Miracle Creek(51)
When she found the final note—the now-infamous H-Mart note that she’d stored with the wok for a year and was now holding in her hand—and read her husband’s scribbled handwriting, This needs to end. We need to meet, 8:15 tonight. By the creek, and the Yes in girlish writing on the bottom, that was when she realized: the proposed time (right after a dive) and location (he’d mentioned only one “creek”) had to mean that the girl he was meeting, the girl he’d smoked with and God only knew what else, was Mary Yoo.
It made her crazy. She could see that now. Finding this note, realizing that Matt was involved with a Korean girl, not knowing which humiliated her more—the teenage part, or the Korean part?—and wondering if the wok cousin had been right. A blast of heat blew through her, so hot and fast she felt feverish and weak, and she wanted to slap Matt and scream, ask what the hell was it with him and this fetish, and yet, at the same time, she hated herself for buying into this fetish bullshit, and she wanted to never say it out loud to him, it was too shameful.
Now, standing in her kitchen, Janine held the note, this piece of paper that had been the beginning and ending of everything she wished she could undo that night: from driving out to Miracle Creek to confront Mary with it, to retrieving it in the middle of the night, plus all the awful things between. She took it to the sink and ran it under the water. She tore it into pieces, again and again, and released the bits into the stream, letting them fall in. She switched on the disposal, focusing on the grating sound of the metal blade turning around and around, obliterating the note into particles of pulp. Once she was calm, once she could no longer hear the rushing of blood in her eardrums, she shut off the disposal and the water, put the wok booklet back in the box, and closed it up. She put the box back in the cabinet, behind all the things she’d never use, and shut it tight.
THE TRIAL: DAY THREE
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
PAK
PAK YOO WAS A DIFFERENT PERSON in English than in Korean. In a way, he supposed, it was inevitable for immigrants to become child versions of themselves, stripped of their verbal fluency and, with it, a layer of their competence and maturity. Before moving to America, he’d prepared himself for the difficulties he knew he’d experience: the logistical awkwardness of translating his thoughts before speaking, the intellectual taxation of figuring out words from context, the physical challenge of shaping his tongue into unfamiliar positions to make sounds that didn’t exist in Korean. But what he hadn’t known, hadn’t expected, was that this linguistic uncertainty would extend beyond speech and, like a virus, infect other parts: his thinking, demeanor, his very personality itself. In Korean, he was an authoritative man, educated and worthy of respect. In English, he was a deaf, mute idiot, unsure, nervous, and inept. A bah-bo.
Pak accepted this long ago, on the first day he joined Young at the Baltimore grocery store. The preteen hoodlums saying “Ah-so” in fake accents, pretending they couldn’t understand his “May I help you?” and sniggering as they repeated in bastardized singsong, “Meh-yee ah-ee hair-puh yoooooh?”—that, he could dismiss as the antics of children trying on cruelty like a shirt in a store. But the woman who’d ordered a bologna sandwich: her struggle to understand his “Would you like a soda also?”—a phrase he’d memorized that morning—had been genuine. She said, “I couldn’t hear; could you repeat that?” After his louder, slower repetition, she said, “Say that one more time,” then, “I’m sorry; something’s wrong with my ears today,” and finally, just an embarrassed smile—the embarrassment for him, Pak realized—and shake of her head. With each of the four repetitions, he felt heat radiating through his cheeks and forehead, as if his head were bowed over burning coal and being pushed down centimeter by centimeter. He ended up pointing to a Coke and miming drinking it. She laughed in relief, saying, “Yes, I’d love one,” and taking her money, he thought of the beggars outside, taking change from people like this woman, with kind but repugnant pity in her eyes.
Pak became quiet. He found relief in the relative dignity of silence and retreated into invisibility. The problem was, Americans didn’t like silence. It made them uneasy. To Koreans, being sparing with words signaled gravitas, but to Americans, verbiage was an inherent good, akin to kindness or courage. They loved words—the more, the longer, and more quickly said, the smarter and more impressive. Quietness, Americans seemed to equate with an empty mind—nothing to say, no thoughts worth hearing—or perhaps sullenness. Deceit, even. Which was why Abe was worried about Pak testifying. “The jury has to think you want to give them information,” he’d said, preparing Pak. “You take those long pauses, they’ll wonder, ‘What’s he hiding? Is he figuring out how best to lie?’”
Sitting here now, with the jury seated and all whispered conversa tions on pause, Pak closed his eyes and savored this last moment of silence before the slinging and pummeling of words would begin. Perhaps he could drink in the silence and keep it in reserve, like a camel in the desert, use it to refresh himself bit by bit on the stand.
* * *
BEING A WITNESS was like acting. On a raised stage, all eyes on him, trying to recall someone else’s scripted words. At least Abe started with basic questions with easy-to-memorize answers: “I am forty-one years old,” “I was born and raised in South Korea,” “I moved to America last year,” “At first, I worked in a grocery store.” The kind of question-answer sets listed in Pak’s old English textbooks, which he’d used to teach Mary back in Korea. He’d drilled her, making her recite her answers again and again until they became automatic, the same way she’d drilled him last night, correcting his pronunciation, forcing him to practice just once more. And now, Mary was at the edge of her seat, staring at him with an unblinking intensity as if to telegraph her thoughts to his, the way he used to during her monthly math competitions in Korea.