AT QUARTER PAST NINE, the overhead lights went dark. Not all of them—it looked like every fifth fluorescent bulb stayed lit.
AT QUARTER PAST NINE, the overhead lights went dark. Not all of them—it looked like every fifth fluorescent bulb stayed lit.
“Don’t worry, Joon-a,” Father said. “It won’t take long.” I certainly hoped it wouldn’t.
To pass the time, Father suggested we play cards. I turned on the gooseneck lamp on the front counter while he rooted around the desk drawer for a hwat-toe deck. Unlike American playing cards, these rectangles were made from thin hard plastic sheets about half the size of business cards, but they were far prettier. Father passed four cards down to me and to himself, then placed three cards between us. He flipped them over one by one, and each revealed a nature scene: a full moon on a hill, a deer in an autumnal forest, and a trio of roses in full bloom. The moon was worth twenty points, and if I held the card that featured the same hill but no moon, I could’ve taken it, but all I had were three scenes of wheat fields and a cardinal perched on a cherry-blossom branch.
Before we could start the game, we heard footsteps approaching us. Sylvia and Mindy were holding hands and looking much more mother-and-daughter-like. Though it seemed as if they’d been crying, they didn’t act sad.
“I think we’re good,” Sylvia said.
“Good, good,” Father said.
“Unfortunately, before we go, I think Mindy needs to stop at the bathroom.”
“No problem,” Father said. “I go, too.”
He got up and extended a hand to Mindy, who took it eagerly.
After they left, Sylvia took Father’s seat and looked like she wanted to say something.
“Your father’s a very nice man,” she said.
I nodded. She must’ve known there would be little comprehension on my part, but she didn’t care. She kept talking, probably lavishing more praise on my father, and when she realized that she was making me feel uncomfortable, she stopped and took in a breath.
“Thank you, David.”
These words I understood, and for that I was grateful.
“You’re welcome, Sylvia,” I said.
What we found outside when we finally left the store that night was snow. Not a whole lot, at most an inch, but the parking lot looked vast and still, the lights from the lampposts casting soft yellow ovals over the blanket of white. There were just four cars left, our station wagon two spaces away from a minivan.
Father held the mall doors open for Sylvia and Mindy, and the four of us carefully made our way down the short staircase to the pavement.
“Thank you again, Harry,” Sylvia said, and she leaned in to give Father a quick peck on the cheek. And before I knew what was happening, Mindy planted a similar kiss on my own forehead. It felt damp and I wanted to wipe it off, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I thrust my hands into my jacket pockets.
Because the snow was fresh, it was simple to brush it off the windshield. All it took was a few broad swipes and we were set to go.
“Nice job!” Father said with more enthusiasm than was necessary.
As we pulled out of the lot, he said, “These American women, you know,” then made a tsk-tsk sort of sound. I didn’t know, so I said nothing. Then we were silent for quite some time, and I wished he would turn on the radio, but every time I stole a glance at him, Father seemed quite content listening to the occasional swoosh of the passing vehicle and the droning hum of the road.
I was avoiding him. I had been for a while, and I thought maybe he hadn’t noticed, but obviously I was wrong. As I sat in darkness, watching pairs of headlights brighten and disappear, I replayed the discussion we had when Mindy wouldn’t leave the store. Joon-a and I will stay, Father had announced to everyone while standing behind me. Then he placed his hands on my shoulders and pulled me close enough for me to get a whiff of his Old Spice. This is a job for men.
I didn’t mind being with him when Mother or Noona were around, but when we were alone together, he was like a different person. His voice would drop lower, he’d suddenly break out a fake grin for no reason at all, and sometimes when I caught him looking at me, it was like staring at the face of a starving man. I knew he wanted something from me, but what? Things were easier when we were still just feeling each other out. Now that the initial rush of meeting each other had run its course, all that was left were these moments of awkwardness.
I loosened the seat belt around my chest and shifted in my seat.
“You all right?” Father asked.
“Have you ever gone fishing?”
At first, I questioned whether I’d understood him properly, but I was certain that’s what he’d asked.
“No,” I said.
