Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(7)

If I were like any other normal teenager, I would lose myself in my fartphone (that’s what Q says instead of smartphone, because all we’re doing is farting around on social media anyway), giving out crappy likes on the crappy feeds, maybe crafting beats if I felt like being creative. But then I would only get carsick. So all I can do is be present and in the racist moment.

“You guys are so racist,” I say instead.

I’m so used to them being racist that I can’t even bother arguing with them anymore. It’s like commanding the wind to alter direction. You are aware that non-Koreans populated the United States of America before you came here, right? I used to say. You’re aware that Korea is this tiny country, and the world is full of people you know little about, right?

Arguing with Mom-n-Dad is pointless, because the wind will blow wherever it wants according to its own infuriating wind-logic. Only the insane would keep trying to change them. Especially when they end things with their just-joking defense. Like now:

“No racist,” says Mom, wounded. “We just joking.”

“Joy Song has a boyfriend and he’s third-gen Chinese,” I say.

I of course say no such thing. Saying that would instantly make Joy’s life hell once her mom got the call from my mom, and my mom is always making calls. Then Joy would build a drone in her garage and order it to dice me up with lasers in my sleep.

But part of me itches to do it anyway. Because this is America, and because I want to force the issue. Did you know, I would say, that Korean-Americans make up only 0.5 percent of the entire population? Did you think about that before you came here? Did you think you could avoid the other 99.5 percent of the country for very long?

I don’t say any of this. Instead, I talk about Q.

“What if Q was Chinese? Would you be all ching-chong in front of him?”

“No,” says Mom. She looks almost insulted.

“So just behind his back.”

“No, Frank.”

“Do you call Q geomdungi behind his back?”

“Frank, aigu!” Mom’s glaring at me through the rearview mirror’s slash of light.

Geomdungi means the n-word.

“Q is okay,” says Dad. His eyes are still closed. It looks like he’s talking and sleeping at the same time. He sounds reasonable and soothing, even when he’s drunk. “Q like family. I like Q.”

Dad says this despite the fact that Q has only ever hung out at my house a handful of times in all the years we’ve known each other. There is a secret to why this is.

The secret is in the smiles. Mom-n-Dad, all smiles, and Q, too. Everyone smiling, pretending the specter of Hanna is not right there before us. By Mom-n-Dad’s internal wind-logic, Q is fine—Q is a friend, Q is a boy. There is no family name at stake here.

But still, I’m afraid Mom-n-Dad would possibly say or do something carelessly hurtful to my most top chap. So the few times Q’s been over, I’ve kept things simple and quick: say hi to Mom-n-Dad, smile-smile-smile right up the staircase, and head straight into my room for shitty old video games on my shitty old system. Eventually I just found myself hanging out at his house all the time. It’s easier than all those smiles.

Q first pointed out the smiles a long time ago. He was angry. I was angry too. Who wouldn’t be? We sat all night with our anger, discussing it, shaping it, until it became a kind of energy shield defending us. I vowed to protect Q from any harm my parents could potentially dish out. I ranted out a fiery apology, going on and on until Q finally stopped me with an arm hug to say You didn’t pick your parents, and neither did I.

That’s what Q tells me whenever my parents say something ludicrous: I didn’t pick your parents to be my best friend in the whole world.

The car is quiet but for the whistling wind. For a second I think the issue has been successfully forced, copious science has been dropped, minds have been quietly blown, we are all one human race, this is the United States of America, I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted.

But then Dad keeps going.

Dad keeps dream-talking.

“Q is so-called honorary white. You know honorary white?”

“No he’s not,” I say, but Dad just keeps on going.

“Daddy, sleep,” says Mom.

But Dad does not sleep. “Black people always no money they having. Always doing crime, gang, whatever. Make too many baby. That’s black people.”

“Dad, jesus, that’s not true,” I say. All I can do is shake my head. This sort of drunken rambling is familiar territory for me. I find a painted line on the highway and follow it as it dips and rises and splits into two. We change lanes and the tires do two fast, sharp drumrolls.

But then Mom sits up. “It is,” she says. “I wondering, why black people behaving like that? Our customers? So many, they behaving like that. Ninety-eight percent.”

Mom likes to make up fake statistics. So does Dad. It’s annoying as hell.

I snarl at the window. “So, slavery, decades of systemic racist policy, and the poverty it created don’t have anything to do with anything.”

“1992,” says Mom, “we coming to United States, only we have three hundred dollar. That’s it. We stay friends’ house almost two year. Dr. and Mrs. Choi. Only we eating ramyun and kimchi rice two year.”

That’s not the same thing, I think. I don’t bother listening to the rest.