The Queen of Tears (21 page)

“What?”

“He’d say, ‘I no need one book fo’ tell me dat’.”

Won Ju laughed. “Well, I guess it’s turn white or live in poor towns without any sidewalks. So what about you? Are you through turning white?”

Darian took a sip of beer before responding. Bitch. “No, are you?”

“What do you mean? I never tried to turn white.”

Darian was surprised Won Ju couldn’t see it. “You live in, or lived in a condo with a Hawaiian who might as well be white. You send your son to a preppy private school with a bunch of spoiled white kids. You’re trying to be white, only you’re not as good at it as me.”

Won Ju shook her head. She asked Darian for a cigarette, then lit it. After taking a long drag, she said, “Brandon going to Punahou was Kenny’s demand. The condo is, or was, a nice place to live. You don’t get it, do you? I was never trying to be white, I was trying to be Mom.”

Darian lit a cigarette of her own. “We’d all fail. Not only in our own eyes, but hers, too. Besides, I don’t think that’s what she wants.”

“Maybe it’s not trying to be Mom, but trying to be what Mom wants me to be.”

Darian took a long drag from her cigarette. “And what’s that?”

“A tolerant wife and a perfect mother.”

“Yes, she wants me to be a successful American. Which of course means a rich American.”

Won Ju sighed. “So we will both fail?”

“It’s not about failure, Won Ju. It’s about finding our own way. There is no success or failure. It’s just finding your own path to your grave at midnight. Don’t try to follow someone else’s footsteps in the dark, Won Ju. You’ll just spend most of the journey walking in circles.”

Won Ju smiled. “Not the happiest thought. But it makes sense. Thanks. I like you for saying it.”

Darian got the message. She knew her sister loved her, but didn’t really like her. It seemed that for the first time, Won Ju liked Darian. It was as if they were two scared people walking around the boneyard in the dark, and for a moment, they ran into each other. For that second, the fear was gone, and they looked at each other with comfort. Darian smiled, “So what about Mom?”

“I don’t know,” Won Ju said. “By the way, what does Kaipo do for money? He doesn’t work enough hours at the restaurant to make a living?”

Darian sighed. “You didn’t hear him? He does whatever he wants.”

“What’s that?”

“He breaks his parole.”

“Drugs?”

“Steals and sells.”

“I can’t imagine him climbing out of a window. He isn’t afraid of jail?”

“He had a funny response when I asked him that. He said, ‘Well, da haoles and Japs may run jus’ about every-ting. But I tell you one ting, dey no run da jails. Hawaiians run da jails.’ So, no, he’s not afraid of prison.”

Won Ju finished her beer and put her cigarette in the empty can. The cherry sizzled as it hit the liquid at the bottom of the can. “I think I miss him,” Won Ju said.

Darian didn’t know how to respond, so she asked, “How is Brandon going to get to school? The bus?”

“I don’t know.”

“Won Ju,” Darian said as she put her cigarette in the same beer can, “you really need to learn how to drive.”

Won Ju sighed. “I know.”

-4-

Soong sat in the dark apartment and wished she were a heavy drinker. She wanted an anesthetic to ease the pain. She thought about the state of her family, how it seemed to be spiraling downward out of control.

She’d called her daughter’s apartment. Kenny told her both son and wife had left him. At first she tried to tell herself that Won Ju just lost her temper, but then she remembered Won Ju mentioning several times that she wanted to leave Kenny. She knew her daughter was the kind of person who didn’t make important decisions so suddenly. It just appeared suddenly to most because she kept her thoughts to herself. Soong knew Won Ju was serious.

After finding out her daughter had left, Soong had tried to call Donny. He was home, but extremely drunk. He spent most of the conversation slurring insults towards Crystal, but after about five minutes of this, he told Soong something very interesting. He’d said, “And perfect Darian, she’s living with that criminal Kaipo. See, Mother, I’m not the only child of yours ruining your life.”

Soong had hung up the phone. Was it true? Was Darian living with Kaipo? Soong shook her head. She walked to the open window and looked down. She deliberately scared herself. Then she thought about it. Perhaps the reason she was afraid of heights was because a part of her always wanted to jump? She went back to the boxes.

