A Cab Called Reliable (11 page)

When the school secretary asked what my father's employment was, I told her he was self-employed, a proprietor of some sort, had his own business here and there. When she asked what my mother did for a living, I told her she passed away when I was three years old from cancer.

“It's just my father and me,” I said.

“Your counselor will be Mrs. Hubbel. She handles all the students whose last names begin with A through E. She'll have your schedule. Her office is right there,” the secretary said, pointing my folder at the door with a paper jack-o'-lantern. “Once you see her, you'll be all set for your first day.” I took my folder and waited outside Mrs. Hubbel's office. The paper jack-o'-lantern had sharp, jagged teeth, and dangling arms and legs made from black yarn. “Honey, you can go ahead and knock. Go ahead and knock,” the secretary said, shaking her bangled wrist at me.

After my first two weeks of school, Mrs. Hubbel got it into her head that I was a troubled adolescent and made me meet with her daily for fifteen minutes to get to the bottom of all this. I had stolen a bottle of Giorgio perfume from the gym locker of a cheerleader, whose father was the president of Woodward & Lothrop. I had written pornographic love letters to Melissa Fintz, who ate her peanut butter and apple sandwiches alone in the cafeteria while reading useless teenage love stories. During gym, I had kicked the soccer ball into Jane Jordan's face when a game wasn't yet in session. I had cheated on my science quiz by sitting on my notes about cumulus clouds. I had torn off birthday balloons and streamers from someone's decorated locker. I had stolen books from the library.

Pitchforked veins grew from the pupils of Mrs. Hubbel's gray eyes.

She sat me next to her behind her desk. From her leather-upholstered, swiveling recliner, she leaned down at me and said, “If you want to succeed here and in your life, you must focus, concentrate, and apply yourself. My dear, you must apply yourself. I know adjusting to a new school is difficult, but you were not meant to be a delinquent.” When I returned her advice with a blank stare, she grabbed my shoulders, shook me, and looking me straight in the eyes said, “Do you know how brilliant you are? Apply yourself.”

She made me play games with her. Word association. When she said “blue,” I said “sky.” When she said “spider,” I said “web.” Black, night. Father, mother. Brother, sister. When I told Mrs. Hubbel to stop, she said, No, go.

When she asked how things were at home, I told her they were all right. When she asked what my favorite food was, I told her none in particular. The happiest moment in my life? I told her last Christmas was the happiest moment in my life. She asked why. I gave her my I-don't-know-and-I-don't-care shrug. Clearing her throat, she calmly told me to complete an I-feel sentence. I told her I felt fine.

I feel. I feel. I feel dumb like the rubber stiffs in CPR class, except I have no one to pump my heart one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand times, then blow breath into me. I feel retarded and limbless like Boris Brace Boy Bulber, who now lives somewhere in Texas with his mother and father. I feel like breaking those curved wooden calligraphy pens into splinters and coloring South America black. I feel like telling Mrs. Hubbel that I know her games and tricks and that she'll never figure out why I'm failing all my subjects. She'll have no notes to scribble on her legal notepad and tuck away into the manila folder labeled “Cho, A. J. #127.”

Stop asking me why I lied about my mother. I don't know where she disappeared to. I feel like stopping. I feel like stopping the bells from ringing every fifty minutes. I don't remember my locker combination. I can't run four times around the track within eight minutes. What do I do during flex time? I don't know where to go during flex time. There is no one to follow, no one to talk with, no one to ask where she bought her designer jeans and Docksiders. I feel like eating my lunch in the cafeteria at a table where my elbows can bump into other human elbows, rather than the metal graffiti walls of the toilet stall, and where I can hear conversations that don't come over the walls between flushes left and right of me. They won't let me sit in front of my locker and eat, they won't let me sit in the library and read, because it's our designated thirty-five minutes to take our afternoon meal.

I don't know the difference between integrals, derivatives, arc cosine, and sine for trigonometry. They put me in the wrong math class. I didn't ask to be put in a gifted and talented trigonometry, but they put me in anyway because I was quiet, looked Chinese, and wore glasses. I haven't even memorized my postulates and theorems for geometry, and doesn't geometry come before trigonometry? I don't have a baked potato for lab science. I won't dribble, run, jump, and throw the basketball through the hoop or underline the prepositional phrases, circle the prepositions, bracket the object of the preposition, and sing all the prepositions in alphabetical order to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy”: about, above, across, after, against, among, around, at, before, beside, between, beyond, by, down … What is the use? I want to read Jocasta's part, but I can't read it aloud without gasping for breath after every three words. But tell me,
gasp,
Oedipus, may I,
gasp,
not also know,
gasp,
what scares you,
gasp,
so? How am I supposed to give an oral report on how to use an abacus? I know how to use one, but how do I tell forty people?

