Eileen beamed, her face shiny with a pinkish sheen and her almond-shaped eyes glowing. She said, “I promised Sami’s father that I’d help her get into a good college. Tell me, can you help my daughter score high on the SAT?”
“Sure. I tutored my cousin two years ago, and he’s a freshman at Caltech now.”
“That’s marvelous.”
She decided to hire me. I would start the next day. Since I was still taking summer courses, I could come only in the evenings. Before I left, Eileen called Sami out to greet me as her teacher. The girl came over and said with a nod of her head, “Thank you for helping me, Mr. Hong.”
“Just call me Dave,” I told her.
“Okay, see you tomorrow, Dave,” she said pleasantly, and grinned. Her button nose crinkled.
Coming out of the Mins’ house, I felt relieved. I would teach Sami five times a week, including Saturday evenings. I no longer needed to worry about my summer income.
Sami was seventeen, and not as slow as I had expected. She was bright, but her grasp of math was shaky owing to some missed classes during her sophomore year, which had left holes in her knowledge. Those holes had expanded. She had been depressed in recent months about her father’s death and unable to pay attention in class. To help her better understand basic algebra and trigonometry, we reviewed the first two years of high school math. As for English, I focused on enlarging her vocabulary and teaching her how to write clearly and expressively. This was easy, since I had taught grammar and composition before. In addition, I assigned her a list of books to read, mainly novels and plays.
Sometimes Sami was quite mischievous. She’d sniff at my arm or hair, then joke, “You smell so strange, like an animal, but that’s what I like about you.” At first her words embarrassed me, but gradually I got used to her playfulness. She’d wink at me, her eyes rolling and her lashes fluttering, and she talked a lot about recent movies and TV shows. I treated her strictly as a pupil; to me she was a child.
When we worked, the door of her room was always open, and I occasionally noticed Eileen eavesdropping on us. I tried to act professionally. Whenever Sami was occupied with an assignment, I would go into the living room to chat a little with her mother, who was always pleased when I did. Eileen would treat me to tea, cookies, nuts, candied fruits. Sometimes I felt she was waiting for me.
I enjoyed spending time with the Mins in their warm and comforting home. My own small studio apartment was lonely. I’d sit by myself, reading or working on my thesis, wondering what sort of life this was. If I fell ill tomorrow, what would happen to me? If I died, where would I be buried? Unless my parents came to claim my body, I might be cremated and my ashes discarded God-knows-where. I had once known a young Filipino who was killed in a traffic accident. He had signed the back of his driver’s license, agreeing to be an organ donor, so his body was shipped to a hospital to have the organs and tissues harvested and then it was burned and his ashes mailed to his parents in Mindanao. At least that’s what I heard. I still don’t know with certainty what happened.
It was difficult to date someone in Flushing, especially if you wanted a long-term, serious relationship, because most people would work here in the daytime and then return home. Those living here didn’t plan to stay for long. It was as if their current residences were merely a transitory step to someplace else. I’d had two girlfriends before, but each had left me. The memories of those breakups stung me whenever I attempted to get close to another woman.
One evening I arrived at the Mins’ a little early. They were just sitting down to dinner. Eileen asked me if I’d eaten. I said, “I’m fine.”
My tone must have been hesitant, for she sensed my stomach was empty and beckoned to me: “Come and eat with us.”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
“Listen to my mom, Dave,” Sami urged. “She’s your boss.”
Eileen went on, “Please. If you don’t mind.”
I stopped resisting, sat down beside Sami, and picked up the chopsticks Eileen had placed before me. Dinner was simple: chicken curry, tomato salad sprinkled with sugar, baked anchovies, and plain rice. I liked the food, though. It was the first time I’d eaten baked anchovies, which were crispy and quite salty. Eileen explained, “It’s healthier to eat small fish nowadays. Big fish have too much mercury in them.”
“This is really tasty,” I said.
“Wait until you have it every day,” Sami piped up. “It’ll make you sick just to look at it.”
As we ate, Eileen kept spooning chicken cubes into my bowl, which seemed to annoy Sami. “Mom,” she said, “Dave’s not a baby.”
“Sure. I’m just happy to have someone eating with us finally.” Eileen turned to me and added, “Actually, you’re the first person to sit with us at this table since March.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Tell me, Dave, which one of you cooks, you or your girlfriend?”
“At the moment I don’t have a girlfriend, Aunt.” I called her that out of politeness, though she was just half a generation older. I felt my face burning and saw Sami’s eyes suddenly gleaming. Then she gave me a smile that displayed her tiny canines.
“Don’t call me ‘Aunt,’” her mother said. “Just ‘Eileen’ is fine.”
“All right.”
“Then why don’t you eat with us when you come to teach Sami in the evenings? That’ll save you some time.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Sami stepped in and said, “My mom’s a wonderful cook. Accept the offer, Dave.”
“Thank you,” I said to Eileen. “In that case, you can pay me less for teaching Sami.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s very kind of you to agree to keep us company. I appreciate that. But don’t grumble if I cook something you don’t like.”
Before I could answer, Sami put in, “My mom’s rich, you know.”
“Sami, don’t start that again,” pleaded Eileen.
“Okay, okay.” The girl made a face and speared a wedge of tomato with her fork. She wouldn’t use chopsticks.
The next evening Eileen made taro soup with shredded pork and coriander. It was delicious; Sami said it was her mother’s specialty. She ate two bowls of the soup and asked Eileen whether we could have it more often. “You used to make this every week.”
Eileen soon learned I liked seafood, and she would pick up shrimp or scallops or squid. On occasion she bought fish — yellow croaker, flounder, red snapper, perch. During the day I found myself looking forward to going to the Mins’, even when I was busy with other things. To distract myself from these thoughts and keep myself from gaining much weight, I often played tennis with my friend Avtar Babu, a fellow graduate student, in art history.
Sometimes I arrived early at the Mins’ to give Eileen a hand in the kitchen — peeling a bulb of garlic, opening a can or bottle, crushing peppercorns in a stone mortar, replacing a trash bag. I just enjoyed hanging around. If something went wrong in the house, Eileen would tell me, and most times I could fix it. She’d be so grateful that she would insist on paying me for the work in addition to the parts, but I refused the money. The Mins treated me almost like a family member, and I was equally attached to them.
Sami made good progress in math, but her English improved slowly. She usually followed my instructions, and even tried memorizing all the words listed at the back of her English textbook, yet there were many gaps in her mastery of the subjects. Before her father died, he’d often said he hoped she could enter an Ivy League college. I never expressed my misgivings about that and always encouraged her.
As I was explaining a trigonometric function to Sami one evening, Eileen came in panting and said, “My car won’t start.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.