A Cab Called Reliable (7 page)

My mother blamed me for burning her cooking. She blamed me for the broken fan, the crank calls, the cockroaches. She blamed me for Min Joo's crying. She blamed me for Father's drinking and Father's magazines. She said it was because of me we came to this awful country. Then my mother put down her knitting and cried herself, mumbling something about being a bad mother, killing herself or running away. I quickly wiped my face and told her I wasn't crying, that something got caught in my eyes, that I was all right, that I was sorry, and that I didn't want her to die or go away,
please.
But she poked her toe into the center of my chest and said it was too late.

My mother let Min Joo cry, but she never let me cry, so I hid in my closet, biting the edges of my blanket. She caught me once and yelled,
What are you crying for? Did your mother die? What are you crying for?
She pulled me out of the closet and told Min Joo to look for the back scratcher. Min Joo was glad he did not know where it was. He did not like listening to the stick
whoosh
through the air, then land
slap
on my skin. He did not like seeing those red rectangles on my calves. When Min Joo came back saying,
Mother, I don't know where it is,
she went frantic until she remembered using it in bed the night before to scratch the back of her head. She had left it under her bed.

Pointing the stick at me, my mother chanted,
What are you crying for? Did your mother die? What are you crying for?
The head of the stick landed on my arm.
What are you crying for? Did your father die? What are you crying …
Before she could finish, for I knew the slap would come right after, I yelled,
I'm crying because you like Min Joo more than you like me!
Taking a deep breath, my mother said,
So that's why you're crying. And you're not going to stop? Aren't you going to stop?
And the stick came down on my back.
You stupid, stupid girl. Ahn Joo-yah, think hard. Think hard about it.
Scratching her ankle with the stick, she walked out of my room.

*   *   *

My father's car was turning into the court, and Loo Lah was sitting on the passenger's side. I let go of the pole, slid down, picked up my school bag, and ran to our apartment. I threw my things onto the couch and went into the kitchen, where I washed our dinner and breakfast dishes and filled three bowls with the steaming white rice I had prepared in the morning. With my thighs aching and my palms smelling like rust, I set three spoons, three pairs of wooden chopsticks, and three cups on the table. I removed a pot of bean sprout soup from the refrigerator and put it on the stove. I turned on the heat. While waiting for the soup to boil, I filled our cups with ice cubes and water. Sitting on the couch with my knees sealed together, I opened my spelling book on my lap. When I heard my father and Loo Lah climbing the stairs together, I formed the words with my mouth: Might. Sight. Flight.

7

I taught myself how to read palms in Mr. Greer's fifth-grade class, when I was assigned to write a book report on Pan, half man and half goat, the Greek god of woods and pastures, the protector of shepherds and farmers, from whom the word
“panic”
came. I was looking him up in the encyclopedia, and on the opposite page was a photograph of a yellow palm with black lines under the heading
“Features of the Hand in Palmistry.”
Each line had a label: line of the heart, line of the head, line of marriage, line of fortune, line of health, line of life, line of fate. I memorized them all, told futures, fortunes, and tales during lunch and recess, and earned the name “Palmer” from the fifth-grade class of Sherwood Elementary.

The first palm I ever read belonged to Yvonne Weaver. She sat at table number four across from her boyfriend, Keith, who one day announced to the class that he saw his father suck on his mother's nipple in the hospital the day after she had delivered his baby brother. His father was black; his mother was Japanese. His baby brother looked Japanese, and Keith looked all black. Next to Keith sat Yvonne's best friend. Lisa had daddy-longleg legs, wore orange and green leg warmers in the winter, was the fastest runner at Sherwood Elementary. Sitting across from Lisa next to Yvonne was Judy. Judy drew horses on the margins of her math notebook, made origami swans with paper napkins, and had an older sister who was pregnant by accident. Whenever I walked by their table, I heard talk of love, animals, designer jeans, and nicknames, and I heard leftover laughter from one of Keith's funny stories.