Soong sat in the dark. The Hawaiians...Kenny, Crystal, Kaipo... Why did her children choose them? Kenny had been a fine man at first. He exercised, he dressed well, he had a good job. And he was good with money. He did not spend extravagantly. He saved and did not take risks. Soong admired that about him. She knew it would provide her daughter with security and stability. And that was all she wanted for her daughter, especially after Las Vegas, security and stability. Yes, she had judged Kenny so fine that she’d felt comfortable leaving her daughter in Hawaii and moving to Long Island with her husband. And why not? Won Ju had found a man who reminded Soong of her first husband, Dong Jin. Only now did she realize there may have been a flaw in the comparison.

Then there was Crystal. Crystal. When she’d first seen that girl teasing her grandchild in the restaurant, she knew what she was immediately. A whore. Only a whore would dress like that. She’d seen women like Crystal years before when she’d first walked into Seoul. Fake, painted women standing on street corners, not waiting, but chasing men for their money. The lowest class of street trash. When she’d moved from Fresno and back to Seoul, she’d met a woman, Chung Yun’s friend, who ran a geisha house, and her girls were way above that. For them, satisfying a man was an art. And it was not purely sexual. She respected that. But Crystal, she oozed just one thing: sex.

And now possibly Darian and Kaipo. Soong shook her head. Why? She’d expected Darian to be her rebellious American daughter, but this she did not see coming. He represented, like his sister, everything Soong hated about Hawaiians. She knew the story. She knew many of the stories. The foreigners came. The foreigners colonized. The foreigners killed. The indigenous people died. The foreigners became the indigenous. It was a sad, but common story. It was also the story of Korea. It was the story of the human race. But does tragedy give license to idleness and wickedness? Soong did not think so. She thought of people like Crystal and Kaipo as fools who wallowed in their birthright of poverty. It had been her birthright, too. But she rose above it. She made the effort to rise above it. When she walked over a hundred miles from North Korea to South, she wasn’t walking down, she was walking up. And if she’d failed? She knew she’d been lucky, but if she’d failed, she at least had tried. She would have died dirty and starving, with flies probably buzzing over her rotten corpse, but she would’ve died with dignity, flies and all. To Soong, Crystal and Kaipo didn’t even try, so their deaths, like their lives, would be a waste.

Soong stood up and turned on the lights. The sudden brightness made her lose her train of thought. She wanted to dull the light so she opened a bottle of sake. She searched for a ceramic kettle in one of the brown boxes, pulled it out, and prepared the drink. After the sake was warmed up, she poured herself a small serving. She sipped the small ceramic cup.

Her children...they were in many ways a disappointment. Chung Yun, or Donny, was the most obvious example. Whose child was he? She did not see any of herself in her son in appearance or personality. His face was broad, his eyes small and dark. His nose was rather flat and his mouth was too small for his face. Perhaps his ears looked like hers, but now she couldn’t imagine what they looked like. In appearance, he took more after his father, she supposed, but he acted nothing like Dong Jin. Her first husband was sweet and not condescending, whereas Donny seemed to always want to hurt people and he’d even hurt himself to do it. Ah, but the restaurant, Soong thought. He’d finally shown promise. W & D Korean Restaurant was still a successful business, and it was a family business. A family business. She’d been glad. But the joy disappeared once her son’s marriage fell apart, not because she liked Crystal, but because she knew it probably hurt her son, and she was ashamed because a part of her hoped it did. The best way for a child to learn not to stick his finger into an electrical socket is to stick his finger into an electrical socket. What was wrong with her son? He was weak. There were millions of weak people in the world. How can a parent so blindly assume that their child will be one of the strong ones?

Soong poured herself another serving of sake when her thoughts turned to Darian. Darian was the child she saw as a perfect half of herself and Henry Lee. Darian looked like a young “Queen of Tears” without the tears. She was slight and light-skinned like her mother. She was pretty and had Soong’s dark eyes. And best of all, her life was easy. She was born in America, in Fresno, California, in a sea of grapes. Unlike Soong, her childhood was filled with memories of toys, birthday parties, and her parents’ affectionate love. Soong remembered especially how her father doted on her. And it made sense. Her personality was very much like his. She was stubborn, fiery, and adventurous. Like the true American child, Darian longed for independence. She did things to satisfy herself and not others. Though Soong was sometimes annoyed by her selfishness, she also respected and envied it. And most of all, she was happy for Darian for having it. Ahh, to worry about yourself before others. It was a feeling Soong longed for, but could never bring herself to indulge in.

