Miles from Nowhere Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Shelter

  Nothing About Love or Pity

  Club Orchid

  Knowledge

  On the Bus

  With a Boy

  Avon

  Frank

  King’s Manor

  In the Tombs

  What We Had

  At the Employment Agency

  Mr. McCommon

  Acknowledgements

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by Nami Mun

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in

  any printed or electronic form without permission. Please

  do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Page 289 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mun, Nami.

  Miles from nowhere / Nami Mun.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-594-48854-2

  1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Runaway teenagers—Fiction.

  3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.U4565M

  813’.6—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

  the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers

  and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author

  assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.

  Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any

  responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Gus, my believer

  To see clearly and without flinching, without turning away, this is agony, the eyes taped open two inches from the sun.

  —Margaret Atwood,

  NOTES TOWARDS A POEM

  THAT CAN NEVER BE WRITTEN

  Shelter

  I’d been at the shelter for two weeks and there was nothing to do but go to counseling or lie on my cot and count the rows of empty cots nailed to the floor or watch TV in the rec room, where the girls cornrowed each other’s hair and went on about pulling a date with Reggie the counselor because he looked like Billy Dee Williams and had a rump-roast ass. I didn’t see a way to join in, but I didn’t feel like being alone, either. It was cold. Outside the lobby doors, the thick snow falling made it hard to see the diner across the street. The walls in this place were too bright, too lit up in a peppermint light. I wandered down the long hallway, walked past the cafeteria and the nurses’ station without saying hi to anyone, and looked for Knowledge.

  I liked Knowledge. She’d stood up for me my first night—whacked a huge girl across her face with a dinner tray and then plunked right down on top of her. With a hand choking the girl’s neck, Knowledge told her to give back my sneakers because that was the right thing to do. I actually hated those sneakers, was glad when the girl stole them so the counselors could give me a new pair, but that really wasn’t the point. Nobody had ever stuck up for me before.

  I saw Knowledge at the end of the hall, jumping rope.

  “Okay, how about this,” she said as I walked up. “What if I was to pull off something really big, something that’ll change our lives forever, but I needed your help. You gonna be there?” The rope buzzed over her face as her eyes focused on some point down the hallway.

  “Depends,” I said, hopping an imaginary hopscotch. “You want to go play cards?”

  “Depends? On what?” She stopped jumping. The white beads in her hair stopped jumping, too. Clenching the rope, she said, “You either trust me or you don’t. We’re either partners or we ain’t, and believe me, you can’t make it on the street without a partner covering your flat ass.” She yanked up her gloves, which were really tube socks with ten finger holes. “So, you’d watch my back or what?”

  “If I say okay, can we go play cards?”

  “Good. That’s what I’m talking about. Here, take this.”

  I took the rope from her and she dropped to the floor. Between each push-up, she bubbled her cheeks and exhaled real loud. “Gotta get in shape so we can bust out tonight.”

  I coiled the rope around my wrist to make an African tribal bracelet. I didn’t know what she was talking about, and plus, the shelter doors were always open—we could leave whenever we wanted. Over the speakers, dinner was being announced.

  “C’mon. Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll let you teach me blackjack.”

  “At a time like this? You gotta be out of your mind.” She shot up and began running fast in place, slowing down only to deliver uppercuts.

  My mom turned crazy the night my father left us for good. He had given up on us. On my mother’s ways. She was getting up in the middle of the night and stepping out onto our cold, muddy yard to dig a hole in the ground. Every night for a week she worked on that one hole, as if trying to tunnel her way back to Korea. It had been her idea to move us to the States four years before, and my dad never let her forget it.

  I was twelve then. It was winter. Her small spade hitting the dirt sounded like coughing.

  That night, as soon as my dad’s car turned the corner, she dropped the spade and turned to me. I felt the eyes of the neighborhood wives and grandmothers peeking through blinds and curtains, judging us, wondering if people like us deserved to share their skies. A gust of wind brought my mom’s hair to life and, even though I knew words were coming from her mouth, it seemed as if the black, uncombed strands were the ones speaking. She ordered me to grab all of his things and pile them in our yard. Like his socks, underwear, toothbrush, the basement TV, his leather Bible, the briefcase I’d gotten him for his birthday which he never used, pictures of him, pictures of him and me, his half-empty jar of Sanka. While I made runs back and forth, my mom lay on the dead grass, the moon shining down on her tears and the small pile of Dad I’d created next to her. She rolled her face to the side, her ear touching dirt. “What do you think God does to people like you?” she asked the ground.

