By the time I got home, I knew it would be selfish of me to boycott the Kims’ dinner party. My mother had already spent a lot of time humming over pie recipes and going through her closet for “something suitable to wear.” She’d even bought a new shirt for Dad and had scrutinized what the boys intended to wear. Obviously she was looking forward to the dinner– not that I really understood that, but I didn’t want to ruin everything by telling her about my newfound hatred of Minjeong.
And Dad felt bad enough about Hyunsuk already. The last thing he needed was to hear about crackpot comments made by immature eighth graders.
So that night I went through the motions of baking pies with my mother and convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. One dinner couldn’t change anyone’s life. I just had to get through it.
Friday at school I avoided the blue-eyed brat the best I could, but that night as I got dressed, I found myself staring at the painting my father had given me and became furious all over again. Minjeong had never been a friend to me, ever! She hadn’t made a stand for the tree, she’d thrown away my eggs, and she’d made fun of me at my uncle’s expense…. Why was I playing along like we were jolly friends and neighbors?
When my mother called that it was time to go, I went out in the hall with every intention of telling her that I would not, could not go to the Kims for dinner, but she looked so lovely and happy that I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I took a deep breath, wrapped up a pie, and shuffled across the street behind my brothers and parents.
Yunho answered the door. Maybe I should’ve been mad at him, too, for telling the Kims about my uncle, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t asked him not to tell, and he certainly wasn’t the one making fun of Hyunsuk.
Mrs. Kim came up behind Yunho, whisked us in, and fluttered about. And even though she had quite a bit of makeup on, I was surprised to see the blueness of bags beneath her eyes. Then Mrs. Kim and my mother went off with the pies, my brothers vanished down the hall with Chaewon, and my father followed Yunho into the living room.
And wasn’t that just dandy? That left me alone in the foyer with Minjeong.
She said hi to me and I lost it. I spun on her, snapping, “Don’t you speak to me! I overheard you and Beomgyu in the library, and I don’t want to talk to you now or ever!”
I started to walk into the living room, but he stopped me. “Jimin! Jimin, wait!” she whispered. “I’m not the bad guy here! That was Beomgyu. That was all Beomgyu!”
I glared at her. “I know what I heard.”
“No! No you don’t! I… I was feeling bad about, you know, the eggs and what I’d said about your yard. I didn’t know anything about your uncle or what kind of situation your family was in, okay? I just wanted to talk to someone about it."
Our eyes locked for a minute, and for the first time its brownness didn’t freeze up my brain. “I heard you laugh. He made a joke about me being the same as my uncle, and you laughed.”
“Jimin, you don’t understand. I wanted to punch him! Really, I did! But we were in the library….”
“So instead you laughed.”
She shrugged and looked miserable and sheepish. “Yeah.”
I left her. Just walked into the living room and left her. If she was making it up, she was quite an actor.
If she was telling the truth, then Yunho was right—she was a coward. Either way, I didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
I stood beside my father and tried to follow his discussion with Yunho about something they’d both read in the paper. My father was saying, “But what he’s proposing would require a perpetual-motion machine, so it’s not possible.”
Yunho replied, “Maybe in the context of what scientists know now, but do you rule it out completely?”
At that moment I was feeling absolutely no scientific curiosity. But in a desperate attempt to block Kim Minjeong from my mind, I asked, “What’s a perpetual-motion machine?”
My father and Yunho glanced at each other, chuckled, then shrugged, giving me the sense that they’d just agreed to let me into a secret club. My father explained, “It’s a machine that runs without any external power source.”
“No electricity, no fuel, no water propulsion, nothing.” Yunho glanced over my shoulder and asked rather absently, “You think that’s a doable thing?”
What had distracted him? Was Minjeong still in the foyer? Why didn’t she just go away?
I forced myself to focus on the conversation. “Do I think that’s a doable thing? Well, I don’t really know. All machines use energy, right? Even real efficient ones. And that energy has to come from somewhere….”
“What if the machine generated it itself?” Yunho asked, but one eye was still on the foyer.
“How could it do that?”
Neither of them answered me. Instead, my father stuck out his hand and said, “Good evening, Baekhyun. Nice of you to have us over.”
Mr. Kim pumped my dad’s hand and joined our group, making little comments about the weather.
When that topic was all dried up, he said, “And wow, that yard of yours has really come along. I told Yunho here that we ought to hire him out. He really knows his pickets, doesn’t he?”
He was joking. I think. But my father didn’t take it that way, and neither did Yunho. I was afraid of what might happen next, but then Mrs. Kim tinkled a little dinner bell and called, “Hors d’oeuvres, everybody!”
The hors d’oeuvres were delicious. But when my father whispered that the teeny-tiny black berries on top of the crackers weren’t berries at all, but caviar, I stopped midbite. Fish eggs? Repulsive!
