Kimchi & Calamari(34)

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.





Shrimp Connection




Ahh, 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.