Kimchi & Calamari (10 page)

Ok-hee touched her barrette, the way girls always do when they're talking about hair.

 

Dad was reading in his recliner when I got home. “There's blueberry pie in the fridge,” he called from behind
The Great Gatsby.

“I'm stuffed.” I walked past him toward the stairs.

He looked like he expected me to start a conversation. Why did it always have to be me?
He
could've asked how things went at the Hans.

I hadn't even reached the top step when Mom's questions began. “Tell me all about it,” she said, walking out of the bathroom with a mud mask on her face.

“Apparently I fit the profile of a Pusaner perfectly,” I said. I explained how the Hans described Pusaners as straight-talking, no-nonsense types.

Mom laughed. With the mud caked on her face, she looked like a sci-fi creature trapped in a bathrobe. “That
sounds like you, all right. Did you enjoy the dinner?”

“Korean mothers make huge quantities of food, just like Italian moms,” I said, patting my stomach. “And the
bulgogi
was awesome.”

“I'm glad you liked it, honey. Next time I see Mrs. Han, I'll ask for her recipe. We Calderaros need to lay off the cream sauce anyway. So they treated you well?”

“I guess…,” I said with hesitation.

“What is it, Joseph?”

“They don't think I'm one of them.
Real
Korean. I can tell.”

Mom looked at me, long and hard. “You've got ‘real' written all over your beautiful face,” she said, and she kissed my forehead before sending me off to bed.

N
ash was standing at the bottom of my driveway when I headed for the bus stop the next morning. He hadn't walked to my house before school since we carried dinosaur backpacks and feared the bully with a water gun. Something was up.

“We got an e-mail back on your search,” he said as the bus screeched in the distance. He looked like he was bursting to get this out, but serious, too.

My stomach fluttered. “What's it say?”

He pulled a paper from his backpack. “Here, read it.”

I stared at the telephone number printed on the bottom of the e-mail. Nash hovered next to me, anxious to hear what I'd say.

“You think this guy Jae is for real? Maybe he's trying to rope me into a sucker scam, like ‘Buy this fail-proof adoption search kit for only $49.95.'”

Nash shrugged his shoulders. “He sounds like he's telling the truth.”

The school bus pulled up and we got on.

“You gonna call him, Joseph?” Nash asked.

“I think so. I mean, what have I got to lose, right?”

“That's the spirit. Tell me what he says, okay?”

“Definitely.”

“Joseph, what's the haps, Drummer Boy!” Frankie called as I stepped on the bus.

“Hey dude,” I answered, but I kept walking.

I would phone St. Louis after school today. After all, Jae could be my brother. I just might find something out before writing my revised essay. Talk about a drummer's lucky timing.

But then why did my palms feel so sweaty?

The world was suddenly spinning fast for a Friday morning.
Very
fast.

 

The rest of the day dragged like somebody stuffed an extra five hours in it. How could I concentrate on textbooks when I had a bombshell phone number in my pocket?

Finally I arrived home to a hushed house. Nobody but Frazer chewing away on a bone. Dad was working, Mom was at the shop with Gina, and Sophie had soccer. For the first time in ages, I skipped a snack. I even thought about skipping the phone call—too much pressure. But I silenced Chicken Calderaro. I needed to talk to Jae.

My hands were shaking as I pulled the paper from my pocket and dialed the phone number.

Right away someone answered, but it wasn't a guy.

“Yes, this is Jae. I'm happy to talk with you, Joseph.” She had a soft voice and an Asian accent, though not as thick as Mrs. Han's.

In the background I heard a little kid's voice.

Jae asked how old I was, where I lived, what grade I was in, and even what my hobbies were. I felt like she was one of those mall walkers with a clipboard doing consumer research.

“So you think you might know about my, umm, my birth mother?” I finally blurted out.

She paused. “Maybe. You see, I grew up in—”

Suddenly I got an earful of long-distance crying.

“I'm sorry, Joseph. My son is upset. He needs something to eat. Can we talk another day?”

“Yeah, sure, I'll call you back,” I said, speaking loud over the wails, but feeling low. After fourteen years of waiting, I got preempted by a kid with the munchies.

 

“Mine!”

“Uh-uh, mine!”

What a painful déjà vu. It was a bright warm day and I sat staring at the computer screen that was just as blank as my brain. Sophie and Gina were in the kitchen arguing about whose hiccups were louder. It sounded like they'd been inhaling helium.