“I think we should,” he said. “Just you and me.”
Those last four words were like an icicle driven into my heart. “What about Mother and Noona?”
“Fishing,” he said, more than happy to supply the answer, “it’s what men do together.”
My brain ran into overdrive, scrambling to squirm out of this future appointment with torture. “But it’s too cold to fish, isn’t it? I mean, you fish in the summer. When the weather’s warm. When there isn’t snow outside. Right?”
“Nah,” Father said, with an easy dismissive wave of his hand. “Plenty of winter fish in the ocean. Like winter flounder. You know what a flounder is?”
I had no idea what a flounder was, and I really didn’t care, but that didn’t stop Father from elaborating on the subject. Apparently, its summer counterpart was the fluke. “The difference between the two is that the fluke has both eyes on its left side, while the flounder has them on the right. Kinda strange, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, sinking into my seat. “Kinda strange.”
Look at that,” Father said on the following Monday, scanning the crisp blue sky from our balcony, shading his eyes from the sun. “It’s gonna be a great day for us to catch some fish, Joon-a.”
Mother got up early to roll us Korean sushi, which was like its Japanese brother except the raw fish was replaced with slivers of cooked beef.
“What are you and Noona gonna do?” I asked as she sliced the seaweed roll into bite-sized wheels. Both my sister and I were off from school because of a statewide teachers’ meeting.
“Not much of anything, I figure. Just clean up around the house and watch some television.”
I would’ve happily volunteered to scrub the toilet with a toothbrush if I didn’t have to spend the day with Father. What would we do for the next eight hours, what would we talk about? He already had the day mapped out: driving down to Neptune to get fresh bait, then heading over to the piers at Long Branch to fish, a two-hour round trip in the car. The prospect of being stuck with him by myself in the passenger seat made me ill.
That was it. Maybe I wasn’t feeling so well. Maybe my stomach hurt and I’d have to stay home. “Oh,” I said, holding on to my tummy with both hands. “I don’t feel so good.”
Mother paused in her slicing and stared at me. It was a long, silent gaze that made me drop my act.
“You’ll have fun,” Mother said. She picked up two rectangular panels of dried seaweed and placed them onto the bamboo mat.
To make up for my attempt at deception, I scooped a spoonful of rice for her. “I don’t think so.”
Mother spread the rice onto the seaweed and added soy-marinated spinach, strips of fried eggs, pickled daikon radishes, and dropped little clusters of beef and caramelized onions on top. Then with few efficient and graceful turns of her wrists, she rolled up the mat like a scroll.
“He just wants to get to know you.”
“But why can’t you guys come? Doesn’t he want to get to know you, too?”
With a snap, the sushi spun out of the mat and onto the chopping board. She handed it to me as is, so I could eat the roll like a banana.
“Maybe that’s something you guys can talk about,” she said.
I chewed viciously as I made my way back to my room. In Korea, Mother would have done everything in her power to protect me, but now? Now she was practically pushing me into the horror that awaited me. I plopped onto my bed and wanted to chuck something breakable against the wall.
“Are you still here?” my sister said from beneath her covers, her voice heavy and thick from sleep. She had her sheet pulled over her head, so I was about to converse with a mound of purple.
“It’s a day off from school and I have to get up even earlier. It’s not fair.”
“You know what’s really not fair? You waking me up, that’s what.”
I grabbed my pillow and flung it at her, aiming for her head.
“Hey!”
“It wasn’t me.”
The mound straightened and stretched momentarily, then curled back to its original position. “Don’t be a baby. Go and spend quality time with your daddy and leave me alone.”
I did leave, but not before opening up the curtain to let the morning sunlight shine right on Noona. It wasn’t much of a victory, but it did cheer me up, especially when I heard her cursing me out.
In the bathroom, I washed up and changed into a pair of jeans and a red sweatshirt. I combed my hair and paused at the face in the mirror staring back at me. I thought of all the terrible things that could happen to someone—like blindness. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to live out the rest of my life without sight, to never see my own face or anybody else’s ever again. I turned and tilted my head to the left and tugged at my right ear. What if I suddenly went deaf? I stuck out my tongue and examined the tiny red bumps that made up its surface. I was sure there was some disease out there that eliminated the ability to taste.
