A Cab Called Reliable (13 page)

My father had to learn. He had to learn that he just could not trust any man who walked into the carry-out bearing what looked like boxes of brand-new Sony videocassette recorders. Even though they were only $100 each and he bargained the price down to $75, he should not have trusted them. I knew he was thinking, One for Ahn Joo's room, one for his room when he bought two for $150 and thought it a steal. But couldn't he tell immediately that those pictures pasted on the boxes were magazine cutouts?

He didn't even shut his car door that day because he was too excited about showing me his steal. He called from the garage, “Joo-yah, Joo-yah!” and when I didn't answer, he came into my room with the two unopened boxes and placed them in the middle of my floor. I handed him a pair of scissors and he began to cut through the masking tape. Didn't he know that brand-new Sony VCRs were not packaged with masking tape? He opened it, and we found a plastic bag full of dirt, pieces of glass, jagged rocks, bottle-caps, and cigarette butts. And he actually had the heart to open the second box hoping that that one was for real.…

After reading the shopping list, I said, “I thought you were going to get all the sodas delivered?”

“We buy RC,” he said.

“Those bottles are too heavy for you to carry. You're going to break your back.”

“I can carry.”

“It's because of the delivery man, isn't it? You didn't like him and you couldn't call them to ask for another delivery person. Is that it?” I asked.

“It's not heavy.”

“Dad, you're their customer. You know you can complain and request a different delivery person,” I said.

“It's all right. I can take care of it. I can take care,” he sang, and turned right driving through an open fence holding the “
WELCOME TO FLORIDA MARKET—WASHINGTON—CASH-&-CARRY
” sign. Behind the fence were rows of wholesale warehouses: Sol Sanders & Sons, Meat Wholesale, Bretcher's Beef, Nello's Candies & Notions, and all the other stores we needed to go to. Load and unload. Load and unload, that was what he needed me for.

He drove between the parked vans and trucks and stopped in front of Sol Sanders & Sons. He turned off the ignition, pulled the parking brake, tossed his sunglasses on the dashboard, opened his door, spat out some phlegm, said, “Stay here,” and shut the door. I watched his short figure walk toward the heavy plastic strips that hung as drapes at the entrance of the store. He flung them back. He faded in with the voices of Mr. Sanders and his sons.

I leaned my back against the door, straightened out my legs onto the driver's seat, and hung my head outside. I told him to check all the potatoes for eyes before he buys the entire bag. Eyes made the potato a pain to peel.

The sun felt hot on my forehead and nose. One of the four men near the door was finishing a bag of potato chips. He shook the remains into his opened mouth and crumpled up the bag. I tasted the salt in my own mouth and felt thirsty for the man.

A heavy African woman wearing a bright yellow and brown dress with an African print stood behind a table of stacked tapes between two huge, silent speakers. She shaded her eyes from the sun, looked my way, and waved her hand for me to come and buy her tapes. But I closed my eyes. Her figure was dancing to African voodoo music in my mind. As the oppressive drumbeats quickened, she pranced around a fire that gradually died down. And as the fire gradually died down, her dress transformed into a red and green
hanbok,
her head now covered in white cloth, and with her long white sleeves she spun fluttering rings. The deep drumbeats changed into the sound of clanging cymbals, and the woman swayed in the center of the busy marketplace in the village of the One Hundred-Year-Old Mountain, where a fishmonger, basket weaver, and kelp seller's loud bargaining with customers competed with the shaman's chanting.

From the back of the truck, my father called, “Joo-yah!” I saw him signal with his right hand for me to come around, unload the cart, and help him load the bed of his truck.

A crate of Twin Shields collard greens, a sack of Kings potatoes, and a sack of Sylvany Spanish onions.

“Did you check to see if the potatoes had eyes?” I asked.

“They got no eyes,” he said.

“Did you check to see if they were rotten? Remember the last time? Some of them were purple, bruised up.”

“Guh reh. Guh reh.”

“Did you get the biggest onions? You know how hard they are to slice if they're the size of golf balls. They don't even stay on the slicing machine.”

“Guh reh.”

“Dad, this isn't a smart idea at all. We should have gotten the vegetables last. They're probably going to wilt in this weather.”

“Go inside. Too many words today. You got too many words.”

