Triplines (9781936364107) (12 page)

Mira gulps air, about to cry.

Lenny grabs her arm and pulls her away. They hurry out
of the kitchen as their father says, “Do you want them to see this?” and they hear him hitting her. She cries out.

Mira's face scrunches up, and Lenny grabs her arm. “Don't cry,” he tells her. “Don't.”

She nods her head quickly but her lips tremble. Lenny is about to send her to her room, but something about the tenor of the fight in the kitchen worries him. Their mother fights back, yelling about how badly he had treated her mother. Lenny hears him punching or kicking the wall, the thudding almost shaking the entire house. He tells Mira to grab her jacket and shoes, and they leave through the front door.

“The church?” she asks.

He feels like climbing the maple tree, and tells her to follow him up. She says, “I don't know.”

The hardest part is getting off the ground, so he gives her a boost to the first branch, and she struggles to climb it. She hugs the trunk. “I'm scared.”

“Don't be. Just hold on.” He climbs up after her, and settles in on the higher branch near her. They hear their parents fighting in the living room, then the bedroom, then the kitchen again. They track their parents' movements from the noise. When their parents move back to their bedroom, their voices fly out the window near the tree. Lenny hears his mother cry in pain, and she screams about wanting a divorce. His father laughs and says she has no job, no money, and there is no way he is going to support her. She will lose her children. She will lose everything.

This is all in Korean, and yet Lenny understands it.

Mira asks if they have to stay out here for long. “I'm getting cold.”

“You should've brought a better jacket.”

“You didn't say what kind.”

“Just until it quiets down.”

After thirty minutes, the stereo begins playing classical music. Lenny tells his sister that they can probably go in now. She says, “I can't get down.”

He jumps to the ground and reaches up. “Come on. I'll help.”

“I can't!”

“It's only like five feet.”

“I can't! It's too far! I'm stuck!”

“I'll catch you.”

“You won't!”

“I'll leave you here if you—”

“You better not! I'm calling Mom!”

“Wait, wait. Shh. I'll get a chair or something.”

“The ladder! I want the ladder!”

Lenny hurries to the garage, and finds it difficult to lift and carry the large wooden ladder around the Cadillac. His sister calls out that he better not be leaving her there.

“I'm coming!” he yells.

Finally he manages to carry the ladder to the tree, and leans it up against a high branch. Mira can't reach it without letting go of the trunk, and says, “It's too far.”

“You have to let go of the other hand.”

“I can't.”

He climbs up the ladder and reaches over to her. She clutches his hand and scrambles over him and to the ladder, hugging it. He laughs and tells her to climb down. As she does, their father opens the front door and demands to know what's going on.

“Nothing,” Lenny says, jumping down. “We just wanted to see something.”

“Put that back,” he says.

“I am.” Lenny carries the ladder to the garage, and his father appears in the doorway leading to the kitchen. He turns on the light and waits. Lenny has to lift the ladder up onto his shoulders again, and struggles with it.

His father says, “You are too weak.”

This annoys Lenny, and he hoists the ladder higher, walking carefully around the Cadillac, but because he's off balance he trips and swings the end of the ladder hard against the car, making a thud. He loses his hold on it. The ladder bangs against the side of the car as it crashes to the ground. His father lets out a surprised bark.

Lenny stares at the ladder, thinking, Oh, no. His father hurries into the garage and looks at the car, running his hand over a deep dent.

“You stupid boy! Look what you did!”

“Sorry. It was too heavy.”

“You will pay for this!”

“It was an accident!”

“You shouldn't be playing with the ladder. It's not a toy! You will pay for this!”

“I don't have the money.”

“You will do yardwork,” he says, pushing the metal around the dent. “Starting this weekend.”

Lenny kicks the ladder and storms inside. His mother appears in the kitchen in a new blouse and her face clean, asking what happened, and he replies, “Ask him.” He glances at the food and broken dishes and glasses on the floor, and goes to his room, hearing his mother beginning to
argue with his father again, who yells something about how stupid the entire family is. The fight grows in volume as it moves around the house.