So that’s how I steeled myself for the day ahead, by thinking of how much worse things could be. Compared to losing my senses of sight, smell, and taste, going fishing with Father wasn’t so bad.
What I didn’t realize then was that Father was just as nervous about this day as I was, if not more. When I got out of the bathroom and carried our lunch down to the car, he was checking off a list on a notepad, making sure we had everything for our outing.
“Are you ready,” he said, then in English, “my good son?”
I nodded. Mother had forced me to wear my winter jacket, but I could see it wouldn’t be necessary. Even though it was early March, it was an unusually warm day, almost springlike. I started to take it off, but I stopped, wondering if he would have anything to say about it.
“You wear what you want to wear,” he said. “It’s just you and me, Joon-a.” He held open the car door, sunlight reflecting off the green vinyl seat.
“Is there oil or something on there?”
“It’s Armor-All,” he said, holding up a spray can. “Makes it look brand-new.”
I slid in, and he slammed the door behind me with a huge, crazy grin; I had to fight the urge to jump out and run back inside. As I watched him hurry around the hood of the car, I still hoped for some sort of a miracle, like him tripping and breaking his ankle. But no, he got in, closed the door, and we were once again alone in the car.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, and I was genuinely terrified. Without warning he leaned toward me, flung his arm between the space in our seats, and thrust a foiled bag in front of my face.
Potato chips. On the label, a black rod ran through the letters BBQ, skewering them over an open-flamed grill. I was surprised he knew they were my favorite.
“Thank you,” I said. Father looked and waited, and it became clear to me that he wanted me to open it, which I did. The familiar smoky, greasy scent immediately filled the car, and I extracted a chip. Mother never would’ve let me eat junk food in the morning, and that was his point.
“Hey,” Father said, “that’s a big one!”
“Uh-huh.” I bit into the salty sweetness and said, “It’s very good.”
He flashed another eager smile and slid the car into gear.
As we drove to the bait shop, Father asked me about school. Both Noona and I had been attending for almost two months now; she was in tenth grade, I was in sixth. I spent most of my time with Ms. Dennis, who was my English as a Second Language instructor, so for six excruciating hours each day, she tried to convince me that the madness of the English language was worth learning. I was no easy convert—English seemed to have no rhyme or reason, the way the past tense of play was played while go was went and buy was bought and so on and so forth. Compared to the sensible rules and structure of the Korean hangul, English seemed like a bunch of half-complete jigsaw puzzles haphazardly glued together.
“English is crazy,” Father agreed. “What purpose does the serve? It makes no sense why you say the sky is blue. Why not just sky is blue?” Our car screeched to a sudden stop, and a long, loud horn sounded from behind. “Oops. That was the street we wanted.” He lazily spun the steering wheel with one hand, making a wide U-turn in the middle of the road, which seemed a little dangerous, but his mind was elsewhere, his face looking as if he was trying to find something. “Oh, have you made any friends at school?”
I grabbed another enormous chip and nibbled on it. “Not really,” I said, which was sort of true.
“Don’t worry,” Father said. “You’ll have lots in no time.”
I thought of the three kids I hung out with at lunch. Billy’s face was squished and he made strange sudden movements with his hands. Marty, when he wasn’t drooling, slurred all his words to the point of incoherence. Petey, afflicted with a mild case of Down Syndrome, looked like he could pass for my brother.
On the very first day of school, I got to know the word retard. Every few minutes, somebody would come over and yell “RETARD!” to us. I didn’t have to look up this word in my trusty dictionary—I knew what it meant. These kids were all mentally challenged, slow-thinking misfits of society. There was a name for them in Korea, too: baa-bo.
We parked beside a yellow cement block of a building. Above the steel door was an ancient-looking sign made out of strips of iron, JACK’S BAIT SHOP, the letters bleeding rust onto the wall. Next to the entrance was a clearance table of what I supposed was fishing paraphernalia: black rubber boots that came up to my chest, reels of lines in all colors and thicknesses, and a plastic box with a handle on top that hid three hinged trays that opened up like steps.