“Finish your lunch,” Dad snapped as their pup-squeaks grew more annoying. I could see he was tired of the Mr. Mom Saturday Routine. Finally Sophie and Gina
jumped up from the table, ignoring their half-eaten sandwiches and apple slices, and ran outside to play.

I had three more days to finish Version Two of my essay and I still hadn't figured out what to write. I couldn't include what I'd learned from Jae because I hadn't learned a thing. I'd called her back twice and both times I got an answering message with her son singing “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Forget writer's block—I had writer's blockhead. How could I write about
anything
when I knew something big was about to reveal itself via St. Louis?

Yesterday I'd scribbled a half-page tribute to Nonno Calderaro. I mean, he was a gutsy guy. Dad told me that when Nonno arrived in Manhattan, a French immigrant pulled a knife on him and stole his wallet. He chased the thief in the heat for an hour until he caught him. But I couldn't fold it into a story that felt like mine. I kept getting hung up on the essay topic: “
Your
Heritage.”

Next I tried to summarize the history of Korea. But I hadn't reached the thirteenth century before I got mixed up about who invaded who and what the Mongols had to do with Korea, anyway.

And in a last, lame attempt, I'd typed “A Tribute to a Gold Horn” on top of the page. But all I could think about was Dad's Mad Meter racing on my birthday, Mom's
mal
occhio
musings, and Sophie starting a Save the Goats campaign. It was stand-up comedy material, but a dark kind of funny that I didn't want to share.

So far, the computer screen was still blank.

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking lemonade and eating leftovers. “Want some calamari, Joseph?” he called.

“Thanks, but I prefer my squid straight from the sea to the frying pan.” Mom travels to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, just to get catch-of-the-day squid from the boats off the Raritan Bay, and you can tell. Her fried calamari is the perfect combination of gummy squid and light, crispy batter. But to me, seafood leftovers taste soggy. Mom says she's turned me into a spoiled calamari connoisseur at an early age.

“What are you working on, Joseph?” Dad called.

“My essay.”

“Which one?”

“For social studies, the ancestry story.” Was he that out of touch? This essay had only started World War III in our house.

“How's it coming?” he asked as he sprinkled red pepper on his food.

“I might as well be writing instructions for constructing an artificial kneecap.”

He turned his chair to face me. “Why?”

“I don't know what to write.”

“How about your visit with the Hans? Mom said they shared a lot with you.”

I wanted to give Dad the silent treatment, because he hadn't been interested in my visit earlier. But then I glanced at him, and I saw this fragile look in his eye, like the beluga whales at Sea World.

So I told him that I used chopsticks at the Hans' house, and that the food was awesome.

“Kimchi is even hotter than Mom's jalapeño poppers,” I said. Dad and I are the only ones in the family who can stomach those. They go down your throat like mini-fireballs, but they're delicious.

I even told Dad what Mr. Han said about people from Pusan.

“They're straight shooters, huh? You sure fit that description,” he said, laughing. “So why aren't you writing? Sounds like you've got some material to work with.”

I looked outside. Sophie and Gina were seated on the glider swing, squealing as they soared higher and higher. One minute my sisters were ready to kill each other, and the next they were giddy. Kind of like Dad and me.

“Know what, Dad? I think I'm an ethnic sandwich.
One hunk of Joseph slapped between a slice of Italian bread and a mound of Korean sticky rice.”

He walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Maybe that's not such a bad combination.”

“That's 'cause it's not you,” I said, staring down at the floor.

“I'm not you, Joseph, and I can't imagine how it feels to be adopted. But I know how it feels to wonder if I'm doing what I was meant to do. I ask myself that almost every night as I rinse out my sponges and load my ladders back on the truck. And I'm no psychologist, but I know you're a fine kid. The best you could be—Italian
and
Korean. Maybe that's the angle you oughtta take for your essay.”

“Maybe shmaybe,” I replied.

Dad still didn't understand. But he
had
given me something to write about.

 

I turned in that blasted essay at the end of class on Tuesday. I'd stayed up past midnight finishing it, and I couldn't wait to hand it to Mrs. Peroutka.

