There’s a hard knot inside my chest, and it says, as it has said when I’ve helped my mother after one of my father’s rages, Don’t forget this. And it makes me look at Lloyd now at the window with the same kind of disgust and resolve. I will never put myself in this position with a crazy man again. And there’s not even room for you. I’m angry at you for making me vulnerable to someone like him. “He didn’t mean any of this,” you would say. I know. You would forgive him even this. That day after the blowup at the mandu place, you’d said to me, “We all need to be loved in our own way.”
“He can’t take out his anger like that,” I’d replied.
“He’s never known real love, Yoona. But he’ll get there. He just needs to know he’s loved no matter what. We all need that.”
I didn’t agree with you, but I didn’t want to tell you either. I couldn’t admit to you then that I was more like Lloyd than like you.
And this? All this today? Love? Lloyd isn’t capable of love. He can call it what he wants, but it’s not love. Yeah, I’m sick of it too. The word: love. You and love and love and love. I hate it now because of Lloyd. I hate the word too. Yes, love. He’s ruined all of it by constantly using that word. Love? I’m sick of it.
75
My mother sounded concerned when she called. “Your classes going well?” she asked. I didn’t tell her I’d been looking for a job and that all of them were minimum wage, which would not be nearly enough for two plane tickets to North Dakota.
“How’s Dad?”
“Fine, work is fine.”
“Did he get that promotion he wanted? He’s not stressed?”
“No. But don’t you worry about it. He’ll be happy to know you’re doing well in your classes. You sure you’re doing all right? I mailed you some money. It’s not much, but your father insisted I send it. Your father said whatever you need for school. He’s very concerned about you, he told me.” I couldn’t quite believe my father expressed concern, but my mother sounded earnest.
“I love you, Mama,” I blurted out. I hadn’t planned on it, but there was this feeling, rising over and over, waves of premonition that I’d never see her again.
“What’s wrong? Are you sure?”
I steadied my breath. “I miss you, that’s all,” I said.
“Wait, Willa just came in, she wants to talk to you. Be careful, Yoona, the flu is going around. Rest up,” my mother said.
My sister had stopped talking as much about converting me to her religion. She was taking classes at the community college and was hanging out with a boy we both knew named Albert Park. An old friend of ours, actually. The son of a family friend. I didn’t like his mother, because she used to look at my mother so pityingly when we ran into her at the grocery store. How many times can someone break her arm? her eyes seem to be saying when my mother had yet another cast. But I didn’t mind Albert. He wouldn’t lure Willa to some fanatical religious sect. She had said she’d never date a Korean guy, so I didn’t suspect it was anything more than a friendship. Thinking of Lloyd, I told her I was glad she had a friend. Friends are important, I told her.
Lloyd was up early the next morning, standing watch at the window looking over the parking lot. “There’re two of them: the man in the blue hat and another in a red sweatshirt.”
I joined him at the window. I didn’t see anything but the usual cars in the lot. “Where?”
He pointed to a black sedan. “They’ve been out there all night.”
“But how could they watch us from there? We’d go in and out through the other side—”
“Because they’re watching that door too. They’re closing in.”
I couldn’t make out any figures in the car he specified. “I’m going to fail, but I have to show up for my art history test today.”
“You can’t leave,” he begged. I didn’t see anyone other than students walking hurriedly to their classes.
“No one’s out there,” I said.
“They’re spies, Yoona. You can’t tell when you’re being followed by professional spies.”
“I’ve got to take this test,” I said. “Daiyu and Faye will walk with me. Heather too.”
“Don’t stay too long,” he said. “Come right back. Eleven o’clock.”
“He can’t do anything to me with people around. And that boy in my Asian lit class, I’ll ask him directly what he was doing last night,” I told him.
“We know what he was doing. He was out looking for me.”
“Maybe he won’t even be in class,” I said. “I have to see.”
For the next three days, Lloyd refused to leave my room except for short trips to the bathroom. He didn’t shower, and he didn’t eat unless I brought him food from the food truck. The boy in my Asian lit class had vanished. I reasoned he could be sick with this flu Heather said was going through her chem lecture. “Half of the class has been out sick for the whole week.” I still went to the library to check on the news in Korea and had coffee with Serena each day. I made sure to ask what she’d heard about the political unrest in Korea from her father.
“You see her every day,” Lloyd said.
“She’s my friend, and maybe she can help us. Her parents travel back and forth to Korea a lot. I’m hoping she can help us.”
“Maybe they work for the government. Maybe she was sent to this school to spy on you. She’s not your friend.”
“Lloyd, stop it. What are you saying, really? She says the same thing about you,” I said in a moment of hopelessness.
“I’m saying this is bigger than we think.” He crawled under the covers and refused to talk to me anymore.
On Friday, October 4, I convinced Lloyd to go to the clinic to see a doctor about his headaches. We walked together, and as we waited for a nurse practitioner, I saw signs warning against pregnancy, STDs, and AIDS, and saw boxes full of condoms for the taking. I was reminded that my own period was late. As of Thursday, it was two weeks late. Still, maybe I’d skip this month. It had happened before when I was stressed, and this month I couldn’t shake the flu. When Lloyd refused to go in for his appointment, saying he noticed someone looking at him oddly, I let him go back to the dorm, and I took his place. He agreed I should. “You look worse than me,” he announced. It was probably the flu. The waiting room was full of students who were hunched over with congestion and misery.
The nurse reminded me of Willa. I could imagine Willa as a nurse someday, which she wouldn’t want to hear from me. She thought nurses were the lackeys of doctors. In her brisk, no-nonsense way, though, the nurse was knowledgeable and thorough. I felt comfortable enough to cry in front of her when she told me the news.