When the bus reached our stop, the vehicle jerked so hard, we might’ve flown through the front windshield. We climbed down, and before my foot cleared the last step, the bus yanked away, leaving a puff of black smoke as its trail. I looked down at Akemi. She looked up at me. She wiped her face and smiled and then began laughing. So did I. We laughed at that bus ride harder than at anything else since we first met. After traveling through a few African countries, as well as the US and Japan, I now knew Korea had the livest, craziest, wildest bus ride, and there weren’t even any chicken or goats on board.
We looked up. Our laughter had slowed down and we stood facing the steepest hills I had ever seen in a residential area of any town. They nearly went straight up into the sky, but a bit less. There was a school built on a slant on that steep hill. I wondered how the students kept from flying out of their seats and falling through the windows onto the slanted dirt soccer field. Unable to stand up straight, even the pine trees that lined the block were leaning.
I pulled out the map with the route I had drawn to Akemi’s grandmother’s address. Her tall building sat at the top of the highest and steepest hill. I looked at my wife and thought to myself, Loving you is hard work. If she wasn’t so sweet to me, and if she wasn’t so talented, and if she wasn’t so pretty, and if she didn’t feel so good …
We began climbing, feeling like if we would have stopped for even one moment, we would’ve fallen backward. I got reassured as I saw a clique of grandmothers gliding up the hill like it was an everyday thing, talking expressively to one another and growing louder and louder as they moved along.
Twenty minutes later, our calf muscles pulsating, we arrived at the building marked Hanshin in the Sajikdong section in Busan. No frontin’, it could have been mistaken for my projects. One thing I always said about my Brooklyn block was that there’s nothing wrong with the building or the sky above: it’s about the motherfuckers living inside there.
Inside the elevator, three grandmothers and four toddlers leaned against one wall and Akemi and I stood silently in the middle. One of the kids looked up and said “Hi” to me. I nodded my head and said “Anyonghaseyo” back to him. Then the kids all smiled. The grandmothers stood staring at Akemi. Meanwhile all four toddlers and Akemi were staring at me. They got off on six.
On the eighth floor we got off. Surprisingly, there were only two apartments on each floor. They must be large places, I thought to myself. We knocked. Purposely, I stood out of the range of the peephole. After all, Akemi’s grandmother had never seen Akemi before, so I wanted her to see her granddaughter first.
The door opened part way. Akemi said, “Anyonghaseyo,” and bowed all the way down. The woman who held the door stood in silence looking at my wife. When Akemi raised up, she gasped at seeing the woman’s face. The woman gasped at seeing Akemi’s face. Both of their eyes filled with tears. Then I knew. We were definitely at the right place. The woman was obviously not a grandmother, but she had to be a relative. Her tears came too suddenly and flooded and spilled so freely, and I had only known my wife to cry that way, so sincerely, so instantly, so seductively.
The woman took a closer step outside her door and placed both her hands on Akemi’s face. She stood staring at her for some seconds before sobbing, a soft and painful sound crept up from her gut. Akemi embraced her.
The door to the apartment facing the woman’s opened. An old man looked out, not at the woman but at me. “Gongpay,” he uttered. I didn’t know what it meant. I said nothing.
The woman in my wife’s embrace, at hearing her neighbor’s utterance, stepped back from Akemi and glanced at me for an eighth of a second. As she wiped away her tears, she spoke in fluent, rapid Korean to Akemi, her voice rising and falling like a melody to a tricky song. Akemi listened without interruption. When the woman ceased, Akemi said “nampyeon,” which I knew meant husband. The woman made a sound of only one syllable slipping out but not a complete word. Soon she managed to mumble a full sentence. Akemi answered, “Yeolyeosut.” The woman paused for eight seconds and then collapsed onto the floor. Akemi bent to help her.
