The Queen of Tears (16 page)

But Kenny was a die-hard optimist. None of these things would happen, he was not the missing-last-second-field-goal type. All he had to do was think and outsmart this bunch—a stripper, a housewife, a foreigner, and a teenage child—and put it through the uprights. He could outsmart them all. He looked down at Crystal and heard himself speak. “Jesus, Crystal. I’m sorry. I didn’t even see you. Are you O.K.?”

Crystal looked up at him. Kenny tried to convey a pleading look, but knew he wasn’t very good at it. Crystal smiled, “It’s O.K., Kenny.” She looked at Soong and Won Ju. “Sorry I screamed so loud, but he stepped on my hand. Kenny, watch where you’re going next time.”

Kenny smiled, feigning embarrassment. He felt uncomfortable pulling off this look, too. “I will, I will.” He yawned. “Well, I’m tired.” He walked to Won Ju. “Let’s go to bed.”

Soong walked back into her room. Won Ju walked into hers. Kenny smiled and followed his wife. Crystal backed him. Maybe she wanted him? Maybe she was just shocked that he wanted her and couldn’t hold in her scream?

The lights went off. The doors closed. Brandon closed his eyes. Crystal closed hers. “I thought it was you,” she whispered.

-9-

So in World Civ. Mr. Andrews told us that there are now
officially six billion people in the world. Who counts this?
How can anyone count to six billion? Where are all of the
graves going to go? You always see these things on TV
that count stuff. The numbers are always digital, and are
usually going up so fast that you only see the ten thousand
column change. The thousand, hundred, ten, and one column
is just moving too fast. People being born, people
dying because they smoke, women who get sexually
assaulted by men. All of this is happening by the thousands
as I sit in Mr. Andrew’s class for an hour listening
to how Hitler killed, like, millions of Jews. It makes me
feel kind of, I don’t know, I guess tiny and a little bit sad,
but mostly tired. It’s times like this that I think about playing
Everquest. I’m a kick-ass druid in Everquest, not a
flashing red digital single-digit number that flashes so
fast on the display that no one even really sees it. But
sometimes I’m even too tired to play when I think about
this. Mom and Dad think that all I do in my room is play
with my computer, but sometimes I just leave it on and
stare at it from bed and think. I get so tired I don’t want to
move. I feel like my chest is trying to sink me through my
bed. Sometimes I feel like my hollowed-out chest will sink
me through every floor of our apartment, but I’m too tired
to stop it. It’s weird, it’s like two thousand pounds of
emptiness. Then I feel like crying, but I’m even too tired
to do that. It’s weird how crying and throwing up is the
same when I’m like this. I get crying dry heaves.

Dad once told me he doesn’t like to see me get so
obsessed over things. He also gets on me to get my driver’s
permit, but I’m not really interested. He’s right about
the obsession thing, though. Like now it’s the computer
games, and I guess before that, it was comics. When I was
in the fourth grade, Dad bought me my first X-Men. For
about three years, I collected comics. I still have them,
and most of the are in pretty cherry condition. I think I
could sell them for about a thousand dollars. Everyone
loves Wolverine the most. And I guess he’s cool. He’s definitely
the one that seems to like to kill people. All the rest
of them just want to defeat evil, but Wolverine, man, with
his adamantium claws, he wants to kill evil. Plus, he had
all that ninja training in Japan, and he smokes cigars
when out of costume, and calls people “bub.” No question,
he’s cool.

And I guess I always told my two comic friends that
he was my favorite, too. I didn’t want to tell them the
truth. I didn’t want to tell them that a chick was my
favorite X-Man. That would have been gay. But my
favorite X-Man, without a doubt, was Rogue. And I’m not
talking about Rogue in the old-school X-Men, not Rogue
in X-Men #173, where she looks all lesbo with her mean
face and short hair, when she was a bad guy. I’m talking
about the new and improved Rogue, the one with the skintight
green and yellow costume (God, what a body), and
the long, curlyish, dark hair, with that one streak of white.
All of that and she can fly and has superhuman strength
(even though she stole both powers from Carol Danvers).
She may be the toughest X-Man. And the hottest. But it’s
not all good being Rogue. Her mutant power is kind of
sad. If she touches anybody skin-to-skin, she steals their
powers and their memories. In other words, now that
she’s a good guy, she can’t touch anyone. When she was a
bad guy, she really fucked up Carol Danvers; she took
everything. So now that she’s good, she can’t even really
kiss anybody or anything like that. I was really into
Rogue, had a poster of her in my room and everything.
She was untouchable.

