Age 8: Welcome to Daeju
Do You Remember?
I woke up this morning super early, mostly because my mom came into my room and starting picking it up. I rubbed my eyes and got out of bed, watching her as she quickly picked up all the toys I had laying on the floor. I walked over to her and tapped her shoulder.
“Mom,” I asked, sounding extra tired, “What’re you doing?”
Mom just laughed at me. I didn’t think my question was funny, so I repeated it to her. “Mom, what’re you doing?”
She turned to me and chuckled, bundling up my toys in her hands and running over to the toy box. “I need your room clean for our friends that are coming over today.”
“Our friends?”
“Yes! Now help me clean your room!”
I didn’t know Mom had friends. She always just came home from work as soon as her shift was over so I could have dinner and be put to bed. The only person I knew had friends was Dad, because he was gone all the time. I never really asked what he did, but when he comes home in the morning, he sounds like he had a good time.
I walked over to my toy box, Barbies stuffed in between my arms, and dumped them in. I looked at my mom, who then was making my bed, and sighed. “Mom, who’s really coming over?”
My mom walked over to the window and smiled, grabbing my blanket from my chair and throwing it onto the bed. She pointed over to the house next door. “You remember when your friend, Min Hee, went away?”
“Is Min Hee coming back?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “but a new family is moving into the house, and they have kids for you to play with!” My neighborhood didn’t really have kids on it, so I’d always have to walk all the way back to school and find kids to play with on the playground. But now that kids are moving in next door, I won’t have to go that far anymore! I smiled at Mom and, getting excited for the kids to come over, I started cleaning my room faster than I ever have before. Mom went back to my bed and pulled up the covers, making it look extra nice for the guests that were coming. Before I knew it, my room was finished and Mom was pushing me into the bathroom to clean up for our first meeting.
I quickly showered and brushed my teeth, making sure they were extra clean. In my room sat the play clothes Mom wanted me to wear, just in case me and the new kids wanted to play outside. She came into my room once I had my clothes on and sat me in the chair, combing my hair and putting it up in a really high ponytail. She does them real tight, though, and every time I ask her why, she says it’s because she doesn’t want all my hair to come out of the rubber band. And I know that once I take it out, my head will hurt really bad, so I hope that the kids don’t pull at it today.
“They’re going to be coming at noon, so don’t get too dirty!” she said as she ran into her room to get herself ready, “And don’t eat the bulgogi!”
I nodded and headed toward the window, looking at Min Hee’s old house. ‘I wonder who’s gonna live there?’ I thought to myself, ‘Maybe she’ll be pretty, like Min Hee.’
Noon came around and, just like Mom said, the moving truck was in front of the house next door. Three pickup trucks also parked in the driveway, and four bigger men came out and opened the back of the moving truck, unloading everything from boxes to couches. As I watched the movers pick up the heavy stuff and take it into the house, I heard the front door open and heard two ladies talking. I assumed one was my mom, so I ran downstairs to meet the new neighbors.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, though, it wasn’t exactly what I expected. Mom was talking to a lady in the kitchen and this man came in with two boys. Boys? I thought there was going to be a girl. Mom must have noticed I was close because she suddenly got up and walked over to me. When she came up to me, she knelt down so I could look her in the eyes and whispered, “The new neighbors are here. Would you like to say hello?”
I didn’t really want to, since… well, they’re boys. But I had to be nice to them for my mom, so I nodded and said, “Okay, Mom. I’ll go.” She took my hand and walked me into the kitchen, where the woman my mom was talking to, the man, and the two boys were sitting at the kitchen table with their plates of bulgogi. There was an empty seat in-between my mom and one of the boys, so I walked over and sat in the chair. Mom smiled and pointed at me, saying, “This is my daughter, Baek Su Min.” Mom looked over at me and, starting with the woman, introduced me to everyone. “Su Min, this is Mrs. Kim, Mr. Kim, Myong Jae, and Joonmyun.” I looked at the boy next to me, who was supposed to be Joonmyun, and smiled. He suddenly looked at me funny and then turned back to his food.
So much for being nice to the new neighbor boy.
After lunch, Mom wanted to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Kim about adult things, so the three of them pushed me, Joonmyun, and Myong Jae outside to play. Myong Jae climbed up a big tree and, since he said he was twelve, he didn’t want to play with kids like me and Joonmyun. So I was stuck with Joonmyun: the boy who decided to look at me funny at lunch. He was sitting on the ground, playing with a blade of grass. I sat across from him and smiled real big. If he was going to be my new friend, I would have to make a good impression. “Hi,” I said with a big smile, “I’m Su Min. I’m really happy you moved here.”
