Famous Adopted People Read online

  “Moses? Is he a real person?”

  “Of course he is, silly! Remember, he was sent down the river in a basket of bulrushes to save him from the slaughter of Jewish babies? C’mon, you’re the Jew here.”

  It’s true, my parents were Jewish, but more as a cultural heritage rather than as a religion. It was Mindy who went to church regularly. “All I remember about Moses is he was a grumpy old guy who brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain.” I shimmied my wrist, admiring the bracelet, woven in my favorite colors, yellow and black. Then I looked guiltily at the crooked, half-finished skein of knots that lay tangled among the prickly furrows of the rug.

  “Well, baby Moses in his basket was found by an Egyptian princess, a daughter of the Pharaoh, the same one who ordered his death!”

  Ever the skeptic, I muttered, “Real life doesn’t happen like that.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “We’re living examples of strange coincidences. We came to America on the same plane. And now we’re best friends. How freaky is that?”

  “Yeah, I guess so…” I conceded. “What happened to Moses? I mean, did his family find out he was Jewish?”

  “Um…” She bit her lip, dimple crumpling under her eye. “I dunno. But eventually he finds out he’s Jewish and leads his people out of slavery by parting the Red Sea!”

  “Wow!” We gazed at each other, her smile mirrored on my face. “That’s so cool! We can be like Moses, so famous that we are remembered two thousand years later.”

  “And help our people,” Mindy added earnestly.

  “We know you’ll be a famous actress.” Mindy had just finished a stint as Annie in her school play. “But what about me?”

  Tilting her head, Mindy looked at me through squinted eyes, as if it was just a matter of seeing me in the right focus. I chewed on the inside of my mouth, waiting for her verdict. “You like to read a lot…” she mused. “And you keep a diary. You always scribble in that thing before you go to bed, even when you come for a sleepover.”

  I looked away in embarrassment. So what? Any old fool could keep a diary.

  “You’re going to be a famous writer,” Mindy decided, clapping her hands to make it final.

  “I do like to read,” I agreed with a small stirring of pride tickling my chest like a furry animal twisting in its lair. Mindy had revealed a truth that I hadn’t been able to admit to myself. I did want to be a writer. Saying it made it so, and I felt like it was already an established fact, an integral part of my identity, my books already inside of me, to be produced with an effortless ripple of fingers over a keyboard. Feeling excited and full of energy, I leapt up and slipped on her checkered Vans. “Let’s go outside and play on the trampoline. I’ll finish your friendship bracelet at home.”

  Though I don’t remember exactly, I’m pretty sure that the friendship bracelet never got finished.

  Chapter 2

  “He was the father I grew up to believe was my father, the father I loved and learned from and respected… He was my Dad.”

  –President Gerald R. Ford

  I was halfway back to Spaghetti Kyu Bok’s when my phone rang again. Wheeling my suitcase to a protected spot in the lee of a table piled high with coils of fake designer belts, I glanced at the number. It wasn’t Mindy, who was no doubt happily sipping her umpteenth cup of tea with her new best friend, her birth mother, right now.

  “Ah, hello, Lisa.” A soft croon.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  The softness sharpened into a hurt whine. “You don’t know? It is I, Harrison.”

  “Oh, Harrison! What’s up?” My head, just starting to settle down, began to throb again. Harrison was the person Mindy and I had met for a drink the night before.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Well…” A laugh erupted from me like a sour burp. “Not too good, really.”

  “Why? What is wrong?” he asked with exquisite solicitude.

  “First of all, that shit you gave me last night really fucked me up. It was like no cocaine that I’ve ever snorted. So then, to sober me up a little, I did too many shots, and now I’m really hungover.”

  “Oh, Lisa, I am so—”

  “And this morning, my friend Mindy? The one who was with me last night? Yeah, well, she threw me out of my hotel room, and now…” Suddenly, the full enormity of the scene with Mindy hit me, and I felt as awful as I had felt that whole, entire shitty morning. “And now we’re not friends anymore,” I wailed, each word getting louder as the tears began to spurt from my eyes. The belt vendor spat out the toothpick he’d been shifting around in his mouth and squatted down on the flat of his feet, settling in for the show.

