I'm Ok Read online

  As I walk to our apartment building, I see Dolores Brades on her patio, braiding a woman’s hair. Our downstairs neighbor wears fancy high-heel boots, leather pants, and a leopard-print sweater. I stare as she braids, her long red nails flashing among the dark strands of hair. I hear Dolores showing off about her fancy Camaro. If I had her car, I’d show off too. It’s sapphire blue and shines like diamonds.

  I know her name because taped to her door is a sign that reads DOLORES BRADES, with her phone number in red marker.

  What’s puzzling is that her mailbox, which is right next to ours, has Olarunfemi as her last name. As I get closer to them, it dawns on me: Dolores can’t spell. Dolores Olarunfemi braids hair for money. If fancy-car-fancy-clothes-fancy-shoes-fancy-nails Dolores, who cannot properly spell what she does for money, can do it, so can I.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Olarunfemi,” I say, walking by her.

  “Mrs.? Who call me Mrs.? I am no Mrs. No man be owning me. I am Miss. Miss O. Like O for Oprah,” she says, laughing into the braid between her fingers.

  “My apologies, Miss O,” I say, and stand there, staring at her fingers.

  “Hey, little mister, how you know my name? You my little stalker?” she says. Her customer laughs. Miss O chuckles. Keeping her eyes on the braid, she says, “You stare long enough, I be charging you by the minute, you know.”

  I hurry into our building and dash up the steps with an idea and violins playing in my head.

  four

  I sit under a poster for the upcoming talent show in the back corner of the cafeteria and eat alone, wondering if competitive eating could be considered a talent. I could eat a hundred hot dogs for one hundred dollars. I’d eat bugs for a hundred dollars. People love watching things that gross them out. I open my can of sardines. I don’t mind eating alone. I read two books. The one on the outside came highly recommended by my social studies teacher, Ms. Lincoln, about Andy Rusch, a boy my age who has a weirdo friend who eats an excessive amount of onions like they’re apples. I like onions, so I can relate. The book I’m hiding inside Onion John is an instructional manual on how to braid hair. Peering over my books, I see Asa and his entourage limp-strut into the cafeteria. I’ve practiced that walk at home. I haven’t quite perfected it yet. My mother watched me limp-strut from the sewing machine to the kitchen and asked if my leg was hurt.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then don’t walk like that,” she said.

  It was the walk of the Asas of the world, the walk of the big and the bad. It was the walk of men like Clint Eastwood. My father loved that man. Whenever he pointed at me with hands shaped like pistols, he was trying to be Clint. Whenever he squinted, he was trying to be Clint. Whenever he chose silence or mumbled, or walked stiff like he couldn’t bend his knees, or let his cigarette barely hang on to the ledge that was his lower lip, he was trying to be Clint. I get it. This wanting to talk some other talk and walk some other walk that says I own this cafeteria, I own this classroom, I own this bus, I own you.

  What makes Asa look like he owns the world makes me look lame.

  “Anyone sitting here?” Mickey McDonald asks, standing beside me with a tray.

  Mickey’s nickname is Old McDonald, not because she has a farm or anything, but because she wears old clothes, like corduroy bell-bottoms and velour shirts with collars big enough for Dracula. I’ve seen the popular girls tease her. Mickey instructs them that it’s vintage, it’s disco chic, and the girls hold their noses as they say, “Ewww. Don’t talk to us. Out of the way, Mothballs.”

  Mickey stands near me, wearing a Bee Gees T-shirt. Her hair is big, like atomic-bomb-mushroom-cloud big, and my fingers twitch, wanting to practice the fine art of braiding. She smells like bug spray, but it doesn’t bother me.

  “Yeah,” I say, angling my books over my food.

  “Who?” she asks. “Your imaginary friends that eat with you every day?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Liar,” she says.

  “Medusa,” I say.

  “A muh-what?” she says.

  I want her to take the seat so that I can tell her all about how Medusa, who was supposed to be like a virgin nun for Athena, fell for Poseidon, the god of the sea, and married him. If you had a chance at marrying the sea god, wouldn’t you? But this ticked Athena off so badly that she cursed Medusa with green skin and snakes for hair. Talk about eternal damnation. Green skin, snakes for hair, and if you made eye contact, she turned you to stone.