Soong reached for the kettle of sake and found it empty. Her head was spinning slightly, and her thinking about Darian’s freedom combined with the alcohol made her feel slightly euphoric. Darian’s freedom. That was why she may have involved herself with Kaipo. It was simple. She did it because she wanted to do it. Soong took comfort in this. Darian would never become that man’s wife. It would mean that she’d toil in poverty and people like Darian, people like Soong, refused to toil in poverty. In fact, Darian refused to toil at all. She was very much unlike her half-sister Won Ju.

Won Ju... Perhaps she was the child Soong loved the most. Won Ju was her first. Won Ju gave her a beautiful grandson. Won Ju suffered. Won Ju, unlike her siblings, was giving and sweet, two qualities which are misconstrued as stupidity by selfish people. Soong knew Won Ju was not dumb. When she was ten, she scored at the top of her class in IQ. But Won Ju was Soong’s Korean daughter, and although she’d been proud of the test score, she was more happy to see how much Won Ju cared for her brother. She’d probably been more of a mother to Donny than Soong. Won Ju’s life should have been easy, but it turned out and was continuing to be so hard.

Soong’s euphoria turned to depression when she thought about Won Ju. She cursed the sake and put the ceramic kettle and cup in the sink. As she washed them, she remembered getting the phone call from Las Vegas. She remembered it had been late in Seoul that night, and she was just about to turn in when the phone rang. It was a long-distance call from her daughter. Her daughter had been viciously attacked and raped.

Soong dropped the delicate cup and it shattered in the sink. The broken pieces of lacquered white were being washed down toward the drain. Soong’s hand shot towards the jagged pieces. She tried to save them.

“Mother, it’s Won Ju.”

“Won Ju? I haven’t heard from you since you left
Henry and Darian. Why did you leave them? I told you
that I was depending on you.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you when you left.”

“We need the money.”

Soong turned off the faucet and put her hand in the garbage disposal. As she tried to retrieve the pieces of broken ceramic, she cut herself. She pulled her hand out and ran cold water under it. After the blood stopped running from her index finger, she reached her hand back down the drain. She carefully tried to retrieve every piece. Luckily, the cup seemed to only break into about eight pieces.

“It was wrong for you to leave. Henry is your husband,
Darian your daughter.”

“But the money. We need the money.”

“I don’t need money. I need you.”

“Don’t talk like a little girl. Since you were a little
girl, you’ve never talked like a little girl. That’s how I
knew I could always depend on you.”

“Nothing good has ever happened when you weren’t
with us.”

“I work for you. Where are you?”

“Nothing ever.”

“You’re scaring me. Where are you?”

“Do you remember the day we left for America? Do
you remember how Chung Yun and I returned from school
beaten and humiliated?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what you said?”

“Yes.”

“You said, ‘I will never let them try again. We are all
going to America where they cannot touch you.’”

Silence.

“I’m in Las Vegas. I’m in the hospital. I need you.”

After Soong was sure that all of the pieces were out, she collected the broken cup and carefully wrapped it in newspaper. Just as she was about to throw it away, she paused. She placed the wadded newspaper on the counter. Then she walked to one of the boxes, each marked with a list in black ink indicating the contents of each box. She found the box she was looking for and rummaged through it. She pulled out a small tube of Crazy Glue and walked back to the kitchen counter. After she opened the wad of newspaper, she counted the pieces. There were eight of varying size. Did she want to do this? It was three in the morning, and she was very tired. She was struck by a sudden desire to go to bed. She yawned. It sucked even more energy out of her. Then she sighed. She knew she would never be able to fall asleep knowing that this cup was sitting on her counter unrepaired. It was why she had trouble sleeping most of her life. She could never leave things undone. When she’d acted, she rarely slept until the final scene was shot. Why did everything have to be finished with her? She stared at the pieces and shook her head. Then she began to meticulously put the cup back together, all the while thinking about how nice it was going to be when she finished and could have the longest night of sleep of her life.