Write a love story with two characters. Make sure you write a beginning, a middle and an end.
The assignment’s on the board but the middle-school girls refuse to work. Sang-yon, the single boy, is quiet and sullen in a corner, lost without his mates. We covered all this in the last few lessons: creating characters, dialogue, basic story structure. Now, I try to get them excited about creating a story of their own.
The girls are a battle every lesson. As usual, they’re busy with handpon, digital cameras and something new today. Ji-yeon’s writing a letter to a boy at school, which they’re all giggling over. She’s written it in green ink, the hanguel characters childish and rounded with exaggerated loops and strokes, and smiley faces in the circles. I remember when I wrote like that.
I drum my fingers on the table and try to initiate some conversation, getting them to think of love stories they know: Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and Prince Charming, King Kong and Naomi Watts. Yes, they can write about anyone: teachers, friends, movie stars. Sang-yon perks up and asks if he can write about monsters and killing. Yes, Sang-yon. You can write a horror if you want to. Just include two characters and a beginning, middle and an end.
The girls are not impressed. After ten minutes of cajoling I lose my patience and snatch away their cellphones and cameras, holding them ransom until 8:50. They always act shocked when I take away their life support.
Ji-yeon sulks and scratches at the desk with her sharpu. I get angry and tell her to start bloody writing or she’s not getting her handpon back. She gets out her electronic dictionary and starts fiddling with it. I lean over her shoulder. She’s playing Tetris.
“Ji-yeon!” I yell. “Do your work!”
Finally, she starts writing. Two other girls are busy working. The others are staring at various points around the room. I sit steaming at them for twenty minutes, leaping down their throats whenever they dare whisper to each other.
It’s 8:45. I don’t care anymore. I’m annoyed with them and don’t want to see their stupid faces. I tell the students that they can go early. I’ve done everything wrong. It has been a maddening hour.
They snatch up their bags and run out, dropping their papers in front of me. Sang-yon, who I ignored all lesson because he was being quiet, has drawn monsters and swords, and written ice-cream killer monster. Because he never gives me any trouble I forgive him. The two girls with their heads together have actually written a complex love story involving my co-teacher, a movie theatre, and me. Naomi-teacher dies at the end of the story. Four girls have drawn masterful Japanese anime: large-eyed heroines with swishing sabres, pouts and whipping hair. I’m impressed by their skill.
Ji-yeon sets a piece of paper in front of me.
Love Story
for all the world
woman and man love subsist
woman and man love divide
She’s drawn smiley faces inside every o.
It’s a love story. It has two characters. It has a beginning, a sense of middle, and an end. I can’t argue with this. Although she’s used the dictionary badly it reads like poetry. She holds out her hand for her handpon and I give it to her reluctantly; my last shred of power. She flounces off, shiny black bob swinging.
Beaten by a bunch of fourteen year olds, again.
Filed under: korea
The doctor looks uncertain.
“Bomiting, tiareya,” he calls across the ER to the nurse standing at reception. She yells something back and he nods vigorously: of course.
“Bad fish,” I offer weakly.
“Yes,” he says. “X-ray and IV. Come here please.”
He takes me by the wrist and leads me to the only unoccupied bed. I unfold gratefully. Muttering, he heads back to reception to ask the nurse something else.
Next door, a heavily pregnant woman, a man with a bandaged arm and a toddler look at me curiously. I wonder who’s the injured one. The boy buries his head in the woman’s arm.
Darren suddenly clutches his water bottle.
“I think I’ll head out for a walk.” He dashes past the curtain.
The doctor returns, frowning after Darren.
“She is alright?” he asks with concern.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “He ate bad fish too.”
The doctor nods and returns to business.
“Please respond with pain,” he says, kneading my belly. As he prods my upper stomach I levitate off the mattress.
“No kidding,” he says, frowning. “The pain here is usual with gastroenteritis.” I am somewhere on the ceiling.
The nurse looms over the bed in a purple uniform topped with pink cardigan. She smiles warmly and jabs her elbow at the doctor.
“English. Top,” she informs me. The doctor blushes. He’s very handsome.
They wheel me to the X-ray room. I can’t understand what they’re telling me, and finally they stop gesturing and just move my limbs like I’m a store mannequin. I’m happy to let them manipulate me. Back in the wheelchair, back to bed.
The nurse can’t find a vein. She clucks and tries my other hand, tapping thoughtfully. The next-door toddler watches with wide eyes, asking her questions at every move. She answers in a patient tone. Yes, I’m looking for a vein. So the girl can have water in her body. Because she can’t drink with her mouth. Because she throws everything up. She pauses to show the boy his own veins, in his wrist. The boy shoves his fist in his mouth and stares at my strange face. I pat my stomach and put on a wrenched expression.
“Bae apoyo,” I tell him solemnly, and he blinks, rubbing his own belly.
I doze on and off as the IV drips into my veins. Darren comes and goes, looking greyer and greyer, then returns triumphant.
“I vomited outside the hospital,” he says with relish. “Five times. A taxi went past.”
“That’s great, baby.”
“All over my jeans and shoes.”
“Wow!”
At 11pm, I’m the one vomiting outside. A taxi goes past as I heave and convulse, crouching on the cold, damp asphalt.
Darren takes my arm and we stagger home.
Darren makes the crust, and I make the filling.
“A packet of chocolate biscuits, half a cup of butter, half a cup of sugar,” he says, and frowns. “Jesus.”
He’s thinking about the Zone, I just know it. I beat eggs, weigh 120g of cream cheese and let the buzz of cheesecake anticipation block out his dubious tone.
He presses the crust into the cake tin, newly purchased at E-mart.
“This smells so fucking good,” he murmurs.
I mix a cup of sugar into the cream cheese, and add vanilla powder. No vanilla essence at E-mart, curiously.
“Do you think it matters if the crust is uneven?” he asks, pressing spots in the cake tin with his thumb. “I can’t get it even.”
“No,” I say. “It’s rustic.”
We take turns pouring the filling in. Rich, smooth and creamy, it oozes to the corners of the tin. Darren slams it on the counter a couple of times to make sure it gets to the edges. We slide it into the toaster oven, set up in the only space available in our one-person kitchen: the floor.
The smell of baking fills the air. I haven’t baked anything except hockey-puck scones since I got to Korea two years ago. I lie prostrate in front of the toaster oven, watching the cheesecake turn golden.
We can’t wait to let it cool. I pour the glossy blueberries over the hot filling. It’s a bad idea but it’s 10:30pm and we’re hungry. I put it in the freezer for ten minutes.
Darren jiggles his knee and reminisces about walking naked through the McDonald’s drive-thru in high school. They wouldn’t serve him. He talks, with something approaching wonder, about how many units of protein and carbohydrates, not to mention fats, will be in the cheesecake. He taps his foot on the floor.
“Do you think it’s ready?” he asks abruptly.
“No,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
The cheesecake is still oozy, still warm. It doesn’t matter. We lever out slabs and eat it standing up. The blueberries are tart, the filling sweet and creamy, the crust buttery and rich.
“Fuck the Zone,” says Darren, forking another wedge into his mouth. Half is gone before we know it.
We high-five, go to bed, and can’t sleep.