  “Ching-chong,” Mickey says.

  “Ping-pong,” I say.

  “Ding-dong,” she says, and stomps away.

  Who needs to eat with other people? It’s not so bad alone. I prefer eating by myself. Leave me alone with my ching-chong cuisine of stinky fish cakes, kimchi, candied fish, pickled radish, mandu, bulgogi, and kimbap. There’s nothing like opening up that wrinkled, used-one-too-many-times, about-to-rip-apart aluminum foil and finding kimbap in three neat rows stacked two layers deep like Legos and smelling oh so stinky. Rice, Spam, egg, dandelion leaves, pickled radish, and carrots rolled up in seaweed. Yum. I wouldn’t trade it for company with the VIP of Landover Hills.

  Once, I packed my own lunch, a cheese sandwich on white bread with potato chips and an apple, thinking maybe someone would sit next to me, or the new contents of my lunch might give me the confidence to plop myself down next to a person of my choosing, but it didn’t work. I ate alone. The only difference was that the food was lousy, and minutes later my stomach was cramping because I’m lactose intolerant. The cheese made me churn. I was also starving and ended up wasting my emergency quarters on a bag of Fritos that had only five chips in it. Rip-off.

  I don’t buy school lunch, although I’d probably qualify for reduced lunch, but I think my mother is too proud to sign me up for it. She says that that food is no good and will make me sick and stupid. So I learned my lesson: Eat Ŏmma’s food to keep from becoming sick, stupid, and poor.

  And for the record, we’re not poor. It’s just that my mother is frugal. Ways my mother likes to save money: reuse aluminum foil and plastic bags; flush the toilet once a day; use public restrooms as much as possible; bring home toilet paper, paper towels, and soap from public restrooms; fill her pockets with napkins, straws, and packets of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, sugar, and cream from McDonald’s; keep lights off; cut each other’s hair; hang clothes to dry; shop at thrift stores; buy marked-down food at the grocery store; gather acorns to make acorn gelatin (actually, this is really tasty); eat weeds like dandelion and nettle; grow food on our balcony; and collect rainwater.

  Let’s put this in perspective, as Ms. Lincoln would say. Maybe by American standards we’re a little poor, but by the whole world’s standards we’re not. We have indoor plumbing. Back in Korea, I got potty trained in an outhouse. My mother used to tell me horror stories of children falling into the pit of poop. We have electricity, clothes on our backs, shoes on our feet, meals every day, free education. In Korea, schools aren’t free. Everyone has to pay tuition, and you have to bribe the teachers regularly so they don’t mistreat your kids. We have a car (but Ŏmma doesn’t have a driver’s license), a television set, and toilet paper. I don’t have to use newspapers to clean my butt. (Some still do that in Korea. That’s why kids run around with ink-stained butts.) I don’t have to use my left hand. (Some still do that in India. That’s why you’re not supposed to eat with your left hand or extend it to anyone as a greeting. Big insult because you’re basically telling them to shake your poo-poo hand.)

  We’re not poor. We might not have as much money as we did when my father was alive, but we’re not poor. Sometimes my mother buys meat, not the feet, tongue, or nose of an animal, but real meat. That’s not poor. With my father gone, there’s one less mouth to feed. No more Camels. No more Johnnie Walker. No more secondhand smoke. No more ashes. No more TV on all night wasting electricity. More savings for us. We’re better off. I’ll bet he was with Johnnie Walker on that roof. I’ll bet he was smok
ing, too. I’ll bet he lost his balance trying to keep his cigarette from falling off his lower lip. Blaming him helps. I don’t miss him. I don’t. I have everything under control.

  The bell rings. Lunch is over. As I get up to throw away my trash, I see Asa shooting a spork into Mickey’s hair. It sticks on the back like a dart to a board. She can’t even feel it. Asa’s friends point and laugh. Some girl giggles and says, “Oh my God, that’s so mean,” but does nothing about it. Another girl says, “Someone’s hungry for attention.” Some other girl says, “Her hair is, like, so huge. Big girl, big hair.”

