Fox Girl (32 page)

I shrugged, trying to hide my nervousness. “Yoon said it was my problem.”

“My turn to hold the toy,” Minnie said, stroking Myu Myu on the back.

“Just be sure it doesn't become Yoon's problem,” Chinke said. “You won't like the way she deals with problems.”

Sookie eyed the crowded room. “Where do we unpack?” she asked.

Froggie jumped up, leaving her sleeping mat in the middle of the kitchen space. “Here,” she said, hopping over a girl behind her. “Next to Ari.” She prodded Ari to scoot over. “You're going to have to get your own futon and blankets. You have cash?” She rattled on without waiting for an answer. “If not, ask Yoon. She'll add it to what you already owe her.” She watched Sookie dump her bag onto Ari's futon and shook her head. “And you'll need new clothes,” she sighed.

Sookie held up a floral halter top and orange short shorts. “What's wrong with my clothes?” she glowered.

Ari sat up and snorted. “Country bumpkins.”

Froggie giggled, patting Sookie on the arm before she could retort. “Ari!” she scolded. “We were all like that when we first got here.” To Sookie and me, she explained, “You don't want to look like cheap country girls from Waimanalo. We're
hostesses.
”

Trying to sound disinterested, I forced a yawn, then asked: “Waimanalo? Where's that?”

Ari got to her feet and stretched, arms overhead, her back an arc of muscle and grace. “Nowhere.”

“It's nowhere you want to be,” Froggie added, tapping her chin. “I don't even think it's on this island, is it?”

Ari snorted. “Who cares. Low-class dirt farms. That's what I ran away from in Korea.”

Sookie, Myu Myu, and I dozed, resting during the next couple of hours, as the other girls got up to have a cup of tea and get ready for work. They seemed to have a schedule already in place; there weren't many arguments over the bathroom. One girl, who I later found out was Lulu, ran into the apartment after her turn had passed. She hurried to the bathroom and pounded on the locked door. “Let me in,” she begged. Then, turning to the other girls in the room, asked, “Who's in there? Chinke, Chinke, let me come in, too!” After a muffled answer, Lulu cupped her hand to the door and shouted, “Shit! Yoon was here? Thanks for covering for me about Stevenson. I owe you, I owe you! When Stevenson marries me, I'll pay you back for everything!”

“
If
Stevenson marries her,” said a girl, someone I hadn't met yet, sponging herself from the sink. “As if that will ever happen.”

“You're just jealous,” Minnie said, “because Lulu found someone serious.” She fluttered her eyes at the sink girl, waiting for her false lashes to dry.

Sookie and I sat next to Minnie, cross-legged on her sleeping mat, watching her put on her makeup. “Remember when Duk Hee put lipstick on us?” I asked. “She said that makeup would hide our true faces from American eyes.”

Sookie stared at me, frowning. “No,” she said. She poked a long finger into Minnie's cosmetics bag. “Can I use this?” she asked, pointing to a frosty blue shadow.

Minnie nodded, but groused, “Next time, get your own.”

After I covered as much of my birthmark as I could, I lay back down, letting Myu Myu crawl over my stomach. When the girls called a taxi and began filing out the door, I got to my feet, lifting the baby to my hip.

“What are you doing?” Chinke demanded.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You can't bring a kid to the club,” she said. “It's against the law.”

“I told you: trouble,” Sookie sang out as she brushed past me and out the door with Minnie.

“But, but . . .” I bit my lip, not knowing what else to say.

“Don't do that,” Chinke scolded. “You'll get lipstick on your teeth.”

I smiled despite the knot in my stomach, remembering that Duk Hee had told me the same thing when Sookie and I were children playing with her makeup. “Your father eats his lips, too,” she had laughed at me. “But it doesn't matter so much if a man has no lips.”

“I don't know why you're smiling,” Chinke complained. “This is a problem.”

I stopped smiling. “I don't know what to do,” I wailed. “I have to bring her.”

“Wait,” Chinke ordered, then stuck her head out the door. “Froggie, come here a second.”

Froggie clomped to the door on pencil-spiked shoes. “What?” she said. “I'm ready to leave.”