Joonmyun still played with the blade of grass, staring at it as he squished it in-between his fingers. I tried getting his attention, but he wouldn’t stop looking at that piece of grass. “So, where did you live before here?”
And again, he stared at that stupid piece of grass. I just got so angry that suddenly, I slapped his hand, releasing the grass from his fingers. He looked up at me, obviously angry. “Hey! I was doing something with that!”
“Well, at least I got your attention!” I smiled, sitting up straighter than I was before, “So where did you live before here?”
He looked down at his shoes. “Seoul.”
He seemed to be real sad, so I tried to cheer him up. “Well, I don’t know much about Seoul, but Daeju is way cooler! I mean, we have a real nice playground and-”
He suddenly stood up and stomped his foot onto the ground. “I don’t care about the playground! My friends were in Seoul, and now I have to come to Daeju and live here instead. I hate it here already!” Joonmyun started walking to the back door. “And I can’t even go into my own room because nothing’s in it yet!” He ran into my house and slammed the door, causing the screen door to shake. I heard his brother laughing in the tree. He started yelling something, but I couldn’t understand him because he was so high up. Oh, well. I walked over to the swing set my dad built for my birthday and sat down on one of the swings, twirling around and spinning in a circle.
I was outside by myself for almost two hours, and yet, Joonmyun never left the inside of my house. Myong Jae decided to go to his house to help the movers move the rest of his family’s things, while I sat alone on the swing set. Suddenly, I started to hear the faint sound of thunder. I looked up at the sky, noticing the clouds being much darker than they were earlier. And in a flash, the rain started pouring onto the Earth, soaking my entire body. I don’t really like thunder very much. You can’t see it and you don’t know where it comes from, but it shakes the ground real bad and makes the scariest noises. I had to get in the house. I ran as fast as I could to the door but, once I went to open it, it was stuck. Joonmyun slammed the door so hard that it jammed into the wood! Stupid Joonmyun! I knocked on the door real hard, the rain soaking my play clothes and mud getting into my sneakers. No one was answering me, so I knocked louder and started yelling.
“Mommy!” I screamed, starting to feel cold from the rain, “Mommy, I’m stuck outside!” Still, no one answered the door. I ran over to the fence by our garage and tried unlocking the lock, but I was way too short to reach it.
Great, I thought, I’m stuck outside in the pouring rain and scary thunder and the mean neighbor boy is nice and warm in my house.
I ran back to the door and started knocking again. Maybe they would hear me if I was louder than the thunder. But the thunder crashed extra loud and some lighting flashed in the sky, making me scream as loud as I could. After a moment standing by the door, I heard the wooden door open and a voice from the other side. “Hey, why did you scream? And why are you still outside? Aren’t you gonna come in?”
I stood up to expect my mom, or maybe even Mr. or Mrs. Kim, but I got someone else. “You slammed the door real hard, and now I can’t open it, you meanie!”
“Hold on, I’ll open it!” Joonmyun put his hands on the door and started kicking the bottom of it. As he did, the screen door started to loosen from the wood. It took a few minutes, but he finally got the door unstuck, my first instinct being to run in the house and kick off my muddy sneakers. Joonmyun shut the screen door and looked at my muddy, cold, and wet self. He asked Mrs. Kim if she could get him a towel because I ‘tracked mud in the house’. Thank goodness he lied, though… I didn’t want Mom to worry about me getting sick. He came back downstairs with the towels and gave one to me. “Dry up,” he said, “I don’t want you to get sick!”
I wrapped the towel around my body, running upstairs as fast as I could and sneaking by Mom to get a new pair of play clothes on. I took my ponytail out because the rain messed it up and, once I got downstairs, I noticed Joonmyun was gone. I wanted to thank him for opening the door for me, but I couldn’t if I didn’t know where he went! So I sat on the couch and the TV, knowing that Mom was still talking to her new friends and I didn’t have any.
A few minutes passed and I heard a knock at the door. I ran up and, as I opened it, saw a soaked Joonmyun with something in his hand: a small, yellow flower he must’ve picked in his new backyard. He looked at me and sighed, extending his arm and handing me the flower. “I’m real sorry I’ve been mean to you. I just didn’t want to move away.”
I smiled and ushered him into the house. “It’s okay, Joonmyun! Now, come in before you get sick!” He kicked off his shoes and headed toward the living room, while I ran in and opened up the towel for him and I to sit on. I handed him a blanket, making him cover up and get himself dry. As we watched TV, I looked down at the flower every once in a while, twirling the stem between my thumb and index finger.
At lunch time, we hated each other. But at that moment, I realized we had become friends.
Mission accomplished.
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