Free A Cab Called Reliable by Patti Kim Page B

and me now. We’re a team,” he said with a smile.
    My father was trying hard to be happy. Ever since Loo Lah left with the American man, who had long hair, a van, no children, and would help improve her pronunciation of English, help get her R’s and L’s straight, my father changed. He woke up an hour earlier than usual, jogged around the court, did push-ups in front of the television, and tried to read my schoolbooks. He told me to smile more. He told me jokes with punch lines that confused me.
    My father told me to cheer up because he had good news. Certain I would hear that Loo Lah had called and was coming back for good, I plugged my ears and told him I did not want to hear good news today. He stood up from the couch, held my head in the palm of his hand, tilted my neck back, and said that from now on, he would be working in the city near the Washington Monument.
    â€œNext to the pencil top?” I asked.
    â€œI’m right in front of it,” he said and inhaled on his cigarette. “But, Joo-yah, I can’t do it by myself. You have to help me.”
    My father had saved up some money from his welding job, but it wasn’t enough to buy a grocery store on 16th Street the way Mr. Kim did last year, or an AOK TV repair shop like Mr. Chun’s, which stood between a flower shop and a liquor store fifteen minutes away from where we lived, or a carry-out in Northeast D.C. like the one Yong Bin’s parents owned. Yong Bin’s parents used to be poor farmers in the most rural village in Korea, and Yong Bin’s three older sisters used to walk around the village wearing rags while Yong Bin played in the nude. They ate porridge and chewed on tree bark. If they were lucky, they got to feast on crickets, rats, and squirrels. It was also said that Yong Bin’s grandmother prostituted herself to black G.I.’s, who were known to love large lips and strong, radish-shaped legs. His parents never finished elementary school, and my father said that he doubted if they even knew how to read and write. They may have had bad blood, a bad name, and not known how to read and write, but they certainly knew how to count—count by hundredths, thousandths, tenths of thousands—because they now lived in a big brick house in Annandale, Virginia, and Yong Bin’s mother’s teeth were made of gold.
    Although my father did not have enough money to buy a store, he did have enough to buy a white vending truck with a crushed left headlight and windshield wipers that did not wipe. Hot dogs, half smokes—spicy or mild, donuts, pretzels—salted or unsalted, chips, sodas—regular or diet, candy bars, chewing gum, aspirin, King Edward cigars, and egg rolls only on Saturdays. Plastic containers of sauerkraut, chili, relish, and chopped onions, which made me think of Boris, which made me cry. Squeezable bottles for ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, and duck sauce only on Saturdays. My father had never been an ambitious man, but Loo Lah in one year had taught him how to make plans, how to set goals, how to aim high. When Loo Lah used to turn up one corner of her lip and say to him indignantly, “You’re not planning to live here forever, are you? You’re not planning to weld forever, are you?” he would shake his head, and a look of concern would come over his face; then for hours he would sit twisting napkins into long strips, not saying a word. Loo Lah had told him he’d better plan to save some money, move out, move up, buy a house, stop drinking, take care of me, and keep her from moving on to bigger and better things.
    But Loo Lah had left, and my father flashed me his I-am-such-an-unlucky-man smile, shrugged his shoulders, and told me it was all for the better because she was using too much of our hot water and electricity anyway. Minutes later, he was in the bathroom, running the faucet trying to hide the sound of his whimpering. I wanted to kick the door down, turn