Then my father pointed out that I ate chicken eggs all the time, so why get squeamish over fish eggs?
He had a point. I hesitantly finished the cracker, and before long I was having another.
Minjeong was standing all by herself across the room, and every time I happened to look her way, she was staring at me.
Finally I completely turned my back on her and said to my father, “So who’s trying to invent a perpetual-motion machine, anyway?”
My father laughed. “Mad scientists all over the world.”
“Really?”
“Yes. For hundreds of years.”
“Well, what do they do? What’s one look like?”
It wasn’t long before Yunho was in on the discussion. And just as I was finally starting to catch on to magnetism, gyroscopic particles, and zero-point energy, I felt someone standing behind me.
It was Minjeong.
I could feel my cheeks flush with anger. Couldn’t she see I wanted to be left alone? I took a step away from her, but what that did was open up the group and allow her to move forward. Now she was standing in our circle listening to our discussion!
Well! Surely she was not interested in perpetual motion. I barely was myself! So, I reasoned, continuing our discussion would drive her away. I dove back in, and when the conversation started to peter out, I came up with my own ideas on perpetual-motion machines. I was like a perpetual-idea
machine, spinning ridiculous suggestions right out of the air.
And still she wouldn’t leave. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there, listening. Then when Mrs. Kim announced that dinner was ready, Minjeong held my arm and whispered, “Jimin, I’m sorry. I’ve never been so sorry about anything in my whole life. You’re right, I was a jerk, and I’m sorry.”
I yanked my arm free from her grasp and said, “It seems to me you’ve been sorry about a whole lot of things lately!” and left her there with her apology hanging wounded in the air.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d made a mistake. I should have let her say she was sorry and then simply continued to ignore her. But I’d snapped at her in the middle of an apology, which somehow made me the rude one.
I sneaked a peek at her across the table, but she was watching her dad, who was asking my brothers about graduating and their plans for college.
I had, of course, seen Mr. Kim many times, but usually from a distance. Still, it seemed impossible that I’d never noticed his eyes before. They were brown. Brilliant brown. And although Mr. Kim’s were set farther back and were hidden somewhat by his eyebrows and cheekbones, there was no mistaking where Minjeong had gotten her eyes. His hair was black, too, like Minjeong’s, and his teeth were white and straight.
Even though Yunho had called Minjeong the spitting image of her father, I’d never really thought of them as looking alike. But now I saw that they did look alike, though where her dad seemed kind of smug, Minjeong seemed… well, right now she seemed angry.
Then from the other side of the table, I heard, “Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Dad.”
Mrs. Kim gave a small gasp, and everyone looked at Chaewon. “Well, it’s not,” she said.
In all the years we’ve lived across the street from the Kims, I’ve said about ten words to Chaewon, and she’s said fewer back. To me she’s scary. So it wasn’t a surprise to see her glaring at her father, but it was uncomfortable. Mrs. Kim was keeping a smile perched on her face, but she was blinking a lot, glancing nervously around the table. I looked from one person to the next, too, wondering if dinner at the Kims’ was always this tense.
Suddenly Chaewon got up and dashed down the hall, but she was back in a flash with a CD in her hand.
And when she put it in the player, I recognized one of my brothers’ songs blaring through the speakers.
We’d heard this song, “Candle Ice,” pouring out of my brothers’ bedroom at least a million times, so we were used to it. But I looked over at my mom, worried that she might be embarrassed by the distorting guitars and the gritty lyrics. This was definitely not caviar music.
She seemed a little uncertain, but in a happy way. She was sharing secret smiles with my father, and honestly, I think she even giggled. My dad was looking amused, although he was very reserved about it, and it took me until the end of the song to realize that he was proud. Proud that this noise came from his boys.
That surprised me. Dad has never been real big on any rendition of my brothers’ band, although he’s never really criticized it either. But then Mr. Kim started grilling Taeyong and Jaehyun about how they’d afforded to record their own music, and they explained about working and saving and shopping for
good deals on equipment, and that’s when I realized why my father was proud.
My brothers were feeling pretty good, too, you could tell. And it was no wonder, with the way Chaewon was carrying on about how great “Candle Ice” was. She was positively gushing, which seemed very
odd, coming from Chaewon.
As I looked around, it struck me that we were having dinner with a group of strangers. We’d lived across the street for years, but I didn’t know these people at all. Chaewon did know how to smile. Mr. Kim was clean and smooth on the outside, but there was a distinct whiff of something rotten buried just beneath the surface. And the ever-efficient Mrs. Kim seemed flustered, almost hyper. Was it having us over that was making her nervous?
