Midnight and the Meaning of Love (69 page)

Akemi looked surprised and unknowing. She looked at me and then she stood also. I got up, uncertain of the mounting situation. Akemi helped her aunt to her feet. Suddenly, the man who still held the book stepped over to my wife and placed his hands on her shoulders and began to caress her. I pushed him hard, and he was propelled backward and fell to the floor, causing everyone else to gasp. Silence fell. I looked down on him. “Keep your hands off of my wife,” I told him in English as he lay there. He got back to his feet and faced me. Immediately, the husband of the aunt stepped between us. The husband said firmly,
jamgganmanyo.
The other man began speaking in Korean boldly, his angry voice escalating. The two teenage boys emerged from the back room and froze in place when they saw and sensed the conflict. I pulled Akemi behind me.

“Say whatever you want, but keep your hands in your pockets,” I told him in English. The twenty-year-old stepped to the angry man’s side. Now the husband, the angry man, the twenty-year-old, and the two male teens were all on one side facing off with me. It wouldn’t be nothing for me to break all of them, I knew. And the man who had touched my wife was still mouthing off. The husband said to me in English, “Let’s go outside.”

“No problem,
all
men outside,” I said, and that was my one condition. Either me and Akemi would leave from here together right
then, which would cut their ties from her, which I knew they didn’t want to happen, or all the men had to exit the apartment together. This was my Sudanese way. I would not leave my wife in a room unattended in the presence of these men, whose role and relationship I did not know.

The husband began speaking to the Korean males gathered. Only the angered man argued back, but in muted tones. He stormed out the apartment door suddenly, and all the men stepped into their shoes, picked up his and then followed him. I turned to Akemi and said calmly, “Stay here.” I went out last behind them; they were piled up right outside the apartment door waiting impatiently. As we began to move, I heard the door locks turn in the apartment across from theirs, and then the door was pulled opened enough for someone to see out, but not enough for me to see in.

The angry man mumbled in his language all the way down on the elevator.

As we moved through the lobby, everyone watched us. Outside the building, they watched some more. I walked behind them, following purposely and aside from the fact that I didn’t know where they were headed. As we stood at the top of the steep hill facing down, the husband stepped down first and each of us followed. I suspected that the husband was trying to lessen the fire in the other guy, with a slow walk downhill with a welcomed breeze blowing in our faces underneath a beautiful, deep blue-black sky lit up with stars and constellations.
He needs to cool the fuck down
, I thought to myself.
It would be in his interest to do so.

Standing on level ground after walking down three steep hills, we were facing a parked police car with its headlights off and two officers seated inside. One officer called out some words to the husband.

I checked to see if he was the same cop from yesterday, but he was not. The husband stopped and answered him, his responses sounding upbeat and calm. The cops seemed satisfied at whatever he was telling and didn’t make no moves. This made me get a speck of respect for the husband. He didn’t start squealing to the police about there being a problem. He didn’t play his trump card of me being the only foreigner and the only black man in their streets. Instead he kept it moving and led us on a sharp turn down a curved side street. In the face of the police, even the angry man was silent. Maybe he had
something to hide, or some reason to distrust or fear the police, I thought to myself.

In the middle of the block the husband stopped and ducked into a plastic tent where other men were gathered, some standing, some seated. As I eased in, I saw it was an outdoor bar with no walls—a drinking spot. The husband said some words to the two male teens and sent them back out. I could see them waiting on the outside of the thick, clear plastic tent. From their interaction I decided he was their father. So in my mind I put together that Akemi’s aunt had a husband, two teen sons, and one two-years-young daughter.

“Ahjumma!”
the husband called out. A woman rushed out, listened to his order, and returned with more green bottles of drink and a set of tiny glasses.

“Anya!”
he said to the men. They sat, but the angry man wouldn’t. I was watching his hands. They were heavy and rough, his skin thick on both sides. The hands of a worker, I thought. His chest was broad and his clothes were common, unlike those of the husband, who was definitely a professional, behind-the-desk type.