  “Lisa, are you crying? Don’t cry, Lisa. It’s OK. I am your friend, and I can help you.”

  “Well, you haven’t helped me very much so far,” I sobbed, spraying my phone with tiny white bubbles of spit.

  “No, you are right,” he purred softly, like an affectionate kitten that wants to curl up in your lap. “It is all my fault. I feel terrible about it. Let me help you. Where are you?”

  “I… I don’t know the name of the alley. It’s down Sogong-ro from the hotel about a mile and a half, and then… you know where that FamiMa is? Turn into the thin alleyway right after that, then turn left at the first, or maybe second, intersection, after a butcher shop. I’ll be at the noodle shop on the right.”

  “OK, don’t move. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Really?” It seemed too good to be true. And then I remembered that he was probably operating under his role as a fixer rather than as the man he’d been last night at the bar. “You’ll never be able to find it from those directions.”

  He laughed softly. “I am a man of many means.”

  Trudging back to Spaghetti Kyu Bok’s, I stopped to peer at myself in the dusty window of a little stationery and candy shop to check just what state Harrison would find me in. I hadn’t taken a shower that morning, thinking I’d do it after we returned from the Dunkin’ Donuts, having no idea that Mindy had other plans for me, and I ran my fingers through greasy clumps of hair, thinking it was about time to change my hairstyle, which had basically stayed the same since eighth grade. In the fall of that year, Mindy’s mother took us to her chichi hairdresser for matching haircuts for the Tweedledee and Tweedledum costumes we were to wear to a congressman’s daughter’s Halloween party. That Margaret would pay for me to get a $100 haircut for the sake of a Halloween costume (one she had dreamed up herself) indicated how badly she wanted Mindy and their neighboring congressman’s daughter to be friends, but Mindy had hated the girl ever since she tried to give Mindy the nickname of Doll, short for China Doll, which was why she insisted her mother wangle an extra invitation to the party for me.

  As I was stuffing a cushion into the waistband of a pair of Margaret’s old stirrup leggings, I whispered to Mindy that we should have gone with my original idea of Mindy dressing up as Moses and me as Gerald Ford, who was also adopted, according to a Life magazine article I had just read. Mindy rolled her eyes as I yoked my shoulders with a pointy lapelled collar she had cut from construction paper. “Look at us,” I hissed. “Could we possibly be more goofy looking?”

  “You think you wouldn’t look even goofier as Gerald Ford?” Mindy laughed, flicking at the floppy ribbon tied in a bow around my neck. “Anyway, no one would have a clue who you were.”

  “I’d just tell them I was a famous adopted person,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure why I was whispering, except Margaret was standing right outside the door, and the idea of famous adopted people was only for Mindy and me and most especially was not for Margaret, who viewed being adopted as some sort of special condition that had to be treated with therapy sessions, heritage camps, Korean cultural activities, and ersatz celebrations like “Homecoming Day,” the anniversary of Mindy’s adoption, which was marked by dinner out at a restaurant of Mindy’s choosing and a lavish gift, usually jewelry, like the diamond stud earrings that were glimmering in her
earlobes at that very moment.

  “You could wear a sign around your neck, ‘Gerald Ford, Famous Adopted Person,’” Mindy whispered back. “And then you’d gets lots of candy from people who felt sorry for somebody’s fake child who didn’t even know how to dress up properly for Halloween.”

  We laughed into our hands, because we weren’t actually going trick-or-treating or to the Halloween party, really. We had other plans. But we had to be careful not to raise Margaret’s suspicions. Margaret was CEO of Stormraker, a private security firm that, as Mindy described it to me, helped our government “fight the bad guys.” There was a framed photograph prominently displayed on their living room wall of Margaret in full combat gear, blond hair spilling down from a camouflage helmet, leaning casually on a pickup truck filled with grinning men clutching machine guns and rocket launchers. Based on that photo, my youthful imagination endowed her with James Bond–like spy skills that Mindy and I had to very carefully evade.

  Right on cue, Margaret asked, “What’s going on in there?”

  Mindy said, “Just about finished up here, Mom. We look awesome!”

