A Cab Called Reliable (3 page)

My father would return her words with a smack or a tight collar made by his hand around her neck. The collar would tighten and tighten, as she looked at him with her go-ahead-and-kill-me-I'm-ready-to-die-death-is-better-than-life-with-you look in her eyes.

As I fell asleep thinking of my mother's voice, I prayed that it would rain because Min Joo cried when it rained; but remembering that my things were buried outside, I changed my mind and asked God to stop the rain. I asked God to hurry up and return my mother to me.
Please, please, please hurry up,
I begged. I promised never to torture Min Joo ever again. I promised to be good. And if God was not able to hurry them home, I asked him to please show me where in the world
RELIABLE
might be.

2

The telephone rang. I answered it with a hello, waited for a response, asked who it was, then waited in silence. The person on the other end hung up, and I was certain she would call again because I was convinced it was my mother wanting to hear my breathing, my voice. The telephone rang again. This time, I answered it with a hello in Korean. When I heard quiet breathing, I called out:
“Mother, Mother, it's me, Ahn Joo. I'm here. I'm waiting. When will you come for me?”
But the voice at the other end belonged to a man. His name was Paul. He asked what language I was speaking, what country I was from, and if my mother or my father was home. He said my English was very good and he could tell from my voice that I had a pretty face. “You're pretty, aren't you?” he asked. I smiled and nodded. He asked my age, my school, my favorite color, my favorite time of day, my favorite ice cream flavor, television show, and holiday. He said he liked the way ice cream felt in his mouth, icy and creamy, and asked if I knew how good that felt. He asked if I had a boyfriend. He asked what I was wearing. When I told him a blue dress, he said to lift it up and touch the place between my legs.

3

Miss Washburn sat at her desk and ate spaghetti out of a blue plastic bowl. The rest of the class was outside for recess. She and Mrs. Martin took turns monitoring the third graders' recess time, and today was her day to have thirty-five minutes of quiet to herself. Sipping from the lid of her thermos, Miss Washburn looked up at me and asked why I wasn't playing outside with everyone else. I handed her a piece of paper on which I had printed the word
RELIABLE
in capital letters and asked her if she knew where it might be. She put down her drink, held the paper in both hands, tilted her head, squinted, leaned toward me, and explained that the word was not a noun. “A noun is a person, place, or thing. Reliable,” she said, “is not a place, person, or thing. It's an adjective. Ahn Joo, do you remember what an adjective is?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“A describing word. It describes a noun,” I answered.

“Where did you see the word?” she asked, holding the paper up to me.

When I told her I had seen it on a cab, she smiled and said that it was very smart of me to write down words I did not know the meaning of. She explained that “Reliable” was probably the name of the cab company, and the reason they called it that was because they wanted their customers to know that their service was reliable or dependable or responsible or faithful or trustworthy. When I returned her explanation with a confused stare, she pushed her seat away from the desk, stood up, and pointing to her chair, said, “See this chair? It is reliable because I know it will not break when I sit on it. See?” Miss Washburn sat back down. She tapped the toes of her canvas sandals against the floor. Her fingers were spread out upon her lap. “Now, you tell me, Ahn Joo, what other things can be reliable.”

Pointing my chin at her, I said, “You.”

Miss Washburn put her hands together, smiled as if she had won a contest, took a breath, and leaned down to hug me. Her hair smelled like brand-new crayons. She then went to the back of the classroom, brought back to her desk the
Living Dictionary,
and read aloud to me the definition of the word: “Worthy of trust. That can be depended on. Worthy of being depended on or trusted. Reliable implies that a person or thing can safely be trusted and counted on to do or be what is expected, wanted, or needed.” She closed the book, smiled, and asked if the word made sense to me. I nodded.

“Ahn Joo, why don't you do an exercise with the word. Why don't you do what we always do with new words?”

“You mean write them up and down?” I asked.