  As I walk by them, I shake my head. It stinks to be teased. I know what that’s like, and I feel sorry for Mickey. I want to say something smooth and heroic like, “Yeah, she is a big girl, big in the best sense of the word, but you, on the other hand, are nothing but small minded, feeble brained, and too blind to see that your own hair is a regular grease pit. When was the last time you shampooed? Shampoo more often. And you know what would look beautiful on you? Braids. You should treat yourself to some pretty braids to crown that pretty little head of yours. Here’s my business card. The name is Ok. Get braided by Ok.”

  But I don’t say anything. I lower my head and leave the cafeteria, hurrying to catch up to Mickey. As I quietly walk behind her, I reach up, quickly pull the spork out of her hair, and make a run for it around the corner.

  five

  While my mother is at work, I watch TV at home. A commercial comes on. A man wearing a blue suit jacket, white shirt, and red tie looks at me. He’s bald, with bushy eyebrows shaped like baby Snickers bars. His cheeks are pink. His forehead bubbles up with beads of sweat like small blisters after a burn. He’s serious. He’s upset. He’s important.

  His mustache twitches, trying to hang on as his words shoot out of his mouth: “Have you been hurt? Have you been in an accident? Have you been injured on the job through no fault of your own? Well, you need a lawyer who will fight for you. Get what you deserve. I can get you fast cash settlements. Call me, Trent Bedderman. I’m the man for the job. I won’t stand for injustice. You have rights. And I’ll do everything in my power to get what’s rightfully yours. When things are looking down, look me up. Trent Bedderman. Because you deserve the best.”

  I turn off the TV. I sit on the floor in the dimming light, surrounded by my mother’s sewing. My father’s portrait looks down at me. It’s an enlarged black-and-white of his passport picture, so he looks young. His slicked-back hair is stiff with gel. His skin is smooth and pale, which is not what he really looked like. He had a tan. He had stubble. He had wrinkles around his eyes, which deepened when he smiled. I remember because he didn’t smile a lot. The look in his eyes teeters between fear and courage. I remember that look. I saw it often. Depending on how I felt, it either scared or emboldened me.

  I open my backpack. As I take out my math book, the class picture order form falls out. Picture day is tomorrow. I need a check to order pictures of myself. Last year my parents ordered a package that cost eighteen dollars. I guess I won’t be ordering pictures this year. Not a big deal. I’ll ask to go to the bathroom when Ms. Lincoln passes them out. Besides, I haven’t changed that much. I open to page 62. How to calculate the area of circles. I start on my homework.

  I’m hungry.

  My mother won’t be home for five hours. The rice maker is turned off, which means there’s no rice. I’d better make some before she gets home. We keep the rice grains in a big plastic barrel under the sink. I open the lid. There’s only about a cup left. I pour every single grain into the rice maker and leave the barrel out to show my mother she needs to buy another big sack. This is enough for tonight, but we’ll need more tomorrow. I wash the grains. The water is murky white at first. With each rinse, the water clears. I drop the bowl into the rice maker and push the on button.

  Our fridge is practically empty. Three eggs, a brown banana, a slice of Spam, an orange juice carton half full of barley tea. The bottom shelf holds four large jars of kimchi, which I can’t touch because they’re reserved for selling to some deacons at church. My mother makes the best kimchi. The church ladies want to know her secret. She lies, tells them it’s raw oysters you need, it’s more garlic, it’s pears, it’s her homegrown red peppers. The women complain it doesn’t work. My mother tells them to lay their hands on the batch and pray. It never works. She won’t give her secret away. It’s bad for business.

  When my mother makes kimchi, our apartment reeks of garlic, but it’s okay because the four big jars of her kimchi lined up in the fridge give me hope for a better future.

  I look in the pantry. Ramen noodles. I grab a pack. I put some water on to boil.

  The phone rings.

  “Hello,” I answer.

  “Oh, who is this?” the man says. I can tell he’s Korean from his accent.

  “Hello,” I answer in Korean.

  “Is your mother there?” the man asks in Korean.

  “I’m sorry, but no, she’s not here,” I say.

  “Then can you tell me when she’ll be home?”

  “She’ll be home later. Excuse me, but may I ask who’s calling, please?”

  “Oh. Yes, this is Deacon Koh from church. You must be Ok. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing fine,” I say.

  “How’s school coming along?”

  “School is fine,” I say.

