A Cab Called Reliable Read online

  Na-Ri and I used to bang pots and pans in front of her mother’s store and sing, A monkey’s butt is red, red is an apple, an apple is sweet, sweet is a banana, a banana is long, long is a train, train is fast, fast is an airplane, an airplane is high, high is the White-Peaked Mountain, hoping to attract customers because if Na-Ri’s mother made more than expected, she let us pick out anything from the store and take it home for free. Na Ri, squeezing her pack of chewing gum in her fist, and I with a new notebook tucked underneath my arm, kissed each other’s ears before I walked through the back door of the store and home to my house.

  I’m sure Na-Ri would remember me. I’m sure that when my mother and Min Joo moved back into the house, Na-Ri visited and asked for me.

  Where is Ahn Joo?

  She is studying in America. Min Joo and I had a more difficult time speaking the language. That is why we had to leave. We like it better here. But Ahn Joo wanted to stay.

  But she will visit, won’t she?

  I wouldn’t count on it.

  What luck! She gets to study in America. She likes it there, doesn’t she?

  Very much.

  Won’t you miss her?

  Very much.

  When I am asked if I have any brothers or sisters, I tell them none. When I am asked where my mother is, I tell them she is dead. When I am asked how she passed away, depending on who my listener is, I tell them one of three stories:

  If a teacher asks, I tell him she died of cancer.

  If a friend asks, I tell him she got run over by a car.

  If a stranger asks, I tell him she died giving birth to me.

  11

  Dear Mother,

  This is to notify you of an address and phone number change. In case of an emergency, you may contact me at my new residence:

  3309 Morning Glory Way

  Potomac, Maryland 20854

  (301) 555-2005

  If you wish to contact Father’s place of business, it is located at:

  Good Food Carry-Out

  100 South Capitol Street SE

  Washington, D.C. 20001

  (202) 555-0562

  The home address and phone number were effective in the month of October, the place of business in the month of September. However, due to the excessive amount of energy and time required for the much-needed move, all notifications have been sent no earlier than today.…

  Dear Mother,

  Although it is highly unlikely that you would ever visit me, I am nevertheless writing in order to properly inform you that I no longer live in the apartment on Burning Rock Court. It is a most fortunate move considering the neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, was beginning to populate itself with the likes of criminals. There were a number of reported robberies, rapes, shootings.…

  Dear Mother,

  Father and I now live in a townhouse. It has four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, basement, a country kitchen, a garage, and two and a half bathrooms. We believe it is an excellent investment for our future. The quality of education offered in the public schools of Potomac, Maryland, far exceeds any education, public or private, in the Arlington area. I am already thinking about college. I want to study literature and write stories.

  And what is in Father’s future? A new van or truck for his restaurant.

  Incidentally, the driving distance from Potomac to Washington, D.C., is considerably shorter than the distance between Arlington to …

  Dear Mother,

  Father does not know that I am writing you. But I feel, out of propriety, courtesy, and kindness, that I should write to inform you of our life which has changed beyond recognition. Father has changed beyond recognition. I have imagined about you and Min Joo’s life in Pusan, I assume that is where you are, as I believe you have imagined about ours here. So that is why I write.…

  Dear Mother,

  Although I sit in our new home on a new chair with a new pen, listening to unfamiliar crickets through my new window, I cannot help but …

  Dear Mother,

  The window of my new room in our new home is open, and a silver moth has landed on the other side of my screen. There are mosquitos floating and waiting to be let inside closer to my lamp. Between my windowsill and screen, a groove holds dried flies turned on their backs and a ladybug covered with dust.

  If it were daylight and I was sitting on top of my desk leaning forward, I could see the budding tips of the long, flexible ivy climbing toward me, the stack of chopped wood below. The weight of the wood with its rotting knots that house the worms, spiders, and red ants crushes the grass below.

  But it is night, and all that I can see beyond the zigzag top of our wooden fence is a rich darkness, disturbed by a row of orange driveway lights with their hosts of spiraling insects. Beyond and above, there is the moon and the stars.…

  Dear Mother,

  I do not understand why you left me. Should I continue to wait?