People from the other apartment came pouring out past the nosy grandfather into the hallway as though they had all been listening all along. Akemi looked at me, panicked. She wanted help picking the woman up. I could’ve helped easily, but I didn’t want to touch the woman. This seemed like a scene that could blow in any direction. I gestured for Akemi to open the top of the woman’s shirt. Her blouse was buttoned all the way up. I motioned Akemi to tilt the woman’s head back and pull open her mouth. I placed one hand over my other hand and gestured a pressuring motion so Akemi would do compression on the woman’s chest. As the woman’s eyes had not opened and she was not responding to Akemi’s touch, I ripped open a gift-wrapped bottle of Umma’s oil and passed it below the woman’s nose. She came through. Her eyes opened.
As Akemi and I were now both kneeling and the woman was on the ground and the small crowd was huddled around speaking words I couldn’t hear or understand, I stood back up. Akemi extended her hand to the woman, and I reached out my hand to Akemi. We got the woman to ease back onto her feet and walked her inside of her apartment. The door closed behind us, leaving the small chattering gathering in the hallway.
We removed our shoes. The woman had already been wearing house slippers. She walked slowly over to her couch. As she sat down, she pointed. Akemi stood up and walked over to a glass pitcher of some type of drink that looked like iced tea. She poured some into a glass and brought it over to the woman.
“Daijobu?” I asked Akemi. Which meant “Are you okay?” in Japanese. “Hai, daijobu!” Akemi assured me softly. She sat down on the floor and motioned for me to do the same. We sat in silence for a minute.
The inside of the apartment was a great surprise. Unlike the projects, it was well designed with quality wooden floors and solid walls. Glass doors led to an enclosed glass terrace filled with greenery and revealing an incredible view down over the entire neighborhood. The place was spotless, as though a meal could be eaten from the floor. A low wooden table displayed a Korean ceramic tea set, all the teacups and dishes sparkling clean with no tea in the pot.
The woman began speaking softly in Korean to Akemi. As my eyes continued to move up the wall over her head where she was seated, I saw the cross. It was the same as the Christian cross I had seen in Reverend Broadman’s church and in Chris’s house. Observing and half listening, all I could decipher at first was the woman asking Akemi if I was Japanese.
“Aniyo,” Akemi answered musically, the way the Koreans drag out their syllables. Then my wife laughed a little and explained that I was “Aprican.”
The woman continued speaking to Akemi until there was a knock at the door. That knock was the same all around the world. It was the police. My father trained me to be thoughtful. Sensei trained me to remain calm. Brooklyn trained me to stay still when confronted and cornered by the police. A flick of a finger gets a black man executed by Brooklyn blue boys in the ghetto.
The two officers stepped inside. Their eyes moved slowly, carefully scanning the apartment and landing on me as they spoke to the woman.
“Military?” The officer said that one word to me.
“No,” I answered one word back.
“Passport,” he demanded. I wondered if these were the few English words he knew.
I kept my eyes on him as I now reached in my pocket. I handed him my passport. He opened it and pulled out a flashlight and shined it on my documents even though it was pure daylight with sunshine pouring in through the wide terrace window. Both the woman and Akemi talked nonstop but softly, with respectful tones, to one officer as the other stood over me, examining my passport. He handed it back to me.
“What you in Korea?” the officer asked.
“Visit family,” I responded.
The officer looked back at me, looked at Akemi, and looked next at the woman. Then he looked at his partner. The woman stood up from her couch. The two cops spoke i
n Korean to one another, then turned to leave. Akemi rushed and opened the door for them to leave while the woman apologized, over and over. Three seconds after the door closed, they knocked again. Akemi eased it back open. The officer looked at the woman. The woman walked out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind her as she spoke with the two officers once again. I guessed that they had to be reassured that this was not a hostage situation. They wanted to question her outside my presence. I didn’t give a fuck. They were more curious and suspicious than they were hostile or vicious. They didn’t seem like they needed to kill me and call it an accident. Nor would they toss a gun on me and say that I had aimed it at them and that’s why they had shot me up thirty-three times. They didn’t even seem like the types to lay low in the cut downstairs and chase me down the steepest hills ever, accidentally striking me with their cop cruiser.