  She had on only her robe, and no socks. She was naked underneath. I asked her if she was cold. Wi
thout answering, she stood up, slapped something off her knees, and stared past me and into the house. “Did you grab everything?”

  I nodded and looked down at the slippers he’d bought me, wondering if they were supposed to go into the pile. Before I could ask, she walked off into the garage and came out seconds later carrying a small can in each hand. With all the lighter fluid, the pile lit up fast, the flash instantly warming my face. I stood there and didn’t try to stop her because I loved her too much then. I knew it wasn’t good to burn all of Dad’s things, but how can you not love someone who lets you see them in all that pain? For the first time, I saw her clearly, as if I were inside a dream of hers, watching all her thoughts. She wasn’t putting on an act. She wasn’t being a nurse. She wasn’t being a mother or a wife or a good Christian. She was just dropping to her knees, inches from the fire, and sliding her thin arms into the flames. If I screamed I didn’t hear it, but I did pull her back, grabbing a fistful of her bathrobe, fully understanding that I was now playing a part in that dream.

  When the fire trucks and the ambulance came, I left her and ran into the house. I locked all the doors, turned off all the lights because we had revealed too much of ourselves. Crouching under a window that faced the yard, I heard two neighbors saying how they’d never seen such a thing. A man asked my mom how she felt.

  All she said was, “I’m starving.”

  In the cafeteria, Knowledge said to me, “Life’s only as bad as you make it out to be. It’s got nothing to do with the way it is.” After three quick shovels of mashed potatoes, she mumbled, “You get me?” Her knees rattled under our table. I folded and unfolded the paper napkin on my lap and drank my milk before telling her that I didn’t, and that I didn’t understand most of what she said.

  She nodded. “I like your honesty. I do. I demand it, actually,” she said, and patted my back. “Here, for your bones.” From under her sweatshirt she pulled out a half-pint of milk and sneaked it onto my lap. “You know, I never knew a Chink before.”

  “That’s okay.” I packed the mash and the Salisbury steak inside my dinner roll.

  “I didn’t even know Chinks ran away from home.”

  “We can do a lot of neat things,” I said, swallowing. I liked hearing her laugh. And I didn’t care that she’d called me a Chink, though I wanted to say that Chinks were for Chinese and that Koreans had their own special name. But that was another subject, and I liked the way we were talking right then.

  “Hello, ladies.”

  I’d seen Wink walk up to us—strutting past the tables, looking to see who was checking him out. He could’ve been Chachi’s younger brother, dressed in tight jeans with a red bandanna tied around his thigh.

  Knowledge pointed her plastic fork at him and yelled, “Don’t even start aiming your ass for the bench.” She didn’t like boys talking to me, especially Wink. To her, boys were either weak or evil—and Wink was both.

  “You’re the boss,” he said, and sat down next to me anyway. I admired that about him. He could really annoy people, but at least he was stubborn about it. And he didn’t seem to care what anyone said behind his back, even after the whole counseling incident. I only got the story from Knowledge, but during Wink’s first rap session, some guys I guess sobbed and told their runaway stories, and when it was Wink’s turn, he admitted that he’d been on the streets for almost a year because his mom used to heat up a coat hanger and beat him with it when he was little. Then she was sent to Bellevue for trying to hang herself and him. Anyway, he cried, too. After the session ended and the counselor left, the boys cornered Wink and pushed him down, stepping on him and laughing. They told him that they’d all made up their stories, and how they rolled queers like him for kicks. Knowledge then told me that Wink was a prostitute, that he was whoring before he came to the shelter and he sure as hell was gonna be whoring after he left. I didn’t even know they had boy prostitutes.

  You couldn’t tell any of this by looking at him, though. Always in his shiny Members Only jacket with the sleeves scrunched up, Wink walked around the place like he was the president of money.

  “Hey,” he said, just to me. “I wanna show you something.” He took out a baseball from his jacket pocket, and I was about to take a closer look when Knowledge elbowed me in the ribs. “Don’t tell him about tonight,” she whispered.

  “What about tonight?” I whispered back. She just waved her hand and shushed me.

  Then Wink said something.

  “What?” I turned to him.

  “It’s autographed, see?”

  He propped the baseball against my tray. Big capital letters, spelling out WILLIE MAYS, slithered across the ball, every letter strung together like some penmanship exercise. I could tell he wanted me to pick up the ball and say something nice about it, but from my right side I felt Knowledge’s eyes burning a hole in my cheek.

  “Hey, you gonna be here on Christmas?” Wink asked, taking back the ball.

