Somebody's Daughter by Marie Myung-Ok Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

Choi
Sunsengnim
asked.
    He stopped in front of her desk.
    â€œDoug Henderson.” His skin was an opaque white like school paste, and pocked with ice pick scars, suggesting he’d had bad acne as a teen. He was also a giant by Korean standards, over six feet, spindly like a houseplant that doesn’t get enough sun. A military star winked from the collar of his frayed flannel shirt.
    â€œMust be one of those fuckwad army guys,” Bernie Lee speculated, as if the visitor wasn’t standing right in front of us. “The Eighth Army pays for them to take classes here.”
    â€œI was sent down from Lee
Sunsengnim
’s class,” Doug Henderson said.
    â€œLee
Sunsengnim
, level-three Lee
Sunsengnim
?” Choi
Sunsengnim
stared at him, the same way she had stared at me when she found out I didn’t have Korean parents.
    â€œLevel-three Lee
Sunsengnim
?” she repeated.
    â€œSam-gup ae so nae ryunun dae yo,”
he said.
    I could hear people’s mouths dropping open with wet sounds, including my own. This guy spoke Korean. Really well. Maybe even better than Bernie Lee, who was the best in the class. I almost expected to see a Korean person emerge from behind as a ventriloquist. This was all a joke, right?
    â€œ
Oh-moh
, Mis-tah Henda-son,” Choi
Sunsengnim
said in awe. “You speak like a Korean.”
    The guy shrugged and sat down in the only place that was open, the desk next to me. He didn’t look at any of us.
    At lunchtime, everyone ran off together as usual. I gathered my things, wondering what I could eat for lunch besides ramen. Take a chance on a sandwich with its frizzled red fillings? Pick the rice out of those paper-wrapped wheels? Take a risk on raccoon-flavored chips?
    Doug Henderson remained, like a rock. Like he was going to sit there until it was time for class again tomorrow.
    â€œHow about some lunch?” I said, impulsively.
    He looked sidewise at me, then unfolded himself from the seat. Wordlessly we walked out the back gate, across the pedestrian walkway, down the first alley to a crumbly beige structure with a corrugated metal roof. I’d passed this place daily on the way to the 7-Eleven, but because I couldn’t read Korean, I had no idea the word meant restaurant.
    We ducked the low doorway and entered the gloomy stucco shack. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the rest of our class materialized at a table in the corner. No one acknowledged us, except for the nun, who nodded in greeting as she chopsticked a clump of kimchi out of a bowl, holding the wide sleeve of her habit so it wouldn’t dip into the hot, red kimchi juice.
    We took a two-person table on the opposite side. The table was an odd, square shape, only a container of metal chopsticks and spoons, and a roll of toilet paper on top of it. The seats were low and plastic, like children’s outdoor furniture. There seemed to be waitresses, middle-aged ladies in tight, unattractive perms, but no one had given us a menu. Doug was fixated on a peeling and stained piece of paper tacked up on the wall. It was all in Korean, the characters running up-and-down instead of side-to-side the way we’d learned them.
    â€œWhat are you going to have?” I asked. In the kitchen, matrons with bulky arms that stevedores might admire were attending to rows of stone pots hissing on the blue-flamed gas range, or scooping rice out of a giant cooker. A sweaty waitress hoisted a tray of four bowls of stew, still boiling, onto her head, and plunged fearlessly among the clustered tables.
    â€œI’m having
lar-myun
,” he said.
    Oh, what the hell. This would be an adventure.
    â€œMake it a double,” I said.
    â€œAjuhma—lar-myun, dugae!”
He yelled at the waitress, the one unloading the tray of stews spitting steam. She glared, bowl in hand, callused thumb half in the soup, but then turned and shrieked in the direction of the