Fox Girl Read Online Free Page B

in her bed, his legs hanging off the mattress. He easily could have been that tall. “Heard that already,” I finally said.
    Sookie’s mother tried to think of something stranger, something that would stump us. “ Miguks can’t see us,” she said. “Korean faces blind them.”
    â€œAha!” said Sookie. “That can’t be true.”
    I thought about it for a moment. It could be true Americans didn’t see like Koreans did; they had overly large, odd-colored ball-eyes. “What do you mean?” I asked.
    â€œJust that it’s possible to be invisible to them.” Sookie’s mother pushed away from the table and held her hands out to us. “Come,” she said, “I’ll show you what I mean.”
    Duk Hee led us to the back room where she and sometimes her boyfriends slept. Sookie and I perched on the edge of the bare mattress while she searched through her drawers of makeup. When we saw her filling her cosmetics bag, looking over her shoulder once in a while to consider our faces, we started wriggling like market dogs for sale.
    â€œFor some reason,” she explained, “American Joes cannot see our faces clearly. Especially when we use the eye shadows, lipsticks, powder, blush-i they give us, we confuse them.”
    I pointed to the bottle of foundation. “What’s that?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know. The last time we had played with her mother’s cosmetics, Sookie and I had used up so much foundation we needed to make up the noticeable difference with water.
    Sookie’s mother poured the liquid skin on her hands and rubbed it over my face. “Magic,” she breathed.
    When she came to my birthmark, she hesitated and frowned, then dabbed more foundation into the creases and darkened pits. Again and again her fingers rubbed my cheek. I closed my eyes as she touched my face. Only she and Sookie had ever acknowledged my defect; not even my own mother would caress me there.
    â€œYou know Grandmother of Chung Woo, right?” Duk Hee asked. When I nodded, she gripped my chin to still my head. “Let me put some blue eyeliner on you, then I’ll line Ho Sook’s eyes in black.” I felt the brush lick around my lashes like a small snake. “Well, Grandmother of Chung Woo has to work in the clubs when her good-for-nothing son spends all his money on his chop. I tell you, he cannot even support the family he has and he is off trying to make a new one with his mistress.” She snorted in disgust. “I heard that was against the law in America—that’s a good country for women, I think.”
    I opened my eyes when I felt the makeup crust around them. Duk Hee turned to rim Sookie’s eyes with a thin paintbrush dipped in black ink.
    â€œAnyway, when Grandmother of Chung Woo does this to her face,” she continued, “she can get any man at the clubs, even one young enough to be her son. Imagine, they cannot even tell how old she is.” Sookie’s mother clucked and shook her head as she sketched an extra line above her daughter’s eyes, then licked her smallest finger to erase a smudge. Then she blew on Sookie’s face. When she was done, Sookie opened her eyes.
    â€œYou look like the king of raccoons,” Sookie said, teasing me.
    â€œDon’t bother looking in the mirror,” I retorted. “You look like a ghost.” Secretly, though, I thought I looked glamorous.
    â€œShup!” scolded Sookie’s mother. “Let me work on your mouths. I’ll tell you what I think. I think that this makeup is magic—a disguise that lets us move through their world safely.”
    I tried not to smile as Duk Hee brushed a fluorescent pink on my lips.
    â€œOoooh, Hyun Jin!” Sookie squinted and raised her hands in front of her, groping air. “Where are you? I can’t see you anymore; your mouth is blinding!”
    Duk Hee knocked her