Kimchi & Calamari(4)
“The flight was delayed two hours because of the weather, and you can’t imagine how worried we were,” Mom said.
Mom has this Italian saying, niente per niente, meaning you have to give to get. And when she bargains, she makes sure everybody benefits. That night she struck a deal with San Guiseppe, or Saint Joseph, the patron saint of families.
“I promised that if your plane landed safely, I would toss more money in the church basket for the rest of my life and put his statue smack dab in the middle of my garden. And as you know, he’s stood guard in between the geraniums and begonias for fourteen years.”
Mom said that when we got home from the airport, I was so hungry I drank two bottles of soy milk. The adoption agency recommended soy milk, and they were right.
I still get the runs from cow’s milk.
“The rate you gulped those bottles down, I swear you could’ve been listed in the Guinness Book of Records,” Dad always added with a grin. That’s the only part of the adoption story he told, even if he listened to Mom’s every word, every time.
What my parents never told me is what I call the MBA piece. Me Before America. Maybe because, in my parents’ minds, my life started presto, the night Mom and Saint Joseph struck a deal and that 747 touched down on the runway safely.
In third grade, when we had to trace our family tree for homework, Mom told me my Korean name: Duk-kee. That was the name my birth mother gave me. Park was added by the adoption agency. Other than that, I don’t know a darn thing about MBA.
Right before I dozed off, Mom came in. She sat at the edge of my bed and smiled.
“Dinner got four stars,” I said, and her face lit up. She likes it when I rave about her cooking. “Is Dad still mad?”
“He’s not really mad. He just felt hurt that you didn’t like our gift. You know how big he is on family tradition,” she said, rubbing my head.
“Sorry, Mom. I would just feel funny wearing that corno.”
“We should’ve known no teenage boy in Nutley, New Jersey, would be thrilled about a goat horn.” She leaned over and kissed me good night.
Staring up at those neon stars got me thinking about Korea. What it looked like and what fourteen-year-olds did there on their birthday. If they fought with their dads and if they had lousy essays to write too. Korea felt so far away. As far as another galaxy. Too far even for the malocchio to reach.
The Mona Lisa of Middle School
The next morning I stuck the corno way in the back of my socks-and-underwear drawer. Out of sight, out of mind, right? I put that essay out of my mind too, at least for a little while. Today was Friday, alleluia! And the best part about Friday, besides just being Friday, was having Life Skills. That’s the politically correct name our school gives sewing and cooking class. It’s required for eighth graders. When the teachers and the girls aren’t around, the guys call it Sissy Skills, though secretly it’s kind of fun.
But the best part about Life Skills, besides eating gooey, straight-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies at nine A.M., was seeing my crush, Kelly Gerken.
For weeks I’d been gearing up to ask Kelly if she wanted to go to the movies with me. That’s how smart middle-school kids do it. We act like it’s the movie we’re interested in. That way, if the girl says no, we tell ourselves she just didn’t want to see that particular flick. My plan was first to ask Kelly how softball was going, since she’s the team captain and star pitcher. Then I’d lead into the invite.
Of course, going to the movies would be just the start. Every eighth-grade guy knew the Farewell Formal coming up next month could be the grand finale of middle school or the end-of-year disaster, depending on who you asked and what she said.
I walked into Life Skills and headed straight to the storage closet to get my pillow. The sewing project we’d been working on for a month counted double for our grade. My patchwork pillow needed some tender loving care: the seams didn’t match, and the stitching between patches zigzagged like jack-o’-lantern teeth.
Lewis Knight gave me a forced nod as we both reached for our pillows. He’s the goalie who made the freshman soccer team long before most of us knew what varsity meant. Dad washes his family’s windows. When I told him how cocky Lewis was, he said Lewis sounded like a chip off his old man’s blockhead. Dad always botches clichés like that. Sometimes his mixed-up sayings are dumb, but other times he cracks us both up.
I sat down at my assigned station, flipped the switch on the sewing machine, and peeked over at Kelly. She had finished sewing all her patches and was already pinning them to the liner. Meanwhile the rest of us were still trying to get the hang of threading the machine needle and catching the bobbin thread before it fell and unraveled across the floor.