16
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The visiting area of the Santa Ana women’s jail smelled like stale coffee, sweat, and disinfectant. Every now and then, John could hear a loud buzzer and the clang of a heavy metal gate opening and shutting.
Her back pin-straight, Danbi sat on the opposite side of the booth behind a thick pane of reinforced glass.
She wore a white undershirt beneath her khaki shirt and pants; her dark hair was gathered with a rubber band.
A few white strands sprouted like antennae from her side part.
Her face bare except for lip balm, she looked younger and unfamiliar. Danbi held the handset lightly.
“Elder Koh, thank you for coming by,” she said.
“I wanted to bring Anna, but the lawyer said—”
“I don’t want her to know that I’m here.”
John’s wedding ring tapped against his handset. He never took it off. What would Helen say? he wondered in every difficult situation.
“Your daughter is a bright child. Losing her father was difficult for her. My son Bo is studying to be a child psychologist, and he thinks that maybe it would be good for Anna to see you.”
“No. I don’t want her to come here. And after”—she paused—“I might be in a worse place.”
John understood her meaning. DH and Shin’s lawyer had said this could go badly.
The judge on her case was notoriously hard on women who committed felonies.
Grand theft, special taking, conspiracy, embezzlement, and assault of an officer.
Even without prior offenses and with full restitution, she would go to state prison for at least a year or two.
A former prosecutor had told DH that the worst part wasn’t the stealing, but the fact that the deputy chasing Danbi had fallen and broken her wrist and ankle.
“Your lawyer said your mother is alive. Did you want Anna to go to her?”
“No.” Like an animal, Danbi tracked his eyes, trying to predict his next move. “And my cousin will not take her, either.”
“Your cousin?”
“Frank Lim. And his wife, Bina. They’re elders.”
John knew of them from church but had never spoken to them.
“Frank is the son of my mother’s sister.
” Her lawyer had reached out to Frank and Bina Lim about Anna.
She’d thought Bina would take good care of Anna, but Frank said it was impossible.
He had agreed to pay Danbi’s legal bills and put commissary money into her books for the length of her detainment and prison term, and in return, she could never contact him or his family except through counsel.
She could not return to Orange County to live. He’d made her sign a contract.
John didn’t know what he should tell her about Anna, who’d been staying with him.
Sometimes the child woke up in the middle of the night.
When she cried, he sat with her and gave her a glass of water.
At Shin’s funeral, she’d overheard remarks about his death from adults and asked him and Bo to explain.
“Sometimes grown-ups drink too much and have accidents,” John told the child. Every chance he could, Bo told Anna that her parents loved her. When she asked to see her mother, John followed Danbi’s lawyer’s instructions. “Your mother went to Korea for a job. She wants you to wait for her.”
Danbi stared at John, her sad eyes imploring yet her chin jutted out slightly above her stiffened neck. She appeared both petulant and self-righteous.
“I’ve no right to ask you. But can you take her while I’m here?”
John focused on the visiting booth counter, a thick, pale slab of indeterminate building material.
“I spoke with Mary. Shin’s wife,” he said.
Danbi tried to look expressionless. She wished she’d worn makeup.
Her skin felt papery all the time. The jail in Santa Ana was unbearable, and the other women there told her that state prison was far worse.
Prison would give her more privileges, but she would be less safe.
Every week in jail, she got three hours outside, but never all at once.
The time she spent in jail would be deducted from any prison sentence.
If only she hadn’t pushed away the female deputy, who had tipped over like a bowling pin, then she might have gotten bail.
“It was an accident,” Danbi pleaded with the judge, but he did not believe her.
“Mary said she might be able to take her.”
Danbi looked surprised.
John didn’t mention that her sons weren’t pleased about it, especially Patrick, the youngest. Mary felt awful about her ex-husband’s death. “She just has to talk to her sons.” The boys refused to attend the funeral, and Mary had come alone. Anna wouldn’t leave Bo’s side during the services.
“But then Anna wouldn’t be in California, where you are,” John said.
She kept quiet, trying to imagine what would happen if Anna lived with Shin’s ex-wife. If the brothers liked her, then Anna would have a family.
