I waited until the Gerkens" car drove off before letting loose with "Woo-hoo, I"m the man!" Then I danced a touchdown dance in the parking lot, just as Dad"s truck pulled up.
Run, Grandpa, Run.
Peck, peck, peck, peck.
My fingers hacked away at the keyboard Sat.u.r.day night. I clicked the mouse to check the word count: 1295. Roughly two hundred words away from the essay finish line. And just in time, too. It was due Monday, but tomorrow was my movie date with Kelly.
The freezer door slammed shut. From the computer desk in the family room, I watched my sisters battle by the kitchen counter. Their hair was wet and braided and they were already in their pajamas. Mom was working at the beauty shop later than usual, leading new product training for the hairdressers. Dad was in his recliner, reading another cla.s.sic that you"d expect to find in the hands of a pipe-smoking professor, not a window washer who looks tough in a tank top.
"Give that to me!" Gina yelled. "Daddy, Sophie took the last Popsicle!"
Sophie sat on a kitchen stool gripping the Popsicle like a weapon. "I grabbed it first. Fair and square."
The air was thick as oatmeal. No matter how many times I wiped my forehead, it felt greasy. My gla.s.s of fruit punch sat in a puddle next to the mouse pad.
"Bully!" Gina wailed.
"Both of you have cookies if there aren"t enough Popsicles," Dad growled from behind The Brothers Karamazov.
"I don"t want cookies," Gina whined.
"I"m eating this Popsicle. I got it first." Sophie ripped the wrapper off just as Gina started crying.
"Maybe there are more in the back of the freezer." Dad put his book down and walked into the kitchen.
I hit my mental b.u.t.ton to mute the sibling static. I was on a roll, two-finger punching at the keyboard.
The t.i.tle of my essay was "A Medal for Speed and a Life of Honor: My Grandpa Sohn." I wrote how Sohn Kee Chung was my father"s father. Since I couldn"t find where he was born, I picked Yongsu"s birthplace, Taegu. Dad"s atlas listed Taegu as the third-largest city in South Korea, right along the Naktong River. It was a city that used to be famous for apples-" Best in Asia," according to the atlas-so I gave Grandpa Sohn"s family their very own orchard.
A young man can only pick apples for so long. Out of sheer boredom, young Sohn began challenging his six sisters and brothers to footraces in the orchard.
Racing became a nightly ritual, I wrote, after the day"s picking was done. Sohn"s father always served as judge at the finish line, though none of his siblings could catch up with Sohn. Afterward the Chung family would sit down together to eat rice and kimchi, a spicy pickled cabbage. It sounded like Koreans eat kimchi the way Italians eat pasta. All the time.
When Sohn was older, people started noticing how fast he could run. His father realized that Sohn had talent and encouraged him to train, which was pretty decent considering that meant one less set of hands picking all those apples.
As I unwound this story, I felt like I"d gotten into the real Sohn"s head. Like I understood how outraged he must have felt about the j.a.panese taking over his country. How lousy it must have been to represent j.a.pan, the invader, in track and field-his sport. The j.a.panese government looked down on the Koreans like the n.a.z.is did the Jews, wanting to kill off everything Korean. Clothes. Tradition. Even their Korean names.
Sohn didn"t want to wear j.a.pan"s colors on the Olympic team. But what choice did he have? He could either run representing j.a.pan, or stay home, give up his dream, and pick apples forever.
I wrote that Grandpa Sohn stuffed his sneakers and a pair of chopsticks in his gym bag. Then, with the rally cry, "This one"s for Korea," he headed to the 1936 Berlin games. It was the first time he"d ever left Taegu. But he never forgot he was Korean. Even during the Olympics, when the j.a.panese forced him to use the name Kitei Son, he protested in his own way-by sketching a tiny map of Korea next to his signature.
The library book described Sohn"s b.u.t.t-kicking victory over the other marathoners in Berlin, including a heavily favored Argentinian named Juan Zabala. Adolf Hitler, who people called the fuhrer, was rooting for Zabala-probably because Zabala looked more like him than Sohn did. But Hitler didn"t know he was dealing with one quick Korean.
Just past mile seventeen, Sohn whizzed by Zabala, who was so stunned by Sohn"s speed that he actually fell, which probably made the fuhrer furious. For the last five miles, Sohn pulled away from the next closest compet.i.tor and won the gold medal. He became the first Olympic marathoner to run the race in less than two-and-a-half hours.
One of my favorite parts of my story-and I swear I didn"t make it up-was when a Korean newspaper got angry about their star being forced to represent j.a.pan. Just to make a point, they airbrushed the sunburst, j.a.pan"s national symbol, off Sohn"s jersey on the front-page photo. The staff was thrown in prison and the newspaper was shut down for ten months as punishment.
