“You’re not your dad,” I say, but he doesn’t believe me. I understand his fear. Who are we if not a product of our parents and their histories?
DANIEL’S FAMILY DID NOT ENTER the black hair care business by chance. When Dae Hyun and Min Soo moved to New York City, there was an entire community of fellow South Korean immigrants waiting to help them. Dae Hyun’s cousin gave them a loan and advised them to open a black hair care store. His cousin had a similar store, as did many other immigrants in his new community. The stores were thriving.
The dominance of South Koreans in the black hair care industry also did not happen by chance. It began in the 1960s with the rise in popularity of wigs made with South Korean hair in the African American community. The wigs were so popular that the South Korean government banned the export of raw hair from its shores. This ensured that wigs featuring South Korean hair could only be made in South Korea. At the same time, the U.S. government banned the import of wigs that contained hair from China. Those two actions effectively solidified the dominance of South Korea in the wig market. The wig business naturally evolved to the more general black hair care business.
It’s estimated that South Korean businesses control between sixty and eighty percent of that market, including distribution, retail, and, increasingly, manufacturing. Be it for cultural reasons or for racial ones, this dominance in distribution makes it nearly impossible for any other group to gain a foothold in the industry. South Korean distributors primarily distribute to South Korean retailers, effectively shutting everyone else out of the market.
Dae Hyun is not aware of any of this history. What he knows is this: America is the land of opportunity. His children will have more than he once did.
I WANT TO THANK HER for not hating me. After that experience in my parents’ store, who could blame her? Also, she didn’t need to react to my family as peacefully as she did. If she’d yelled at both my brother and my dad, I would’ve understood. It’s a miracle (water-into-wine variety) that she’s still willing to hang out with me, and I’m more than grateful for it.
Instead of saying all that, I ask her if she wants to get some lunch. We’re back at the subway entrance, and all I want to do is get as far away from the store as possible. If the D line went to the moon, I’d buy a ticket.
“I’m starving,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Starving, really? You have a penchant for exaggeration.”
“It’s to offset your precision.”
“Do you have a place in mind?” she asks.
I suggest my favorite restaurant in Koreatown and she agrees.
We find side-by-side seats on the train and settle in. It’ll take forty minutes to get all the way back downtown.
I take out my phone to find more questions. “Ready for more?” I ask her.
She slides closer to me so our shoulders are pressed together, and peers down at my phone. She’s so close her hair tickles my nose. I can’t help it. I take what I think is a discreet sniff of her hair that is not discreet at all.
She scoots away from me, eyes wide and mortified. “Did you just smell me?” she asks. She touches the section of hair where my nose just was.
I don’t know what to say. If I admit it, I’m creepy and weird. If I deny it, I’m a liar and creepy and weird. She pulls the strands that she’s touching across her nose and sniffs at it herself. Now I need to make sure that she doesn’t think I think her hair smells bad.
“No. I mean, yes. Yes, I smelled it.”
I stop talking because her eyes have gone wider than eyes should be able to go.
“And?” she prompts.
It takes me a second to work out what she’s asking. “It smells good. You know sometimes in spring when it rains just for like five minutes and then the sun comes out right away and the water’s evaporating and the air is still damp? It smells like that. Really good.”
I make my mouth close even though it just wants to keep talking. I look back down at my phone and wait, hoping she’ll come close again.
HE THINKS MY HAIR SMELLS like spring rain. I’m really trying to remain stoic and unaffected. I remind myself that I don’t like poetic language. I don’t like poetry. I don’t even like people who like poetry.
But I’m not dead inside either.
SHE COMES CLOSE AGAIN and I barrel ahead, because apparently that’s who I am with this girl. Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself. I like who I am with her. I like that I say what’s on my mind. I like that I barrel ahead despite the obstacles she raises. Normally I would give up, but not today.
I raise my voice over the clacking of the train against the tracks. “Right. On to section two.” I look up from my phone. “Ready for this? We’re leveling up on the intimacy.”
She frowns at me but still nods. I read the questions aloud and she chooses number twenty-four: How do you feel about your relationship with your mother (and father)?
“You have to go first,” she says.
“Well. You met my dad.” I don’t even know where to begin with this question. Of course I love him, but you can love someone and still have a not-so-great relationship with them. I wonder how much of our non-relationship is because of typical father versus teenage boy stuff (a ten o’clock curfew, really?) and how much of it is cultural (Korean Korean versus Korean American). I don’t know if it’s even possible to separate the two. Sometimes I feel like we’re on opposite sides of a soundproofed glass wall. We can see each other but we can’t hear each other.
“So you feel bad, then?” she teases.
I laugh because it’s such a simple and concise way to describe something so complicated. The train brakes suddenly and jostles us even closer together. She doesn’t move away.
“And your mom?” she asks.
“Pretty good,” I say, and realize that I mean it. “She’s kind of like me. She paints. She’s artistic.” Funny, I’ve never thought of us being the same in this way before. “Now your turn.”
She looks at me. “Remind me again why I agreed to this?”
“Want to stop?” I ask, even though I know she’ll say no. She’s the kind of person who finishes what she starts. “I’ll make it easy on you. You can just give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, okay?”
She nods.
“Mom?” I ask
Thumbs-up.
“Way up?”
“Let’s not go overboard. I’m seventeen and she’s my mom,” she says.
“Dad?”
Thumbs-down.
“Way down?” I ask.
“Way, way, way down.”
“IT’S HARD TO LOVE SOMEONE who doesn’t love you back,” I tell him. He opens his mouth and then closes it again. He wants to tell me that of course my father loves me. All parents love their children, he wants to say. But that’s not true. Nothing is ever universal. Most parents love their children. It’s true that my mother loves me. Here’s another thing that’s also true: I am my father’s greatest regret.
How do I know?
He said so himself.
SAMUEL KINGSLEY WAS CERTAIN BEING famous was his destiny. Surely God wouldn’t have gifted him with all this talent with no place to display it.
And then Patricia came along. Surely God wouldn’t have given him a beautiful wife and children if he didn’t mean to provide for them.
Samuel remembers the moment he met her. They were still in Jamaica, in Montego Bay. It’d been raining outside, one of those tropical storms that start as suddenly as they stop. He’d ducked into a clothing store for shelter so he wouldn’t be soaked for his audition.
She was the store manager, so the first time he saw her she was wearing a name tag and looking very official. Her hair was short and curly and she had the biggest, prettiest, shyest eyes he’d ever seen. He never could resist a shy girl—all that caution and mystery.
He’d quoted Bob Marley and Robert Frost. He’d sung. Patricia never stood a chance against the force of his charm. His audition time came and went, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t get enough of those eyes that widened so dramatically at the slightest flirtation.