“Chonin Mayonaka midah,”
I introduced myself, and then held my hand out to the husband to remind him that they had all introduced themselves to my wife in Korean but not to me.

“Sorry, I’m Kim Dong Hwa, your wife’s uncle by marriage. He is my brother Che Hwa, but he doesn’t speak English. He is my friend Jang Jung Oh, no English,” he said introducing the angry guy. I extended my hand to him. He knocked it away with his right and grabbed a bottle from the table behind him and took a swipe at my head. I leaned left and punched with my right and broke either his nose or his blood vessels. He ignored his blood, didn’t wipe it or chase it, and took the punch like his head was made from steel and had been slammed with force many times before. He lunged at me. I was quick, dodged, and pushed the flimsy table toward him. Everyone seated behind where I was standing scattered instantly. I grabbed a set of steel chopsticks from the table and held them like
shuriken
. When he came at me again, I would poke them in his lungs or kidneys or just gouge out his eyes. But he didn’t charge again. He picked up a wooden crate and hurled it at my head instead. As the
ahjumma
woman yelled and complained, I blocked it with my right arm and a piece of wood broke off as the crate crashed to the floor. The twenty-
year-old and Dong Hwa and Che Hwa tried to subdue the angry guy, but he slung them off and they fell to the floor. That caused the two teens, who had been posted outside the tent, to rush in toward the angry guy. I knew they were about to be tossed through the air. They were lightweight and obviously untrained, with hands that looked like they had been served their entire lives and had never labored for nothing.

Instead of them attacking the man who had just tossed their father and uncle, they got down on their knees before him and in begging tones asked him to stop. The twenty-year-old came over to me and held his hand out to relieve me of the chopsticks. I kept my eyes on the angry guy, who was giving way to the two begging teen boys. Just then the angry guy bent over to help Dong Hwa and Che Hwa stand back up. When Dong Hwa accepted his hand, I laid the chopsticks down on the table.

Akemi’s uncle Dong Hwa began cleaning off his formerly white shirt and standing up the crates and setting the lady’s bar back in order. She stood off in the distance, watching as though she had seen this type of thing more than a few times. Dong Hwa pulled out his wallet and walked over some won and handed it to the woman, which seemed to satisfy her. She handed him some napkins for his friend’s bloody face. I could see that in personality Dong Hwa was like my best friend Chris, the type to smooth out conflicts and work hard to avert a crisis or a murder. He set his guys up with drinks and pointed his sons back outside. I wasn’t sure if they were keeping watch or being thrown out because of their ages.

Then Dong Hwa walked my way and said in English, “You have some things in common with Jung Oh and Jung Oh has some things in common with you.” I heard him but it didn’t mean nothing to me. I still had my eye on Jung Oh, who sat throwing back drinks from a glass so tiny I wondered why he didn’t just drink straight from the bottle or dump it all in one mug. I knew that the more he drank, the better it was for me. He was already strong and slow; once he became drunk, he would lose his balance, and no matter how much confidence he had, he would be defeated.

“Anya,”
Dong Hwa said, pointing toward the chair. I pulled the chair around so my view was toward Jung Oh in case he made any more sudden moves. I sat.

“Even though we have gotten off to a bad start, we all have reasons to be friends,” Dong Hwa said.

“I’m not here to make friends, but I want to keep it respectful. Akemi is my wife. I’m here in Busan to meet Akemi’s grandmother and to return Ms. Joo Eun Lee’s ashes to her. The sooner the better. My wife’s grandmother is your mother-in-law, is that right?” I asked him.

“Yes, she is,” he said solemnly.

“Then if you can arrange for us to meet her, Akemi and I can be on our way back to the United States,” I said, observing Jung Oh’s boiling energy, as he turned back to look my way.

“Help me out here,” Dong Hwa said to me quietly, with pleading eyes. “My friend there does not know that Akemi’s mother is dead.”

I listened and weighed the man’s words. “Is he related to her?” I asked.

“He is Akemi’s father,” Dong Hwa said.

I felt like I had been hit with a bomb and parts of myself were scattered throughout the bar. “He is Akemi’s father” replayed in my mind.

