MR. HONG SAT on our front desk, his back to Father, talking about what it was like to be without his wife for the last few weeks. She was visiting her relatives in Korea, and he had the whole apartment to himself.
MR. HONG SAT on our front desk, his back to Father, talking about what it was like to be without his wife for the last few weeks. She was visiting her relatives in Korea, and he had the whole apartment to himself.
“Toilet seat,” Mr. Hong said. “I leave it up all the time.”
“Oh yeah,” Father said, full of nostalgia. “I remember what that was like.”
“And when I pee, I leave the door wide open.”
It was eight-thirty, half an hour before closing time on a Saturday, and I was barely awake. Listening to their conversation wasn’t helping, but it was better than fixing up the kimono section with Mother and Noona. Half the robes were scattered on the floor because kimonos, especially the ones made out of silk or rayon, weren’t meant to be hung on hangers. I watched Mother pick up a shiny red one and slide it back onto its pink plastic frame. Then it was Noona’s turn, then back to Mother. Pointless.
A deafening popping sound, like the snap of a giant whip, woke me right up and silenced everyone else.
“What the hell was that?” Mr. Hong said.
It had come from the far west end of the mall, near Hometown Grill. Everybody, including the few customers in the store, came out to the walkway to investigate. Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. McManus of the mirror store Cimmetri, joined the group. We waited a couple of seconds but saw nothing.
“FIRE!” Mr. Hong yelled. He didn’t have to yell—everyone was within earshot. “FIRE!” he yelled again.
Through the two large windows of the restaurant, yellow and orange flames blazed, some as tall as the ceiling. I was witnessing my first live fire, outside of a struck match or a flicked lighter. People ran away from it screaming. A woman was yelling as she almost tripped on her way to the exit. As she ran by, one of the windows at Hometown Grill burst and shattered, the shards falling in a shower of light.
“My store!” Mr. Hong yelled. He dashed up and cut a dramatic hard left, a long wing of his comb-over hair flying.
Father turned to Mother and said, “I’ll be back.”
“What?” Mother said.
“Hong may need some help.”
“What if our store catches on fire?”
“We’re pretty far away from it,” Father said, looking down at Hometown Grill. “Besides, I’m sure the fire trucks are on their way.”
“We all should get out of here right now,” Mother said.
“Hong’s wife is out of town, he’s got nobody. I’ll be right back.”
Mother started to say something, then stopped. I knew what she was going to say—it was what she said about Father to Noona behind closed doors. “We always come second,” I heard her say bitterly on more than one occasion. “His friends, the store, everything else comes first.”
Jason DeLeon, the useless assistant manager of Peddlers Town who nobody liked, lumbered up to us. “I just ran all the way up here from the office,” he said, as if it were some kind of an accomplishment.
Mr. McManus said, “Why aren’t the sprinklers working?”
“I don’t know,” he said, tugging at his beard. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” It was the same line he gave Father whenever he was asked about the leak in our ceiling. “I’ll need to use your phone,” he told Mother. Mother nodded, though not without suspicion. Jason dialed 911 and reported the fire.
“He hasn’t done that yet?” Noona said. “How stupid is this idiot?”
The greatest advantage of speaking a different language was the things you could say about people while standing right next to them.
“Shit for brains,” I said.
Things weren’t looking good at Hometown Grill. The fire had spread to the next store over, HiFi FoFum. Black smoke that smelled of burning plastic wafted over our way.
“The fire department already knows,” Jason said. “A truck’ll be here in less than a minute.”
“We’ve stayed around long enough,” Mother said. She herded Noona and me outside, but not until she gave a long and disgusted look back at Father’s trail to Mr. Hong’s store.