“Go right in,” Father said. He pointed at the phone stand off to the side of the building. “I have to make a call.”
“All right.”
“A wholesaler,” he said. “I can’t be there today, and there’s an order I was supposed to pick up, so I should let them know.”
I didn’t know why he felt like he had to explain that to me, but I just nodded and went inside.
A bell rang as I opened the door, but neither the large bearded man behind the counter nor the shopper buying a six-pack of beer noticed. The store sold more than just fishing stuff, also carrying small grocery items like 7-Eleven did. As I walked down the aisles, I caught Father through one of the smaller round windows. Although I couldn’t hear what he was saying into the telephone, he looked like he was having an argument. He was no doubt late with a payment; he often talked like that to his wholesalers.
A minute later, the bell rang again, and Father bounded in. “Come on, Joon-a!” he said. The clownlike grin was back on his face. “Let’s buy us some bait!”
Father drove, and I talked. Mother wasn’t kidding when she said he wanted to get to know me. By the time we got to the piers of Long Branch, my throat was sore. Father asked me one question after another, about the last five years of my life, like what happened on my eighth birthday. Who was there? What did I eat? What presents did I get? Did the Bugs Bunny figurine he sent over arrive in time? It was exhausting to recall every detail of something that happened years ago, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the car so I wouldn’t have to listen to my own voice for one more second.
“This is great. I really feel like I’m catching up, you know? Five years is a long time.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, and drained the remains of my can of Coke.
We rode over a pair of speed bumps, and I could hear the silent asphalt road giving way to the crunch of sand. Father slowed and shifted the car into park. “I know you’ve been doing all the talking, so on the ride back, you can ask me whatever you want.”
“All right,” I agreed, though with reluctance. Is that what he expected, for me to reciprocate by querying him incessantly on the return trip? I picked up the clear plastic container of worms and watched their squiggly struggle, inching around the curved surface of the neverending wall. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to know about Father’s life. What was there to know? He worked at the store, he lived in the apartment. How was his life any different before we arrived? While we fished, I was going to have to come up with something. Lots and lots of something.
My mood brightened considerably when the car doors opened and we stood up looking at the ocean in front of us. The salty scent of the sea hit me first, followed by the hypnotic call of the waves as they crashed onto the beach. I remembered the last time we were on the coast in Korea, Mother and Noona and I sitting together on a large towel as we watched the sunset, the bright disc turning redder as it dipped under the horizon. This was two summers ago, but my memory of that entire day was as strong as if it had happened yesterday, my sister and I running on the beach, stamping our bare feet into the wet sand, Mother peeling fresh apples for us to munch on.
I felt Father’s hands on my shoulder. “Isn’t this great?” Father said. “It’s so beautiful, so peaceful.”
It was colder by the ocean, and windy, too, my hair quickly whipped into a shaggy mess. Mother had been right to outfit me with both my winter coat and a wool cap. I wanted to get the cap from the back seat, but Father’s hands were still perched on me, so all I could do was wait it out. The entire beachfront was deserted except for a man walking his dog. To the left was the pier—a strip of rocks where we were supposed to fish.
Father finally let go of me when we heard the sound of another car behind us. It was a black Jeep, and emerging from it were a Latino man and a boy. He seemed to be about my age, though taller and tanner and wearing a Yankees baseball hat. The man acknowledged us with a quick nod, which is how Father should have responded, but instead he raised his hand and bellowed, “Good morning!”
They walked around their Jeep and picked up their fishing gear.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones today, huh, Joon-a? Let’s get going!”
Father led me to the back of our car to pop the trunk, but it wouldn’t open. Every once in a while it would get stuck, and the only way to get it working was for me to hold the release switch next to the driver’s seat while Father turned the lock. As I trudged back to the front of our car, I wished we had a cool Jeep like them instead of this ugly station wagon. And while I was at it, I wished I had the Latino guy for a father; he seemed like the strong, silent type, unlike my own.
“Okay,” I yelled back, pulling on the release.
