Macy was different from the other Memorial girls, including me. Tall, with unruly hair and a washboard chest, which she rued, she was silly and a little out there. She had a nice dad and a nice house with art chosen by interior designers, but even all that couldn’t hold her inside: she was unadulteratedly herself.
I looked over at her again. Lala was going to town on a glob of bean dip Macy had applied to the tip of her nose. I shook my head and finally let myself laugh.
Lala lifted her head and howled.
After that, Macy and I were inseparable. She knew where we lived was a strange place, with rules and expectations about female behavior and perfection. Our mothers both worked where mothers generally did not, except hers was rich and mine was poor. I had the feeling most Memorial girls—blond, blue-eyed, and naturally in the right clothes—enjoyed being girls, but I thought it would be better if I were a boy like Arthur, whom my parents allowed more freedom. Then I could live without my mother’s fear of Peeping Toms, wear sleeveless shirts in the summer, and be good at sports.
Unlike me, working hard to succeed in the few places I might be accepted, Macy didn’t try to fit in at all in Memorial. I was beginning to buck against my mother, but Macy was further advanced in carping against hers. Mrs. Jordanowicz walked into her daughter’s room the evening of the bean dip recital and declared in her soft North Texas accent, “Macy Lee, what is going on here? You are in a fit.” Mrs. J. worked as a senior vice president at a bank, which meant she had a ccah-reer. She wore custom suits and good heels, carried prim Coach purses, and was a real Southern woman.
It was in Mrs. J.’s home office that Macy and I transformed into “Jordanowicz and Song, LLC, LLP, et al., Esq., Inc., Etc. Etc.,” by which we cracked high-profile criminal cases and hunted for perps. When a case went cold, we turned our attention to a more genteel business assisting a stable of well-connected clients requiring our services for multimillion-dollar design projects. Flipping through Mrs. J.’s Architectural Digests, the two of us critiqued the lines and colors of the rooms, and invariably came to the conclusion that the competition had done it all wrong. “Now don’t kill me, but I love this chandelier here. The crystals really bring up the room, but ugh, that couch.” Pointing to a leather sectional, Macy shook her head in pity. “Whoever decided that couch was a good idea in that room was a real dummy.”
But our favorite pastime was the walk we took through her neighborhood after school. Unlike my apartment complex, which stood on the other side of the busy main road I was forbidden to cross, her home stood on the fun side, with the strip of shops including Fox Photos and French Bakery, which we could walk to, and it felt like money meant freedom and movement.
We always ended up at Fox, either to buy a roll of Fuji film for her camera, drop off one for development, or pick up photographs, which were unfailingly of Lala in sleep mode or manic mode. Macy was extravagant—she said yes to doubles and yes to five-by-sevens. Even if I had a million dollars, I’d never be able to buy anything but four-by-sixes; anything else would be a betrayal of my mother.
On the way home from the shops, Macy and I played “landscape architect,” which was the best game, mostly because we got to critique Macy’s actual neighbors. Then the commentary was even more brutal.
“That row of hedges needs to be much lower—” she said, pointing to a two-story Tudor.
“I was going to say the same thing!”
“Lower than the window—”
“So the kids can see out!”
“Exactly,” Macy said with satisfaction. “Also, I love azaleas but I don’t understand why anyone would plant white ones. Let’s have some color here, people!”
Macy was coming over for the first time, and I was nervous. I scrubbed the toilets and wiped down the counters, moved the fifteen-pound bags of rice into a row, and lined up our shoes. Umma didn’t keep a dirty house, but I tried to survey everything with the eyes of a critical outsider. Given the hours we’d already engaged in “Jordanowicz and Song,” I knew my friend’s clear eye for detail.
Mr. Jordanowicz showed up in yet another Hawaiian shirt, and Macy had her hair down in wrinkly red tresses. I liked her more when she wasn’t with Lala because while I enjoyed thinking of animals as noble creatures with complex inner lives, in reality, I sensed their chaos and uncontrollable nature when I was with them. Mr. Jordanowicz screamed out “Jai!” to Umma, instead of “Mrs. Song,” and the two of them shook hands as if they were family. Macy was very happy, and it struck me that while I was worried about her seeing where I lived, she might be anxious herself—she hadn’t been invited to anyone’s house since moving to Memorial. She neither ogled the cramped apartment nor tried to avoid seeing anything in particular. When I showed her my bedroom, book collection, and drawings, it wasn’t Lala following us around this time but Arthur, against whom I wanted to shut the door, but Umma said we had to play with him.
After a while, she came in and said the three of us must be hungry—did we want to make mandu?
“What’s that?” Macy asked.
“Korean dumplings,” I said. “My mother makes the best mandu, but it takes a lot of hands.”
My mother did make the best mandu. Whenever there was a party with the other Korean families from church or her college alumni group, I tasted the dumplings made by the other moms, but Umma’s were always superior. But perhaps that was the way with a mother’s cooking—you think your mother’s the best because she grew your taste buds, acclimated them to the things she made, and every other mother’s food feels foreign and made for someone else.