Danbi blurted out, “If Mary says yes, then send her. Tell Anna that I had to stay in Korea and I can’t have her live with me. I’ll be back for her when things are better.”
She didn’t sound normal, John thought, but it wasn’t as if he really knew her.
“I can’t ask Mary to lie to the child,” he said. “Mary isn’t like that. Also, it can’t be good for her to think that. Anna has already suffered the loss of her father.” John tried to remember all the things Bo had explained that a bereaved child might be going through.
“What did you tell her? About her father?” Danbi said the words slowly.
“That it was an accident.”
She exhaled quietly, relieved.
“It was an accident. He drank too much and made a bad decision. That wasn’t really him,” she said. “It’s the truth.”
John didn’t know what else to say.
“If Anna lives in New Jersey with her brothers,” Danbi said, “then she could forget about her father’s death. This is the best I can do for her.”
“Are you sure? Don’t you want to see her?” John asked. Every other day, the child asked to see her mother.
Danbi clenched her fists, wanting to smash the glass with the heavy plastic handset.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” she said, not looking at John. “I thought he was stronger.” Danbi turned to him. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I did all this for them.”
When their time was up, the guard took her away.
When John returned to Rose Salon, it was only half full, and he went to his office to sit at his desk. He felt lightheaded and confused. When the phone rang, he picked up right away and smiled at hearing his daughter’s voice.
“Did you eat?” he asked.
“Yes, Dad. Did you?” Mido asked. He sounded tired, and she could picture his windowless office in the back of the salon—the metal desk and chair, the single filing cabinet. “How are things with Anna? Is Bo able to get his schoolwork done?”
“I saw Anna’s mother today.”
“The jail? You went there?” Mido raised her voice slightly.
“Yes. It was fine enough. I felt sorry for her. And little Anna.” From the open door, he could see Nari waving him over. Several customers had finished at the same time, and she needed help taking payment. “Is everything okay? With the hagwon?” he asked.
“Yes, the hagwon is doing well.”
“I better go. Customers.”
Mido picked up the file for the next appointment on the schedule: another set of parents whose child hadn’t been admitted to Fortress Seoul.
Professor Kim had gone to high school with Peter’s father, and Professor Kim and his wife, Dr. Gu, wanted to make a special case for their youngest. Professor Kim, a scientist who’d received his PhD in the United States and taught at KAIST, had been a deputy minister in the previous administration.
His cousin was the wife of a former president, and his sister was a prosecutor.
When Renee rattled all this off to her, Mido let herself forget the details and just put them in the category of Very Important People.
Lately, every parent seemed to be some significant personage, or to know a high-status person. Peter said either no one was important or everyone was important. He didn’t want to meet anyone whose grand pedigree preceded them.
Ginny, wearing one of the fashionable dresses she’d bought near Ewha, came into her office and handed her more folders.
She had organized them in the order of requested appointments.
Yun had taught Ginny how to run a hagwon so well that her competence allowed Mido to focus mostly on training the tutors.
Peter joked that he’d rather work for Ginny than any other boss.
“All of these folks want meetings, too. Ideally today,” Ginny said, shaking her head. Having spent most of her childhood at Exodus and after living with Yun and Lion, she could be as tough as any hagwon owner when it came to pushy parents.
“More parents? Today?” Mido frowned and opened the top folder in the pile.
“I tried to get rid of as many as possible, but they were very insistent.”
Standing over Mido’s shoulder, Ginny watched her skim the contents of the first folder.
Mido underlined the student’s strengths with her blue pencil.
There were no obvious weaknesses. The boy had wonderful grades and scores, had won international math competitions, and held an internship at a nanotechnology research lab at the California Institute of Technology. He knew how to code and build websites.
On the preferred list of schools, his parents had listed international choices: the usual Ivy League schools, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, and Cambridge. No doubt he would get something. Mido didn’t think the child even needed Fortress Seoul.
“Impressive kid.”
Peter had come in earlier and was sitting quietly on the office couch, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He was reviewing his own stack of folders.
“How are yours looking?” Mido asked.
Peter sat up straight, his face tense and arms crossed tightly.
“I wish you hadn’t accepted the meeting with Professor Kim,” he said.
“It will take only thirty minutes.”