We stood outside in the parking lot and watched the west wing of Peddlers Town light up the sky. Though it was early June, it was rather chilly, which seemed strange because the fire raged in front of us. A caravan of siren-wailing fire trucks came, one after the other, three in all. Following closely behind were two ambulances and a police cruiser. Dressed in yellow slickers and thick rubbery black pants, the squad of firefighters jumped off their vehicles, attached three white hoses to three different hydrants, got into their places and formations, and proceeded to put out the fire. They chopped down the pair of large oak doors that led directly into Hometown Grill and sprayed white jets of water into the heavy flames. Black smoke escaped through the restaurant’s broken windows and drifted downward, a dark shadow that glided across the tan cinder-block walls of Peddlers Town.
“Jake!” Mr. McManus said. “You all right?”
Jake was a big guy, but tonight he seemed smaller than Father, his head hanging down, his shoulders drawn together. “Everybody’s fine. One of the gas stoves blew, I don’t know why.”
“Hey,” Mr. McManus said, “the important thing is that nobody’s hurt.”
Jake nodded, though he hardly seemed convinced. He reached for his chin but stopped halfway, and looked more dejected than ever.
The fire, which seemed powerful and threatening before the trucks had arrived, was beaten down in less than ten minutes. The only one who needed medical assistance was Dmitri, the Russian guy who owned HiFi FoFum, who’d suffered a cut on his forearm from the look of his bandage. He walked over to where we were standing.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s wrong with Susan?”
And that’s when I realized that Noona was nowhere. “Where’s Noona?” I asked Mother, but she hadn’t noticed her disappearance, either. Sensing our distress, Dmitri cleared his throat and pointed to the ambulance in the middle of the parking lot. Sitting in the back of the open truck was my sister, and standing in front of her was an EMT guy.
Mother and I looked at each other in confusion. “I’ll get her,” I said.
I made my approach slowly. The guy had slicked-back, wet-looking hair, and he was shorter than Noona.
“Take a deep breath,” he told my sister, so she did. He had a stethoscope plugged into his ears and was apparently listening to her heartbeat, but he didn’t look like a doctor and Noona didn’t act like a patient. In fact, they were both smiling, like they were playing a funny game.
“You’ll be just fine,” he said.
“Thank you, Dr. Ramon,” Noona said. She sounded coquettish, childlike—but not entirely unfamiliar.
“You’re welcome.”
“You saved us,” Noona said with such sincerity that it was almost laughable.
Ramon chuckled. “And what’s your name?”
Noona offered Ramon her crazy dark eyes. I knew they were crazy, but of course Ramon didn’t. He would’ve thought they were beautiful and terribly mysterious. When she answered, her lips reaching out to him as she formed the word “Susan,” it all came back to me. This was exactly how she acted back in Korea when she was with her Boyfriend of the Month. How could I have forgotten it? The lilt in her voice, the showering of sweet compliments; it was all there, with nothing lost in the translation from Korean to English.
“Susan. You pretty cool,” Ramon said.
“Hey,” I called out to Noona. It made them both turn around. “What’re you doing?”
Noona jumped off the truck and greeted me with a stinging slap on my arm. “None of your business, Junior.”
“You talking Chinese or something?” Ramon asked. “Where you going?”
“See you,” she said, and blew him a kiss as we walked away.
“I hope so,” Ramon said, making an exaggerated pretend-grab at her toss.
We found Father propped up against the nearest lamppost when we returned. His shirt was soaked with sweat and his hair was a mess.
Mother, silently stewing all this time, tore into him. “Where have you been? And what happened? Don’t tell me you’ve been with Hong all this time.”
Father held up his hand, trying to catch his breath. “We moved maybe half of Hong’s bags outside. Hong’s hurt,” he managed to say. “They took him in the ambulance.” He pointed, but we didn’t see any ambulances, just the one remaining fire truck and its blinking red lights. Seeing our confused faces, Father shook his head. “No, no, it left already. Come on, everybody in the car, let’s go.” Nobody protested, not even Mother.