  We placed the striped beanies Margaret had found at Bruce Variety onto our heads and nodded at each other before marching out to Margaret’s delighted shrieks.

  She insisted on walking us the four blocks to the congressman’s house, even though Mindy protested the whole way, making her promise not to pick us up. We stayed at the party for an hour, pure torture for me as the Georgetown girls completely ignored me while sharing inside jokes and obsessing over some guy called Fergus. As became her upbringing, Mindy politely thanked the congressman and his wife when we left, telling them we had to go to another party. Then we met up with the very same Fergus, the first in a long line of Mindy’s rich white boyfriends with slicked-back hair, popped-up collars, and prep school jackets with gold-threaded insignias on the breast pocket. A sophomore at Landon, Fergus already had his driver’s license and his own Volvo. His friend gave up shotgun to Mindy, hopping into the backseat with me. I was not good with boys, clamming up in their presence, excruciatingly self-conscious, doggedly trying to keep my crazy nose from being seen in profile. Mindy, on the other hand, was suddenly a burbling fountain of inanities, flicking her hair, flashing her chin dimples, squealing with delight at every fresh idiocy uttered by Fergus. We drove around for a while before finding the darkest corner of a public park parking lot. There, Fergus pulled a joint out of his glove box and lit it up, filling the car with a sweet, earthy aroma. He passed it to Mindy, but she shook her head. Fingers tightly pinching the end, he tried to insist, gesturing emphatically at her while he coughed inside his throat, keeping the smoke trapped in his lungs, until he gave up and passed the joint to his friend. The boy sucked earnestly at the twisted end and then slanted the joint over to me, smoke spilling out of the corners of his grimacing mouth. Without hesitation, I took it and put the tip, wet from the boys’ saliva, to my lips, whistling smoke through pursed lips just as I’d seen them do. Immediately, my lungs spewed out what I had tried to force in. I coughed until I thought I would gag. Fergus smirked, “Can’t get off without a cough,” and took another deep drag. When the joint came around again, I was better prepared for it, lightly sipping the smoke, mixing in a lot of air. Nevertheless, to my acute embarrassment, I coughed again, but for the third round, I was able to inhale without causing a scene. Probably he and his friend had an agreement, because somehow the friend and I were out of the car. We found our way to a swing set, and I was pumping my legs, leaning my head back, and laughing. I could feel the beanie gently lift from the crown of my head as I swung forward; it seemed a minor miracle to me that it never flew off but landed in the same warm spot, again and again, on the upswing. Incoherent words dropped from my lips like stones into a placid pond, but the friend seemed to understand me, for he would drop his own stones as well. Giving up on the swings, we walked into the night, Halloween lights glazing the world orange. Costumed children paraded by at a reduced speed, so that I could follow every flutter of material, distinguish every sparkling sequin, see the glitter of eyes in the shadowed holes of masks. I was still laughing, but the sound seemed very far away. The friend told me to mellow out, but I couldn’t, so he had me take the cushion from my pants and sit on it on a lonely curb near a dark house that got no trick-or-treat traffic. Long after I had forgotten his existence, he returned with pockets full of candy, and to ecstatic groans, we consumed it all. Candy has never tasted so good again.

  Mindy lost her virginity that Halloween, and I my sobriety.

  Of course, Margaret found out that we had left the party early, and naturally, she blamed it all on me because her sweet, smart, beautiful daughter would never think to deceive her best friend, which is how Margaret imagined her relationship with Mindy. We were not allowed to see each other for two months, the first in a long line of attempts by Mindy’s parents to strangle our friendship, so we made up for it by talking on the phone for hours, driving everyone in our respective households crazy for tying up the phone lines. It was on one of those calls that Mindy informed me, “Gerald Ford doesn’t count.”

  “What? Why not?!”

  “Well, because you said he was a famous adopted person, I decided to write a biography on him for our presidents unit of US history, and it turns out that his mother left his biological father just days after giving birth, then remarried. And so even though Gerald Ford got the name of his mother’s new husband, the guy never adopted him. Can you imagine, the kid names himself after you, and you can’t even be bothered to adopt him?”