I guess Crystal reminds me of Rogue, especially when
she first moved in. At first, I was like completely stoked,
especially when I found out she had to sleep in the living
room with me because Grandma is in my room. That definitely
pissed me off at first because it cut into my
Everquest time, but it was all good when I found out that
I’d be sleeping in the same room as Crystal. When she
came over that first night, and I acted like I was sleeping,
and when Mom told her where she had to sleep, I thought,
fuck Brian Kelsey, who got to spend so much time with
Mary Keller because of the fact that their last names
started with the same letter so they were in homeroom
together, and I thought fuck Mary Keller, who was killer
for a freshman, but no Crystal. I had a girl with a superhero
body sleeping in the same room as me. Now how
many of the six billion have that. There must only be like
one million girls in the world with superhero bodies, and
one of them was in my living room.

But that first night, after Mom went to her room and
all the lights were off, I started to get like, nervous. I don’t
know why; it wasn’t like I even dreamed of doing anything.
Maybe it wasn’t nervous, maybe, I don’t know, after
I stared at the back of her head for an hour or so, it didn’t
seem like such a big deal because I was just staring at
some untouchable girl’s hair. I mean, I might as well have
been staring at my old poster of Rogue. There was nothing
to do but stare, and I guess when I thought about that,
I got uncomfortable. So I couldn’t sleep, and Crystal didn’t
even move. I guess I was still a little glad, I mean, it
was like inevitable that she’d leave the loser, but I’m like
fifteen. That automatically makes me a loser, too. The fact
that I was into comics and am into computer games doesn’t
help either.

But then after about two hours, something scary and
wonderful happened. I think she was still sleeping, but
suddenly she threw off the blanket that Mom gave her and
started tossing and turning. It was weird at first because
she was throwing up her arm like she was trying to get
someone off of her, and I was kind of scared, because even
though I wasn’t near her, I thought she meant me. Like in
her sleep she telepathically knew that I wanted to jump
her bones. Well, I don’t know if I wanted to jump her
bones. I guess a part of me did.

But she kept doing it. I think she was having a bad
dream or something. I wanted to wake her up, but I didn’t
know how to do it. At first I was going to touch her arm
or something, but then I had all of that Rogue issue stuff
going on, so I froze. Then I thought about whispering her
name, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to control
my voice and I’d say it too loud and wake everyone up or
something. I even thought about throwing one of my pillows
at her, but that seemed kinda rude. So I just watched,
wanting to help her, but not being able to.

Then it happened. First she suddenly stopped moving.
Then after being still for about a minute, she started taking
off her T-shirt. It was kind of gradual. I guess you’re
kind of uncoordinated in your sleep. It took like six tries
and a minute and a half to get it off. Needless to say, I had
like the woody from hell. Those breasts. Perfect. Just like
a superhero’s.

Then she went downstairs. I don’t know what I was
thinking at this point. Actually, I don’t think I was even
thinking, I was just watching. It’s like my brain turned off
or something. But not really because I was concentrating
really hard. I had to; it was dark. But she started taking
off her panties, and I think, and I hate this word, I don’t
know why, it just kind of sounds funny to me; but it was
the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I’m not saying that her
pussy was the most beautiful thing I saw, I mean it was the
first time I saw a pussy in real life, and I didn’t even really
see it; it was dark, but, I don’t know, I guess I mean just
her getting totally naked was like the most beautiful thing
I ever saw. And I had the mother of all woodies. It was like
so hard, it hurt. But I didn’t want to touch her. It was like
the last thing I wanted to do was touch her. I don’t know,
it’s like if you see like a really nice car, you don’t want to
touch it; no, that’s not right, I guess it’s more like if you’re
in the same room as a nuclear missile and you don’t want
to touch it. The last thing you want to do is touch it. But it
was more than that because missiles aren’t beautiful, but
she was. I would’ve touched a nuke in an instant before I
would’ve touched her.