“Joseph, the Ethnic Sandwich.” A fifteen-hundred-word ancestry tale that read like a buffet. A little about Buddha Baby's American debut, or how I arrived at JFK Airport from Korea. A little about my grandparents'
tailor shop. A bit about Dad's boxing past. And some on those straight-talkers from Pusan. Finally, I threw in a mini-lesson on Italian superstitions and the
malocchio
.

I knew this version wouldn't win a contest, but this time it was the God Honest Truth from a former Cub Scout: how it felt to be Joseph Calderaro—Korean on the outside, Italian on the inside, and sometimes the other way around.

And I wouldn't say this around my parents or Mrs. Peroutka, but I felt proud of “Joseph, the Ethnic Sandwich.”

It was
my
story.

A
hh, the sounds of silence.

I came home from school a few days later and was glad the only mouth nearby was connected to Frazer's snout—and he was snoring. I'd spent the whole lunch period listening to Frankie's verbal delusions about which top-tier girl he was asking to the Farewell Formal. I couldn't stand hearing any more. It reminded me of how my year-long plan to ask Kelly had gone up in flames.

The empty house gave me a chance to concentrate on the phone call I had to make to Jae. I poured a glass of
iced tea and dialed Jae's number.

“Is this a good time to talk?” I asked.

“Yes, Kevin is sleeping. And I'm taking a break after a busy day of auditing.”

Jae had her own accounting firm and worked from home. I told her Mom and Dad both owned businesses. Jae especially liked hearing that Mom owned a hair salon. I could just imagine the two of them talking about what hairstyles were hot here and in the Midwest. Jae said she'd never visited New Jersey, though she knew the “Which exit?” joke.

“I've never been to Saint Louis,” I told her.

She and Kevin liked to visit the Missouri Botanical Garden. “We feed these giant Japanese koi fish there. Every time Kevin spots one, he splashes and screams with joy. I think the fish want to scream when they see him, too.”

I laughed. It felt like I had known Jae forever. She was so easy to talk to.

“About Kevin,” I said, “his name doesn't sound too Korean.”

“You're right. My husband, Scott, is from Independence, Missouri.”

That surprised me. I'd expected Jae to be like Mrs. Han, 100 percent Korean, even in her choice of a husband.

I told Jae about my dinner at the Hans. She giggled when I called myself the Master Chopstick Impersonator. But she interrupted when I said the Hans were the first real Koreans I'd ever met.

“What do you mean
real
?”

“Authentic, not adopted,” I explained.

“So that makes someone a real Korean and you
not
real?”

“Yeah, being adopted Korean is different. It's sort of like wearing one of those fake stones they sell on TV—a cubic zirconium—and passing it off as a diamond.”

“I suggest you consider yourself a diamond, only cut differently,” Jae said.

I looked up at the kitchen clock as we spoke. Almost dinnertime. A hungry Calderaro might burst through the door any minute. So like a true Pusaner, I cut to the chase. “Do you know anything about me, Jae?”

“It's possible,” she answered cautiously.

She explained that her Aunt Hea had a baby fourteen years ago. A baby, she said, that nobody talked about and nobody ever saw. “My uncle left my aunt and my three little cousins. He had a drinking problem, and he'd lost his job. Shortly after he moved out, I remember that my aunt looked fatter in the belly. But it's the Korean way not to talk much about these things.”

Half of my brain concentrated on what Jae was saying; the other half raced wildly.

Jae could be my cousin. I could have sisters and brothers in Pusan. My mother's name could be Hea!

“The day you were found, May seventh…I remember it because in Korea, it's close to Children's Day, May fifth. My parents were having a party, and my aunt brought my cousins. Her face looked sunken, and she didn't have a big belly anymore. She didn't have a baby, either.”

“What did your aunt do with her baby?” My heart pounded louder than a bass drum. Louder than six bass drums. I was ready to fit the final piece into the MBA puzzle.

“I asked my mother once, and she changed the subject. My aunt took a job waitressing at a coffee shop. Nobody ever talked about the baby, and I knew I wasn't supposed to either.”

“Mommy! Mommy!” Kevin's squeaky voice called, and she whispered back to him in Korean.

I tried to remember what I knew: my birth mother named me Duk-kee. I was left outside the Pusan police station in a basket, with a blanket and a note. An old lady found me in the afternoon after returning from the market.

“Jae, is anyone in your family named Duk-kee?”

“That's my uncle's name. My mom and Aunt Hea's older brother. Why do you ask?”

