Free Drifting House by Krys Lee Page A

her into the water.
    I shouted, “I’ll get the police! I will!”
    He thrust her in and out. There was no struggle now, no breath of resistance, nothing in that body except for her small exhausted sounds.
    I scrambled down the embankment to the river’s edge. I was nearly on top of them, but he didn’t stop. Only then I locked him by his arms and hauled him off her.
    He looked at me, his eyes black with anger. He said, “Go home,
jashik.
There’s no happiness here.”
    New Mother’s flattened curls shrouded her face. She crouched on the cement, her breathing uneven.
    I said, “Stop it, please. God is everywhere….”
    He looked crazed, sad. He gripped himself, trying to contain himself. But then he was on me. His breath was hard on my cheek as he locked me from behind by my arms.
    “Decades my junior and you think you have rights? You think we’re American?”
    His teeth scraped against my ear.
    “You’re no
baekin
from America with white skin. You look like me.”
    I laughed, convinced there was nothing of my father in me.
    “On your knees,” he said. “And I want real sorrow in that apology. Say it.”
    New Mother said, “He’s your boy.” She flinched with fear at her own words.
    “You.” He pointed through the fog to the ghostly cars. “Go away, woman. Leave my family alone.”
    His eyes bore into her.
    I told her, “Go! This isn’t about you.”
    Finally she began walking backward, away from us, her eyes on him the entire time. “I’m getting help, don’t worry!” She kept screaming this until she was no longer there.
    He squatted, his shoulders like a
ssireum
wrestler’s, his legs spidery. “I’ll break your legs if you don’t get down on them yourself.”
    “Is this the only way, Abeoji, hurting people?”
    “Who are you, telling your father what he is and what he isn’t? You
­mot-nan gaesaekki
!”
    His voice rammed into me, he swore he would teach me.
    His fist struck me in the stomach; his leg reared back. I heard a ­snap—like ice cracking in ­spring—as I fell. When the foot kicked out again, I balled up, my arms around my skull, andwaited for the blows from my father, the man I should love. I tried to imagine myself somewhere else, someone else, but I only saw myself on the cold pavement. I was young, a stranger in my own country, again my father’s easy victim.
    His foot sailed out again; I did the unforgivable. That foot, my father’s own foot, I caught with one hand. Then I hit him.
    He lay on the pavement. His lips were parted as if he were thirsty. The rain beat down on his face, his nose bled, and his forehead swelled a dull purple. He closed his mouth, opened it. He was trying to say something.
    “Jingyu, I don’t know ­why—this ­anger—” He looked up. “Jingyu, don’t cry. Please.”
    He kissed my head, my chest. His hands were wet, rubbery, as he caressed my hand. I saw he didn’t want me to leave him, like all the others had.
    “You know what I think about every day?” I said. “I ask myself why God took the wrong parent.”
    My father dragged himself up, his hair shiny against his forehead. I listened, unmoved by his weary breaths. “You know the old saying?” he said. “If your parents die, you bury them in the mountains. If your child dies, you bury him in your heart.” He reached for me the way he always did when he was calmer. “Adeul–ah, no one will ever love you the way I do.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    The rain came. My father sighed, the sound threadbare, labored.
    “Jingyu, I didn’t have a father,” he said. “I don’t know how to be a father.”
    I stood still. He paced, then turned back. His brogues made prints in the rain before they were washed away.
    “This rage….” His voice slowed. “I can’t slow ­myself—”
    “Enough, Abeoji.”
    I walked away. When I held my hands out in front of me, they were shaking. They were strangers to me, these large knuckles and thick fingers I would grow into. I