“But you know where she might be?”
The girl nods, still without looking up. She seems suspicious of Suzy. Why wouldn’t she be? Here’s an adult who spent the better part of the morning throwing up in the school toilet. In the world of teenagers, just being an adult is reason enough for suspicion. To appease her, Suzy asks softly, “So is Miss Park a good teacher? Do students like her?” She is not sure why she wants to know, but she does. Grace’s life. This bashful teenager in front of her. This first-floor ladies’ room. This concrete building filled with ebullient sixteen-year-olds. This suburban town half an hour away from Port Authority.
“Yes,” the girl answers with surprising eagerness. Then, as if suddenly aware of her own voice, she drops her gaze and mumbles, “They said I’m ready to quit ESL, but Ms. Park lets me sit in her class sometimes. She says it’ll get rid of my headache.”
“A headache?”
“Ms. Park says that so much English all day is what’s giving me a headache.”
A strange thing for an ESL teacher to say. Suzy has never quite thought of it that way—the English language being a headache-inducer. She wonders if such a reaction might also happen at depositions. She wonders if her translation sometimes sends the witness home with a migraine. Then she realizes that her own headache has faded. She probably threw up all the alcohol. Her stomach must be spotlessly clean, emptied.
“Can you show me to her class?”
The girl nods again, leading the way. The classroom is on the third floor. The stairs are steep and wide, the way they often are in old buildings. The students obviously get enough exercise, walking up and down between classes. The second bell must not have rung yet. Kids are rushing from lockers to classes, some grumpy and morose, some clapping high fives with dramatic facial expressions. Those are the popular kids, Suzy can tell. The ones who are not afraid to be seen, the ones used to being seen.
Neither Suzy nor Grace had known such teenage years. Theirs was the darkness surrounding home, the brooding silence before a storm. Suzy is not sure if her parents had always been so uninterested in each other, or if they just ran out of things to say over the years. It did not help that they were always tired. By the time they came home, around nine or ten, they had been working for over twelve hours. By rule, Suzy and Grace would have to sit at the table while they ate, although almost always both girls had already eaten. Often Dad burst into a rage, the violent, vicious thrashing of words. He would lash out at whoever happened to be near. Sometimes he would grumble about the kimchi being too sour, the rice not cooked enough, the anchovies too salty. He would take a bite and make a face, and then storm out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. Sometimes he would scream at both Suzy and Grace for sitting there like idiots while he slaved all day to put food on the table. Mom would never say anything back. She would sit there and finish her rice to the bottom of the bowl, and then get up to clear the dishes. She would never ask Suzy or Grace for help. She would never apologize for Dad’s moods. She would pretend that nothing had happened. Then, finally, she would turn to both and say, “Go finish your homework and get to bed, it’s a school night.” Suzy can still hear Mom. It’s a school night. She would say it sometimes even on weekends. Both her parents often worked seven days a week. They rarely had weekends.
With each job, with each endless hour they labored at dry cleaners, liquor stores, fruit-and-vegetable markets, nail salons, delis, truck-delivery service, car service, they seemed to have lost something of themselves, a sort of language with which they had communicated with each other and their daughters. Sure, it could have been the claustrophobia of immigrant life, being stuck in Korean enclaves that remained ignorant of English-speaking America. But there was something deeper. Something terrible that seemed to have haunted both. Something resembling fear that stirred Dad’s rage and Mom’s pointed absence, and always the two girls were made to sit and watch. Everything always came to the same end. The reason was Korea. The final answer was Korea. All of their discontent, their misery, their endless wanderings through the slums of outer New York happened only because they had left their country. The girls were bad girls because they spoke English, rather than their native Korean. The houses they kept moving through were temporary shelters with torn mattresses on the floor, because America could never be home. But of course her parents had no intention of returning to Korea. It was an excuse, Suzy thought. Korea was a crutch. It was what they used to keep the girls on their own terms.
Yet the one thing both Suzy and Grace so desperately wanted was to be American girls, full-fledged American darlings, more golden than the girl next door, even cheerier than the prom queen, definitely sweeter than all-American sweethearts. Far, far away from their parents’ Korea, which stuck to them like an ugly tattoo.
How misguided such a dream: neither even made it to the prom. Dad would never have allowed it, but it did not matter really, for the girls were always new in their high school and had hardly any friends. No boy would have asked Suzy, and the ones Grace knew would have laughed at the idea. Besides, a prom was a luxury at the sort of schools to which they transferred. Most kids came from immigrant homes. No boy could dish out a hundred bucks for a night. No girl looked good in ruffled dresses. Pink satin was for white girls. A limousine? Why hire one when your father’s the cabbie? A prom belonged in those Molly Ringwald movies, in which the prettiest girl, pretending to be a geek, ends up winning the rich, handsome, sensitive football captain for the last dance. High schools, as Suzy knew, had nothing to do with sweet sixteen. You were lucky if you didn’t get mugged on the way to the locker. You were lucky if you didn’t get frisked by the policeman at the gate ready to crack down on drug gangs. The golden girl, the girl next door, the all-American sweetheart didn’t get made in the gutters of Queens.
“Here we are.” The girl turns around, stopping abruptly in the middle of the hallway.
“The prom… when’s your prom?” Suzy blurts out, then quickly regrets it, realizing that this might be too far-fetched for the girl.
“Prom?” asks the girl, her eyes widening.
“No, never mind,” mutters Suzy, finding herself before Grace’s classroom.
It is hard to believe that Grace must be inside. It suddenly occurs to Suzy that she might be too early. 8:50 a.m., not the best time for a surprise visit. But, then, it might even work to her advantage. Grace would have to greet her politely, first thing in the morning, showing up before her entire class. But it would not be fair to walk in on her like that, nor would it be wise. Instead, Suzy suggests, “Could you ask Miss Park to come outside? Tell her someone’s here to see her.” The girl is still vexed by Suzy’s question about the prom but seems relieved that the subject is being dropped. Before disappearing inside, she turns around once, as if making sure Suzy is still there.
A few minutes later, the door opens to reveal the girl, followed by an older woman. Short-waisted and blotchy-skinned, she reminds Suzy of Michael’s secretary, Sandy. Although Suzy has never seen Sandy in person, she imagines Sandy to have a similar look, the nervous look of a woman who’s been on her own too long.