Then she woke up. She didn’t sit up or anything, her
eyes just opened. If it were possible for people to actually
jump up from the lying position, I would’ve done it. God,
I was embarrassed. She saw me looking. So I turned and
pressed down on my woody praying that it would go away.
I felt like complete shit. I wanted to cry even. But then I
thought about World Civ. I thought about the six billion. I
thought if there’s a digital counter counting the amount of
fifteen-year-old kids who just went through what I went
through, I bet the numbers move up pretty slow. I was
thinking that you could see the one column move even.

HIGH CLASS REFUGEE

chapter six

-1-

J
UN
Jang
. War. Is a country ever the same afterwards? Even in some countries that almost never have wars at home, like America, where it’s almost only young men, mostly poor, who die, countries are not the same. But when the war is at home, things do not merely change; they transform. Park Soong Nan considered, in large part, the Korean War an American War. And all one had to do was live in Seoul in the 1960’s to see that.

The Americans called it industrialism. To Soong Nan, industrialism meant steel, glass, newspapers, movies, leather wallets, paper money, and doing whatever it took to make everyone believe that you were O.K. Maybe not O.K., but good even. Seoul needed to look good. The city worked furiously to paint dirt mountains green, replace short, cement buildings with steel skyscrapers, build roads with smooth asphalt, and fill these new roads with cars. Lots of cars. Soong Nan remembered the cars she’d seen made out of American beer cans when she first arrived in Seoul a decade before. She knew she would never see one again.

The city stopped worrying about death and started to worry about money. How do I get money? Why can’t I get more of it? How much will it take to make me happy? How much will it take to make me look happy? To Soong Nan it seemed that there was not a city in this world, not even Tokyo, that pondered these questions more than Seoul did. And she pondered them, too. She was a woman in a growth industry, and during the war, when hundreds of thousands of women unwillingly learned how to make money in the most ruthless fashion, and then the war ended, these women decided that not only were they going to hold on to what they had, but they, along with Soong Nan, were going to make even more. But you cannot simply erase five thousand years of history. Not even Americans, though they have been trying ever since they became the United States of America to do so everywhere they go.

In 1962, at the age of twenty-four, Park Soong Nan, widowed and a mother of two, began her fight for more. More for her, more for her children. Soong Nan had seen many books trying to explain why human beings behave they way they do, but to her it was one-word simple. More. Keep what you have and make more. So after her husband’s death, she had to work to keep the house. She had to work to keep the car. She had to work to keep the servants. Later, she had to work to keep her children in boarding school. But she was a woman. More was not coming so easily. She did not produce movies, only children; she did not direct films, only households. At work, she acted. And she didn’t get paid like the men. She didn’t have power like the men. The paths that men took to success were not open to her. So she always kept her eyes open for a man who would help clear the path for her. Another Dong Jin. But at the same time, she often felt herself wish that she’d never find him.

Sometimes she felt like that little girl again, the one who walked from North to South Korea. But she knew she was being silly. She was no longer barefoot and ignorant. But on the other hand, she now carried two children with her whom she decided she’d live and work for. Yes, five thousand, or for that matter, a million years of history doesn’t simply vanish after war.

The offers came after two years had passed since her husband’s death. Politicians, actors, producers, and directors. Members of the renowned Rider’s Club. On weekends the members, who included the head of the Cum Chul Jung (Korean Central Intelligence), and the heads of the two political parties (the Yau Dong and Ya Dong), would take in an early-morning ride, then eat lunch at the clubhouse. She was often invited. And subtle propositions would be given. These were powerful, married men who wanted mistresses. And on top of many of their lists was Mul Ui Yau Wang. The Queen of Tears.

Soong did not want to be a mistress. But at the same time she knew for these men, men who could set her children up for life, there were no other options. The fact that she was a widow with two children counted against her. The fact that they were married made the situation more impossible. So she slowly convinced herself that being a mistress was not that bad a thing. She started an affair with Moon Chung Han, one of the heads of the Yau Dong party, and one of the most powerful men in South Korea.