  “But even if the new father had adopted Gerald Ford, he still couldn’t be considered a famous adopted person because he was never separated from his birth mother.”

  “He’s only half adopted,” she agreed.

  “Kind of like how I’m only half Asian.”

  “He’s white on the outside and adopted on the inside,” Mindy said, giggling.

  Steam was still rising from my bowl when Harrison slid onto the stool next to me. “Wow, that was quick!” I marveled, dipping my head down to suck up another hank of noodles.

  Chest rapidly rising and falling, he nodded breathlessly, perspiration blistering his forehead. “I was nearby,” he panted.

  Perhaps it was a cutthroat world of competition for adoptee fixers in Seoul. I was surprised at his eagerness and wondered what it would cost me.

  Kyu Bok approached with a glass of water and metal chopsticks wrapped in a white paper sleeve, while his wife glared at us from the vapor clouds of the kitchen’s boiling pots.

  “Get what I’m having,” I advised with a noisy slurp.

  Harrison gave his order without a nod or a smile to Kyu Bok, who shouted the order without a “please” or a “thank you” at his wife before sauntering over to the cash register and ostentatiously shaking out his newspaper.

  “OK, not to worry, I have everything figured out,” Harrison assured me, leaning toward me with tender solicitude.

  “Mmm?” I looked up at him while reeling in a long, thick noodle, the broth spattering my chin.

  “A friend of mine is out of town, and he said you can use his apartment.” He peered winsomely at me from behind a glossy fringe of hair. “You can relax, forget about your friend Mindy. Have a good time. I’ll show you around Seoul.”

  Though no longer jelly-brained with a hangover, I was still slow on the uptake, and it took me a few seconds to become confused. “Is that in your job description?”

  “My job…?” A dent appeared above each arched eyebrow as he looked at me with eyes the color of burnt sugar, his gaze sweet and sticky.

  “Yeah, you work for MotherFinders, don’t you? I thought they helped people look for their mothers. I wasn’t aware they provided escorts for single female travelers.”

  He leaned in very close to me like he was confessing something, the soft pop of his lips tickling my ear. “My work for MotherFinders ended when I took you to the address in Itaewon. When I met you at the
bar last night, that was as friends, friends hanging out.”

  I scooched back on my stool to put a little distance between us. “And so the use of this apartment and a few days’ sightseeing will cost me just how much exactly…?”

  “Lisa!” he rebuked me, lacing long ivory fingers protectively over his heart. Kyu Bok slipped a large bowl brimming with golden broth whorled with noodles before Harrison, veiling him in steam. “I come here as your friend. Because I like you, and I want to help you. And I feel very ashamed for offering you the drugs last night.”

  Dropping my voice, I hissed, “Yeah, what was that shit anyway? Didn’t you say it was coke? Because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t coke.”

  He hung his head, feathered locks flopping over his eyes. “I am very embarrassed. A friend of mine gave it me. I told him I wanted to impress you very much. He said American girls are liking this kind of a drugs.” All of a sudden his English, which had been so perfect that I was sure he had an English-speaking parent, turned clumsy. “I was very bad for giving it to you. It must to be a dangerous something.”

  Two weary-looking men in workman’s coveralls came in, and Kyu Bok’s wife ran over, screeching and bowing, to settle them at one of the square tables wedged at the back of the tiny shop.

  “Do you forgive me?” Harrison asked, gazing into my eyes with an earnestness guaranteed to make all the adopted girls go crazy, finely sculpted nostrils slightly flared, plump lips parted just a crack.

  I picked up my long-handled spoon and started to scoop broth into my mouth. “You’re making me nervous. I forgive you. Now eat your soup.”

  Harrison had been introduced to me by Miss Cho, my case manager at MotherFinders. For the simple fee of $500, plus incurred expenses, this organization, which also had branches in China, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and Guatemala, would comb through archives and registries to find out the name and current address of an adoptee’s birth mother. If it was successful in finding her (it advertised a 72 percent success rate in South Korea), it offered additional services, such as contacting the birth mother to arrange a meeting and organizing flights, hotels, itineraries, interpreters, drivers, and meeting rooms, as well as a whole array of seminars on how to build a relationship with your birth mother.