  “How are your grades?”

  “They’re fine,” I say.

  “Uh, I’m just calling to see if you and your mother are doing all right,” he says, sounding nervous and fishy. His voice doesn’t sound like this is just a courtesy phone call on behalf of the church. Deacon Koh is known as the lonely widower of FKFGC, and I’ve seen him trying to talk to my mother during fellowship hour after service.

  “Hello, Deacon Koh. We’re fine. I’ll let her know she received a call from church.”

  “Uh, tell her it’s Deacon Koh.”

  “I will. Thank you. Good-bye,” I say, and hang up.

  The water on the stove boils. The phone rings again. I let it ring because I suspect it’s the deacon again, wanting to leave his personal phone number. But then again, it could be my mother calling to ask me if she needs to bring home a new sack of rice. It could also maybe be Jerome from Booked. We’re in the same science class. I answer it.

  “Good evening. This is Pepco calling. Am I speaking with Mr. Lee?” The woman’s voice is clear, confident, and full of purpose, like a teacher’s voice calling roll. Mr. Lee? Is there a Mr. Lee present? Raise your hand and say “Here.”

  It’s easier for me to answer yes, so I deepen my voice, turn on my Korean accent, and say, “Speaking.”

  “Mr. Lee, I’m calling to notify you that your Pepco bill in the amount of fifty-nine dollars and seventy cents is three months overdue. If you cannot pay this amount in full by the next due date, we will have to shut off your electricity. You will lose your power, Mr. Lee. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Yes. I understand. I take care. I take care. Thank you berry, berry much,” I say, and hang up, my heart pounding hard.

  The water boils over. I turn down the heat, carefully drop the noodles in, and watch the dry block soften and separate. What was once stiff and brittle comes unglued. The curls relax into waves as the noodles depart from one another. I sprinkle in the soup base, and the water browns. My mouth waters as I stir the noodles and wonder how in the world Trent Bedderman might get us some cash. Fast.

  six

  My mother and I are at church. We sit in the back pew. Pastor Chung finishes his sermon by telling us to bow our heads in prayer.

  I close my eyes and pray, telling God that I need a talent for the talent show so I can win a hundred dollars, and that I want Deacon Koh to get married so my mother doesn’t get any ideas, and that I want Miss O to teach me how to braid so that we can have fancy things too, but I know she won’t. It’s bad for her business. The point is to make money, not lose it. I’ve gone to the library and checked out a book
called Be Your Own Boss: Easy Steps to Starting a Small Business. I know the steps by heart.

  Step #1: Brainstorm types of skills that fit your interests.

  (I am interested in making money. I am interested in making the world more beautiful. I can combine my interests in making money and making beauty by braiding hair. I don’t have any braiding skills yet, but I have a book that can teach me. I am a fast learner. I am good with my hands. My braiding skills will pave the way to big bucks.)

  Step #2: Research competitors and how much they charge.

  (Dolores charges sixty dollars for three hours of braiding. That’s a lot of money. Enough to pay our overdue electric bill with change left over. No one else braids at my church or school. Unbraided territories. There’s potential for a monopoly here.)

  Step #3: Write down a business plan.

  (My business plan is to make money braiding hair. I plan on charging fifteen dollars for one braiding session, which is 75 percent less than my competitor. I plan on offering six basic kinds of braids: the French braid, the Dutch braid, the fishtail braid, the Swiss braid, the crown braid, and the microbraid. Well, I might not offer the microbraid, which is what Dolores does on her patio. It takes a long time. Like three to four hours. I figure that if I can do a French braid in fifteen minutes and make fifteen dollars, it’s more profitable for me to do four French braids and earn sixty dollars in one hour than the same amount in three hours.)

  Step #4: Make a list of initial expenses.

  BOOKS FOR RESEARCH: $0. (Get all books free from the library. Remember to return them on time.)

  PAPER FOR FLYERS: $0. (Use the back side of all the junk mail we get.)

  BUSINESS CARDS: $0. (Take a stack of Pastor Chung’s business cards from the church office. If I glue paper over them, I can write my name and number on them. It’s okay. No one takes those cards. I’ve seen some thrown out in the parking lot. Besides, my mother tithes. As far as I’m concerned, she paid for some of those cards.)