Between the affair and her hectic work schedule, Soong had almost no time for her children. They would come back from school and spend vacations, not with her, but the nannies that cared for them when they were babies. Sometimes, out of guilt, she’d bring them to a movie set. And while the little girl Won Ju remained quiet and watched things carefully, Chung Yun would pout, cry, and scream every time the director said, “action.” It became so bad that several directors, none of them either woman or mothers, had the small boy banned from the set. In fact, they even began to resent her little girl. “Too quiet,” they’d say. “It makes me nervous. She looks like she’s judging.”

And Soong started hearing a lot of such things about her daughter. Even her teachers would mention it after going on a tirade about Chung Yun. “And your daughter. She shouldn’t stare so quietly. It’s not only the teachers, but the other students do not like it. They call her conceited. They say it’s because you are her mother.”

Rubbish. Soong knew her daughter was intelligent, shy, and polite, maybe even to a fault. Maybe when people see humble goodness, it makes them uncomfortable because it makes them feel guilty. As far as Soong was concerned, the comments about her daughter were made by people insecure about their own goodness or their inability to keep their mouths shut. She didn’t know how to respond against the criticism of her son, though.

Both children posed a difficult problem for Soong. The simple fact of the matter was that she did not have the time to be a mother. Won Ju and Chung Yun were brought up in a world of rotating nannies and schools, and each time it was time for a change, like the time Chung Yun got kicked out of the second-most-prestigious children’s boarding school (he had already been kicked out of the first) for stabbing a teacher in the leg with his scissors, the only thing his older sister said was, “Mother, send me to the same school as Chung Yun. He needs me.” Soong complied and threw her hard-earned money at the problem. And the entire time she would blame herself for the condition of her son, knowing that she didn’t even find the time to feed him grapes, like she did with her daughter, when he was growing in her womb. The fact that he’d been born with a shallow crater in the middle of his chest confirmed it for her. The guilt would be overwhelming after each incident, but she had no one to turn to. She had no friends, only employees and business associates. And Moon Chung Han, her lover, made it quite clear in the beginning that he did not want to discuss children that weren’t his own.

It was in this condition, in the summer of 1968, after Chung Yun got kicked out of the last prestigious children’s school in South Korea that Soong met the American soldier, Captain Henry Lee. It was at a private, exclusive dinner party in Seoul, and he was the guest of the head of the Cum Chul Jung, Korean Central Intelligence. She was escorted by Moon Chung Han and had her party face on, despite her worries, when the bold American soldier of Korean ancestry introduced himself after dinner.

He was not built like the other men attending the party. Though he was obviously older than Soong, like just about every other male in the ballroom, the soldier lacked the balding head and bulging stomach of the rest. His shiny black hair was combed back. And his tight neck worked up to a strong muscular jowl. Soong could tell that under the tuxedo, this man of about forty probably had the wiry build of a swimmer. His tanned face and clear eyes also hinted at activeness. But perhaps the biggest thing that separated him from the rest of the men was that he seemed to be the only one not picking his teeth with a toothpick, rubbing his stomach, or wearing a rolled-up sleeve so everyone could see his Rolex. When he approached her, he spoke in perhaps the worst Korean she had ever heard, and though she couldn’t see it at first, he wore the cheapest Timex watch money could buy. “Hi, woman,” he said, “I saw your movies and thought that they were awful.”

She had heard about the captain before at the Rider’s Club. Since it had been powerful men who had spoken his name, she tried to shrug off the bold insult. “What don’t you like about my films, sir?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, my Korean’s pretty not O.K. What I meant to say was that your movies don’t do you credit or justice or whatever.”

Soong smiled. “Thank you, sir. Can I get you something to drink?”

Henry smiled. “Yes. I drink Scotch. Get me one.”

Soong understood his rudeness. He was trying to learn the nuances of the Korean language, which were based on a hierarchical structure. Children and women were spoken down to by men, and there were subtle differences; however, Henry was obviously mixing them up. “So, how long have you been studying our complex language sir?”

Henry laughed. “I still don’t have it, do I, child? The American military taught me language, but only me how to speak the Korean you speak talking to those superior to you. The formal one. When some of my new friends heard me speak to children as warlords, they laughed and tried to teach me proper way.”

Soong nodded. “Well, sir, allow me to get your drink.”