“My good son,” he said again in English, and when the trunk sprang up and I saw Father’s face through the body of the car, I had a funny thought: What had he been like when he was my age? In school, some of the bigger kids made fun of me and the retards, but they also went after the ones who smiled too much, the ones who desperately wanted to be liked. If I had met Father as a classmate, I probably wouldn’t want to be friends with him.
Father armed me with a white bucket and our lunch while he carried the poles and the tackle box. From afar, the pier seemed flat, but close up, huge rocks jutted out in various angles. It wasn’t difficult to negotiate, but there were some places where the surface was slick.
“Here we are,” Father said, handing me a fishing pole. The one he gave me was new, the yellow enamel polished, the rubberized grip almost sticky, while the one he held looked like it might not make it to the end of the day. When I tried to trade, Father held up his hand.
“Nothing but the best for my son,” he said. “Besides, this one’s fine, it’s just old and beat-up, like me.” That was a joke, and to make sure I got it, he laughed.
The used pole was from Mr. Hong, one of his spares. Father said they fished together all last year, from late winter to late fall.
“You know, it would be fine with me if you invited Mr. Hong next time.” I wasn’t exactly a fan of his, but at least he and Father could gab and I could sit in the back seat with minimal participation.
From the bottom of the tackle box, Father brought out a pair of reels. Again, he gave me the new one and kept the old, and I mirrored his actions as he clasped the reel onto his pole and threaded the nylon line through the rings. I couldn’t figure out how to tie the hook and the sinker, so Father did that for me.
All that remained was for us to put on the bait, so we each took a worm out of the canister. It felt like a cold, wet noodle between my fingers.
“It’s my least favorite part,” Father said, looking forlornly at his brown worm. “But it’s for a good cause, so no regrets.” He pierced one end through the hook, twirled it around, and pierced the other end, creating a pretzel around the metal. The worm squirmed a little, but didn’t seem to mind too much. My bait didn’t look as neat as his, but it was done, and we were ready.
Casting was simple: hold the line with the index finger, grasp the pole with both hands, pivot ninety degrees to the right, then fling the pole back to the front, releasing the line at the same time. It took me a couple of tries to get it right, but in no time flat, I was plunking the sinker a good distance away.
“It’s all in the hips,” Father said, and then proceeded to twirl his behind in an exaggerated circular motion, as if he were hoola-hooping. Again, it was supposed to be a joke. I glanced back at the Latino family, to see if they were watching. Fortunately, they weren’t.
In fact, they weren’t doing anything but fishing. As I cast and waited for my line to tug, I noticed how quietly they were interacting with one another while Father kept up a steady stream of small talk, forcing me to discuss the weather, the store, and everything else that meant nothing to me. I envied those two, the ease of their silence, their immobility. They seemed like a pair of bronze statues, something out of an artful photograph.
An hour passed without a single bite. I thought maybe we weren’t doing something right, but the other guys weren’t faring any better. And then Father almost lost his pole.
“Whoa!” Father yelled, grabbing it with both hands. We had been sitting down, but now we were both up, and Father pulled the pole to his chest, the end bending into a u. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t broken.
In the excitement, I blurted out, “Your hips, use your hips!”
Father laughed. “Right!” He pulled and reeled and pulled and reeled, and whatever that was on the end of the line was putting up a hell of a fight. And then just as suddenly as it had come, the line went slack.
“Oh shit,” Father said.
“What happened?”
“Sometimes they manage to wriggle out of the hook.” He reeled in the line dejectedly, but it stopped again and the pole bowed. I started to get excited again, but Father’s reaction was now one of annoyance. “Christ, it’s stuck.”
We followed the taut line and sure enough, it looked like the sinker was jammed in the crevice between a pair of rocks.
“I can get that,” I said.
“It’s all right,” Father said. “We can just cut it off.”
“No,” I said, surveying the path down to the point. It got me close to the water, but it didn’t look dangerous. “I think I can.”
“You sure?” Father said. “I guess we can use that sinker. I bought plenty of hooks but not too many sinkers.”
I was getting bored of sitting around anyway, so I welcomed the activity. As I’d suspected, finding purchase between the pieces of rock was simple. I climbed down slowly, and at the halfway point, I looked back and gestured a thumbs-up to Father.
