Folks, this story actually goes way back. All the way to a place called the Eighties. Just think about George Orwell and rewind the clock back twenty years. All that 1984 stuff would come soon enough, after the Towers fell. Don’t worry, we’ll find out about what happened to Building 7 right after these commercials.
What a perfect time, a peaceful time! A time we never understood. The technicolor era, full of rainbow signal checks and the domestic wonder of morning cartoons. We were already embarrassed by the things we wore, right after we finished wearing them. Before the past was rewritten, and time was erased—or multiplied—into pixels and microcosms of magnified existence, entrapping us in a sweet surrender, a blank stare, the urge to like something.
We played kickball. We played basketball. We played football. We played soccer. We played Nintendo and rode bikes. We came home at dinnertime, always. And our father came home every day at 7:30, from the drycleaner in East Orange. A long day, a faithful day, the day always the same, with different customers, awkward interactions, still can’t speak English, after 20-30-40 years, little annoyances and moments of peace, between the hum of my mother’s sewing, preferable for him to her nagging, and there they were stuck together, completely resentful, unfailingly devoted, giving their lives away for us.
This ride from this place to that. It must’ve made him so happy. When things were good. Love was in the air. A love of country, American flags waving, a pride in steroid-pumped steaks. The bigness of Stallone and Schwarzeneggar’s muscles made you unafraid of any enemy, of anything really. What problem could not be solved with an M16?
America wins, motherfucker. The other countries only exist to create some context. A little drama. Voila, I have a bomb! I’m going to blow up the world!
Well, America has 100 bombs, and they’re all sanctioned and aimed at different positions on the globe which we’ve deputized as missile silos in exchange for cheaper prices on oil.
This game sucks.
Yeah, I’m going home.
Okay, let’s play something else.
Boys! Dinner!
Guys, I’ve got to go home.
Okay.
The stars beckon us to our places of living, where the real world really is, and yet so hidden away, behind the curtains of your neighbor’s house, the front door ajar, leaking with the same warm glow. In each American domicile is a story with a unique flavor, just a different aisle in the Great American Grocery Store. In this one, basil and garlic. In that one, curry and cumin. In yet another, Kosher, and in ours, Kimchi.
My father was a man of routine. Same newspaper, same KBS evening news in his chair, same K-drama, which he sometimes watched to the end, but oftentimes lost interest. I have no idea which parts he found interesting. Korean kings and queens, royal courts of intrigue and betrayal, a lot of gravelly voiced men threatening each other with swords and edicts.
Picture me, wondering where all the men who talked like that went, along with the gnarly facial hair, when all I see are falsetto dudes with dyed bangs who dance in choreographed unison.
My dad’s show’s been on forever, I bet. Seven-year-old me, and then seventeen-year-old me, sees no change. In that decade, my father changed his chair once. His daily pants, maybe twice, when the corduroy didn’t corduroy anymore. The actors on screen flow in and out, the same wigs and wicked beards and mustaches. No one notices the change. Only we get older. Our innocent little giggles turn into grunts which substitute for what used to be “yeses”, and our Starter caps grow increasingly more tilted. If only we had those dynastic little hats with wings that look like they could start flying as a getaway device.
My father never changed. He did the same exact thing every single day. Socks came off at the table. His newspaper was unfolded. And he always had to have a bowl of soup with dinner.
Korean gguk is soup filled with broth and various boiled greens and radishes, sometimes potatoes, bean sprouts, and little pieces of meat. These are all boiled and prepared with the usual suspects, a big steaming pot, a lot of salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and red pepper flakes. All the various flavors of wartime delight infused with whatever’s on sale at H-Mart. Remember that the old days, when you just wanted to feel a little grit between your teeth and pretend it was meat?
Well, this is America baby. Let’s get you some USDA beef in that pot.
My brother and I ate bulgogi at least every other week. This was a must. And my father had to have his gguk with dinner. My mom was always cooking, but we were never particularly appreciative of her labor or her skills. Just expectant, and hungry.
In my father’s case, the soup was the cornerstone, the whole thing holding his whole life together. I mean, this is a man who put up with a lot. He wasn’t easily upset. His only request was the soup with whatever dinner his wife had prepared, the Korean newspaper, and that the house not need repairs when he got home. Once I saw my mom panic because there was no gguk. It had slipped her mind. There wasn’t enough time to throw things in the pot and hit the bottom with the stove fire. When she broke the news to the old man, he wasn’t even mad. I saw something in him collapse. There was no way he could eat.
He got up and left the table and went without dinner that night. He didn’t even drive off like a typical American dad to the nearest McDonald’s a bury his woes in a Big Mac. That was an unthinkable waste of money, and anyway he didn’t like fast food.
Why was the soup so necessary?
Later I learned that these were the little things that formed a person’s psychology and ability to cope with existence. A habit formed from growing up during the Korean War, when all Koreans depended on liquid mixed with solidity to make up for that missing sustenance. To give the impression, the feeling of everything, when there was so much missing. Boiling all you have and pulling out every last molecule of nutriment, to keep you alive through the hard winter, a winter that would last your entire life.
