Necessary Roughness

one

Okay, I shouldn’t have done it. They say hindsight is twenty-twenty; my visibility is now unlimited. I shouldn’t have even dreamed of saying anything about the Buddha. But what can I say except that, at the time, it seemed a perfectly logical thing to do?

The Buddha statue in question was the size of a Border collie and about three times as heavy. Pure stone, very Las Vegas in gold-leaf paint. It always sat in the left corner of our living room, its smile semi-hidden behind the potted palm.

No one ever paid any attention to it. We didn’t offer it food like the Parks did with theirs. It just sat there. So when my mother said we needed to leave things behind for the big move, I suggested that.

Naturally. We say grace before meals, which means we’re Christians, which means we have no need for a Buddha statue—right? And the Parks certainly would have appreciated the donation, two Buddhas being better than one and all that.

But as usual, after I said it I wished I hadn’t. I still don’t know exactly why that lump of stone was so important, but Abogee boiled over, as if I’d suggested we leave my sister behind or something. And I knew he was mad, not because he ranted and raved or whopped me on my heinie with a yardstick—like he used to when I was little—but because he refused to talk to me, or even look at me, the whole drive to Minnesota.

When my abogee gets mad, he either yells or gives you the silent treatment, depending on his mood. I almost prefer the yelling because eventually it blows over. It’s his silence that really cuts, the way a piece of paper can slice your finger open.

But this time I didn’t let him get to me. I was mad too, and we kind of canceled each other out.

I couldn’t believe it when Abogee told us we were leaving L.A. I think the first words out of my mouth were But we can’t. I haven’t finished high school yet!

O-Ma (Young and I call her by the Korean word for mom, while Abogee makes us call him Abogee—father) made me go outside, which is rare for her. I didn’t stop to think that she was probably upset too. I mean, she was leaving all her friends, her church, and Kim’s Green Extravaganza, our store.

I felt even worse when Young didn’t complain, even though a week ago she’d found out that—after about a kajillion auditions—she’d won a spot in the L.A. Young (no relation) People’s Orchestra.

She just nodded when she heard the news, which made Abogee say to me, Why can’t you be more obedient like your sister?

It always boils down to this: I’m the evil twin and Young is the good one.

Last night through the wall I heard Abogee tell O-Ma that if we were in Korea, I would never talk back to him like I do. So how does he know? How can he predict what I’d be like?

I would say that we’re an almost perfect family, except for the one small fact that Abogee and I could start World War III all by ourselves. The way Abogee talks, you’d think he had me mixed up with some other son. One who gets all A’s. One who knows what his abogee wants before he says anything. One who snaps to attention and goes Yessir! at everything his abogee says.

And as for me, my life is defined by the perpetual fear of pissing him off. I never mean to, like I said, but it’s like walking through a minefield. No matter how much you tiptoe around, sooner or later—boom!—you’re going to get it.

So there we were, in a clanky station wagon, the Buddha statue weighing down the rear, heading toward Minnesota. Toward certain doom.

two

According to our espionage reports, it was Abogee’s brother who got us into this mess. Even though Young and I aren’t allowed in on family affairs, we manage to piece things together, especially since the walls that separate the rooms in our house are as thin as rice crackers.

Let me back up to give you a little history. Abogee and O-Ma came to America when Young and I were three. Abogee had been a chemist, so he wasn’t too thrilled with O-Ma’s idea of opening a grocery—even though his Ph.D. friends Mr. Park and Mr. Lee also had stores. But when he couldn’t find a position in chemistry, he went along with O-Ma’s idea, grumbling all the way.

O-Ma named our store Kim’s Green Extravaganza. We sold all sorts of veggies and fruits and went mental about keeping them extra fresh. The moment something got even a little soft or had one tiny little bruise, we either gave it away to friends or took it home. To this day I’m haunted by the spongy taste of overripe apples.

The other thing about the store was that we sold stuff our customers needed: soup-for-one, tiny cans of cat food, cigarettes, fat-free cookies. O-Ma even went so far as to ask for suggestions. Abogee complained that people would think we didn’t know how to run a business. But the stuff O-Ma ordered from people’s suggestions almost always became regular sellers.

I guess we were doing pretty well, because Abogee’s mom and his brother, Bong, eventually came from Korea to live with us.

At first I wasn’t too thrilled to be sharing the house with two strangers, but Grandma, Halmoni, grew on me. She padded around in her stocking feet, and when I came home from school, I could hear her singing wafting through the open windows. Some of my best memories are of sitting with her in the kitchen. Young would be at her flute lessons, so it was just Halmoni and me, surrounded by pungent Korean food smells—ginger, garlic, sesame oil. She would chop, smash, fry, and boil like a maniac while she told me stories about animals: why frogs croak in the rain, how the rat king found the perfect husband for his daughter.

Bong told stories too. They were all about this guy, Joker Kim, who can’t stop himself from doing weird and/or stupid things; like he’d pick his nose and then get bummed when a glop of snot fell in his rice. Young and I hated it when he’d call us over and say, Did you hear the one about when Joker Kim went to the bathroom?

I always had the feeling Abogee was not thrilled with his brother either. It was clear that Bong cared only about Bong. He never made his bed; he splattered toothpaste all over the bathroom. The closest he ever came to helping with the dishes was one time when he brought his glass within a hundred-yard vicinity of the sink.