“You don’t have to do this, Joon-a,” he bellowed from above.
“Almost there,” I yelled back.
As I got closer, I got wetter. I tried to evade one particular swell, but it still got my feet, my sneakers soaking the water like a sponge. But that was the worst of it, as I found the hook and yanked it free from the crevice.
“Okay!” Holding the sinker in my palm, I felt triumphant, as if I’d scaled down the face of Mount Everest. I flung it back to Father with all my strength, and suddenly found myself slipping backwards, unable to stop.
I didn’t even have the chance to scream. I was floating in air one moment, and next, there was water everywhere. The long-sleeved cotton shirt I’d been wearing became a wet second skin, and even though the water must’ve been cold, what I felt most was the heat of panic. I flailed my arms, kicked my legs, and did all I could to stay above the surface.
“I can’t swim!” I yelled. I didn’t know where Father was, where the pier was. Seawater rushed into my mouth and I spit out the salty contents, only to have more of it funnel back in.
Father said something back to me, but I was beyond hearing. My head dipped under completely, but somehow I managed to rise, and when I was able to take in another lungful of air, I thought about how angry Mother would be if I died.
Stand up. That’s what I thought I’d heard.
It wasn’t Father’s voice. My eyes were blurred, but I could make out the Latino man as he stood at the edge of the pier, his hands raised out toward me, like a god welcoming his children.
He yelled it again, and this time I listened. I stopped my thrashing and stood up straight, surprised to find ground beneath my feet. The water was only as deep as my neck.
On the return trip home, the car’s heat was on full blast, all the vents pointed toward me. I could use it, as all I had on was my underwear and my winter coat. Everything else was in the trunk, stuffed into a garbage bag and ready for the laundry.
“It’s really kinda funny, huh?” I’d said.
Those were the first and last words spoken in the car. Father’s eyes remained glued to the road, and his hands were choking the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock.
I thought he should lighten up. There I am, thinking I’m going to die, and it turns out that all I had to do was stand up. If that’s not funny, what is? Of course I could’ve drowned, and no doubt he was feeling bad about letting me go down there in the first place, but still, I didn’t think it was fair for him to be acting this way.
When Father finally broke the silence, he said, almost offhandedly, “You swam just fine.”
What was he talking about?
“You don’t remember,” Father said.
“Remember what?”
“You used to swim just fine. I never learned, so I always wanted you to.”
Father laughed, but it was the mirthless kind. “Your sixth birthday, the year before I left, we had a party for you at Uncle Chan’s house.”
The name was somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place him. My life before eight was like feeling my way around a dark, familiar room. There were times when I would run into something and know it immediately, but those occasions were rare.
“He moved to Austria of all places the same time I left, but he was very rich. Had an indoor pool that was heated, and that’s where you swam. Your mother was by your side the whole time, but you hardly needed her help. You were a natural.”
Father didn’t say anything further. As we turned off at the ramp and neared our home, I felt a mixture of confusion and anger. It didn’t seem right that I’d lost something I didn’t even know I had, and a part of me resented him for revealing my shortcoming.
Our apartment loomed ahead, the yellow-bricked building looking especially ugly at this time of day, the late afternoon sun exposing the cavities of missing bricks, the rusting gutters. A handful of turns later, we were back where we started from.
“Stay here,” Father said. “I’ll bring down a blanket for you.”
“All right.”
As he slid over to exit from the driver’s side door, something fell from his back pocket and onto the seat. It was his little notebook. After the door slammed shut and I saw him disappear into the apartment entrance, I picked it up.
Everything he’d asked me earlier in the day was in here, and more. For someone who never finished high school, he had fine penmanship, better than mine. On the last page, he’d written:
Ask him if he is going to call me “father” or “dad” in English
Or “pop” or “papa” maybe
From where I sat, I looked up and saw him at the kitchen window, talking to Mother. She moved to her left and disappeared from view, then returned in a moment holding something blue in her hand.
Father strode through the back door, the bundle of blanket in his arms, ready to bring me home.