Then there was Minjeong—the most disturbing of all because I had to admit that I didn’t really know her, either. And based on what I’d discovered lately, I didn’t care to know any more. Looking across the table at her, all I got was a strange, detached, neutral feeling. No fireworks, no leftover anger or
resurging flutters.
Nothing.
After we’d had dessert and it was time to go, I went up to Minjeong and told her I was sorry for having been so fierce when we’d first come in. “I should’ve let you apologize, and really, it was very nice of your family to have us over. I know it was a lot of work and, well, I think my mom had a really good
time and that’s what matters to me.” We were looking right at each other, but it was almost as though she didn’t hear me. “Minjeong? I said I’m sorry.”
She nodded, and then our families were waving good-bye and saying good night.
I walked behind my mother, who was holding hands with my father, and beside my brothers, who were carrying home what was left of our pies. We all wound up in the kitchen, and Taeyong poured himself a glass of milk and said to Jaehyun, “That Mr. Kim was sniffing us out pretty good tonight,
wasn’t he?”
“No kidding. Maybe he thinks we’re hot for his daughter.”
“Not me, dude! You?”
Jaehyun got himself a glass of milk, too. “That’s Yunjin’s gig. No way I’d go there.” He grinned. “But she was really cool tonight. Did she come down on papa bear or what?”
My dad took a paper plate out of the cupboard and cut a slice of pie. “You boys showed a lot of restraint tonight. I don’t know if I could’ve kept my cool that way.”
“Aw, he’s just, you know… entrenched,” Taeyong said. “Gotta adjust to the perspective and deal from there.” Then he added, “Not that I’d want him as my dad….”
Jaehyun practically sprayed his milk. “Dude! Can you imagine?” Then Taeyong gave my dad a slap on the back and said, “No way. I’m sticking with my main man here.” My mom grinned from across the kitchen and said, “Me too.”
I’d never seen my father cry. And he didn’t exactly sit there bawling, but there were definitely tears welling up in his eyes. He blinked them back the best he could and said, “Don’t you boys want some pie to go with that milk?”
“Dude,” said Taeyong as he straddled a chair. “I was just thinking that.”
“Yeah,” Jaehyun added. “I’m starved.”
“Get me a plate, too!” I called as Taeyong dug through the cupboard.
“But we just ate,” my mother cried.
“Come on, Tiffany, have some pie. It’s delicious.”
I went to bed that night feeling very full and very happy. And as I lay there in the dark, I wondered at how much emotion can go into any given day, and thought how nice it was to feel this way at the end of it.
And as I nestled in and drifted off to sleep, my heart felt wonderfully… free.
-
The next morning I still felt good. I went outside and sprinkled the yard, enjoying the splish and patter of water on soil, wondering when, when, that first little blade of grass would spring up into the sunshine.
Then I went out back, cleaned the coop, raked the yard, and dug up some of the bigger weeds growing along the edges.
Mrs. Lee leaned over the side fence as I was shoveling my rakings and weeds into a trash can and said, “How’s it going, Jimin? Making neat for a rooster?”
“A rooster?”
“Why, certainly. Those hens need some motivation to start laying more!”
It was true. Bonnie and Clydette and the others were only laying about half the eggs that they used to, but a rooster? “I don’t think the neighborhood would appreciate my getting a rooster, Mrs. Lee. Besides, we’d get chicks and I don’t think we can handle any more poultry back here.”
“Nonsense. You’ve spoiled these birds, giving them the whole yard. They can share the space. Easily! How else are you going to maintain your business? Soon those birds won’t be laying anything a-tall!”
“They won’t?”
“Well, very little.”
I shook my head, then said, “They were just my chicks that grew into chickens and started laying eggs. I never really thought of it as a business.”
“Well, my runnin’ a tab has probably contributed to that, and I’m sorry. I’ll be sure and get you the whole sum this week, but consider buying yourself a rooster with some of it. I’ve got a friend down on Newcomb Street who is positively green over my deviled eggs. I gave her my recipe, but she says hers just don’t taste the same.” She winked at me. “I’m certain she’d pay handsomely for a supply of my secret ingredient if it became available.” She turned to go, then said, “By-the-by, Jimin, you have done a mighty fine job on that front yard. Most impressive!”
“Thanks, Mrs. Lee,” I called as she slid open her patio door. “Thanks very much.”
I finished scooping up the piles I’d made and thought about what Mrs. Lee had said. Should I really get a rooster? I’d heard that having one around made chickens lay more, whether they were in contact with each other or not. I could even breed my chickens and get a whole new set of layers. But did I
really want to go through all of that again?
Not really. I didn’t want to be the neighborhood rancher. If my girls quit laying altogether, that would be just fine with me.
I put away the rake and shovel, clucked a kiss on each of the hens, and went inside. It felt good to take charge of my own destiny! I felt strong and right and certain.
Little did I know how a few days back at school would change all of that.