Miss Washburn in her singing voice said with excitement, “Yes, yes, write the word up and down, and think up others that start with the same letters.”

Making lists was one of my teacher's most favorite and important lessons. Each morning began with a list of things to do for the day, and each afternoon ended with a list of things to do for homework. She covered the walls of our classroom with rows and columns of rules like
BE AT THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME
and
WALK—DO NOT RUN.
She listed the fifty states of America in alphabetical order, with Alabama near the ceiling and Wyoming touching the floor.

I took back my piece of paper, politely thanked Miss Washburn, went to my seat in the fifth row, and for a few seconds put my stupid head down.
RELIABLE
was not a person, place, or thing. What was I thinking, trying to locate it on a map or atlas?

As Miss Washburn finished her bowl of spaghetti, I opened my notebook to a blank page, wrote the word up and down along the red margin, listed words that began with the letter R, then E, then L, then I, and became bored with the exercise. My teacher winked at me as she left the classroom to rinse out her empty bowl and fork. The sound of her footsteps faded down the hall. I tore the page out of my notebook, crinkled it up, and tossed the ball of paper into the wastebasket.

The wind blew in through the window and fluttered the corners of Miss Washburn's posters. Across the top of the chalkboard hung the long green strip of the alphabet. The white letters were written in perfect script. The arrows around all the curved lines showed us how to write in cursive, when to move and lift our pencils, and in which direction to take them. Take your pencil this way. Take it that way. I began to scribble in my notebook. I could hear the others playing outside. I imagined Judy and Kirk were trying to have sex in the forsythia shrubs.

“R is for rain,” I wrote. “My little brother cried when it rained.”

*   *   *

The bell rang. I put my pencil down and ran my fingers over the words with which I had filled two entire pages. The classroom smelled of oranges. There were peelings on Miss Washburn's desk. She was writing math problems on the chalkboard. I liked hearing the clean
tap, tap, tap
of the chalk against the board. I showed her my writing. She read the first page, took a seat, turned to the second, and looked up at me with proud eyes on the verge of tears. “Do you know how wonderful this is?” she asked. She wanted my permission to make a poster of my words to hang on the bulletin board. She said it was the most beautiful writing she had ever read.

The next morning, my words covered an entire bulletin board. Miss Washburn had labeled my writing “New Word of the Week.” This was what I had written:

R is for rain. My little brother cried when it rained. I could depend on my brother to cry. A walnut formed on his chin. Tears fell down his cheeks. He cried winter, spring, summer, and fall. I never liked to hear him cry, but I miss it now. My little brother and mother went away. I miss them very much. I wish I could hear him cry again.

E is for eat. I like to eat cupcakes. I could depend on them to make me happy. My mother used to make me fish cakes and rice cakes. I didn't like them because they tasted too salty and felt too slippery in my mouth. But if she made them for me right now, I would not mind. I would actually thank her and happily eat them.

L is for locusts. I could depend on them to visit every seventeen years. The noise they make fills the summer air. It keeps me company. No one can escape it.

I is for India. Kavitha and her family is from India. India is a country in Asia. I could depend on her because she is my friend. We like to make dandelion sandwiches for our brothers. She keeps all of my secrets.

A is for
abba.
That's the Korean word for “father.” That's also the Indian word for “father.” I say it whenever I need him. I could depend on him. My father does not go away.

B is for baby-sitter. My mother used to baby-sit Mina, Hyun-Joo, and Whan. The babies depended on her. She fed them water, rice, and soy sauce. She changed their diapers. She played with them. When they cried, she bounced them upon her lap. When they became sick, she placed her eye on their forehead to feel for the fever.

L is for love. My mother used to sing Korean love songs. One was about the love for a river. Another was about the love for a mountain. And another was about the love of a mother. She sang about chrysanthemums, barley fields, and whispering winds. She knew many songs by heart. But only one line to only one song was taught to me: “It's not love if you can't let me go.”

