Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(67)

46TH ANNUAL

LOS ANGELES KOREAN WINTER STREET FESTIVAL

PRESENTED BY

AJU ELECTRONICS NORTH AMERICA We stare agog at the throngs of people. K-pop pounds from towering black steles of speakers. Streamers crisscross the venue. On a rainbow-lit stage, little kids in white doboks warm up for an ultra-cute hapkido demonstration. Dancers in traditional dress float among the crowd, twirling ribbons affixed to their hats in long flowing swirls.

And the food. There’s barbecue, sure, kimchi, sure, but then there’s all the other stuff that most people never get to see—fiery red tteokbokki rice cakes, perfect pyramids of kimbap seaweed rice, patbingsu shaved ice with sweet rice bean, even mountains of freshly roasted beondegi.

Joy points at the beondegi stall. “You eat it,” she says.

“You eat it,” I say.

Beondegi are silkworm pupae. The stall owner beckons me in Korean, and I ask for a sample in English. It’s not bad—nutty, mushroomy, and with a fantastic crunch—and I immediately kiss Joy to let her taste it, too.

“Ew,” she says, licks her teeth in contemplation, then orders a paper-coneful.

We stroll along, and we stroll along, and there’s a samulnori percussion quartet banging out a frenzied brass whirlwind of beats, with one crazy old man dancing along and twin toddler girls holding their ears shut. I record it with my Tascam—these rhythms remade with electronic instruments would be a sick kind of mash-up.

We hop up and down. Joy’s hair flashes green and black, green and black. Above us garlands of cafe lights sparkle to life against a cool velvet sky. I guess the sun set without telling us.

Farther along is another little stage, fancier than the first, with an ensemble of samgo-mu dancers performing in ornate individual stalls lined with traditional barrel drums. They’re all women, all impeccably dressed in shimmering hanbok, all with deadly perfect timing as they strike drums to the left, right, and before them in unison with their sticks. At one point they bend way, way back and whack out a crescendo of unrelenting eighth notes on the booming drum skin, then the cracking rim, then back.

“Abs of steel,” yells Joy.

She kisses me as the drums thunder louder and louder to completion. Applause erupts. There is something happening here inside me. I look at Joy and can tell she can feel it too. The lights, the music, this great celebration of a culture that we supposedly belong to. Everyone here, looking like we do. The food, the drums, the kids in their white doboks. One of them looks like me when I was little.

Me and Joy grew up exposed to this world. We know all of its elements, even if we don’t always know their names in Korean. They’re not weird or exotic to us. They have the feeling of home.

If not for the skyline of Los Angeles in the background, I can fool myself into thinking I’m in Korea. Even better: I can fool myself into thinking that I am Korean.

Me and Joy move forth, skipping like idiots.

Joy stops in her tracks. She slowly points to a delicately fluttering pink-and-white booth decorated with hundreds of tiny soft pillows, each the size of a baby’s cheek.

“It’s those sweet rice cake thingies,” moans Joy.

Some of the cakes are plain; some are filled with sweet red bean paste, some with powdered sesame. The more exotic ones here have mango frosting and even chocolate.

I rack my brain for the word. Chalttok. Pretty sure these cakes are called chalttok.

Behind the booth smiles a gentle old woman in a simple country hanbok looking like she just stepped out of a fragile scroll painting.

“I want that sesame one,” says Joy, transfixed like a child with desire.

I begin working up an ember of courage. Because suddenly I find myself having this urge to order in Korean for my girl.

The food, the drums, the little kids in their white doboks.

I point and say, “I chalttok dugae jeom juseyo.” Two of these cakes, please.

The old woman’s smile fades to a flat line, then darkens to a scowl. She starts barking at me with the black crescent of her mouth. I can catch most of her words.

“Chalttok?” says the old woman. “I don’t know what this chalttok is. Maybe you should learn to speak Korean right.”

The food vanishes, the drums go mute, the white doboks collapse, suddenly empty of their children.

I got chalttok wrong. It’s chaltteok. The difference is small, like cheese versus jeez. But a person would never ask for extra jeez on their pizza.

A native person.

“You fucking kyopos are all stupid,” says the old woman. It’s like she’s deliberately using basic Korean to make sure I understand every word.

Kyopo is what they call a Korean person living abroad. I don’t know who they is. I don’t seem to know anything right at this moment. Except for the fact that my feet are leaving the ground again. You already know how they do that at moments like these. It is an alarming feeling, but also comforting, and I know that makes no sense.

“What is going on?” says Joy. “What did she just say?”

I look around. The K-pop pounding out of those speakers? Indecipherable. All this signage? Gibberish. The people? They look like me, but I know it is all some kind of elaborate visual trick. I could pass a hand right through them as though they were phantoms.

I fooled myself into believing I belonged. My brainlock is the best brainlock.

“Let’s go,” I say.