“You're a mother,” said Chinke. “You know about these things.”

Chinke and Froggie frowned down at Myu Myu, who had eaten a small bowl of rice and was happily gumming the collar of my dress.

“Well,” she drawled, “I left mine in Itaewon.” She tapped her foot, then said, “I know.” She rushed into the bathroom and came out with a small green bottle.

“NyQuil?” Chinke said, squinting at the bottle.

“It works,” Froggie said. “Give her a spoonful, maybe two, and she'll sleep through the night. No problem.”

My hand shook as I took the bottle. “Do I have to leave her?” I rasped. “Alone?”

“What else can you do?” Froggie shrugged, and stomped outside.

Chinke patted my arm. “She'll be all right,” she said, but her voice wavered.

I nodded. Twisting open the cap, I sniffed the bottle and recoiled from the fumes.

“Look,” Chinke coaxed, “just do it for now, and I'll ask around, see if maybe I can find some girl who married out that can watch your kid for some extra spending money.”

She lent me her futon, which I unfolded in a corner. Laying Myu Myu in the center, I forced some of the green medicine into her mouth. She cried and I rocked her until Chinke pulled me up.

“We have to go,” she said. “We're already late; we'll be the last ones there.”

I pushed some pillows and bags around the futon, blocking Myu Myu in. She whimpered when I stood and I squatted back down to kiss her tears. She blinked. I kissed her eyes closed and this time they stayed shut when I stood.

“Come on, come on,” Chinke said, urging me up. “You can visit her during your break.”

 

Yoon's club was only a few blocks away, but not wanting to sweat in our makeup and dresses, we took a taxicab. “They call this ‘Korea-moku' Street,” Chinke said as the cab stopped in front of a small corner bar.

I could see why. “Korea-moku” street was comprised of a string of dingy-looking bars and Korean restaurants. Signs announcing naked girls and
kalbi
glittered in English and Korean. Across the street, between a club called Rose and a
pornu
shop, I saw a market advertising kimchee and hair perms.

Yoon's bar was modeled on the Korean Club Foxa. “Same same, only mine's bigger. Better. American,” Yoon liked to boast. Chinke led me through the curtained door and into the dark, windowless room. I recognized a song that hit the Korea Foxa just before I left—“Spinning Wheel”—and for a moment I was spinning in time and place, unsure of where I was. I panicked, my heart pumping in time to the music, looking around, expecting to see Bar Mama and Kitchen Auntie, and the uniformed
gomshi
GIs bellying up to the stage with bills in their fists. Chinke hustled me past the bar, where she waved a greeting to the bartender, past the stage where Froggie was already rubbing her bared breasts against the pole, and toward the booths.

Instead of a blur of khaki uniforms, the men lounging at the bar and in the booths wore flowered shirts and jeans, T-shirts and shorts, soft-colored pullovers and slacks. In the dim and smoky light, I made out varying degrees of brown skin. Some of the men looked Korean. Or Chinese. Or Japanese. Or some combination with too much mixture of features for my eyes to focus on, to identify. Men who looked like Lobetto.

I spotted Sookie sipping a drink in a booth, squeezed against an enormously large man with pale skin, black hair, slanted eyes. He could have been Japanese or Chinese or white; it was hard to tell because his face was obscured by fat.

Chinke saw where I was looking and said something under her breath.

I shook my head, pointing to my ears. Leaning closer, I asked, “What?” I could barely hear my own voice above the music.

“I said,” Chinke yelled, cupping a hand to her mouth, “your friend works fast. She's already latched on to one of our regulars.” She shook her head and when the music stopped for a change of dancers, she explained: “Fat Danny's been looking for a girlfriend, but most of us can't stand him because he's so fat. You have to balance on that stomach mountain, bouncing up and down on a little pinkie penis—scary! I always think I'm going to slip off and crack my head.”

“A shy ugly,” I said, but Chinke didn't hear; she was hurrying to the last booth, where Yoon was bent over an opened notebook.

“We're here,” Chinke panted.

“You're late,” Yoon said without looking up. She scribbled something in her book. “You both owe me forty-five minutes.” She snapped her book shut and stood.

