Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey Read Online Free Page A

was a bit out of character for me, which caused her to take suspicious note of it and inquire as to my reason. Not thinking anything of it, I told her I had come across it in some shop, put it on, liked it, liked the price, liked the color (it was gray), and so went ahead and purchased it.
    She nodded, called me strange, which was normal, and then told me a story about her father, whom I knew next to nothing about. All I knew about him was that he was dead. Period.
    The story began with her reminding me that they were poor, and needed money for food. One day, her father came home wearing a brand-new scarf around his neck. Upon seeing this, a battle ensued between him and my grandmother, Halmoni, who exploded, cursing him over his stupid scarf, since what they needed was money for feeding the family, not for scarves.
    He tried to explain to her that it was fashion, and that he liked the scarf. I would imagine she didn’t care for that at all, since men’s fashion had very little to do with food. While listening to the story, I laughed at the thought of my Halmoni, all five feet of her, unloading on her husband like a caged pit bull at the mere mention of the word fashion .
    I was taken aback by all this. When we were kids, she would tell us her father was up in heaven, or “happy mountain,” whenever we’d asked about him. By the way she wouldn’t say anything further, it was understood that we were never to bring him up.
    But on this occasion, late at night in her room at the hospital, just the two of us, my mother told me more about her father. She told me he liked to drink, a lot, especially loved whiskey, and how he also loved to gamble and chase women. So far, he sounded pretty cool to me. When she sensed this, she tried to extinguish that thought by explaining that due to his behavior, she and her family grew up poor, very poor, and that her mother, who had grown up rather well off, had to raise the entire family by herself while her husband blew all his money on booze and gambling, leaving nothing for the family he had abandoned.
    To emphasize this point, she told me that in her village in Korea, the kids would have to bring money to their teachers every now and then to pay for school. If you didn’t have any money for the teacher, the teacher would beat you in front of the entire class. The ruler smacked hard on her hands, and the worst part of it all, she told me, was that the other kids would tease her for not having money for school. My mother also had stories of being very young and her mother sending her out into their village many times to find her father and to tell him that the family had no food, and needed money. Many times he’d be drunk or with another woman when my mother would find him. She’d yell at him for money, and every time he would claim to not have any, sending her home empty-handed.
    Learning all this explained a lot to me; why my mother always hated my drinking, and why she always made sure we had everything that we needed. She always made sure we had nice clothes, food on the table, and everything that we could possibly need for school. It also explained why, while growing up, my mother had always had a special place in her heart for my friends being raised by single mothers. She’d always ask me about them more than about anyone else—how they were doing, how their mothers were doing, always a bit of sorrow for them in her voice.
    Now I knew why.
    Decades after abandoning my mother’s family, my grandfather wrote each member a letter indicating that he was getting older, and had no family, and no one to help take care of him. He was all alone, and planned to kill himself.
    He had determined how he was going to kill himself, where he was going to kill himself, and where he was to be buried. He even planned the exact date on which he was going to do it. When that date arrived, sure enough, he did it.
    My mother leveled her steady gaze toward me, and told me that when she went back to