Kimchi And Calamari Part 4

"What's her name?"

"Ok-hee."

I must have made a face.

"Ok-hee's a popular name in Korea," he said. "Like Brittney or Jessica in America."

"Or Kelly." Popular with me, for sure.

We stopped playing cards. Yongsu took a handheld computer out of his pocket. It was a j.a.panese video game he'd bought off a street vendor in Flushing. It played like a s.p.a.ce arcade, but involved morphed gra.s.shoppers searching for food and fighting four-legged bad guys.

"You ever heard the name Duk-kee before?" I asked.

"One of my best friends in Taegu was Duk-kee."

He p.r.o.nounced "Duk-kee" differently. More like "Took-ee." Not "Ducky," the way I say it.

"Do you know where you were born in Korea, Joseph?"

"Pusan," I said. "You been there?"

He nodded. "It's a two-hour drive from Taegu, where we lived. In the summer my parents took us to the fish market and beach in Pusan. My cousin goes to university there."

I wished I had a Korean cousin. Then I could write about him or her for my essay. I'd settle for just about any Korean relative at this point.

"Yongsu, can you think of any famous Koreans? Like how we have George Washington and Tiger Woods?"

His eyes sparkled like his mom's. "You ask funny questions."

"I'm not kidding," I said. "It's for a school paper."

Yongsu said there were plenty. His dad had shelves of Korean history books.

"Problem is they're written in Korean," he said.

"Yeah, that's a big problem for me." I glanced at my watch. It was five thirty. I was starving, and that burger smell was torturing me.

"Yongsu!" his mom called from the window. She shouted something in Korean, and even I could figure out it meant "Get your b.u.t.t inside."

On my way back to Shear Impressions, I practiced saying my Korean name, Duk-kee, the way Yongsu had p.r.o.nounced it. But it just didn't sound right coming out of my mouth.

Sounds like Baby Moses.

Mom came home from work as the sun was setting on Wednesday. She had dark circles under her eyes and a cardboard box of fried chicken in her hands.

"I had one heck of an afternoon perming crabby Mrs. Congelosi. After an hour of wrapping her whole head in medium-sized silver rollers-and listening to her complain about her daughter-in-law-she changes her mind and says she wants tight blue rollers. And then she had the nerve to tell me to hurry up! No way am I cooking," she declared.

Dad took the chicken from Mom and wrapped his arms around her. "Aristotle said beauty is a gift from G.o.d. Let me behold the present He's bestowed on me!"

"Oh, spare me your Greek philosophy and kiss me," she said.

They kissed, this drawn-out smooch that made me feel embarra.s.sed. Mom and Dad may be over forty and set in their suburban ways, but they still act like they've got raging hormones.

Luckily my sisters didn't see them lock lips. That always gets them squealing and making "yuck faces." They were in the family room, working on a thousand-piece Noah's Ark puzzle-which, of course, would never get a.s.sembled without a fight and pathetic pleas for help.

Dad opened the back sliding door. "I'm going to water the tomato plants."

"I'll set the table," I said.

"That would be nice, Joseph," Mom said, looking surprised. I don't usually jump up at the chance to help in the kitchen.

Alone at last with Mom. I could ask what she knew about the day I was born. Seeing Yongsu and his parents got me wondering even more. Plus, I still had to give Nash some more info for the search, since my talk with Dad was a bust.

"Can I ask you a few questions, Mom?"

She gave me a curious look. "Ask away."

"Do you know my birth parents' names, or where the adoption agency found me?" I folded the napkins in triangles, concentrating so I wouldn't have to look at her.

Mom started to say something, then paused. "I planned on sharing this with you at a special time. When you were...well, a bit older."

"Sharing what?" I asked.

"The information the adoption agency gave us. But it isn't much, Joseph."

"I really want to know whatever it is," I pleaded. "Now."

She took a breath before she began. "They told us they found you in the south of Pusan, by the waterfront, in a police station parking lot. An old woman was walking back from the fish market in the afternoon when she heard a baby crying. You were lying in a basket, wrapped in a blanket."

This sounded like the Baby Moses story. Had I floated down a river in Pusan too?

"What was my birth mother's name?"

"They didn't give us any names."

"What day did the old woman find me?"

"May seventh," Mom said, rubbing the top of my head with her fingertips.

"Well, since my birthday is May fifth, that meant my birth mother took care of me for two days. Maybe she felt torn and didn't want to give me up," I said.

Mom nodded. I noticed her eyes were watery. It made me feel kind of guilty.

"Move, Frazer!" Sophie yelled from the family room. That old boxer loved to park himself in inconvenient places, like right on top of the puzzle.

"What's got you thinking about all this, honey?" Mom asked.

Should I tell her about the essay? I wanted to, but she was practically crying already. I didn't want to make her feel like she wasn't a good-enough mom.

"I just met this new kid at school today, and he's Korean. That's all."

She nodded and started scooping mashed potatoes from the plastic container onto the plates. She didn't seem as upset anymore.