We rode in silence. I felt bad for Mr. Hong, all alone and suffering in a hospital room. With his wife out of town, all he had was his son, and he wasn’t nearby, attending a college in Connecticut.
Mother broke the silence with a quiet, demure question, obviously feeling guilty for being so confrontational with Father. “Is he burned badly?”
“He slipped and broke his leg. On the way out. I think it was an ice-cream bar.”
“Broke his leg?”
“He said he broke it. Couldn’t put any pressure on his ankle. Screamed like a baby when he tried.”
After a lengthy pause, Mother continued. “He has a son.”
“Who’s three, four hours away. Come on, this is the least we can do.”
“Our store almost burned down and you’re worried about Hong and his stupid ankle.” Father started to say something but Mother interrupted him. “I’m done listening,” she said, and leaned her face against the window, staring out at the fields of corn blurring by.
I wondered how long this fight would last. Whenever Father and Mother argued about nonmonetary matters, they typically managed to work things out within twenty-four hours. If it was money-related, the awkward silence could blanket an entire week. I wasn’t afraid of their fighting, but seven days of them avoiding eye contact and saying the bare minimum to each other wore me down.
When we arrived at the hospital, Mother opted to stay in the car. “Just leave me here,” she told Father. “Go and see your friend and leave me here.” She dug into her change purse and fished out two dollars for me and Noona, all in quarters, in case we wanted to get something to eat. If there was a vending machine in there and it wasn’t a total ripoff, that translated to eight Twinkies.
We entered the hospital through the waiting area and saw the misfortunes that had struck ordinary people. In the corner a kid sat holding a hand towel over his right eye. Next to him was a black woman whose legs were covered with fuzzy white dots. At the receptionist’s desk, Father found out Mr. Hong’s whereabouts and we wasted no time pushing through the double swinging doors and into the bright clinical lights of the hospital corridor.
Mr. Hong was in a room that wasn’t a real room, just a space sectioned off by a pair of blue curtains. He lay on a narrow bed, his bad leg propped up on two pillows.
“Hey, Hong,” Father said, giving his shoulder a firm squeeze.
“What are you doing here?” Mr. Hong asked. He saw Noona and me lagging behind and greeted us.
“Just thought I’d stop by, see how you’re doing.”
“My son is on his way.”
“That’s good,” Father said. “Well, I’ll just stay here until he comes.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Mr. Hong said, though he was obviously pleased.
That was the high point of their conversation. It soon degraded into the fire, about insurance, about what route his son had taken to get over here, then spiraled further into boredom as they talked about the currency exchange rate between the Korean won and the U.S. dollar.
“Ugh,” I muttered to myself, turning to Noona, finding no one there. She’d done it again. “I’ll be back,” I told Father, who nodded vaguely.
A quick peek outside Mr. Hong’s room offered no trace of Noona. I walked carefully, sidestepping an incredibly old man slumped in a wheelchair—I couldn’t believe he was still alive. I almost tripped as I avoided a stampede of doctors with their scrubs on and their masks hanging on one ear. Following them were two burly men rolling a gurney at full speed, their eyes wide and alert and staring straight ahead. The hospital was not for the slow-footed. I hugged the inner curve of the wide hallway and stuck close to the wall.
“Susan,” I heard, then laughter. It was coming from Radiology, a darkened room illuminated by a low reddish glow. I peered into the room and saw Noona flat against the wall and someone in front of her, their faces maybe a foot apart and the distance shrinking quick.
“You’re hot,” the man said, and their lips met. It was the same guy from the ambulance, Ramon.
Across from me was a tall woman who wore a name tag (ROSEY) and had the look of someone in authority. She scrutinized a chart on the wall. I tiptoed away from my peeping position and tapped on her lower back, as I couldn’t reach her shoulder.
“What do you want?”
I flinched, then waited. Usually this was an effective maneuver to soften up adults, but not this lady.
“I said, what do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Kiss kiss,” I said, and puckered up. Then I pointed to Radiology.