Even in the land of milk and honey, the place where all dreams came true. Even in New Jersey, with its ubiquitous diners and pizzerias on every avenue. The man needed soup.
Sometimes I wish I could ask, “Was this what you dreamed of? Was this the life you thought you would have?”
Then you grow up and find out for yourself, “When is it ever?”
We had a good life.
My parents loved each other.
No, they didn’t.
They respected each other.
No, they didn’t.
They were bound to each other.
Okay, I’ll give you that.
They were bound by duty, by secrets, by everything that they never told us or expressed in front of us, all the things that never needed to be said, but which I desperately wished they would say.
If only I knew how they truly felt. If only I saw them even once in my life hug each other. Or show any kind of tenderness or affection.
If only I could feel that there was something there. Other than the suffocating grip of fate, making sure that each other didn’t dare move a muscle, or else lose all they had.
Because all they had was us.
My family had love.
We were all held hostage by Christmas and the anticipation of money on New Year’s.
I had a happy life. So did my brother and sisters.
We sometimes wondered what our parents would do without us.
They would survive, as they always had.
And perhaps I had it all wrong. Perhaps they really were happy.
I mean, every night my mom would sit beside my dad as he ate. I would see her sitting in a chair, knee folded up to her chest. She never could just sit in a chair like an American. The chair was just an elevated piece of the floor. And she would drone on about something or other.
What was there left to say? Weren’t they there in the drycleaner together, every day in the stinking heat and the freezing cold, collecting coins in a cookie tin from Costco?
Weren’t they together whenever a bum came in asking for money, or the street urchins came around selling their (possibly stolen) wares?
My father always bought their junk. My mom complained, but this was one of the most unique things about him. His willingness to be stupid in order to be kind.
I knew my father was a good man. But this little thing made me know it a little more.
All I knew was data-harvested. Observations. Notes on patterns and routines.
These are the facts that become solid after he dies.
He really loved that store. He wanted to open up a bunch of them across the Tri-State, as legends of other hustling Koreans who had made it big and now lived in richer towns like Short Hills or Alpine. Unbelievable, sure, but even his friends at church drove Mercedes, while he was still pushing that Dodge so many years later.
What did he do wrong and what did they do right?
My mom said he wasn’t much of a businessman. But I can imagine how happy it made him when things were really cooking in the eighties. The economy was doing great thanks to Reagan, and he had more employees than he needed. Back when me and my brother were still young enough to chase each other between the racks of plastic wrapped clothes. We ran about that smell and just knew instinctively which machines to stay away from and didn’t even think about any of the buttons. Just don’t think about them!
We were in our own world then, that world of the past wrapped in plastic, meant to be preserved, with so many clothes lost and left behind by the wayfarers of life: dresses, coats, sweaters, even name-embroidered materials, silver buttons, the little collection of brass my father collected, and all forgotten on the road to somewhere. How could they leave it all behind?
I remember the day Rodney King made the news.
I saw L.A. burning. Korean storeowners like us crying, from losing everything they had.
Survival Koreans on the rooftops with rifles, protecting what was left of Koreatown. That understanding that they were not important enough to be helped by the government. They were on their own.
“Burn, baby, burn! Burn, baby, burn!”
I watched my dad’s Black employees shaking their heads saying, “What a shame! What a shame!”
But who could tell what they really meant?
Which part was shameful? The riots? The police brutality? The Blacks and Mexicans burning down Korean-owned businesses?
There was a line between people, events, and streets when things got hot. You always thought you were unified, and then quickly, you realize you are not.
My father’s employees were mostly seniors who did random jobs, like answer the telephone. He didn’t really need them around, but the store was a lot livelier with them there. Eventually they weren’t around and he went to all their funerals. They seemed to all pass within just a couple of years of each other. Then one day, the store was empty. And it was just work. And I realized why he had them all there.
There was no more TV in the corner. Only the sound of KBS radio, crackling quietly in the corner.
The 80’s ended, and the Rhinestone jackets went, and all the kids who grew up watching the old hustlers took over their former places.
The side of our store was covered in Crip script. I knew enough to know that all that blue spray paint meant something. I even had an inkling of what it might mean when someone’s name was crossed out.
The dealer on the corner, the junkie on the bench. The Caribbean linen around the dreads, the fried crab stick passed already wrapped with a napkin. I used to imagine a world before this world. And then there I was in the world, passing through another tunnel, thinking about another bag to cop.
80’s, 90’s, and now it’s whenever it is, if you’re still around here doing the thing, that terrible thing, that still has you coming out to The Bricks.
Don’t know too many who made it that long. Don’t know anyone who does it still. They’d be gone by now. You don’t last long in this kind of game. The quality is always up and down. It’s off the chain and then it’s not. Sometimes the strength is straight-off-the-boat. New Jersey and Philly hoods are like petri dishes for the new product. Nobody knows why, but all that pharmaceutical shit started right here. Maybe Johnson & Johnson leaked all that OxyContin out onto the streets. Who knows?
Straight from Afghanistan, your man says, like he got the shipment personally from Muhammad, guarding that field with an Ak-47 and a Quran. There’s a process. Farm to table; from my opium field to your medicine cabinet. Worldwide production. International trade.
Occupation, emancipation.
God bless America.