I kept imagining how it all happened in Pusan fourteen years ago. "Maybe it was a baby-s.n.a.t.c.hing conspiracy and the lady who found me was in on it," I said. "She could have kidnapped me, realized she was going to get caught, and then dropped me at the police station with that story so they wouldn't suspect anything."

"I don't think so," Mom answered. "The adoption agency told us that's just the way babies are left in Korea. Birth mothers pick spots where they know their babies will be safe and get discovered quickly."

Then Mom continued, as if trying to convince me she was right. "Unmarried Korean women can't keep their babies, Joseph. Having a child before marriage is taboo there, much worse than here. Mothers without husbands are outcasts. Sometimes they can't even find jobs or homes. I think your birth mother knew you both would have had a difficult life if she'd kept you."

"Why do Koreans make the mothers feel so bad?" I asked. "That's dumb."

"I've read that Koreans have mixed feelings about adoption. Some think it's unnatural, but others feel terrible that they don't do a better job taking care of children in their country. I think it's so sad, especially for the birth mothers."

I thought about Mrs. Han's face when I said I was adopted. I must have been a breathing reminder of all those abandoned babies back in her country. "Well, maybe my birth mother was married to my birth father and they just didn't have enough money to raise a kid," I said. "Or she could have gotten sick. Isn't that possible too?"

"I suppose," Mom said, nodding, although she looked doubtful.

Through the window I watched Dad reel the hose in. I better wrap this up.

"Do you know anything else? I mean, about me before America?"

Mom closed her eyes as if she were thinking hard.

"Your birth mother had tucked a note under your blanket. We never got it-and I'm sure it was written in Korean-but the adoption agency told us about it. She asked that you be raised Christian. That's part of the reason you came to us."

"What about my Korean name, Duk-kee?" I asked, just as Dad opened the sliding gla.s.s door.

"Just what I've told you already, honey. Your birth mother named you Duk-kee. It's a common name in Korea."

Dad came inside and washed his hands. "What are you two talking about?"

"Joseph was asking about the day he was born and his name. His Korean name," she said.

Dad nodded and looked at me. "Your mom was set on naming you Joseph after the saint when you arrived safely, but I was partial to Antonio."

"Yeah, Dad, I sure look like an Antonio." I was teasing, but I wasn't, too.

"We could've picked worse. You could've been baptized...Luigi!" He shouted it loud, intentionally exaggerating an Italian accent.

"Luigi?" I made my ultra-disgusted face.

"Don't pay any attention to your father. He wanted Gina to be named Philomena. I put my foot down on that one." She was uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cork from a bottle of merlot, Dad's favorite.

"Thanks for talking, Mom," I said. I felt bad inside. Like I should have said, "None of this matters. You're my real mom, after all."

"Anytime you wanna talk, Joseph, we talk."

I couldn't talk anymore, even if I wanted to. My head hurt from all this heavy info. I would call Nash and tell him everything after dinner, but for now I didn't want to think about it.

"Gina, you're messing up the whole puzzle!" Sophie shouted. "The camel's hump doesn't go behind the zebra's tail."

"Don't blame me. Noah brought too many animals on this ark," Gina whined. "Can you help us, Joseph?"

I sat on the carpet next to my sisters and picked up a puzzle piece-an orange striped tail. "Let's get this ark built so these fur b.a.l.l.s don't drown. Besides, chow's on the table and my stomach is growling like this tiger."

Starstruck.

"Go away," I shouted, knowing the Lilliputian knocking on the other side of the door was one of my sisters.

Who wouldn't be grouchy? I was trapped in my bedroom dungeon, slaving away on my essay. My doomed essay. Even with all the details I had given him, Nash still couldn't find anything. And his computer crashed. He said it had some sort of virus-probably caused by the malocchio since I wasn't wearing my goat horn.

It was still sunny out, and the sound of kids playing in the distance was d.o.g.g.i.ng me.

I picked up one of the library books. It had a map of North and South Korea on the cover and a photo of Mount Hallasan, the tallest mountain in South Korea.

I reread the a.s.signment sheet for the twentieth time: "Your essay must fully explore your ancestry and reflect on its impact on your life."

Why did Mrs. Peroutka have to turn social studies into soul searching?

"Guess what, Joseph!" Gina squeaked from the hallway.

"What?"

"We're making chocolate chip milkshakes!"

"Bring one up to me. I'm busy."

I heard Gina run downstairs and then back upstairs again. "Mommy says no food out of the kitchen. You know the rule. Come down," she pleaded again.

"Maybe later."

After scanning a hundred pages in the book, my yellow notepad was still wordless. The "I've Got Nothing to Say Korean Heritage Tale" by Joseph Calderaro.

Dozens and dozens of Korean faces stared up at me from the pages. People from the Yi Dynasty all the way to the Korean War, and yet I couldn't find a way to get started. To stick me in the story.

A couple of pictures showed Koreans who led this surprise counterattack when j.a.pan invaded in 1910. I never knew that j.a.pan invaded Korea. Or that these sc.r.a.ppy Korean nationalists waged such a fight against the odds to resist. They reminded me of minutemen from the Revolutionary War, except with black hair, b.u.t.tonhole eyes, and swords instead of rifles.