“What in the world you talking about, child?”
I grabbed her hand and she followed willingly. She was a pushover after all—just talked a mean game.
After bringing her to the threshold, I slunk away and hid behind the nearby water cooler. Rosey stomped into the room and said, “Ramon, what you think you’re doing?” She pried him off Noona by his ear and dragged him away.
“Ow, stop it, Rosey!” Ramon yelled. When she let go, he straightened up and slicked back his hair. “I was gonna get me some, you understand?”
“The only thing you be getting is my foot kicking your sorry ass,” Rosey said. Ramon waved her off and walked away in a huff. Rosey walked back into the room and stared Noona down.
“And you,” Rosey said, “should be ashamed of yourself, child. What you got to say for yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Noona said, and started crying. I knew they were fake tears, but she had Rosey convinced. She threw her soft, dark arms around my sister to comfort her.
“There, there,” Rosey said, “it’s okay. Just be careful, you hear?”
“Okay, thank you,” she said, feigning a couple of sobs. Such an actress, she almost had me fooled.
When Rosey left, I casually walked over to Noona and said, “Hey, I’ve been looking for you.” I braced myself for the onslaught of insults, but it never came. Instead, Noona hugged me and wept and wept and wept.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” she mumbled, clutching me harder.
She had cried like this on the night before we left Korea, she and her boyfriend sitting on our white sofa, holding hands, shedding enough tears to fill an ocean. Noona’s eyes were still swollen when we boarded the plane the morning after.
And now here she was, months later, and her wounds still just as fresh. I didn’t know what to do, so I waited until she was finished.
“Come on,” I said, “we have to go.”
Noona nodded and let me lead her back to Mr. Hong’s room. His son was there now, sitting next to Father and looking bored. When he saw us, he jumped up and greeted us both.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Noona. She didn’t bother to reply. Ever since Yun Sae first laid eyes on my sister at Newark Airport, the very first day we arrived in the United States, he’d been in love with her. Of course, this meant that Noona wanted nothing to do with him.
We said goodbye and wished Mr. Hong a quick recovery. “Take care,” Yun Sae said to Noona, but again, she pretended not to hear.
Back at the car, Mother hadn’t moved an inch. The radio was tuned to the oldies station, Frank Sinatra belting out “My Way.” He was Mother’s favorite American singer. She turned it off when we got in the car.
“He’ll be fine,” Father told Mother, even though she hadn’t asked him. It was a quiet ride home, both of the women looking far into the dark—brooding into the moonless night.
As we drove up to Peddlers Town the next morning, we saw the black hole that used to be Hometown Grill.
“Oh my God,” Mother said, the first words she’d spoken since last night.
“I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” Father said.
He was right. After we drove by Jake’s restaurant, we saw that the rest of Peddlers Town was just as we’d remembered it. None of us was ever thrilled with the faded beige walls or the dirty brown trim of the building, but that morning, we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful sight. Our store looked untouched.
“Hey, Harry,” Reggie, Peddlers head security guard, greeted Father. I still wasn’t used to hearing Father’s American name, but he seemed to like it fine, shaking Reggie’s big hand. Everything about Reggie was big except his face, which was long and oval and shrunken like a raisin.
“Good morning, Reggie,” Father said. “We go in?”
“Sure. Got electricity back this morning.”
They’d sectioned off the first three stores closest to Jake’s due to damage, and since there were three rows of stores, that meant that nine stores were affected, including Dmitri’s HiFi FoFum and Mr. Hong’s In the Bag.
Though the fire hadn’t spread over to our store, we were not exempt from its effects. Our bad luck came in the form of smoke damage and soot, nasty black flakes that had settled on half the store. This wasn’t much of a calamity when it came to vases and jars and such—a quick wipe with a wet rag would bring things back good as new—but there was no such easy solution for the clothing.
“Maybe I can wash them,” Mother suggested.