But I bet it was worth it.
Word count check: 1,496. Closing time.
I never met my grandfather, but thinking about how tall he stood has inspired me. Beneath Sohn"s j.a.panese jersey was a true Korean: proud of who he was and determined to achieve.
Finally I was finished. I"d told Sohn Kee Chung"s story, and he was one awesome Korean. If only our family connection were true.
I waited for the yahoo-I"m-done! exhilaration to hit like it usually does when a paper"s finished, but it didn"t. Sohn Kee Chung was proud and true to himself, but I didn"t feel that way.
I looked up. Dad had gone upstairs. I hit Save and signed off. This wasn"t the kind of doc.u.ment I wanted Mom or Dad to see.
My sisters were still in the kitchen as I searched the cupboard. Dad had let me skip dinner to finish the essay, and now I was craving something cheesy with tomato sauce.
"Did you two reach a truce?" I asked.
Only Sophie nodded, so I figured she ate the last Popsicle. Gina was distracted, playing some sort of stack "em game on the kitchen counter with the spice containers. She"d gotten eight of them on top of each other and was attempting to add the dried rosemary to make it nine, but it was wobbling.
"The leaning tower of flavor," I said in an accent just like Nonno Calderaro"s.
Gina giggled.
I poured a gla.s.s of orange juice and looked in the fridge, only to discover leftover pizza in the back, behind the margarine. Yessss. Heaven in tinfoil.
"C"mon, Gina and Sophie, bedtime. Brush your teeth," Dad called from upstairs. Gina got off her chair just as Sophie reached over and knocked the tower down. Plastic spice jars started rolling across the counter. Green flecks of oregano spilled everywhere.
"I saw you, Sophie, you brat!" Tears filled Gina"s eyes.
Sophie grinned and then glanced at me.
"Why are you so mean?" I barked.
"Who says it was me?" she said, dashing out of the kitchen with guilt and Popsicle juice smeared across her face.
"That"ll be five seventy-five," the pizza guy growled in a cartoon bulldog voice on Sunday afternoon. I handed him a ten-dollar bill and stuffed the change in my shorts pocket. Kelly was already walking to a booth in the back of the pizzeria.
"You didn"t have to pay for me, Joseph," she said, poking a straw in her cup. She was drinking diet soda, though I doubt she weighed a hundred pounds. I can"t stand diet anything.
The pizzeria was warm and crowded. A herd of Little Leaguers had just walked in. The smell of garlic floated in the air like it does when Mom"s making her Bolognese sauce. It was almost four and I was starving, even though I"d eaten most of the popcorn at the movie theater.
Subtly, I watched how Kelly handled her pizza. Pizza-eating technique reveals a lot about a person. First Kelly placed a napkin on top and sopped up the grease. Then she p.r.i.c.ked the cheese with a fork to release the heat. When she finally dug in, she took teensy bites and dabbed her chin with a napkin.
Me, the moment we sat down I reached for the Parmesan and the red pepper shaker and covered my pepperoni slice like sand on the desert. The more kick, the better. I"m convinced my spicy craving is genetic. Even in kindergarten I preferred ballpark chili dogs over plain franks.
Still, I didn"t want to be a slob around Kelly. I was careful to not chew with my mouth open-which, according to Mom, is a bad habit of all us Calderaros.
We talked about how the movie creeped us both out. "My sister Sophie would have liked it," I said. "She loves getting scared to the brink of wetting her pants."
Kelly said she was the only child in her family.
I told her how I have five cousins on my dad"s side, and six cousins-or cousins once removed, I get it mixed up-on my mom"s side. "Italians have Rolodexes full of relatives," I added.
"Italians?"
"Yeah, most of my relatives on both sides moved to Florida. The warmer weather reminds them of Italy. We"re the only family members who still own snow shovels."
Kelly started to speak, but then stopped. She seemed to be confused, about my being Italian, I guessed.
"I"m adopted." I shrugged, as if that explained it all.
"Really?" She looked surprised. Maybe she thought my dad was white and my mom was Asian. But I guess she never met my parents.
"Yup, I was born in Korea," I said, as though I could map the entire country. Under the booth I slapped my hands against my knees to the beat of "You"re a Grand Old Flag."
Kelly put her drink down and perked up. "Do you know your story? I mean, who your parents were?"
"Oh, sure," I said. I don"t know what made me say it. Maybe to impress her. Or maybe because I felt dumb not knowing.
"So you"ve searched for your birth mother? I saw this Russian girl on a talk show who did that. She put a posting on a website and was reunited with her relatives."