E is for exit. I could depend on the red signs. They blink and reflect light. They hang above the main doors in Sherwood Elementary School. We can all depend on them to show us where to go at the end of the day, when the last bell ringalingalings.

Day after day, posters were made and hung all over the classroom walls. We learned the meanings to prima donna, martyr, festival, antepenultimate.… With each new poster, the words became longer.

When the last day of third grade came along, we signed our posters, rolled them up, and traded them. I took home Judy Davis's definition of the word “exotic.” I thanked Miss Washburn, hugged her goodbye, and walked out of room 304 for the last time.

4

During silent reading, my book about volcanoes was propped up and opened on page sixteen. I sat in desk number six in the third row of Mr. Albert's fourth-grade class. My desk partners were falling asleep. Jason drooled onto his book about the Civil War. Our teacher sat in his recliner in the back of the classroom and read the sports page of his newspaper.

I laid my book down, turned the page, and smoothed my hand over the glossy pictures. I traced my thumb over the lava that poured out of the volcano's opening. I traced it down to my other hand, which was flattened at the bottom edge of the book. With the nail of my left index finger, I scratched a line across the center of my knuckles. Two inches. I told myself that there had to be two inches of water above the rice. My father's rice had to be sticky enough to stay on the tips of his chopsticks as he brought them to his lips. One night the rice was too watery, and he complained about having to use a spoon. He said he hadn't come all the way to America to lose his wife and son to a poor man's bowl of porridge. The night before, the rice had been too dry. Two nights before, I had forgotten to push the “on” button on the rice cooker, left it on “warm,” and the grains simmered in the water and turned into hard rice cakes. My father had knuckled my head and told me to throw the entire pot away and that we would have to wait thirty more minutes for dinner. Thirty more minutes meant two more drinks.

As I watched Laurie get up from her seat to wash the blackboard, I told myself that tonight's rice had to be perfect. When I flattened my hand into the water, it had to cover all my fingers and its surface had to meet the center of my knuckles. The water had to end at the center of my knuckles.

Laurie placed the wet sponge underneath the green cardboard strip of the alphabet that was taped above the board and smoothed it down while gently squeezing out the water. She was underneath the letter D. To her left, the board had already dried an even black. To her right were chalk dust and numbers that hadn't been erased. After every three strokes, Laurie bent down, doused her sponge in the bucket of water, squeezed it dry, and started again.

I closed my volcano book, took out my notepad, and made a list of what needed to be done before my father came home from work. The
kimchi
needed to be sliced, the yellow radishes washed. A pot of water needed to be boiled with half a cup of dried anchovies, salt, and chopped green onions for the dumpling soup. I had to boil the dried corn to make tea, which would take at least two and a half hours. I decided to fry the last two eggs with baloney slices rather than hot dog slices because they were easier to cut, and they cooked faster. And the faster something cooked, the more time I would have to wash my father's corduroy and denim pants that he wore to work, to scrub the bathroom sink and tub after he washed, and to shake the dried dirt off his boots. Then I could quickly finish my homework and read if Hazel, Fiver, Speedwell, Pipkin, and the whole lot of them safely crossed the river on their journey to find a new home.

The bell rang. From the back of the room, Mr. Albert shouted, “Pop quiz tomorrow. Know Columbus and his three ships. What are they?” In unison, the class answered,
“Niña, Pinta, Santa María,”
and closed their books. As all the others packed their bags, placed their chairs on the tops of their desks, and ran to the door, I remained seated and bit my thumbnail, wondering if it was possible for one to discover a land that had already been found while trying to remember if there was enough cooking oil to fry the eggs.

Boris was asking Mr. Albert about long division; he didn't know which number went into which how many times and which number went under which and which got added or subtracted and what about the leftovers? While everyone else filed out of the room, Boris held up his math book to Mr. Albert. Our teacher stretched, went to the blackboard, worked out one problem for him. Then he told Boris he'd teach it again tomorrow. “You'll get it sooner or later,” he said.