Fox Girl (14 page)

“Is that why you wanted to work Club Foxa? Chazu?” I asked.

Sookie nodded. “The day he came to the apartment looking for Duk Hee, he told me to come to him if I needed help.” She giggled. “He got more than he expected.”

“He didn't remember saying that?” I guessed.

“Hyun Jin, he didn't even remember me. Or Duk Hee,” she said. “But once I reminded him who I was, and told him I didn't have anyplace to stay, he brought me back here for the night. I decided not to leave.”

I forced a laugh. “And he let you?”

“What could he say?” Sookie bit back a smile. “He's basically a nice guy. Really,” she insisted when she saw my frown. “He's okay.”

“And what do you have to do for him?” I studied her face, searching for the Sookie I used to know.

“Drink with me,” Sookie said. She tipped the High Life into her mouth, then shook the empty beer bottle in my face. “It's boring by myself. I hate when Chazu leaves me by myself.” She added the bottle to a row of seven she had started on the counter.

I held up my cola. “I am drinking.”

“Ugh,” Sookie grimaced. “Chazu said that stuff rots your teeth. Be healthy, drink beer.”

I shrugged, then nodded. “Only if I can sit in a chair that doesn't move,” I said, struggling to stand up.

Sookie lurched into the kitchen and brought back two beers. “How's your mother?” she asked, handing me a bottle. “Still as bitchy as ever?”

“Sookie,” I warned.

“Still saying shit like, ‘Blood will always tell'?” She mimicked my mother's shrill and disapproving voice. “As if her blood runs gold and mine—and yours—is just shit.”

I was surprised that Sookie knew what my mother said about her, and though I didn't like it, I didn't want to hear Sookie's criticism. “I'm leaving now,” I said.

“No, don't!” Sookie tried to grab my hand and dropped her bottle. Beer gushed onto the carpet. “Shit,” Sookie muttered at the floor, then, looking at me, flung her arms wide. “Stay,” she said. “You left me when I really needed you. Don't leave now.”

“I didn't leave you,” I said, shaking my head, denying her words though I knew they were true. “You're the one who left, remember?” When she continued to stare at me, I fluttered my hands at the spilled beer. “You better clean this up.”

Ignoring the mess, Sookie threw herself into one of the chairs at the glass table. “Don't you know you've always been the one who left?”

Scowling at her, I demanded: “What are you talking about?”

“You left me,” Sookie repeated. “Again. And again. And again.”

I shook my head at her nonsense and watched the beer seep into the carpet. “I'll clean it up,” I sighed. Marching into the bathroom, I grabbed a towel off the rack and returned to mop up the spill.

Sookie had gotten herself another beer. She took a sip, then frowned at me. “You were leaving me from the moment you were born.”

“Sookie,” I grunted, kneeling to dab at the puddle of beer, I have to tell you, you are not making sense.” Most of the alcohol had soaked into the carpet. “You didn't know me when I was born,” I pointed out to her. “You were only, what? Two?” I righted the bottle and, seeing that it was still half-full, took a swig.

She squinted at me, then nodded so hard she almost slipped off the chair. “I did know you. And at first I hated you,” she said. “I hated you because I thought you were killing my mother. She screamed and screamed and I thought she was dying.”

Shaken by her words, though I knew she was just on a drunken ramble, I threw the dampened towel at her feet. “Shut up. Shut up right now. You're scaring me.”

“Then you popped out—pop!” Sookie rubbed a finger on the inside of her cupped mouth to make a smacking sound. “I thought, how could something so small cause so much trouble? I thought, I could crush you with one hand, that's how small you were.”

I stood up and leaned over her. “Sookie,” I snarled. “You're drunk.”

Sookie tilted her head back and looked into my face. “One hand,” she murmured, ignoring me. She placed her hand against my face, right against the birthmark. “I put my hand here, just like this, the day you were born. I was going to kill you for hurting my
omoni.
”

I flinched at her touch, pulling away.

“But it fit my hand perfectly,” Sookie continued, almost dreamily. “And I thought it was a sign that you belonged to me, that you were marked for me. Isn't that silly?” She smiled, then frowned. “It wasn't as dark then as it is now, though.”

I felt dizzy, sick from the beer and the soda churning in my stomach. “You're fucked up,” I croaked. “You don't know what you're saying. I don't know what you're saying.”

She squinted at me. “For someone so smart, you sure are dumb. I'm saying Duk Hee's your
omoni.
We're sisters.” She belched and reeled away from the table to add the empty bottle to her collection.

Stunned, I stared at her trying to place the bottle next to the others. It kept tipping over, threatening to topple the others in line. When I found my voice, it was weak: “What? What? What?” is all I could say.

She glanced at the bottle of beer I had left on the floor. “You done with that?” she asked.

“What!” I screamed, my voice gaining strength, exploding. Jumping up, I kicked the bottle, sending it clattering against the wall. The dregs from the bottom foamed up and dribbled out. “Sookie!” I marched up to her, grabbed her shoulders and shook. “Tell me the truth. Duk Hee's my mama? We're sisters?”

Stumbling against me, she wrapped her arms around my neck. “Duk Hee's your mother and my mother, too,” she repeated, her words starting to slur.

I pushed her off me. “You better not be fucking with me,” I yelled. “I know you're angry with me for not helping you last year, but if you're making up lies about me, about my mother, about my daddy—” I stopped, my heart suddenly in my throat. “Is my father really my father?”

Sookie sighed. “He's yours.”

I let out the breath I'd been holding. It came out as a sob.