I feel like rolling an iron ball down the hall to split the clusters of fours and sixes lingering near the lockers, talking amongst themselves about going to a movie Friday night—my mother will drive us, your father can pick us up, let's not ask her, she's such a nerd, did you know that Ellen and Chris kissed?

*   *   *

At nights in my new bed and my new room, I told myself that I was far superior to all of them. They were mere pigs living lives of mediocrity. There was no depth in their thinking; they were preoccupied with kiwi-flavored lip gloss, the hemline of their skirts, love notes folded into the shape of stars. They knew nothing of pain and suffering. To them, pain was not seeing their names typed on next year's cheerleader list. They drew red hearts on the margins of their world studies notes. They became embarrassed seeing their domestic help drag her flip-flops into the classroom with disheveled hair, smelling of disinfectant, a brown bag lunch in one hand, and a plastic bag holding a pink retainer in the other.

The students were simpletons who decorated other simpletons' lockers with streamers and balloons; all to ensure the returned favor on their own birthdays. And the teachers, who scribbled fractions of truths onto yellowing transparencies, leaned against overhead projectors that gave off more warmth than their own hearts.

I was not doing well in Weston Junior High, and I frantically searched through my father's dresser drawers because I wanted my mother.

Hidden in the tube of a brown sock were the three pictures of my mother:

On the other side of this photograph, there was a date. It was taken on June 14, 1954. My mother was ten years old. She smiled, while her little brother pouted. That was how Min Joo and I looked when we stood side by side. The last I heard, my uncle died of a heart attack. His ashes were tossed into a creek. I do not know what has happened to my mother. Sometimes I wish she has also died of a heart attack. I wish her ashes have already been scattered. Other times I wish she would come back and tell me how pretty my face has become.

For weeks I practiced holding my head in the same position, smiled so that dimples formed on my cheeks and my eyes took on the shape of the moon, wore a wide-collared white cotton blouse with a blue bandanna around my neck, and tried to live in a world that was black and white.

This is my mother with my best friend, Na-Ri. Our families went to the beach together. I wanted my mother to grab me and pull me into the picture, but Na-Ri was closer to her. Na-Ri's mother had a grocery store that sold instant noodles, cold red bean soup, fried dough stuffed with melted brown sugar, and piles and piles of notebooks stacked next to the front door, against the freezer, and on the shelves beside the cash register. Metal spiral notebooks, plastic spiral, lined, unlined. Pages as thick as rice paper; pages as thin as onion skin. Covers with drawings of blue birds, red shoes, elephant ears, and goldfish with puckered mouths blowing bubbles that contained the American words,
I love you, Forget me not, Will you be mine?

Na-Ri and I used to bang pots and pans in front of her mother's store and sing,
A monkey's butt is red, red is an apple, an apple is sweet, sweet is a banana, a banana is long, long is a train, train is fast, fast is an airplane, an airplane is high, high is the White-Peaked Mountain,
hoping to attract customers because if Na-Ri's mother made more than expected, she let us pick out anything from the store and take it home for free. Na Ri, squeezing her pack of chewing gum in her fist, and I with a new notebook tucked underneath my arm, kissed each other's ears before I walked through the back door of the store and home to my house.

I'm sure Na-Ri would remember me. I'm sure that when my mother and Min Joo moved back into the house, Na-Ri visited and asked for me.

Where is Ahn Joo?

She is studying in America. Min Joo and I had a more difficult time speaking the language. That is why we had to leave. We like it better here. But Ahn Joo wanted to stay.

But she will visit, won't she?

I wouldn't count on it.

What luck! She gets to study in America. She likes it there, doesn't she?

Very much.

Won't you miss her?

Very much.

When I am asked if I have any brothers or sisters, I tell them none. When I am asked where my mother is, I tell them she is dead. When I am asked how she passed away, depending on who my listener is, I tell them one of three stories:

If a teacher asks, I tell him she died of cancer.

If a friend asks, I tell him she got run over by a car.

If a stranger asks, I tell him she died giving birth to me.

11

Dear Mother,

This is to notify you of an address and phone number change. In case of an emergency, you may contact me at my new residence:

3309 Morning Glory Way

Potomac, Maryland 20854

(301) 555-2005

If you wish to contact Father's place of business, it is located at:

Good Food Carry-Out

100 South Capitol Street SE

Washington, D.C. 20001

(202) 555-0562

The home address and phone number were effective in the month of October, the place of business in the month of September. However, due to the excessive amount of energy and time required for the much-needed move, all notifications have been sent no earlier than today.…