Henry smiled and nodded. Soong walked across the burgundy carpet of the ballroom. She looked up at the chandeliers. She was beginning to feel accustomed to Western things. It seemed ages since she had first seen the Western possessions her first husband had. The years that followed brought so many Western things into Seoul that one could not keep one’s eyes open and not see the influence. The ballroom was filled with tuxedos and gowns. Louis Armstrong, whom she had actually met a few years back, was being played by the house orchestra. She stepped in front of the Western bar and asked the bartender, who wore a white shirt, black bow tie, and black vest, for a Scotch on the rocks. Just then Moon Chung Han stepped to her side and asked, “How are you, my child?”

She took the drink from the bartender. She looked at Chung Han. He wore the face of a hardened soldier masked with a layer of baby fat. Sometime, in the past, the face must’ve been muscled and hard, like the captain’s. But it was growing softer as the years of newfound comfort passed. A toothpick hung from his mouth. “I just met that interesting American captain. His Korean is quite terrible.”

Chung Han laughed and ordered a Scotch. “Don’t let his ignorance fool you, child. He is a very dangerous man.”

Soong Nan looked at Henry. “Really? What is it that he does that makes him so dangerous?”

Chung Han sipped his drink. “You know better than to ask me.”

Soong shrugged. “I apologize.”

Chung Han glanced around the room. “Well, if you must know, he is a warlord in the American CIA. He deals with unhappy Communists in the North.”

Soong, keeping a straight face, asked, “He really goes to the North?”

Chung Han smiled. “All of the time. I have seen the type many times before. He is an adventurer. He fears little. He probably watches too many American movies. Or too much, who was that, Daniel Boone as a child. It is often a pity to see this type of man grow old.”

Soong looked up into Chung Han’s middle-aged face that was not growing old very gracefully. “Why so?”

“These men cannot cope with getting older. They are not businessmen or politicians. As I said, they’re adventurers. They are better off dying young, so that they do not have to see that life in the real world is not adventure. It is monotony.”

She wanted to ask him how he knew this so well, but knew it was inappropriate. “Well, I better be getting back to him. I have his drink.”

As a couple of men passed him, Chung Han rubbed his stomach and checked his watch. “Do not stray far,” he said.

Soong walked back to Henry. He took his drink and smiled. “So, what did old Moon have to say about me?”

“That you’re an adventurer.”

“One getting too old for the adventure. He thinks I think that I am Peter Pan.”

“Petera Pahn?”

“A boy in Western stories. Never grow up.”

Soong waited for at least a rub of the stomach by the lean man. As if reading her mind, he said, “Korean men are so funny. Look. Picking teeth, rubbing stomachs. They want each other know that they had good meal. They want each other know they afford good meal. A Korean man spend two month pay to buy a watch he cannot afford. Look, they even roll up sleeve to show they watch.”

“This is not so in America?” Soong asked.

Henry smiled. “With some. But not like this. No one roll up sleeve of tuxedo to show off watch. Koreans, so proud. Too proud.”

“What kind of watch do you wear?”

Henry laughed and rolled up his sleeve. “Timex. $5.95.”

Soong laughed back. “So what will you do after your adventure is over?”

Henry smiled. “I thought I marry Korean actress, take her and her family to America, and make million dollars.”

Soong, so conscious of maintaining control of her face, involuntarily blushed. This man was way too rude and presumptuous. He was way too American. She consciously decided that she’d never be one of those sad, pathetic women who fall for American soldiers. It was so unoriginal and boring. The American soldier’s dream.

-2-

Their very private wedding followed three months later. The courtship consisted of Korean language lessons, and the fact that Henry was such a quick learner was one of the main reasons that Soong fell in love with him. Actually, Soong knew that this was only a small part of it. Soong was learning about the dynamics of love. It seemed to her that this type of love was almost like the Big Bang. Everything, like mass, temperature, the presence of key elements, and time, had to happen exactly how it did in order for this thing to exist. It wasn’t so much that if one of these things didn’t happen, it would’ve been dead rocks floating in space. It was more like these things were the things in Henry, and every aspect of him seemed perfect to her, even his imperfections. He was unabashedly human. He was never trying to trick her into believing that he was anything more than this. Though Soong often tried to articulate this love in her head, she was constantly making amendments and retractions. So finally she came to the conclusion that when he was around she felt very happy, and when he was not around, she was miserable. Maybe it was that simple.