“It’s true. He is really a friend of my wife’s family from North Korea. He made it over here to South Korea, and my wife made it over safely also
only
because of Akemi’s grandmother. But my wife’s younger sister, Joo Eun Lee,
she never made it.
She disappeared from their North Korean home when she was fifteen, while her mother was here in South Korea arranging for both her daughters to escape from the North Korean government. Joo Eun was never seen again by any of them. So you can imagine when they saw her as an adult in that book that you gave to my wife, how shocking it was for each of them. All these years, we prayed that Joo Eun hadn’t been killed by the North Korean government. We never received
any
information on her until we received the call from Japan a few months ago.

“The Japanese guy who contacted us was typical Japanese, annoyingly polite yet controlling, deceitful, and heartless. He wouldn’t give us any information about Joo Eun but wanted to arrange for us to meet Akemi, who he said was Joo Eun’s daughter. When we asked why we could not also see Akemi’s mother, Joo Eun, he offered us only one option to meet Akemi for one day, for only a few hours here in Korea, but only in his presence. We wanted to refuse, but my wife
has been in therapy for many years because of losing her country, being separated from her mother for some time, and then losing her sister, forever.”

I leaned over and hung my head, my face facing the floor. I needed to think.

“What was the name of the caller?” I raised my head asking. “The Japanese guy,” I explained.

“You are asking the right questions, I see,” he said thoughtfully. Then he sighed. “It’s a long story. When my mother-in-law, who is Akemi’s grandmother, was first contacted, it was in the form of a business inquiry. She receives those kinds of calls often, people wanting her to come and lecture on the topic of North Korea. The caller was a Japanese woman who asked many questions about my mother-in-law, her services and fees. That was normal. However, being invited by a Japanese host or a Japanese college or university was not typical. In fact it was rare. Then more than a month passed by. The woman called us again and said she had some important information that should be shared in private. She wanted to arrange a meeting with us here in Busan. Well, we Koreans are accustomed to the process where, when we’re doing business with the Japanese, they want to be invited into a series of preliminary meetings and entertained and it all can become quite a burden. But if the deal is good, their money is strong, their yen. So normally we endure the process.

“We met with her. Then, strangely, she wanted to speak only with my mother-in-law. We tried to convince her otherwise, but she wouldn’t compromise. We allowed the woman to meet separately with our mother. After they met, my mother-in-law was upset but refused to discuss with any of us what had been said between the two women.

“Another month passed. We received a call from the same woman. When my mother-in-law picked up, the caller gave the phone to the Japanese man, a Mr. Nakamura. My mother-in-law wrote his name down while she was still on the phone. Again, she was affected by these calls, became sad and quiet but would not discuss.

“Finally, Akemi called our apartment, said she was Akemi Nakamura, Joo Eun Lee’s daughter, and that she would be pleased to meet her grandmother. The problem was, Akemi was speaking to my wife over the phone. It was the first that my wife was hearing anything
about it, but she collapsed after that call. In the hospital, at my wife’s side, was when my mother-in-law finally confided what had been happening. My mother-in-law admitted that she was angry and suspicious of both the Japanese woman whom she met with and the Mr. Nakamura whom she spoke to. She didn’t believe a word that they had to say. She didn’t want to disturb any of us with this kind of situation, feeling that if it was a hoax, the disappointment would be too great. But once my wife, Sun Eun, got involved, that was it. There was no way for any of us to ignore the situation any further.”

“My wife,” I said, “Akemi, does not know anything about this man being her father?”

“No, not unless her mother, Joo Eun, told her. Only her mother would have known, of course, and any person who Joo Eun might have confided in.”

“I need to be sure, scientifically. We need to get one of those paternity tests done. The Americans do that type of test all of the time,” I told him.

He sat thoughtfully.

“Just in case Jung Oh’s wrong and he isn’t actually my wife’s father, we won’t tell Akemi. I don’t want to upset her,” I said.

“I don’t know you, but I can see that you love her. I can feel that. This is the same emotion I feel for my wife, to protect her from every tear,” he said. “We can arrange for that test.”