“It's almost my time on stage,” Chinke said, backing away. “I'm going to go now, get ready . . .”

Yoon ignored Chinke. “I hope you're not late because of that
tweggi
bastard,” she sneered.

I bit my lip to silence my retort. Eyes narrowed, I shook my head.

“That's good,” Yoon drawled. “I brought you here. I can send you back.”

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.

Yoon stared at me for a few more minutes, then, apparently satisfied, she nodded and jerked her head, beckoning me to follow. We walked past the restrooms and the out-of-order video game, to two doors. “These are the backrooms,” she said, “where we take any customers asking for special attention.”

“How much?” I asked.

“You broke the first rule,” Yoon said. “Never be the first to mention money. If he asks, you say, ‘You tell me' and play hard to get until they name the right price.”

“Which is?” I prompted.

Yoon pursed her lips. “You need manners,” she said. “Tell them they can use the rooms for fifty dollars for half an hour. That's rent to me,” she stressed. “Anything extra between you and the customer is between you and the customer.”

The first night, I wasn't able to get anyone into the backroom. “Too bad,” said Minnie. “That's where the real money is—make them order champagne,
pupus,
stretch out the time with eating and drinking, rack up the commission before you even get on your back.”

Sookie had better luck. Fat Danny couldn't stop looking at her, and she stared at him as if he was the most fascinating man she had ever met. At the beginning of the night, I had tried to join them, but Sookie glared at me. “He's mine,” she said. Her voice was light, and she laughed as if she were teasing both me and him, but her eyes were hard and I knew that she was warning me off.

Fat Danny had chuckled, his jowls slapping his neck. “Who's your friend, Sookie?” he asked, his English spiced with an accent I came to identify as local to Hawai‘i. “You know, there's plenny of me for go around.”

Sookie introduced us, and we taught him a few Korean folk songs that we sang in high, girlish voices. He told us a few jokes that I didn't understand, but laughed at anyway. And then I left. I knew Sookie wasn't joking when she had marked him as her own.

I worked the way I always worked, the way Lobetto and Sookie had taught me; I cruised the room, targeting the men who were alone and nursing their drinks. I got them to laugh at my mangled English, giggling over my own stumbling tongue. I let my hands wander, stroking their muscles—or lack of muscles—telling them they were big men but treating them like babies. I even cut up their meat for them, popping the tiny morsels into their mouths. And all the time, I encouraged them to drink, knowing that each beer or vodka tonic or tequila lessened my debt by a few pennies.

After a few hours, when Yoon disappeared into one of the backrooms with a regular, I left the booths and cornered Chinke in the bathroom. “I'm taking my break,” I told her. “How do I get home?”

Chinke's eyes drooped so that they were almost closed. “Don't be stupid,” she said, slurring her words slightly; she had spent the last hours bouncing quarters and drinking.

“Come on, Chinke,” I said.

She shrugged, then swayed to the sink to fix her makeup. She opened her eyes wide, and with exaggerated care applied her lipstick.

“Chinke,” I growled.

“All right, all right.” She dug through her purse for a napkin, blotted her mouth, then sketched a quick map on the flip side of the napkin.

I rushed back to the apartment, taking off my shoes to jog most of the way, and found Myu Myu motionless, curled into herself, butt in the air. I tiptoed into the room, bent over her inert form, and waited for her breath. She snuffled, exhaling a long breath, and I released my own. Once I knew she was still alive, that she hadn't been killed off by the NyQuil, I backed away and silently shut the door behind me.

In my scramble to get back to the club before Yoon noticed and penalized me for my absence, I left the map next to the baby. After several minutes of walking, I looked around and realized I didn't know where I was. I slowed, continuing for several blocks—past girls dressed like I was, girls who hooted at me, glared at me, warned me away from their sections of the street—and came to the ocean. I circled back, trying not to panic. I couldn't even remember the name of Yoon's club. I backtracked, turning circles, until I finally recognized a Korean market near Yoon's bar.

“Where were you?” Sookie screeched when I ran in. “The place is closing—are you trying to get us both in trouble?”