Sookie wrapped her arms around herself and dropped her head. “I was jealous that you had him,” she admitted. “I saw what he gave you, where you lived, and I was angry that Duk Hee gave you away instead of me.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to think straight. “That means . . . Duk Hee and my father?” I whirled away from her and stomped to the door. “I don't believe you!” I shouted as I stormed out. “I don't believe you.”

But I did.

It explained my father's affection for Sookie and my mother's hatred of me. And I believed because a part of me chose to believe; much as I looked down on Sookie, I loved her—even then.

“You do believe me,” Sookie taunted as I ran down her stairwell. “And you'll come back—remember what your
mother
always says: blood will tell.”

 

I searched for Duk Hee, wanting to hear from her mouth whether or not she was my first mother, my true mother. I wandered the streets until dawn, circling the bars she used to hang out at—Club Foxa and Angel, Club Rose and Tulips—eyeing the women emerging from the alleys nearby.

I stared at one couple, convinced that the woman was Duk Hee, until she broke away from her Joe and charged at me. “What?” she bellowed, thrusting her chest out. “What're you looking at?”

“How much-i? How much-i?” the GI called from behind her, whistling for me to join them. I tucked my chin toward my chest, looked down and hurried away. With nowhere else to go, I made my way back to Lobetto's house.

In the dim morning light, I pounded on the door and when no one answered, yelled, “Lobetto.”

“Hey!” Lobetto hissed as he came up behind me. “Stupid, making so much noise.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I turned to go, but he grabbed my elbow.

“You okay?” he asked. “Not that I care, but if you start crying you might ruin my mother's time.”

“Huh?” I asked.

He pointed his chin toward the apartment. “She picked up a Joe last night.” Yanking my arm, he ordered: “Come.”

We walked around toward the back of the house. Next to the pit where they hosed off their dishes, Lobetto had nailed blankets against the wall, creating a triangle of private space. Inside, tight and dark as a fox's den, was just enough room for a mattress.

Balancing a glass lamp on his lap, Lobetto groped under the mattress and pulled out an army lighter. “This is all that my father left behind,” Lobetto said as he lit the lamp. He gestured to a small pile of junk on the mattress, then added: “Besides me, that is.” He touched the mattress, the army lamp, the lighter, a compass with a limp arrow that hung south, a rusted knife, and two empty St. Paulie Girl bottles. “That's his favorite beer,” he said, caressing the green glass. “Beautiful, huh?”

Then he looked at me. “What's wrong, Hyun Jin?” he asked, the first question he had ever asked me with compassion.

I opened my mouth, but I didn't know how to say that I wasn't who I thought I was because everyone in my life had been lying to me. I couldn't explain to him, or to myself, how I felt—betrayed and angry, but also pleased and guilty. It was ironic: when we were younger, I had harbored the secret fantasy that Sookie and I were really sisters. But now, to have that dream become a reality horrified me. I was disgusted to learn that we shared the same whorish blood, that the inside of my body was as tainted as the outside. The words became jumbled in my mind and stuck in my throat. “Soo-Soo-Sookie,” I stammered.

“Huh,” he grunted. “Don't worry about her. She's doing good.”

I remembered his mother, who was at that moment with an American Joe, and worried that I had embarrassed Lobetto. I didn't want him to think that I judged him or his mother.

Lobetto lifted his hand and I flinched out of habit. But instead of thumping my head, he cupped his hand gently under my chin. He turned my head toward and way from the lamp-light, so that I faced light and shadow in turns. “We are the same,” he announced. “Half in one world, half in the other.”

“I don't know what to believe,” I said. “I can't tell what's true and what's not.”

Lobetto pressed his thumb against my lips. “Shh,” he whispered. “You'll know what's right.”

I remember thinking only that my mother and Sookie were right. Blood will tell. Like the truth, it comes rushing to the surface, staining the body, a blueprint for life.

I had the birthmark to prove it.

I woke with my face pressed into the seam made by Lobetto's back and the bare mattress that smelled like sweat and grass. The blanket hung low over my head, trapping my breath hot against my face, but my feet felt cold, exposed to the open-air kitchen. I didn't know when I had fallen asleep; one moment I was ranting about Sookie, and the next I was wrapped around Lobetto's stinky body. Pushing away from him, I went to wash at the hose that hung from the kitchen wall. I sprayed my face with the water that screeched from the pipes, then aimed the water at my feet.

“What're you doing?” Lobetto grumbled. Holding one corner of the blanket up, he poked his head out of his tent.

I turned off the water. I looked for a towel to dry my hands, but when I didn't find any, combed my fingers through my hair. “I'm going to find Duk Hee,” I said, wincing as I pulled through a knot. “I need to know if she's my . . .” I tried to make myself say “mother,” but my throat tangled around the word. “I just need to know.”

“Humph,” Lobetto grunted, raising his eyes. He didn't seem surprised, but most times it was hard to tell what he felt. Scooting back, he let the flap of blanket drop between us.

I marched over to his tent and flung the blanket aside. “What do you mean by that?” I demanded.

Lobetto lay on his back, eyes closed. “I didn't say anything,” he grumbled.

I kicked him with my toe. “I heard you. You said, ‘Humph.' Like you always do when you think I'm being stupid.”

Lobetto opened one eye. “You are stupid.” He grinned, then held up his palms when I doubled my fists. “Joking, joking.” Lobetto sat up and frowned. “But seriously, why do you want to see Duk Hee?”

I planted my fists on my hips. “Didn't you hear what I just said?” Taking a breath, I let the words rush out. “She's my mother. At least that's what Sookie said.”

He stared at me. “So?”

I tapped my foot. “So?” I screeched. “So I need to find out the truth.”