  Dear Mother,

  As a young woman, I now see that you suffered greatly living with Father. You suffered greatly living with me. Your life here was torturous. You were unhappy, and what is greater or more rational than having as one’s sole purpose in life the fulfillment of one’s own personal happiness? And when you were given the opportunity to pursue a happier, more self-satisfying, comfortable and complacent existence without me, you did not hesitate. Your choice did not exactly heighten my hope for humanity nor was it one I would characterize as heroic, admirable, or meritorious. Your choice was that of any feeble-minded, well-fed, common woman.…

  Dear Mother,

  Father is not the same man, so if you have thoughts of returning, you are certainly welcomed here.…

  Dear Mother,

  Father has been telling me stories about Korea. My favorite is the one about the fox-girl and her brother. Do you know the story? It begins, “Long ago there lived a rich man who had a son but no daughter. He longed to have a daughter.” The daughter grows up and kills her father’s cattle by eating their livers. She kills the villagers and her parents by eating their livers as well. She then turns into a fox. It is a strange story, but one that is dear to me.…

  Dear Mother,

  One of the first and foremost concerns that should occupy all good mothers is whether or not her child is being well fed.

  Our freezer is full of steaks. Our refrigerator is full of strawberries, carrots, and whole milk. Our cabinets are full of whole wheat, whole grain, raisin, almond, and date cereals. Our drawers are full of bags of dried black, Grand Northern, and kidney beans.

  The above listing of foods is not necessarily a response to the addressed mother’s concern since all concern is either the product of the addresser’s imagination or nonexistent. The listing is actually an attempt to span the breach between what-is and what-ought-to-be.…

  12

  “Dad, you’re going the wrong way.”

  “This is right way.”

  “Dad, you missed our turn. You had to turn at the light. You missed it.”

  “You push me. Stop pushing.”

  “Well, you’re pushing me. I have to be home. I have work to do.”

  “That’s why I take short way.”

  “Shortcut, Dad. It’s called shortcut. Anyway, this isn’t a shortcut. You were supposed to turn on New York Avenue. You just want to pass Angela’s mom’s store.”

  “Joo-yah, stop pushing!”

  My father switched gears, pushed the accelerator, and made a sharp left turn onto a street that intersected with an old railroad track. Driving over it made his van bumpity bump bump and the box holding his hammer, pliers, electric drill in the back spill out, spread, and clatter. I opened my window, stuck out my arm, and could smell the liquor reeking from the clothes, breath, pores of the white-haired black man sleeping against the pitch-it can in front of Fish Boat—Come In We’re Open Fresh Seafood Every Day. Fresh? There was nothing fresh about the barred-up windows and doors, stinking alleys used as urinals, purple plastic flowers pinned on the
hat of a churchgoing woman with oceanic breasts, and these ugly brown vinyl seats smelling of spoiled ground beef fried in bacon grease.

  If my father would only hire somebody competent and reliable to go shopping with him for a week’s worth of Good Food groceries, I wouldn’t have to spend my Saturday mornings and afternoons in this side of D.C. shopping for collard greens, cans of mackerel, blocks of lard, and frozen pigs’ feet, ankles, intestines, and ears. I wouldn’t have to listen to those men standing around in their suspicious circle in front of Sol Sanders & Sons getting hungry cannibal looks in their eyes, damning every time a woman walked by. Talking “hey man gotta get ’tween those legs, move on in smooth and slow,” and giving their crotches a congratulatory tug or two. Two of them had leaned against my father’s truck, looked inside, and asked me if I got the time. Why you giving me that Chinese look like you can’t speak no English? You Chinese? No, I am not Chinese, nor am I Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, dirty knees or look at these. I am a Korean-American. They sneered at me with their what-the-difference look. The difference is as apparent as night and day, rich and poor, salvation and damnation, heaven and hell, awareness and ignorance, literate and illiterate, you and me.

  Instead, in a feeble voice I mumbled it was almost one o’clock. One of them told me to speak up ’cause he couldn’t hear me, so I held up my index finger and pointed to the sky.

