The first weekend after classes started, Heather and I went to a party in the student union. I could hear music pounding from the room, Prince’s “Purple Rain,” as we approached a large gothic building in the arts quadrangle. All paths converged there, and everyone walked in crowds toward that building. It was dark by eight, but there were so many lights on around the quad and the student union that it seemed like daytime. Huge spotlights were set up on the grass outside, and tables with signs inviting students to join this athletic club or that community service group were everywhere.
That night could have been a new start, as it was for many freshmen like me. Everyone was friendly and open, easy to talk to, smiling. The air was festive. In Korea, the last time I had seen you, you’d said to me, “Freshmen have to suffer,” and sent me away. I found myself making note of things to tell you when I saw you again. The stone staircase up to a large terrace outside the entrance with more tables covered with flyers announcing clubs for political organizations and campus newspapers. Apparently there were two rival publications, one that was radical and one that toed the official college line. The conversations about President Reagan and the economy, the talk of South Africa’s apartheid system and how other colleges were protesting. You would feel at home here, I thought, as I signed my name to the mailing list for the radical newspaper.
Heather waved to a group of students by the door when we entered the building, and we walked over to them. One of them had gone to her high school. I tried to pay attention when introductions were made.
I met Daiyu and Faye that night. Daiyu lived in Taft, the modern concrete-block behemoth across the quadrangle of buildings of the main campus. Uglier on the outside than Reynolds, where Heather, Faye, and I had our rooms, Taft was reputed to have plush new mauve carpeting and had more bathrooms per floor than our dorm. All freshmen were housed in these two buildings. The four of us walked around, picking up flyers, signing up for clubs. Faye laughed about everything, and Heather and I looked at each other wondering why. “I’m sorry, I have this problem,” Faye said. “I get silly spells.” Then she burst into laughter again and tried to stop it, resulting in loud hiccups. I wondered if she was on drugs. Or was it immaturity? Silly spells? Didn’t we use words like that in third grade? Daiyu tripped three times on our walk to the dorms. She was the accident-prone one.
I tried to relax around them, my new friends. There was nothing to hide, unlike the way it had been back in high school. I had nothing to hide, because my parents were in Lakeburg. And you had done something to me; meeting you had changed me. I felt it. I could stop and look around and take in the looks of others without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. I could weather being inspected for once and not squirm under their gaze. “Let them look,” you used to say. “Let them. Be yourself.”
17
What would Willa do in my place here in this room?
My sister, Willa, was always falling in love. I don’t know how she could when our parents were poor examples of what follows after you fall in love. The old childhood limerick that Willa welcomed—Willa and Tom or Eric or whoever she had a crush on that week sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage. But you know, for me, love was something I resisted. Even with you.
My sister was the social one at school. She had loads of friends and spent her time after school and on weekends at her friends’ houses. Boyfriends kept her out of the house when she got older. She avoided all things Korean as if they were the reason our father lost his temper. How could I blame her? Being Korean seemed to be the reason for his rage.
“They make fun of my English,” he used to shout as he threw a chair to the floor. “I don’t get the promotion, I don’t get the raise. What are you looking at?”
It seemed all I could do was hold up the test I’d taken at school as he made his way toward my mother. “See my A-plus,” I said to him. “Look, look.”
Sometimes it worked, his eyes registered what was on the page; sometimes it was as if I were invisible. “How are we going to protect our children from this?” he shouted before he knocked our dinner off the table. I said, “I’m here, right here. Stop, stop, stop.” But he ignored me. I ran from him to my mother, back and forth, waving my hands. Look at me, stop, stop, stop.
18
I’ve read that the five stages of grief are denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Is it denial if I speak to you in my head as if you’re alive somewhere and can hear me?
19
Two months before I started at Weston College in central Pennsylvania, I went to Korea. It was July 6, 1985. I boarded a plane at the county airport near Lakeburg, New York, transferred at Kennedy Airport in New York City three hours later, and flew to the other side of the world. You and I were on the same plane that left New York City, along with several others who had just graduated from high school or had done so the year before. You were one of those who had graduated from high school a year earlier and had already finished one year of college. I didn’t see you on the plane, which is hard to believe now. How did I not notice you?
The first time I saw you was in Gimpo Airport in Seoul after we landed. I was in the crowd behind you, making my way to the exits. You and another boy, who could have been your brother except for the widow’s peak that made your hair jut out over your forehead, were shaking hands with men and women on the other side of the cordoned-off hallway, perfectly at ease. Men in business suits or patterned button-down shirts open at the neck to show white Tshirts underneath reached across and patted you on the back. Women in knee-length floral dresses in muted colors with their hair styled and pressed powder on their cheeks waved you in closer to see if you were who they sought. Everyone there looked more formal than those of us who had arrived from the States in our bright, casual vacation clothes.
You smiled and leaned in with a stranger’s hand still in yours to hear what he or she said. You blushed at the compliments. There must have been compliments. You had a glow about you, a confidence. And you charmed those hundreds of people reaching to touch us as we walked off the plane, reaching for our clothes, our hands, our elbows, as if touching us would make us become who they wanted us to be—their loved one, relative, or dongchang, old childhood friend.