I
had too many words? He was the one with too many words. And they were all inappropriate ones. I told him not to talk like his customers, damning and hey manning and what you doing with my eggs, little miss, and if you ever thinking about getting married mmm mmm mmm. I told him to refuse the girlie magazines, postcards, and calendars the mechanic next door gave him. Didn't he remember what they did to Mother? He didn't have to take them. He could simply say, no thank you, instead of stashing them underneath the cash register and taking a peek at them when the lunch crowd died down. Or stashing the cutouts in the Yellow Pages or the Korean phone directory or between the pages of
Yes, You Too Can Speak English, Too.

Only three words. No—thank—you. No thank you. He had no trouble saying them when I cooked him brown rice with beans instead of the white rice because brown rice was better for one's digestion and had more nutrients, or when I served him pasta shells with marinara instead of
gook soo,
lettuce with vinegar and oil instead of
kimchi.
He wanted red meat so I cooked steak, but he wanted
kal bi.
No thank you; he said it to me easily.

My father parked in front of Deck-Bone Cash & Carry, and I said, “Dad, don't go to Deck-Bone Cash & Carry.”

“Deck-Bone is cheap,” he said.

“I know, but they don't carry everything, which means we'll have to go to two meat stores today.”

“Shut up. We go to three today,” he said.

He should have gone to Meat Time Eat Time instead of Deck-Bone Cash & Carry because Deck-Bone didn't carry chicken gizzards. Chicken gizzards with gravy over rice, although a little expensive, went over especially well on Thursdays because Thursday was payday for the Navy Yard workers. But my father never listened to me.

He went ahead, got out of the car, shut the door, put the shopping list in his back pocket, pulled his socks up, walked into Deck-Bone, and looked for his frozen turkey wings, ham hock, and slab of bacon. He was not going to find any chicken gizzards in there.

Minutes later, my father tapped my window with his knuckles and said, “Come on.” I followed him to the back where a cartload of everything they like to eat was waiting for me to unload. The customers loved Juicy Fruit chewing gum. They loved orange-flavored Nehi and grape-flavored Rock Creek. Salmon cake made of canned mackerel and breadcrumbs. Salt and vinegar and barbeque on everything. Deep-fried pig skin chips and hot potato sticks.

We finally arrived back at the store, and Father backed the truck to Good Food's front door. He opened the bars, unbolted the top, middle, and two bottom locks, pulled open the door, and pushed the screen back, hooking the handle on a rusty bent nail. I crawled into the bed of the truck and waited for him to bring the cart so I could load and he could roll the boxes and sacks to the back. But he didn't come out like he usually did with a smile or a burp or a scratch. He didn't come out. So I called him three times. When he didn't answer, I worried, remembering how Angela's father got stabbed. I climbed out of the truck and looked inside.

My father was on his hands and knees picking up the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies that had spilled out of the cash register when the burglars cracked open the drawer. He collected the coins into the King Edward cigar box. The chairs were knocked over onto the middle of the floor. Tables turned.

Greasy posters of cheeseburgers and french fries hanging by one corner. Cigarette cartons torn and stepped on. Clean napkins scattered on the floor, like they had been thrown up in the air by gloved hands. I could see them having a party in here. One with chunks of ham and roast beef, one with a carton of beer, one with the slicing machine coming in and going out of the hole they had drilled in the middle of our wall underneath our sink next to our steam table in front of the grill. The only things left in the back were opened sacks of cornmeal, mousetraps, and the stink of horse manure from Mr. Selby's limo service. They were renting out horse, carriage, and rider by the hour because the weather was so pleasant nowadays.

When a path was finally cleared, I wheeled the cart around from the storage room to the back of the truck. My father was mopping up the eggshells. I loaded the cart with stacked boxes of bottled orange and grape-flavored RC. I rolled the cart to the back. He was still mopping up the eggshells. I unloaded the cart and rolled it back to the truck. Sylvany Spanish onions wheeled to the cooking room; Kings potatoes leaned against the onions; the crate of collard greens in the refrigerator. He picked up the napkins, dusted them on his thigh, and collected them in a pile. I loaded the cart with turkey wings, ham hock, and the slab of bacon. I rolled the cart to the freezer and unloaded. He was taping the greasy posters back up on the wall. I rolled the cart back to the truck, unloaded the boxes of Snickers, Milky Ways, Three Musketeers, M&Ms, and five boxes of Juicy Fruit, the gum they love to chew, and wheeled them to the counter. He was looking into the hole, shaking his balding head, and touching the edges of the circle they made. I wheeled the empty cart to the back storage room and leaned it against the wall underneath the light switch.