No, they only wanted and needed enough information to satisfy the neighbors about “the Japanese girl, the Korean woman, and the gongpay.” Meanwhile I’m knowing it was the grandpa next door who had sounded the alarm and fingered me. He had slipped away and phoned the police. “Gongpay,” he had called me. I was going to find out before the end of the day if that word meant “nigger.”
Welcome to Korea, I thought to myself. They kept it real here, singled out a black man, confronted him, demanded ID, and questioned him. That’s what I was used to. There were no ninjas, trapdoors, or sneaky, deadly silences like with the Japanese.
Chapter 2
By THE SEA
“Yimo and omahnee, face same,” Akemi said. She meant that her aunt, the woman we had both just met, and her mother, Joo Eun Lee, both had the same-looking face.
“Omahnee young,” Akemi said. I took that to mean that her mother was younger than the aunt.
We were vibing in our own way while riding on the topside of a convertible double-decker bus. The bus tour would take us around the whole of Busan, including: Haeundae, Kwonganli, Seomyeon, Nampodong, Gwanbokro, and Jungongdong, helping us to become more familiar with the city, which was the second-largest city in Korea and had more than three million people. It would stop at all their major sections, areas, and sights, giving us and the other passengers a chance to look around before loading up and visiting the next site.
Akemi chose to continue writing in kanji in her new hardcover diary. As she began sketching a picture of the woman who I now knew was her aunt, I thought to myself, maybe Akemi’s mom was the younger sister. Or maybe because her mom died young, Akemi had a permanent picture in her mind of her mother as a young woman.
I could feel my wife’s mounting emotions. While I was glad that she unexpectedly met her aunt, and I could tell that they felt connected to one another instantly and immediately, I was feeling unsettled about how time was slipping away and then spinning out of control. Akemi had still not met her grandmother, who was the true reason for our arrival here in Busan. Her grandmother’s hands were where the urn containing Akemi’s mother’s ashes needed to be delivered in order for the two of us to head back to New York. Now we had agreed to return to her grandmother’s apartment tomorrow night at seven for dinner. I needed it all to run swiftly and smoothly even though I was prepared to handle this matter with full respect and consideration to Akemi’s mother and to Akemi’s feelings.
* * *
When our citywide bus tour finished, we returned to our motel, Bada Ga. Just like its name, which meant On the Sea, we were close to Korea’s South Sea; only the sand was closer. The rooms were reasonably priced, at 55,000 won per night, and we registered separately. Akemi went in first and I entered afterward. We each had our own rooms. Since Akemi spoke Korean, her registration was swift. Mine required my passport, before any other words could be exchanged. Then the question, “Military?” and my explanation, “No, I am not in the military. I’m a traveling student, pay as I stay,” before the registration card was slid across the desk for my signature.
Secretly we each gave the other copies of our room keys. This was the best way to raise the fewest suspicions in Korea, where everyone was interested in knowing what’s going on, and where people’s reactions showed up clearly on their faces.
After today’s fainting episode with Akemi’s aunt, I was suspecting that it was not only race being considered here in Busan, but our ages. Before collapsing in the hallway, the aunt had uttered “Yeolyeosut,” which I now knew meant “sixteen.”
With the urn locked in the safe in my room, I unloaded all our new purchases. Of course I got a Korean-English dictionary and a Korean phrase dictionary also from a huge bookstore named Kyobu Books. I must admit that even though I planned to learn some more Korean words than I already had from my travel book, after listening carefully all around town and in Akemi’s grandmother’s home, I was certain that it didn’t matter if a foreigner saw a Korean-language word printed out in the English alphabet. This language was distinct from Japanese and every other language I had ever heard or paid close attention to. Even if you knew the Korean vocabulary words, you needed to know how to sing each of them, seriously. It was the same as if you had the printed lyrics to some hot-ass song but didn’t know the melody or the rhythm. I flipped open to the G page in my new dictionary. It didn’t list the word gongpay.
In the fabric districts of Busan, I had chosen and purchased the most elegant textiles for Umma and our company, Umma Designs. I thought the different textures and patterned cloths would open up a whole new arena of design for my mother.