  If only my father would hire good help.

  But when he did hire someone, he hired the wrong kind of help. Remember Donna? Donna May Johnson was not the type of person one would take into employment. Father said she was a strong girl and could lift two boxes of sodas and a slab of bacon at the same time. But she was a thief and a liar. She hid packs of Camels in her waistband underneath her apron. She had wads and wads of our napkins stuffed in her purse. She drank as many sodas as her strong arms could carry. And guess in whose kitchen our coffeemaker perks coffee? Still he would not fire her.

  Because of her, I had to boil pig ankle, pig feet, pig neck, pig ear, pig skin all last summer because his hired help with the strong biceps and deltoids wanted to take a week off to take her two sons to Disneyland. Didn’t my father know her boyfriend had moved to Florida four days before that? When Donna never showed up that Monday, he called home from the store telling me to get up, get ready because he was coming to get me. Did he not know I had books to read, thoughts to jot down, my moral view of the universe to form, the truth of the human condition to contemplate, a creative fire to fan, art to serve…? He came, got me, and all last summer I learned lima beans taste good with two chunks of lard in the soup, Grand Northern beans taste good with pieces of fatback floating in the juices, pinto beans taste good plain, and everything tastes good with hot sauce.

  I learned to scramble Davey’s eggs while spreading grape jelly and melted butter on Hugo’s biscuit. I knew everyone took ketchup and hot sauce on their home fries except Mr. Selby and Joe from Joe’s Body Shop next door. Mr. Selby took honey in his morning coffee because sugar made his hands shake, and honey, you can’t have shaking hands if you’re going to drive a limo all day, you know what I mean? And Jamie came in at 2:12 for a medium-sized Styrofoam bowl of spaghetti, ate it at the table, and lingered around thinking I’d give him more if he eyed the steam table long enough. “Hey, Mr. Cho, this here your son?” He looked down at my chest and could see that through my thin white T-shirt, I happened to be wearing a bra. “Damn, I thought you were—excuse me.” And his girlfriend gave a huh-huh of a laugh.

  I went to the back room where the sodas were stored, stood on top of the boxes, cursed Donna May, her boyfriend, her two sons, and the entire state of Florida, prayed for a miraculous enlightenment that would convince Father to terminate her employment, pointed two forefingers at my temples and commanded my hair to grow, grow, grow because not only was I a Korean-American, I was a Korean-American woman.

  Donna May called the following Friday and told my father to send her check to her new Florida address. She also said that she would appreciate it if he could write a nice reference letter about how she was a dependable employee because she was applying for a position as cook at an all-you-can-eat restaurant underneath the Sandy Shore Hotel. Why didn’t he write them the truth? Why did he tell them she was good help, good cook, good girl, while complaining to me how she always cook biscuit too long black bottom crazy girl and never call never call when she going to be late and she alway late, one day her boy got a flu, other day her other boy got a stomachache, and other day she catch her boy flu, and she sick. She never cook fatback right. Boil hog maw too little time. Customers all the time complaining hog maw too tough, hog maw too tough. Just like the rubber band.

  I had to stay the rest of the summer until Connie got hired and trained.

  * * *

  Father turned to me and insisted, “Angela mom store not here.”

  “What are you talking about? Thirteen more minutes down this street and Sunny Grocery stands on your right.”

  “Her store in northeast.”

  “Northeast, southwest, northwest, who cares?”

  “Her store in northeast.”

  “All right. All right. Her store’s in northeast.”

  “This is southeast,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said, and scratched off a patch of dried grease on the dashboard. “Abba, don’t forget to buy a box of King Edward cigars.”

  During that summer, Mr. Stuart came in for cigars and a turkey salad on wheat toast, hold the onions please. He asked me how old I was, what grade I was in, and what I wanted to be when I got older. He told me I was a bright young lady and he would talk to my boss about giving me the rest of the summer off. I told him my father was in the process of hiring new help, that he was presently undergoing a vigorous search for a competent and reliable employee. Mr. Stuart always walked out of the store with sandwich and cigar in hand looking back at me like I was wasting my life in front of a grill. I thought Connie would take over the grill, but she only brought bad luck.

