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It’s time to go back to the apartment.
When I arrive, it’s still empty. I drag myself up the stairs and lie down. My body is tired and even as my feet ache and my head hurts, I still can’t sleep.
The hamster in my head is running again. One of these women is my mother, which means there’s someone in this city, in this country, who gave birth to me. Or she could be dead, my brain unhelpfully supplies.
Yes, or she could be alive. Ellen always theorized that my bio mom had been poor, and that’s the conclusion that I had come to as well. It’s the story that made the abandonment hurt the least. She was poor and couldn’t afford to raise a family. Abortions aren’t legal—not then or now. It fits with the state of my father’s place—small and bare. An ache blooms in my chest, and when I press the heel of my hand against my heart, it doesn’t go away. I don’t know if it’s an ache of sadness or hope. Sometimes they feel the same way inside your soul.
I finally drift off into some stage of restless sleep until a buzzing of soft laughter, excited chatter, pulls me out of my semiconscious state. I creep downstairs to find my flatmates in various stages of dress. The smells of hair spray, curling irons, and perfume tell the story. They’re going out for the night.
Anna stops on her way to the bedroom, a mélange of hair products clutched against her sizable chest, and looks up at me on the stairs. “You woke up at the perfect time. We’re going to Club Dance. It’s this swanky club over in Incheon, and normally I wouldn’t go all the way to the airport but rappers from a famous group are supposed to be there and they never perform alone like this. I know you just had the thing”—she waves her hand as if to brush aside the unpleasant thought of my dad dying—“but if you need a distraction, this would be it. I don’t want your time in Korea to be a bummer.”
Stay home and mope or go out and distract myself? It takes me a split second to decide. “What should I wear?”
Anna beams. “Something sexy, of course!”
“Not too sexy,” Jules chides unseen from another room.
Some Korean men think Westerners are easy, I remember her saying. I trot back to my room and dig through my suitcase. Despite overpacking, I don’t find any club clothes. They didn’t seem appropriate attire for a meeting with my biological father. I have leggings, sweatpants, skinny jeans, and a denim skirt that stops somewhere in the vicinity of my knees. Also a frock. With its thin white stripes against the black background, the elastic waist, and small bow ties at the side, it is a dress you wear to Sunday brunch or a meeting with your dad, but not one you’d wear to grind out on the dance floor.
I opt for jeans and a black silky T-shirt that has a scoop neck. Around my neck, I tie a velvet ribbon for decoration. The shoes that Boyoung provided with the funeral gear will be perfect with this outfit even if the soles are worn out. I have to pay her back for all of this. I keep forgetting and she isn’t saying a word. I’ll settle up with her tomorrow. It seems fitting to wear my funeral shoes to a nightclub. It’s a sort of weird clash of experiences that have summed up my three days in Korea. Even if I don’t know why I’m here, at least the experience is memorable.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Club Dance is four stories of LED screens stitched together to project enormous illusions. The exterior of the club is so fancy, so technological, so full of lights and screens and moving images, that I half wonder if I’m inside a gaming console. I wouldn’t be surprised if a flying car speeds across the sky just below the planes taking off and landing. The airport is within spitting distance.
The line to get in is long, which is expected given that even I, whose knowledge of Korean culture is shallower than a puddle, recognize the performers. I don’t mind, though, because there’s so much to look at and I don’t mean the architecture. It’s the first time since the airport that I’ve paid much attention to the people around me. There’s the occasional wildly dyed head, but for the most part everyone has jet-black hair. I reach up and run a hand over my own straight locks. In this line, I don’t stand out. The people in front of me are staring, but not at me—at my flatmates. I fit in. I fit in so much that at the door, the bouncer frowns when I present my passport as my ID. He stares at the document a long time before inspecting my face with his flashlight. This time I don’t blurt out that I’m adopted, but I won’t lie, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Sorry I’m confusing you. I’m adopted. Not from here. Or, I was originally from here, but then I got sent to America, where I grew up next to the corn and cows. And insurance. Iowa is big on insurance. It’s the second-largest insurance capital—