Umma used her biggest stainless steel mixing bowl. The filling she mushed together with her hands was the culmination of one big shopping trip: the ground beef from Kroger; the pork, vermicelli noodles, cabbage, and chives from the two Korean stores; the onions, garlic, and dumpling wrappers from Fiesta; the carrots from Save A Lot. The kimchi she’d fermented, she diced into the mix.
I taught Macy, a lefty, how to cup the wrapper in her right palm, dip her left index finger in egg yolk, trace the top edge of the wrapper, and then scoop a spoonful of filling. She put in too little, leaving too much wrapper, but we were having fun inventing ways of sealing the dumpling. You could pinch decorative crinkles along the spine or wrap the two ends around and make a purse.
Umma fried in batches, and we ate while we worked in the living room. She brought out her soy sauce concoction, which she made with rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seed, and a dash of gochugaru for spice. We ate the mandu that had burst and broken in the frying pan first, and double-dipped without asking whether it was okay.
“This is so tasty,” Macy said as she blew into the filling.
We dunked, chewed, and smacked. Arthur put on Beetlejuice, and we laughed whenever Michael Keaton got up to his antics. Eventually, Umma came out with a dish of kimchi, which Macy went toward with chopsticks, whispering, “Ooh.”
“Wait, Macy! It’s spicy, you’re not going to like it,” Umma warned.
But Macy said she’d never eaten anything more delicious in her life. Finishing off the last piece of red cabbage, she asked for more. Astonished, Umma went wordlessly into the kitchen to retrieve another plate.
After we had our fill of mandu, Umma got up and said she was going to freeze the rest. Macy, Arthur, and I splayed out in front of the TV, our eyelids heavy. Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Umma appeared with two immense Asian pears on a tray. She didn’t buy Asian pears often because they were almost two dollars a pop.
“What are those, Mrs. Song?”
“These are Asian pears.”
“They don’t look like pears at all.”
I said, “They’re a cross between apples and pears, but way better. Imagine sweet cold water in a ball.”
“Just try it,” Arthur said.
In one long, curling strip, Umma peeled away the skin. She cut out the rind and arranged the slices in a wheel on the plate.
The translucent flesh broke with a wet snap in Macy’s mouth. “Where do you buy this?” she exclaimed, her eyes bright as she went for another.
Mrs. Jordanowicz picked up Macy. She had been at the apartment for many hours by then, and while we could have played forever, Umma didn’t believe in long visits. Even so, I could tell she loved Macy. She would use the word “ssikssikae” later to describe her, which means spunky or spirited. At the door, Macy waved and said, “Thanks for the Asian pear!”—Umma having packed her one.
When she was gone, Umma and I cleaned up silently and then sat on the couch in front of the television. Beetlejuice was over, and now it was a sitcom.
She looked over at me. “We need to go to the Korean store. I forgot mackerel for dinner tonight.”
When we pushed open the door of the grocery store, the bells clattered, and the familiar smells of dried anchovies, spices, and fresh vegetables hit us.
“Macy?” I exclaimed.
She and her mother stood in front of a stack of Asian pears. We all laughed. Mrs. Jordanowicz said Macy had begged to go to the Korean store.
“I can’t believe you actually listened to my mother’s directions!” I said.
Macy motioned Arthur and me over to the snacks aisle. “I can’t read the words, but it all looks so good.” She pointed to pink and yellow bags of shrimp chips, boxes of Haribo and Pepero, tins of individually wrapped wafer cookies, and Choco Pie.
Mrs. Jordanowicz came over with a basket overflowing with Asian pears. “Do you want anything else, Macy Lee?”
We took that as carte blanche, and Macy and I began sweeping as much as we could off the shelves. Arthur ran for a second basket. My mother paid for our things, and Macy’s mother paid for their things, and we all went out to the parking lot laughing.
5.
THE DAY MARIAH HARTT GOT fringe, I stood outside the gym with a group of sixth-grade girls before the start of PE. “Did you see Mariah’s bangs?” I asked in an attempt to ingratiate myself with a girl named Lindsey who ran in her circle. Mariah was the most popular girl in school, an accomplished junior golfer and also half-Korean. There weren’t many Koreans at Memorial Middle School, but those of us who walked the halls tried owning Mariah as a part of ourselves.
Lindsey tossed her hair. “Oh yeah, I don’t really like them. They make her look more Oriental.” Her face crinkled as though she’d sucked a lemon. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I replied, as if I understood Lindsey. And I thought I did. The gym doors banged open, unleashing sweaty girls. I shrugged off this short interaction, reminding myself of reality. If Mariah, with all her incandescent popularity, couldn’t fit in with her half-Koreanness, how would I ever with my full?
Instead, I moved toward the thing I knew I was permitted to succeed at and redoubled my efforts at academics. And thankfully, being good at school was acceptable to both the Korean and American constituencies. Success was a numbers (100) or a letters (A) game, and the goal was to grab on to them and never let them go.