  I told him that I didn’t know. With a spoon, I mashed my mashed potatoes and tried my best to feel comfortable sitting between these two.

  “That’s cool because. . .” Wink juggled the baseball from one hand to the other. “Because I got you a gift.”

  “Oh.” I bit into my sandwich.

  “And I’m telling you so you have time to get me one,” he said, and laughed a little.

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to whisper?” Knowledge thwacked the back of his head, which made Wink jump out of his seat.

  “Don’t touch me, you crazy dyke.” He pulled his arm back, looking to beam the ball at her. Knowledge didn’t flinch. She just stood up, bumped her chest into his, and stared him down. “Jesus fuck,” he said. “Why can’t you act like a girl for once?”

  A few kids had gathered around us. “A fight, a fight, a nigga and a white,” one girl sang but we all knew Wink would back down. Beat up a girl or get beaten by a girl, either way, it didn’t look good.

  “This is bunk, man. I’m outta here.” He tucked the baseball back into his jacket pocket. “I’ll see you later, my Korean empress,” he said, and gave me a wink. As he swaggered out of the cafeteria, practically all the girls booed him, calling him a white ass honky trick baby.

  It was lights-out at ten. Knowledge slept in the cot next to mine and, as usual, she cried in her sleep. I got to know her best during these times. On most nights, she called out to someone, and by the way her lips trembled, you could tell the person never came. I thought about who this person could be, and I thought about my mom, how heavy her eyes had looked the night my father left, how her bathrobe smelled like gasoline. After the sirens faded and the neighbors went back into their homes, I rummaged through our house all over again, this time to see if my father had left me a note. Or maybe a phone number. Nothing turned up. The house was quiet for the first time in months. I dragged my blanket into the living room and watched TV, but mostly I kept thinking somebody would call—the cops or the hospital. No one did. I did see our next-door neighbor Mr. McCommon pacing his driveway with eyes to the ground. He didn’t come by, either. I didn’t feel sad or lonely, just numb. I opened up a package of dry instant noodles, dipped chunks of it in peanut butter, and stayed up late to watch Midnight Kung Fu Theater.

  Knowledge mumbled something. I rolled to my side to look at her—her short thick lashes upcurled so tight. I liked watching her like this—I liked that there was nothing between me and her. Not even her. But then she scrunched her brows, which made her look more scared than usual.

  “Hey.” I leaned over and nudged her arm.

  She opened her eyes really big and didn’t blink.

  “Did it seem real?” I lay back down, ready to hear out her dream, ready to fall asleep to it.

  “Get up,” she said. “It’s time.” She sat up and launched her legs into her pants.

  “Time for sleep, right?”

  “Hey, you trust me or what?”

  “Not really,” I said. Knowledge didn’t laugh, though. She was too bus
y putting on her T-shirt—her head popping up first, then both arms sprouting out together.

  “Okay, this is what’s gonna happen. I’ll cause a distraction. But you gotta get past the Pigs by yourself, all right?”

  “What pigs?”

  “And you gotta hurry, Joon.”

  I sat up. “What’s happening to your brain right now?”

  She rolled her eyes in disgust. “Just look around the room, idiot.”

  I looked around. Four walls. A piano nobody touched. Rows of green cots, each with a lump of a girl.

  “Do I gotta say more?” she asked, making her bed.

  “If you want me to understand you.”

  “Exactly.” She shot a look at the door. Her eyes were working so hard solving some geometry problem in her head, it seemed more dangerous to interrupt her.

  “Wait for me at the Greek’s across the street. You got until the count of five. That’s your distraction.”

  “Distraction for what?” I asked, but she was already sprinting out of the room, screaming, “One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”

  Outside, I could hear her running back and forth, yelling, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly!” like she was demanding you to do it.

  “Crazy ass motherfucker,” a voice said in the dark.

  I got dressed.

  In the front lobby, Reggie sat with his feet up on the desk, the toothpick in his mouth twirling a little as he mumbled into the phone. I considered waving goodbye to him but decided to just go. He probably didn’t even know who I was.

  “Your bed ain’t gonna be here when you come back,” he said, covering the mouthpiece. He really did look like Billy Dee Williams.

  With some drama, I hipped the door open and flashed him a look that said, “Oh well.” The snow hadn’t let up. I tucked my sweatshirt into my jeans and crossed the street. I’d forgotten about the bed policy, but who cared. That was what Knowledge would’ve said, or something more fortune cookie-like, like, The bed belongs to no one.