“My birth mother named me Duk-Kee. Where did your aunt live in Pusan?”

Jae said her family lived in the same row of small houses as Aunt Hea's, up on a hill, not far from the docks. I knew all about those docks and hills.

“My father worked on the boats. My mother used to take us to the market nearby. Before he left, my uncle sold fish from a cart. Sometimes he'd give us big, plump shrimp that my mother would steam for dinner.”

That could've been the market that the old lady was walking from when she found me. The market where my real father sold shrimp. No wonder I love shrimp!

“Does your aunt still live in Pusan?” I asked.

“Yes. She's remarried now, actually, to the owner of the coffee shop. One of her sons, my cousin Chulsu, graduated from university and came to America like me. He's a computer programmer for Microsoft.”

My real brother could be hacking away at a computer, side by side with Bill Gates!

“What's your aunt's last name?” I asked. I was seconds away from identifying this phantom lady who's loomed over me my whole life. I'd say her full name out loud and—
presto!
She'd be real.

I didn't hear an answer. Mom, Sophie, Gina, and Aunt Foxy burst through the door, talking and laughing all at once.

“Sorry, Jae. I've got to go.” I hung up quickly. I'd just uncovered the most incredible news of my life, but I couldn't imagine sharing it with anybody yet. Especially my family.

”Hiya, Joseph!” Aunt Foxy called out.

“Hi,” I said, trying to act normal, even if my hands were trembling.

“What, you're too big to kiss your godmother?” She wrapped her arms tight around me. I could smell Shear Impressions's body-fragrance-of-the-month on her clothes.

“I better get my hugs now before those high school girls notice your good looks and stylish haircuts,” she said.

Sophie started searching through the snack cupboard, ignoring Mom's threats about not eating before dinner. Meanwhile Gina unloaded her backpack, spilling a bag of pretzels on the floor. But before anyone could say “Back off, boxer,” Frazer had gobbled them up.

“Aunt Foxy's staying for supper,” Gina told me with her eyes aglow.

“But the bad news is Mommy's making meatball heroes.” Sophie pouted. “Ground guts, yuck! I'm having a
special veggie burger.
And
I get to sit next to Aunt Foxy.”

“No fair!” Gina cried.

Mom ignored Sophie and Gina. She was listening to Aunt Foxy rave about her new boyfriend, who was a producer for the cable company.

“I'm telling you, Maria, he's different from the other clowns I've dated. Dominick's a perfect gentleman—and sweet, too. Remember when I was sick last week? He brought me orange juice and chicken noodle soup.”

“Just for you? Or does he make deliveries for every attractive woman he sees blowing her nose?” Mom grinned.

“C'mon, you haven't even met him,” Aunt Foxy said, laughing. She turned to me. “What do you think, Joseph? Dominick's a diehard Yankees fan with season tickets.”

“He can't be a total jerk if he roots for the Yankees,” I said. Wanting to avoid more talk, I brushed past her on my way upstairs.

Aunt Foxy gave me a curious look, as if she wondered why I wasn't goofing around with her like usual. But I just couldn't. My brain was overloaded. I needed to lie down and rewind everything I'd just heard from Jae.

 

In my dream that night, I was back on that dirt road in Korea. My clothes were sweaty as I trekked up a hill, and
my arm hurt from pulling the wagon. I must have fallen behind, because all my companions were ahead of me.

My breath was heavy and I wanted to stop and rest, but then I saw her at the top of the hill. My birth mother. She was short and stocky like me and wearing a red dress. Everything about her was crystal clear except for her face. As usual, that was out of focus, even as I got closer.

She recognized me right away.

“Duk-kee,” she shouted, waving wildly. “I've been waiting. Hurry!”

The wagon bumped up and down as I charged toward her. Huffing and puffing, I ran until I could almost reach out and touch her, when suddenly I heard:

“Your friendly neighborhood wall crawler says rise and shine!”

My Spider-Man alarm woke me, and I realized I had never heard her voice. I had never, ever seen my birth mother at all. I was crushed.

But she was out there. And I got to thinking, like Dad always says, “The ball's in my court.” I needed to make this happen.

Jae and I had found each other, against the odds. I knew that she
had
to be my cousin. This was no time for Chicken Calderaro to appear. I had to overcome the obstacles—to keep going until I got the answers I needed.