When Yvonne laughed, her face reminded me of a Korean song my mother used to sing about a pretty face as pretty as a shiny apple and an ugly face as ugly as a pumpkin. Yvonne was the apple, and I was the pumpkin. She wore rainbow-colored beads in her corn-braids, and when she moved her head, they chinked against each other, the sound pearls made when being strung. Yvonne wore miniskirts and knee-hi stockings to match. She walked like a ballet dancer. Her skin was light, unlike most of the dark-skinned students in my class. She was class president, the captain of patrol, and won the Read-a-thon award for the most books read. And when Mr. Greer called on her to read aloud from
Our Western Civilization,
she had the prettiest lisp when saying her s-words.
Aphrodite is the goddess of love. She was born when she rose out of the sea. Her Roman name is Venus.
Everyone called her “Vonny,” an animal's name, and I wanted to correct them, tell them that the “y” went in front of her name not after it, but I always plugged my ears, shook my head, and walked away.

On Yvonne's birthday, the class stayed inside for recess because Mr. and Mrs. Weaver brought us cupcakes, ice cream, streamers, and balloons for a party. Her father, a full-bearded dentist, had to duck in order to fit through the doorway. He hugged Yvonne, kissed her on the forehead, and pulled on her earlobe when wishing her a happy birthday. When she turned her back to him, he made rabbit ears behind her head and funny faces that made me laugh.

I wished I was Yvonne and my father was a full-bearded dentist. Yvonne's mother had freckles on her nose and wore tinted eyeglasses that made her look smart and important. She scooped ice cream into our paper bowls, telling us there was plenty for seconds. Yvonne decorated her mother with a necklace made of streamer links. I had once overheard my guidance counselor tell a parent over the telephone that the quality of the time spent with one's child was more important than the quantity of time together. Yvonne and her mother looked as if they had both quality and quantity time. While we sat in our seats with ice cream and cupcake, I looked over at Yvonne's mother and father, who were standing arm-in-arm near the doorway. They were watching their daughter at her seat receiving birthday wishes from her schoolmates.

“Happy birthday, Vonny.”

“Happy birthday, Vonny.”

“Happy birthday, Vonny.”

As her parents left, Yvonne's mother kissed her on the eyes, and her father nudged her chin with his thumb. They shook hands with Mr. Greer, who looked like a little man next to them. He didn't look the way that he did on the first day of fifth grade, when he told us to “fear Mr. Greer.” The three of them stood near the cake and ice cream table talking about Yvonne, and I wanted to hear. The two Chinese girls were at the blackboard playing a Chinese word game. Frank had chased Marcia into the closet behind the bulletin board. And the Iranian boys were chewing paper and throwing pencils down the radiator. I took my plate to the cupcake and ice cream table for more, and overheard Yvonne's father tell Mr. Greer that Yvonne was going to find a beagle in their front yard after school. As I was walking to my desk, Mr. Greer clapped his hands and announced that Vonny's parents were leaving and we should thank them for the treats. We waved good-bye and screamed our gratitude.

“This is for you,” said Lisa, and handed Yvonne a bottle of lotion with strawberries pictured on the label. They hugged each other, and Yvonne opened the bottle, took a sniff, dipped her finger through the opening, and rubbed some on her hands. Keith gave her a pink card almost the size of my notebook. She thanked him, but did not open it in front of the rest of us. I watched Yvonne and her table of friends from my seat and decided I would read her palm.

“Yvonne, Happy Birthday,” I said in a hoarse voice, standing behind her. She looked over her shoulder and thanked me. As she was about to turn around, I quickly added, “Don't you want to hear your birthday fortune? I know how to read palms.”

Yvonne said she never had her palm read before and did not know what to do. I told her to hold still while I read her lines and give me her right hand because the left always lied. She turned her seat to face me, and I kneeled on the floor to read her palm. Her table mates gathered around us, and feeling her mounts, I began to tell Yvonne that her mount of Apollo was in constant motion, always moving, which meant she would be a dancer someday.

“Do you like to dance?” I asked, and she smiled and nodded.

Keith, who was watching us over Yvonne's shoulder, laughed and said, “Everyone knows Von likes to dance.”