Lenny hears him chasing her down the hall. His mother opens his bedroom door and grabs him. She says, “Get your sister and go into the basement.”

His father pushes her away, and she tells Lenny to go. She runs into the living room, his father going after her. Lenny opens his sister's bedroom door, and she's standing there in the center of the room, frozen. He tells her to follow him.

They hurry downstairs, and hear their father beating their mother, who sobs and begs for him to stop. The basement door opens—a flimsy folding door on rollers that squeak—and she tumbles down the stairs, crying out and grabbing the banister to stop her fall. The door closes. She struggles down the last few steps and sits on the floor, crying quietly.

Lenny and his sister remain still. Finally, after a few minutes, his mother looks up.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She nods and pulls herself up. She limps to the old sofa, and sits down. She touches the side of her face gingerly and readjusts her scarf. She says, “We will sleep here tonight.”

“On the sofa?” Mira asks.

“It'll be like camping.” Their mother pats the cushions. “Sit.”

They hear their father upstairs, talking to himself.

“Sleep here?” Mira asks.

“Just until later,” their mother says. “Do you want to hear another folk tale?”

“No,” Lenny says. “Tell us something real.”

She smiles. “How about when we had to escape the Communists?”

“The who?” Mira asks.

“Chinese and North Koreans wanting to take over the country.”

“How old were you?” Lenny asks.

“Mira's age. No, even younger. The Communists took my mother's house and everything in it. I was the youngest. I was too tired to walk, so someone carried me on his back. Many, many miles on his back. I remember breathing into his neck. But during one of the times everyone was running, the man carrying me was separated from my family and couldn't find them.”

“What happened?” Mira asks.

“We were separated for two weeks. I thought they were dead. I thought I was all alone. But then we made it to Seoul, and my mother found me. I was so happy. After that we moved around every few months. It was hard because there were so many refugees and the war was going on. But I never left my mother's side after that. I didn't want to lose her again. And now I don't get to see my mother at all anymore.”

They sit quietly until one by one they all fall asleep.

Umee has a large bruise on the side of her face that spreads over her cheek and up to her eye, and because of this she doesn't want to leave the house. She asks Lenny to buy a newspaper on his way home from school—she wants to start looking for jobs.

Lenny has so many things to do today that he barely pays attention in class. They're preparing for some kind of achievement test, but he can't concentrate on this. He just doesn't care. Instead he wonders which Post Office to go to—the one near the train station always gives him a money order, but he can go to the one near the school during lunch, and send off the order right there, since he has forms with him. He worries that the clerks at this new Post Office might think he's too young. He also worries about which newspaper to buy, and does it matter if it's a morning or afternoon edition? He worries about the trip line in the woods, hoping he set it correctly. He worries about the dent in the Cadillac and how much yardwork he'll have to do to pay it off. He has been grinding his teeth more every night.

During lunch he leaves the school and walks to the Post Office on Merrick Road, waiting in line with a few others on their lunch break—a man in a tie, women in blouses and skirts—and when it's his turn the woman behind the counter looks down at him with a smile. When he asks for a money order for forty-two dollars, the clerk says, “Of course, honey.” She puts the order in a small machine and types in
the numbers. The machine spits out the money order.

Lenny asks, “It doesn't matter how young I am?”

“As long as you have the cash, honey, you can have a money order. That's forty-two fifty, please.”

He pays this, and fills out address forms, making sure the carbon duplicate is legible, then sends off the top copy with the order form. Every time he does this he's amazed at what kind of information he can find. He's expecting more martial arts catalogs any day.

At the nearby drugstore he finds two newspapers,
News-day
and the
New York Post
, and also sees a copy of
Merrick Life
, which he buys too. He's already used up his lunch hour, and he hasn't even touched his sandwich. He takes a few bites while hurrying back to school, and feeds the crows.