On that tour through Seomyeon, I observed that Korea was try’na come up. Youth was rocking Guess Jeans, but their fitted and kicks was all bootleg. I saw an opportunity. My mind started thinking international trade, international styling. I got stopped on those streets more than a few times because of my style. One older sneaker store owner who spoke some English called me over and questioned me about my style. As he looked me over from head to toe, he had nothing but dollar signs in his eyes. I took his business card. It was the first in a series of business cards I had copped. Shit, I could show them how to rock it right, where to get it wholesale, and what to avoid. I could become that middleman from Brooklyn to Busan. While they tried to catch up with the New York and hood fashions and get it right, I would be steady stacking my paper. That way, when they got too cocky and figured they needed to cut me out of the moneymaking deals, I’d already be paid, laced and chillin’.
I had picked up a few patches from underground vendors lined up against the subway walls. I was pushing around some ideas of redesigning some already dope jeans. I would lay it out for Umma, and she would make it happen.
I had also selected seven silk scarves for my wife so that she could wrap up her beautiful hair. Now that she was back to wearing her bad-ass diamond and gold bangles and her diamond studs in her ears, I would make sure that everything else was concealed. While we were out walking, Akemi wanted to buy a diamond for her belly button, but I told her no in English, anyo in Korean, and iie in Japanese. She was carrying our babies. Her belly button belonged to us, and if she wanted to pierce it for my pleasure, she could, after she delivered my sons, inshallah.
The sun was beginning to set. I jumped out of my day clothes and into my black Nike sweat suit and kicks. I put my wallet and my valuables in the safe and locked it. I grabbed my wool hat and a white washcloth and hit the beach outside my motel door.
Running in the sand is more work than on stable, flat ground. The traction requires more effort. It felt good though. The serene scenes of Busan offered a bunch of blessings that Brooklyn did not.
The sky faded from lavender to deep blue. The scent of the ocean was refreshing, the opposite of the smell of the ghetto. In fact, as I ran faster than a jog but slower than a sprint, I said to myself, The ocean has a scent and a soul. As the waves rushed into the shore slowly and without force, pulling back very little as it left, I could feel the ocean was alive and breathing. It even had a natural voice that filled the air and bounced and echoed between their greened mountains and silhou
ettes of mountains. The ocean was peaceful yet powerful. Unlike an emcee, the ocean didn’t need no mic. Unlike a deejay, the ocean didn’t need a sound system. Still, everyone from a great distance could hear its voice, and when they did, it caused them to pause.
The ocean made me feel something too. The great and deep moving body of water lay on my left side as I was running by, fasting and feeling thirsty.
Miles away from my starting point, from Haeundae Beach to Kwong An Li, I had reached an incredible Ferris wheel. It swung from the sky to the earth and around again. It made me think of my wife.
My tongue felt like sandpaper now. And my intestines felt dry like jerky. I bought four bottles of water from a beach vendor, along with two bananas. I stuffed my wool hat in my back pocket, dumped water over my head, cleaned my nose and my hands and my feet and praised Allah.
Slowly, I drank the three remaining bottles, my chest still heaving from the run. The sky was black now, jet black, and the unending line of lampposts lit up the gold sand. And the Ferris wheel tossed around green light and the boats set globs of yellow into the distance and over the blackened sea, and hundreds of red lights sparkled and outlined the far-off Haeundae Beach pier.
I followed the red lights home to my wife.
Akemi was seated on the boardwalk under a lamppost on the steps that led to the sand that led to the water. Oddly, she was wearing an all-black Nike sweat suit and black Chanel flip-flops, with her hair wrapped in a black silk scarf. Of course she had drawn a crowd who formed a semicircle around her as she sketched an elderly Korean woman who held her pose still as she sat on a small wooden stool. I was surprised. I knew Akemi didn’t like poses. She normally liked to see and experience and feel something and then create from the images in her amazing memory. Glancing over shoulders, I saw my wife’s pencil can was stuffed with pencils of every color and a thick stack of Korean won. Less than seventy-two hours from docking on these shores and Akemi was already making money. Random youths in the crowd spoke to her. She answered back softly in what sounded like perfectly spoken, musical Korean. She aroused me.