I swept the floors, while he tried to cover up the hole by nailing a piece of plywood over it. I swept the corners, underneath the tables and counters, and around his stooped body. We wouldn't be able to total up the week's worth of sales on the cash register. I mopped. I poured Clorox and Ajax into the bucket of hot water, dunked the mop in, and without wringing it, dripped the water onto the floor. I scrubbed the corners, underneath the tables and counters, and around his stooped body. I wrung the mop and soaked up the soapy water from the wet floor. The mop slapped.

I washed and rinsed the four coffeepots, using rags rubber-banded around the tip of a tong. He was still nailing the piece of plywood over the hole. I dried the coffeepots and returned them to the coffeemaker.

I scraped the week's worth of grease into the large can that held a month's worth of grease. I shut it and wobbled out to the alley with it. When I returned, he had finished nailing the piece of plywood over the hole. I rinsed out the toilet bowl. I emptied out the trash. I beat the dust out of the welcome mat.

My father spoke in Korean.
“Ahn Joo-yah, let's go home.”

He locked the four bolts and let the door of bars clank shut. It shut, and we heard liquid quickly streaming. When we looked into the alley, there was an old black man peeing next to our can of a month's worth of grease. When my father quickly turned me around and pushed me toward the truck, I heard the man say he was sorry, but he couldn't help it, you know how it is. My father said he was sorry and hey man you can finish, take your time. The man zipped up and walked to the end of the alley.

My father sat on the driver's seat and fiddled with the gear before starting the ignition. I looked at him and said, “What the hell is his problem? Can't he find another hole to land his pee?”

He didn't answer. He drove over a curb, barely missing the
NO PARKING
sign that was bent in a forty-five-degree angle.

“Dad, who does he think he is?” I screamed.

My father told me to quiet down.

“It's bad enough Mr. Selby's horses shit there, why does he have hang his dick and piss in our alley? I can't stand this. I can't stand it. It's making me sick. It's bad enough we get robbed, why does he have to add on to our misery and leave his urine in our alley? That's illegal, do you know that?”

He opened the glove compartment and took out a napkin to wipe off the sweat beading on his head.

In Korean he said,
“Ahn Joo-yah, please let's drive home quietly.”

I wanted to tell him the robbery and the urine were absolute injustices, we were wronged, and the guilty would eventually have to pay their karma debt. All of them. For stabbing Angela's father, for holding Yoo Jin's mother at gunpoint underneath the toilet, for shooting off Mr. Hong's ear for a couple of hundred dollars and a bag of chips, for calling Mrs. Kim a stingy money-hungry chink because she refused to give her customers cleaning for free or because she charged extra for boxed shirts, for making me write badly to save myself from being accused of copying out of a book, for telling me to go back to where I came from (how can I return to my mother's womb?), for stretching their large, long, curly-lashed eyes at me while singing about my being Chinese and Japanese, for making me want to look, walk, eat, sleep, talk like them, for expecting me to sit quietly in the back of the classroom, for making me repeat my question two or three times because no one could hear my voice squeezed out of a throat that always had clay caught in the center except when it was speaking to Father. When I spoke at Father, my throat opened up and clever words, sentences, paragraphs came to me. It was because I believed I knew better than he.

He had pushed his socks down to his ankles because the weather was warm, and the vent above the pedals blew air. The vinyl seats were sticking to my thighs. The sun reflected off the side of a high rise made of mirrors that twinkled, blinked, and winked at me as if trying to dazzle me to keep its secrets. We were driving across a bridge over a river. The wind beat in and made noise. But it didn't keep me from hearing my father's breathing, which was his pathetic plea:
Ahn Joo-yah, Ahn Joo-yah, you have to save your poor father. You are the reason I do this. I cannot do this for long. Study hard, place first in your class, become a doctor or lawyer, take care of me, make money, make my suffering pay off, make my sacrifice worthwhile …