  On her first day, when I was showing her how to scramble eggs, spread butter and jelly on a biscuit, and take the next order at the same time, she was pouring coffee into her Styrofoam cup. She didn’t stop pouring until the hot black liquid spilled over onto her hand. She dropped the cup. She dropped the coffeepot. I slipped on the puddle and glass trying to reach the rags next to the sink. My forearms landed on the grill. The two men waiting to give their orders laughed. The rest of the day Connie had to figure her own way around the steam table, while I soaked my arms in a bucket of cold water. I was grilled for life.

  The next day my father came home from Good Food with thick gauze wrapped around the middle finger of his right hand. Connie couldn’t pick up the box of plastic wrap to place on top of the shelf next to the stack of eggs. He told me she had said, “Mr. Cho, Mr. Cho, you got to help me.” He picked it up, but the box was covered with grease from Connie’s bacon-slicing hands, so it slipped down. The serrated edge slipped down and cut right through the flesh of his middle finger. I told him to get rid of Connie.

  “Dad, Angela’s mother isn’t even in the store on Saturdays,” I said now.

  “Oh yeah, she open on Saturday,” he said.

  “I know, but she doesn’t come in on Saturdays. She has people taking care of the store on Saturdays.”

  “Her store busy on Saturday.”

  “I know her store’s busy, but she’s not there.”

  “Most customers come in Saturdays.”

  “You’re absolutely right about that. Her store is busy on Saturdays,” I agreed.

  My father handed me a torn piece of paper with our grocery list written on it.

  Steak was spelled “stek”; Coke was spelled “cok”; collard greens was “collar greens”; cabbage was missing a b; and rice was spelled with an 1. My father was spelling all his words incorrectly. When would he learn that steak had a long “a” sound with a silent e? He had to understand that collars were flaps around the necks of shirts, blouses,
jackets, and coats. Collars weren’t greens. And our customers would die if we steamed and served lice. They would just die. And it wasn’t, What it is. It was, What is it. What is it? What is it?

  My father had to learn. He had to learn that he just could not trust any man who walked into the carry-out bearing what looked like boxes of brand-new Sony videocassette recorders. Even though they were only $100 each and he bargained the price down to $75, he should not have trusted them. I knew he was thinking, One for Ahn Joo’s room, one for his room when he bought two for $150 and thought it a steal. But couldn’t he tell immediately that those pictures pasted on the boxes were magazine cutouts?

  He didn’t even shut his car door that day because he was too excited about showing me his steal. He called from the garage, “Joo-yah, Joo-yah!” and when I didn’t answer, he came into my room with the two unopened boxes and placed them in the middle of my floor. I handed him a pair of scissors and he began to cut through the masking tape. Didn’t he know that brand-new Sony VCRs were not packaged with masking tape? He opened it, and we found a plastic bag full of dirt, pieces of glass, jagged rocks, bottle-caps, and cigarette butts. And he actually had the heart to open the second box hoping that that one was for real.…

  After reading the shopping list, I said, “I thought you were going to get all the sodas delivered?”

  “We buy RC,” he said.

  “Those bottles are too heavy for you to carry. You’re going to break your back.”

  “I can carry.”

  “It’s because of the delivery man, isn’t it? You didn’t like him and you couldn’t call them to ask for another delivery person. Is that it?” I asked.

  “It’s not heavy.”

  “Dad, you’re their customer. You know you can complain and request a different delivery person,” I said.

  “It’s all right. I can take care of it. I can take care,” he sang, and turned right driving through an open fence holding the “WELCOME TO FLORIDA MARKET—WASHINGTON—CASH-&-CARRY” sign. Behind the fence were rows of wholesale warehouses: Sol Sanders & Sons, Meat Wholesale, Bretcher’s Beef, Nello’s Candies & Notions, and all the other stores we needed to go to. Load and unload. Load and unload, that was what he needed me for.