Father shook his head. It was okay to wash the cheaper stuff like kiddie pajamas since they were made out of cotton, but the kimonos were out of the question. “Silk or rayon,” Father said, going around and checking tags. One of our most esteemed possessions, the Japanese winter kimono crucified against the far wall with four spotlights igniting its gold-threaded embroidery, was made of silk. Fine black dust had left a pattern that resembled a mountain range. I thought it looked kind of cool. Nobody else did.
“What do we do with all this?” Father said. None of us could think of anything useful to say. I felt helpless and afraid. This store was all we had to bring money into the household—if we couldn’t sell our merchandise, how would we eat?
Father phoned Mr. Hong at home to find out how he was doing. I heard him warn Mr. Hong to brace himself when he came in.
“Hong’s doing fine,” he relayed to us, as if we cared.
“Look,” Mother said, pointing to our window that faced the parking lot. “What is going on out there?”
It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and the lot was already half filled. On Sundays, Peddlers Town opened at eleven.
“It’s like Christmas,” Father said. “They all came early last Christmas Eve, lined up in front of the entrances, and when Reggie unlocked the doors, it was like a flood.” Father snapped his fingers. “They must’ve heard about the fire!”
We followed him as he walked to the front counter, dipped underneath, and came back up with a large white piece of construction paper. From the coffee can that housed all the pens and markers, he fished out a red, an orange, a yellow, and a black.
“You’re good at drawing,” Father said to Noona. “Can you draw me a sign that reads FIRE SALE?”
She nodded and went off by herself to the back corner. Father and Mother looked at each other and smiled, the official gesture that signified the end of their latest fight.
While my sister busied herself with her pens and markers, the rest of us cleaned up. Sharing a spray bottle of Windex and two rolls of paper towels between the three of us, we attacked shelf after shelf, our hands quickly becoming filthy. It felt nice working together as a family. As we cleaned, Mother and Father recounted a story about me and strawberries. Way back when, Mother’s family had owned a strawberry farm in the Korean countryside, and every June, we’d all drive down for a visit. Supposedly when I was three, I’d inexplicably become enamored with strawberries. When we got there, I bolted out of the car, ran to the strawberry field, and started picking and eating everything in sight. Before anybody could catch me, I’d eaten so many strawberries that supposedly my face had turned a very real shade of green.
“Do you remember how he looked?” Father said.
“It wasn’t so funny then, but yes. Like this,” Mother said, picking up a green-colored bowl. “You looked just like this, Joon-a.”
I’d heard this story before, but this was the first time I heard it from both of my parents, and I didn’t like it. They were using my story of innocent gluttony to ease the tension from their latest argument. Their cruel laughter sounded forced, but they kept on laughing.
“I’m done,” Noona said behind us. She held up the sign in front of her.
“Wow,” Father and Mother said together. First, I was in awe, then I was filled with jealousy. Noona had all the talent in this family. She could play the piano like Beethoven and draw signs like this. All I was good for was gorging on strawberries.
FIRE SALE, the sign read. Little tiny flame-creatures jumped off each letter, their spindly legs and arms in wild motion. The whole thing had a real animated look to it. She’d done it all with just three colors: black, orange, and red.
Once again, Father crouched underneath the front counter and this time brought out a bunch of hollow aluminum sticks. (What else did he have under there?) He slid the sticks together and like magic, he erected an easel.
He leaned the sign on it and stepped back to admire it. “It’s perfect,” he told Noona. “Thank you.”
It was eleven. We heard Reggie announce, “Welcome to Peddlers Town!” He said this every time he opened up the mall, even if there was no one waiting. Now that he had a sizable audience, his voice boomed. “Welcome to Peddlers Town!”
Father pushed the easel right out in front. He looked at me, and Mother looked at Noona, and we listened to the stampede, felt the feet of hundreds. Then they came, they came in waves, they drowned us with their bodies and their voices.