"Sort of," I said. Inside my head I thought I heard that tiny angel Mom calls your conscience calling, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
Kelly stared at me wide-eyed, like a curious cat. I wanted her to think I was interesting, but I didn"t really want to get into all this adoption stuff.
"Did you meet your birth mother?" she asked.
I shook my head no.
"Have you talked to her on the phone?"
"We"re, uh, writing letters," I said. If only it were true. And now I felt like that tiny angel was smacking the inside of my brain, furious.
Just when I dreaded saying another word, one of the Little Leaguers ran past our table, tripped on his shoelace, and sent his paper plate flying.
Splat! His slice of meatball pizza landed cheese down on the linoleum, and he started wailing. I got up to hand the poor kid napkins. I hate hearing squirts cry.
Soon his mom took charge, and the boy calmed down. Kelly and I sat quietly for a few minutes after that. I slurped my soda. It was empty, and I wanted a refill.
"I give you credit, Joseph. I don"t know if I would have searched," Kelly said.
I looked up, surprised by her words. "Why not?"
"Because I like my life," she answered carefully, as if thinking it through. "You probably like yours, too. I"d be afraid of the skeletons in the closet, if you know what I mean."
I didn"t. I wanted to know every single thing I could. What my birth parents looked like, what kind of jobs they had, their favorite foods and colors, even what songs they hummed in the shower. Knowing nothing is worse than knowing the truth. But I didn"t tell that to Kelly. Mostly I wanted to change the subject.
"Be right back." I walked over to the counter and filled my soda to the top.
Since my plate was empty and Kelly"s just had pizza crust, we went outside. It had started to rain lightly, and the sky was covered with dark cauliflower-shaped clouds.
"I"m supposed to meet my mom next door," she said, pointing to the florist. "She has to pick up centerpieces for a dinner for their restaurant suppliers tonight."
End-of-date rituals, can anything be more awkward? I thought about kissing her, but it didn"t feel right, what in the rain and with the Little Leaguers standing by the door eating Italian ices and staring at us. Besides, after all that crushed red pepper on my pizza, my breath might have set a cla.s.s A fire on her lips.
"Let me know if you hear anything about your birth family, okay?" she said.
"Sure. So, um, do you wanna go out again sometime?"
"Maybe, but call me way ahead of time. The next couple of weeks are crazy busy. You know, commitments," she said, rolling her eyes.
As I nodded and waved good-bye, I tried to think of one thing in my life that qualified as a commitment. But I could only hear Mom yelling at me to hurry with that sack of towels before the Jiffy Wash closed.
I ran back to the CinemaPlex in the rain and sat on a bench inside, waiting for Dad. He"d taken Gina and Sophie to buy sneakers, and so I still had another twenty minutes to kill. I watched a few older guys standing in the ticket line with their arms around girls. It made me think about my afternoon. In Frankie-speak, I"d made contact with one of the hottest girls in school. We"d had fun together. She"d actually spoken the two victory words, "Call me."
Then why wasn"t I having those heart-pounding, firecracker-exploding feelings? My mind wasn"t even on Kelly. Instead, my thoughts bounced from my essay about who I wasn"t, to wondering about who I was. I needed to solve this MBA puzzle. Like why I always sneeze five times in a row. No one else I know sneezes more than three times. Or my constant craving for spicy food. Or my never-ending wondering about who came before me in that long line of ancestors Mrs. Peroutka talked about.
Maybe my birth mother sneezes in sets of five. Maybe my birth father loads his plate with hot peppers too. Who knows? Maybe some of my Korean relatives resisted the j.a.panese occupiers the way Sohn Kee Chung had.
I really wanted to know. No, I needed to know. There had to be a way to find out, I decided, even if the essay was already finished. I know Nash would help me. I"d tell him what Kelly said about that adopted Russian girl posting a note on the Internet. Maybe we could try that!
That"s what was on my mind more than anything else. Even more than Kelly.
Finding Your Ki-bun.
A few days later, I rang the doorbell at Nash"s house less than ten minutes after he called. I licked my lips. They still tasted like the spice from the barbecue chips I"d wolfed down.
"You found something out about me, didn"t you?" I asked as we ran upstairs.
"You bet I did," he said.
While we waited for the computer to boot up, Nash told me about his new lab partner in science. "I think she"s Korean, Joseph, no kidding. She"s really pretty and smart."
It had to be Ok-hee. I reminded him about Yongsu being the new kid in band and told him that was her brother. "The Hans bought the Jiffy Wash, near my mom"s shop," I said.
"I"ll carry towels for your mom whenever she wants," said Nash, "as long as Ok-hee"s there."
Nash sounded slick, but I knew him well enough to know he probably acted shy around Ok-hee.
The computer screen finally lit up. With a click Nash called up a website called "Finding Your Ki-bun."