At the store he wasn’t much better. Once, a whole crate of Clementine oranges disappeared when he was supposed to be watching them. But Abogee just made his regular guy, Manuel, pick up the slack. Abogee let Bong do his thing all the way up until he stopped showing up for work. Then Abogee fired him.

After that, Bong just drifted in and out of the house, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. Occasionally he’d come in with his face looking like a bruised piece of fruit and smelling like he’d been smoked and pickled.

Everything in the house somehow managed to stay its course until Halmoni died. I think Halmoni kept a lid on whatever grudges lurked between Abogee and Bong. Once she was gone, I could hear them arguing long into the night.

Bong started reading these magazines, Small Business Owner, Entrepreneur, that he left behind the toilet in the bathroom. One day he announced that he was now the proud owner of a convenience store somewhere up in Minnesota. The next thing we knew—poof!—he was gone, and we had some peace.

Of course, the next thing we knew—poof!—Bong turned up in Korea with some scheme about pizza-making robots he’d found through an 800 number. Hello! It was so important, he didn’t have time to tell anyone, didn’t have time to sell the store back in Minnesota. He promised that one day he’d be rich and pay everyone back.

It was at this point that O-Ma found out that Abogee had loaned Bong a wad of money to buy the store, a franchise. In fact Bong had convinced Abogee to basically stake him all of the money, since he didn’t have any of his own. That was when Young and I got the news that we were moving.

Abogee keeps telling us that he’s been looking for an excuse to get out of L.A. anyway. It’s too crowded, too many merchants getting shot in their stores. The new place is going to be quiet, safe, secure. A small town, good schools. No more big-city problems.

It gets to me, that Abogee even pretends he’s doing this for Young and me. O-Ma is always saying, Your father sacrifices so much for you. Look at how hard he works at the store. It’s all for you children.

If that’s true, then he doesn’t have to do this. He could sacrifice less and we could stay in L.A. and that would be fine with me.

I would have said this out loud, but I knew no one would have listened.

three

Young and I had named our car Lou, because he came to us with a key chain that said LOU GRUBB CHEVROLET FORD, and he seemed more like a Lou than a Grubb. Lou was the latest in a series of junker cars that Abogee had bought cheap, counting on his mechanic friend, Henry Park, to fix things when necessary. That was fine in L.A. But as each minute passed, as we drove farther and farther away from Henry and his tools, I worried that every little noise might be Lou’s death rattle.

We were inching up the twisty cliff road that crosses the Continental Divide, when Lou started to sputter and cough. There was no shoulder, only a tinfoil guardrail that could not have kept a mosquito from going over the edge, so Abogee kept going.

As we climbed higher, Lou wheezed louder. The CHECK ENGINE light flickered. O-Ma murmured something to Abogee that I couldn’t hear.

Young and I, stuffed in the backseat along with shoe boxes, bags of linens, that damn Buddha, and a cooler, looked at each other and clung to the worn armrests. Abogee shifted Lou into another gear.

The car started to slide backward.

Young grabbed my hand. Rocky crags we’d passed seconds earlier were now passing us. I touched the Buddha’s nose.

If we go, you go, I reminded him.

The gear caught. Lou jerked to a stop, then slowly, reluctantly moved forward.

We finally came to one of those places where you can pull over to let people pass if you’re going too slow, which we were. Some jerk in a Geo Tracker honked at us, spraying gravel—ping! ping! ping!—as he passed, while Abogee struggled to wedge Lou into the tiny pull-off. Young and I got out and inspected the cliff while Abogee fiddled under the hood.

It felt good to be standing on solid ground.

Did you know that at the Continental Divide, rivers actually change direction? Young asked.

Mmm. Fingers of a breeze teased my sweaty hair. I liked this place, the endless chain of mountains, the scrubby trees clinging like undecided suicide jumpers to the edges of cliffs. I yelled Hel-loooo into the air, hoping for an echo, but there was none.

Half an hour and two quarts of oil later, we were on our way again. Lou sounded better, but I think it was the rest more than the tinkering that did it. We crested the Divide, then began the equally twisty ride down. I was wondering at exactly what point the rivers flowed in opposite directions, but Young was asleep and I didn’t want to bug her.

After we left the mountains behind, the ride flattened out. I almost preferred being in a state of panic. Now I had nothing to do except sit and think about how much I missed my friends, my soccer team, our old hangouts. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. That’s what Sujin had said to me the night before we left. I know it’s corny, but for this situation, it’s applicable. Sujin was always into prepackaged words. Her other favorite line was, If you love something, set it free—and blah-blah-blah. I can’t remember the rest. I think she got them off posters in card stores.

Sujin is—was—my girlfriend. She was also Young’s best friend, so I didn’t have to sneak around to see her. A lot of Korean parents are strict, but not as bad as Abogee. He’d decreed dating totally off-limits until college. Who is he kidding?

Even though I got to see Sujin a lot, our dating possibilities were pretty limited. For just the two of us, there were no movies, no neighborhood restaurants—no places to just hang out The Korean CIA—which consisted of anyone’s nosy parents, grandparents, and bratty younger brothers and sisters—might see us and report to Abogee. We had been going out a record two and a half months, but that meant five dates, tops.

What I liked best about