Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(8)

Mom-n-Dad are like this big ice wall of ignorance, and I’m just a lone soldier with a sword. I just kind of give up. I find myself missing Hanna big-time. She used to argue all righteous with Mom-n-Dad all the time, like the lawyer she eventually became. She wouldn’t back down a single millimeter, not for shit. She would take the argument all the way to the limit, and then just hold it there. Like:

Where does Korean-ness begin and end?

What about kids born from Chinese or Japanese occupiers? What about those comfort women? Should their Korean cards be canceled?

Don’t you think you should have to live in Korea to be fully Korean?

Don’t you think you should have to be fluent in Korean to be fully Korean?

Why’d you come to this country if you’re so Korean?

And what about me and Frank?

She was brave—braver than me—but now I wonder if being brave is worth it. The brave go first into battle. But that makes them the first to go down, too.

I wait for the car to get quiet again before saying:

“What if I dated someone black?” I want to add like Hanna, but don’t.

“Frank, stop it,” says Mom, and gets a grave look, like That’s not funny. She glances at Dad. Dad is asleep. His to-go cup is tipping. She puts it in the center cup holder, which somehow makes it even more disgusting.

“What about white?” I say.

“No,” says Mom.

“So only Korean.”

Mom sighs. “Why, you have white girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Don’t do it, okay?” says Mom. “Anyway. Big eyes is better. Nice eyes.”

Mom is obsessed with girls having big eyes. Joy’s mom is obsessed with girls having big eyes. Same with the parents of the other Limbos. We tried figuring out why once at a Gathering. Someone said it must have something to do with a bunch of round-eye American soldiers saving them from civil war, which led to a close examination of the size of General MacArthur’s eyes, which pivoted to theories about big-eyed characters in Japanese anime, which devolved into a big Lego-throwing debate about which was better, Japanese manga or Korean manhwa.

“You marry Korean girl,” says Mom. “Make everything easier.”

I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Easier for you.” I want to add, I could care less if she were Korean, but we’ve beat this horse before and it’s an incredibly durable creature.

“Not just us,” says Mom. She’s indignant. “Easier for everybody. Korean girl, we gathering with her parents, we speak Korean together. More comfortable, more better. We eating Korean food all together, going to Korean church together, more better.”

“So, more better for you.”

“No,” says Mom, louder. “You will understand when you have baby. Okay: pretend you have mix baby, okay? People say, ‘Oh, what nationality this baby?’ Too headache for baby. For you too! Where baby belong? You think about baby.”

So I think about baby. Not my baby, but specifically the future baby of Hanna and Miles. I’ve seen mixed babies before, and like all babies ever born, they’re adorable. Who could be so cruel as to reject a mixed baby?

What the hell am I talking about? I hate that word, mixed. Just a couple generations ago people called French-Russian babies mixed. Now those babies are just called white. This word mixed is just brainlock messing with my head.

I give up. “Okay, Mom.”

“Anyway,” says Mom, calm again. “I know lot of nice girls.”

I massage my temples. I’ve reached the end of the discussion, where there’s nothing left to do but say Okay, Mom.

“Okay, Mom,” I say.





chapter 4


just bad enough




I don’t really like calculus.

But Calculus class? That’s a different story.

Calculus class takes place at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock, before the rest of humanity is even conscious. It’s unreasonable. Mr. Soft knows this. That’s why he has a box of coffee ready, and a dozen donuts, two for each of us.

Mr. Soft has the lights dimmed. He has quiet jazz playing on a sweet vintage boombox. Mr. Soft is one of the gentlest human beings I know.

Mr. Soft’s full name is Berry Soft.

“You want a little something special this morning, Frank?” says Mr. Berry Soft, very softly. “I brought my espresso machine today. More than happy to make you a cappuccino.”

Our desks are arranged in a rough circle, with Mr. Soft tailor-sitting atop a stool, his glowing face underlit by an antique overhead projector literally from the year 1969 that he likes to draw on with wet-erase pens. No laptops, no phones. Just concepts and principles and longhand problem solving.

“Just look for the stuff in common between the nominators and denominators,” says Mr. Soft, drawing by hand. “See what cancels out. Chop chop, flip these guys here, chop, and we’re left with the answer.”

“What is the answer?” says Brit Means, who sits next to me.

“I mean, it’s thirteen over five,” says Mr. Soft. “But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the process.”

Brit Means glows in the light of his wisdom. “The process,” she says. Then I realize she is nodding at me through narrowed eyes. I nod back without quite knowing what we’re nodding about.