Seven

Appa is a man with big dreams, the type of person who is smart and works hard but is held back only by the hand that fortune has dealt him. In Korean, the word for “fortune” is palja. It comes from the term saju palja, which means “the four pillars of destiny.” These four pillars are based on the year, month, day, and hour of a person’s birth. And, according to my father, these seemingly meaningless components determine whether your brief existence will be good or bad before you even have the opportunity to live.

For as long as I can remember, my father has always lamented his palja. As a child, he grew up in one of the poorest villages in Busan, even poorer than my mother and her family, if such a thing is possible. His parents were farmers who were driven from their land during the Japanese occupation, left penniless with only the clothing on their backs. They were unedu­cated and, having never stepped inside of a school, had never learned to read or write. Appa and his two older sisters faced similar fates. All three of them worked to help support the family from the moment they could walk and talk, selling roasted sweet potatoes on street corners, watching other children go to school.

For Appa’s sisters, this was enough. They were resigned to their fate. They would sell potatoes until they found some other meager job, after which they would get married to some other poor fool, another person whose lousy palja matched theirs.

Appa, however, fought against his destiny every chance he had. He taught himself to read and write by digging through piles of trash for discarded newspapers. In his free time, when he wasn’t begging for money or looking for work, he stayed up late reading them cover to cover, sounding out the words silently in his head.

For him, words were magic. The people who knew how to use them, who were able to bend them to their will, sat in their nice houses and ate meat with every meal. They walked by in their fancy Western-style clothing, in crisp suits and shirts so luxurious he longed to run his fingers over them. Words, he under­stood, were a way into that world.

Eventually, he saved up enough money to take the college entrance exam. His score earned him an article in the news­paper—­second page, small, only four lines long—as well as a spot at the best school in the country: Seoul National University.

If my father had been anybody else, that would have been the end of his troubles. Seoul National University is a school that opens doors, even when all of them should be locked shut. But for some strange reason, Appa couldn’t find a decent job after graduating. There was nobody who could help him, nobody who could get him into one of the towering office buildings he looked at longingly each day. Finally, after years of trying, he gave up, resigned to an unfulfilling life of menial labor.

One day, my father received a letter in the mail. It was from Min-ho, a friend he hadn’t spoken to in many years. Min-ho had moved to California and opened a shoe repair shop. The work was good, and he needed someone to help him. He remembered that my father was a hard worker and skilled with his hands.

If you can come, I’ll have a job waiting for you, the letter promised. You won’t regret it. California is an incredible place. His address was scrawled underneath.

Appa knew nothing about California, except what he had heard in passing and seen in movies. Supposedly, it was a place where people grew fat and rich in their enormous houses and loud American cars. It was a place where dreams came true.

It didn’t take him long to decide. Within a week, he had spent the entirety of his savings on a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles. Anything that didn’t fit in his suitcase was given away. And as he boarded the plane, Appa swore that he would leave his bad luck behind.

As soon as he got to California, my father began working. He had never fixed shoes before, but he was a fast learner. Min-ho was right. Soon Appa was making more money than he ever had in Seoul. A year later, Min-ho’s wife introduced my father to my mother for the first time. The four of them went on double dates, meeting over dinner and drinks. My mother and father stayed at the restaurant for hours, long after Min-ho and his wife had gone home. Six short weeks later they were married, and Appa was certain that his luck had changed for good.

When Umma told me the story of how they met, she said that it was love at first sight. “Not for me, of course,” she giggled. “For your father. He was smitten from the moment he laid eyes on me. He took me to Gladstones. In Malibu. Have you heard of it? It’s famous.”

The failing dry-cleaning business was purchased for cheap when Ji-hyun was in middle school and I was in high school. The previous owners had given up on it, and they were desperate to get out. Appa didn’t care. He saw potential in the building’s peeling walls and cracked ceilings. He painted and fixed every inch of it himself, spending long hours there each day, and soon his hard work paid off.

With their newfound success, my parents bought the house. It was nothing special—small, shabby, and one-story, only slightly bigger than the cockroach-infested apartment we were living in at that time—but for Appa, it meant everything.

Months after we moved in, my mother had a dream. In it, the store, the house, and everything they owned went up in flames. Umma woke up terrified, but Appa was thrilled. To him, the fire was an omen, a sign of good luck.

Eight months later, Min-ho, whom they had lost touch with over the years, called my father out of the blue. He had an investment opportunity—a new business that he was planning on opening in Koreatown, close to where we lived. Umma was uneasy at his sudden reappearance in their lives, but Appa was certain that this was what her dreams had been about.

Unfortunately, my mother was right. There was no investment opportunity, no business. Min-ho was deeply in debt due to a gambling addiction and, fearing his debtors and their threats, took the cash and ran. We never heard from him again. Overnight, everything my parents worked for crumbled into dust and blew away.

You can cheat destiny once, maybe twice if you’re lucky. But as Koreans, we understand that the course of our lives is invariably determined by our palja.

When my father was here, I could sense his longing, even if my mother and sister were oblivious to it. The dreamy look on his face when he was lost in his thoughts. The way his mouth went slack at random moments during the day. I knew he was imagining a way to escape his small, inconsequential life. Our small, inconsequential life.

He hated the tiny apartment we moved into after we lost the house. He hated the way the rooms were pushed up next to each other so that there wasn’t a modicum of privacy for any of us. He hated that I had not been born a boy, and that Ji-hyun hadn’t been, either. He hated Umma’s dented, twenty-year-old Honda, but he hated his broken-down truck even more. He hated arguing with the landlord every month about the rent. He hated that the dry-cleaning business had closed after two short years.

More than anything, he hated that everything in his life served as a reminder of his failures.

I don’t blame him. Maybe because I know what it’s like, to live a life so defined by want. That’s why I was able to recognize it in him—it was what I had been feeling for so long.