Tracing her line of the heart, I told her that more than anything else in the whole world, she loved animals.

“What kind?” asked Keith. I wanted to stand up, push his face away, and tell him: the kind with four legs and a tail, you don't qualify. But I stood up, let Yvonne's hand go, stepped back, and smiled. Those who had huddled around us asked, “What?”

“What is it?” asked Yvonne.

“Before the day is up—” I paused.

“What?”

“You're going to have a dog,” I answered.

Keith said, “What kind?”

“The one I saw had short hair.”

“Von asked for a dog last year, and she didn't get it,” said Keith.

The others offered me their dirty palms, saying, “Read mine. Read mine,” but I walked slowly back to my seat and drank the rest of my melted ice cream. Mr. Greer clapped his hands near the garbage can, singing, “Let's clean up, folks. Let's clean up.”

*   *   *

When Yvonne saw me the next morning, she grabbed my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and demanded, “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

“My dog. How'd you know I'd get a dog?”

I told her my mother had the gift of telling fortunes, so did my grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great grandmother. It was no surprise that the gift was passed onto me. When Yvonne thrust her open palm at me and told me to do it again, do it again, I saw her pretty apple face transform into a pumpkin.

“I don't give second readings,” I said, and walked away. Yvonne stepped in front of me, her beads violently hitting against each other, and told me to come over to her house after school because she wanted me to do it again and to see her new dog. I told her I had piano lessons, to which she burst out, “Oh Ahn Joo, I play the piano, too! Then tomorrow. Come over tomorrow.”

Up close, Yvonne smelled like the zoo, and I started to wonder if cornbraids could be shampooed, and if they could, did Yvonne ever shampoo hers? I told her I had piano lessons every day and walked into the closet, leaving her behind. I took longer than usual hanging up my sweater because I was feeling ashamed, guilty, and triumphant all at the same time.

When the rest of the class found out that Yvonne had received a dog for her birthday as I had foretold, they sat around me during lunch, and all throughout recess they followed me from the swings to the merry-go-round and back to the swings again, holding out their palms to me. I charged a quarter for a reading.

The girls lined up at the foot of the monkey bar waiting for their turn to be called up one by one. To one I would ask if she played a musical instrument, and if she did, I told her to keep at it because her ring of Venus, which represented love and music, was the strongest I had ever seen. To another I said she should stop spending so much money and start saving before she became a bag lady because her line of fortune, faint and weak, looked as if it would vanish by the time she turned twenty. There were too many gaps between her finger joints, which meant money easily slipped through—something my mother had said about me. To another whose nails were bitten down, I told her if she kept biting them, demons would enter her body, strike her mute, then infest her intestines with white tapeworms. To another whose hands looked just like mine, whose line of fate ran right through her line of head and heart, I stroked her cheek to comfort her and told her to keep a sharp eye on her mother lest she run away.

When Mr. Greer found out I was selling fortunes, he told me to put an end to it. He said getting money by lying was the same as stealing, an offense to my conscience, and I should stop before someone got hurt. I asked if he wanted his palm read as well. I told him I'd tell his fortune for free, and he hesitated before telling me he did not believe in such nonsense and should send me to the principal for tempting him. I told him it wasn't nonsense, that I was gifted as my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother had been. My great-great-grandmother had told the fortunes of kings and queens in the royal court. Mr. Greer said this was not a royal court, and palm reading was an inappropriate school activity. So I arranged to meet the girls secretly in the bathroom, the boys in the back closet.

To the boys, I told fortunes of becoming a zookeeper who kidnapped children and fed them to the animals, eating dog soup to get rid of nightmares, and kissing a girl's private parts to grow hair on their chests. When Larry pulled down Julie's pants and tried to kiss her private parts, Mr. Greer pulled him up by his collar and said, “You can't treat girls like that. What's your problem, boy?” Larry screamed that I had told him it was the only way to get hair on his chest. The class laughed out loud. They might as well have been laughing at their own selves because they all believed my stories and came back to me with their lunch and milk money to hear more.