He sees Frankie picking on a younger kid, another walker returning to school. Frankie pushes him off the sidewalk, and the kid stumbles onto the street. Lenny walks toward them, looking around to make sure no teacher's aide is nearby. Frankie sees him and backs away.

“Haven't you learned anything?” Lenny asks him. He puts down his back pack. The kid on the ground stops sniffling.

“Why do you pick on weaker kids? Why don't you pick on
me
now?” Lenny pushes him hard.

“You better leave me alone.”

Impatient, Lenny does a quick roundhouse kick to his face, which connects solidly, Frankie's head snapping to the side. He falls to the ground, stunned. Lenny kicks him in the stomach and chest, and then gives him one final vicious kick in the face. Frankie howls as his nose bleeds. Frankie curls up tightly, protecting his body and face.

Lenny turns to the kid in the street, who stares at him in fear. “If he bothers you or anyone else again, let me know.”

The kid nods his head quickly. Lenny turns back to Frankie. “You are so weak.” He kicks him again, hitting Frankie's hands covering his face, and viciously stomps on his shoulder. Frankie yelps in pain, sobbing. Lenny finds that he wants to keep kicking him, but stops himself.

Lenny comes home to Ed packing for his summer trip to California. Ed has done something to his hair—it's curly and strangely glossy. Lenny asks him about it.

“Permed a little for the prom,” Ed replies. He takes down his posters and boxes most of his belongings.

“You're going to the prom?” Lenny asks. “With who?”

“With Liz. Down the block.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

He snorts. “No. Just a friend.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

He gives Lenny an incredulous look. “You think any girl wants to go out with an Oriental guy in this town?”

“Why not?”

“Because Bruce Lee never gets the girl. Chuck Norris does. Shit, even David Carradine is a white guy. You know? That show
Kung-fu
?”

“He's white?”

Ed laughs. “Oh, man. You're funny.”

Lenny isn't joking, and is puzzled by this new information. Ed asks what Lenny is going to do with his new bedroom.

“I'm going to buy a TV and then I'm going to hook up illegal cable.”

“How?”

“I think I need to hook it up to the wires up on the telephone pole.”

“Be careful. Don't get electrocuted. And don't get caught. Dad will kill you.”

“I won't get caught.”

He points to Lenny's arms. “You need to work out. You're too scrawny.” He flexes his large biceps. “You need to bulk up. I told you why I got strong, right?”

“Yeah. To fight Dad.”

He says, “When I'm gone he's going to focus on you. You better be ready.”

“I'm learning martial arts.”

“It's more than what you know, Lenny. It's how you look. It's both. That's my advice to you. Get more muscle.”

Sal and Lenny discover the trip wire has been triggered. The wire holding the stick and the log lies on the ground. Sal quizzes him on the construction of the trip wire, making sure it couldn't have fallen accidentally. He tells Lenny to set it up again, which he does, and Sal inspects it.

“Was it this solid?”

“Yeah. I checked it a few times.”

“Goddammit. So someone came by last night?”

“An animal?”

Sal checks the plants, looking for leaves chewed on or the dirt dug up, but finds no signs of animals. He bites his upper lip, which exaggerates his underbite. He's growing a scraggly mustache, and his long, messy hair reaches his neck. He says, “Could be like a raccoon or something just looking around. Those things get pretty big.”

“What do we do?”

“Water the plants, set up the trap again, and this time clean the area so that we can maybe see footprints.”

Lenny examines the ground, but the leaves and hard dirt reveal nothing.

Sal says, “We just have to till the dirt, make it soft. Then we'll see if it's an animal or a person. I have a hand till at the house. I'll go back and get it. You water the crops and start clearing the leaves and grass.”

Lenny begins working, remembering that his father is going to make him clean the yard this weekend for denting the car. The prospect of more gardening annoys him, but it will also give him a chance to inspect the yard for his own garden. Except for mowing the lawn, his father doesn't really care that much about the yard, and his mother, who used to have a small vegetable garden in the corner, no longer tends it. Lenny doubts either of them could recognize marijuana plants, especially if he scatters them throughout the bushes.