boobs, and my mother is drinking a lot of wine. They’re not acting like Korean parents. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
“I see. That is a lot.”
“If they act like assholes, I don’t see why I have to act like a genius.”
“Fair point.”
Susie smiled.
“Listen. You can quit. You can blame your parents, who are going through whatever. Frankly, I don’t care what the adults are doing, because they’re not my students.
“However, I would like you to have many wonderful choices. Fucking up your life right now is not going to help you become liberated from your parents, who are going through some possibly delayed rebellion. Maybe if they had blue hair when they were kids, there might be more peace in your life now. No idea. I’m guessing all this without knowing any of the facts. Regardless, I’m on your side.
“The reality is that the way you can get away from their nuttiness is by doing well at school and going across the country and having them pay for a college education, which they’re able to do. Lucky you.”
“Where did you go to college?” Susie asked.
“I finished my first year at the University of Sydney, then I came to the US with my family.”
“You haven’t finished?”
“Nope. Your verbal teacher and college essay specialist is more or less a college dropout, or you can say that I took a pause.”
“Cool.”
“I can’t afford to finish my college education right now.”
“You can’t get loans?”
Mido wondered if she should bother telling her about how her life had not ended up the way she’d thought it would when she was Susie’s age.
“I need to earn money. I’ll get to my degree later.
The only thing that’s relevant for you right now, though, is that you are sitting in a room with a person who not only knows how to get a perfect score on the verbal section of the SATs or most standardized exams, I’m tremendous at teaching high school students how to get one, too.
I may not have any other gifts, but on this testing thing, I’m a savant.
Look up the word if you don’t know what it means.
The dictionary is behind you on the shelf.
I can and will raise your scores. Joe is also excellent, but you didn’t realize that.
He’s nicer than me. Anyway, his loss is my gain. ”
Susie was paying attention. When it came to students, it was easier to talk plainly like this. Around adults, Mido spoke as needed, measuring every extra word, but with children and teenagers, she wanted to simply tell them the truth, however long it took.
Susie glanced at her practice test in front of Mido.
“I wasn’t even trying for that score.”
“I know.”
“If I focused—”
“It’s not the score, Susie. Respect language. If you respect words, sentences, and meaning, you will have command of one of the greatest gifts of your life. Forget the test. Attain command of the English language.”
Mido checked her math scores.
“Do you like your math group?”
“Meh.”
“Do you know Catherine Seo? She’s also at Troy.”
“Blond girl.”
“Yeah. You want to join her group? Peter leads it, and they’re doing very well.”
“Okay.”
“Done. Let’s turn to this reading comp passage.”
Mido sat up straight and gestured to the page.
Susie picked up her pencil and brushed away the blue hair from her eyes.
Ten days after the funeral, Tek arrived in California.
Work had prevented him from traveling to Helen’s services.
He’d sent an enormous wreath of white chrysanthemums. He called Mido often and, when he missed her, left brief messages on the answering machine.
They wrote each other emails instead of letters.
Right after work, Mido went to his hotel, and as soon as she walked into his room and closed the door, she collapsed into his arms. It was as if they had forgotten their disagreements and disappointments.
“I’m so sorry, Mido. This was the soonest I could get away.”
Tek’s dark hair was longer in front than usual.
A while back, he’d mentioned changing his barber.
Mido was surprised by how unfamiliar a person could look just from a new haircut.
His fine features—the thoughtful sloping eyes and straight nose—became more distinct shaded by his dark hair.
He’d lost some weight and his cheekbones were more defined. Tek was more handsome than before.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
She wasn’t. The thought of food made her think of her mother, who always asked about her meals. “You must be tired from the flight.”
“No. I’m okay. I was reading this fascinating case. I’m studying it, actually.” He gestured to the papers on the hotel desk. “Are you tired?”
They were being polite. The last time they had been in a room at this hotel, almost right away they’d made love as if two people needed to do something to remember each other. Now it felt strange to think of sex.
“How’s work?”
“Fine,” he said. He was swamped and learning more about the business side of law.
Tek had met Helen only a few times, but he had felt her kindness. From an early age, his mother, Professor Yoon, the famous economist, had drilled it into him that women did paid and unpaid work in and out of the house, but it was all work.
“You’re back at the hagwon so soon.”
“It’s better to keep busy.”
“I felt bad I couldn’t be here for you.”
Mido had understood. In order for this to continue, neither could expect much from the other. This was how they had managed to last.
Tek had no intention of moving to California. It made no sense, and of course, she respected it. There was the stronger argument for her to move to Sydney to finish her degree. But Mido would not leave her family now. Her income was more important than ever.
Hospital bills, mortgage for the new house, insurance, taxes, car payments—all of it required Mido to help out.
They no longer had Helen’s earnings. Bo had two more years of school, and he wanted to be a psychologist, which would require a doctorate, and that could add another six to eight years.
DH would graduate law school in two, and his grades mattered for the jobs he wanted: He couldn’t spare the time to work.
“How long can you stay?”
“Two days at best. I should leave tomorrow, but I think I can stay until my original flight.”
“You flew two days already.”
“I would’ve been here sooner, Mido.”
“I know.”
“Come back with me. I’m a working lawyer.
You know I have a plan. After I’m called to the bar, I’ll become a barrister focusing on commercial litigation.
I’ve already figured out which chambers.
I can send money back to your family and put you through school.
My offer stands.” He folded his arms against his chest. “This can’t go on with you being here and me in Sydney. ”
Mido hugged her knees. His reasoning made sense, and she was so tired.
“You’re going to sacrifice your life for your father and brothers? No, Mido. This isn’t some Korean fairy tale. This is your life. We’ve entered the twenty-first century. How’s this okay? Your mother wouldn’t want this.”
“You’re right. She wouldn’t want me to do this for them, but it’s not just for them. I like working at Fortress.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re an office manager and SAT tutor. You’re helping kids with college essays when you haven’t finished your own degree. You can do any of this in Sydney if you want. They have hagwons there.”
“No, no. I don’t think you understand. It’s not just a job.”
Mido felt inadequate to argue with a lawyer and was too worn down to try. How could she ever persuade him? She could not.
“I give up,” she said, then saw him grin at the thought of winning. Again he’d misunderstood.
“No, I mean us. I’m not going back.”