Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee Page A

real dummy, Henry. Don’t you know? You just free dance ticket. She just using you.” Just then the housekeeper shuffled by us into her rooms on the other side of the pantry.
    â€œI guess that’s right,” I said. “I should have seen that. You know it all. I guess I still have much to learn from you about dealing with women.”
    â€œWhat you say!” he exploded. “What you say!” He slammed his palm on the side lamp table, almost breaking the plate of smoked glass. I started to leave but he grabbed me hard by the neck as if to shake me and I flung my arm back and knocked off his grip. We were turned on each other, suddenly ready to go, and I could tell he was as astonished as I to be glaring this way at his only blood. He took a step back, afraid of what might have happened. Then he threw up his hands and just muttered, “Stupid.”
    A few weeks later I stumbled home from the garage apartment late one night, drunk on some gin filched from a friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet. My father appeared downstairs at the door and I promptly vomited at his feet on the newly refinished floors. He didn’t say anything and just helped me to my room. When I struggled down to the landing the next morning the mess was gone. I still felt nauseous. I went to the kitchen and he was sitting there with his tea, smoking and reading the Korean-language newspaper. I sat across from him.
    â€œDid she clean it up?” I asked, looking about for the woman. He looked at me like I was crazy. He put down the paper and rose and disappeared into the pantry. He returned with a bottle of bourbon and glasses and he carefully poured two generous jiggers of it. It was nine o’clock on Sunday morning. He took one for himself and then slid the other under me.
    â€œ
Mah-shuh!
” he said firmly.
Drink!
I could see he was serious. “
Mah-shuh!
”
    He sat there, waiting. I lifted the stinking glass to my lips and could only let a little of the alcohol seep onto my tongue before I leaped to the sink and dry-heaved uncontrollably. And as I turned with tears in my eyes and the spittle hanging from my mouth I saw my father grimace before he threw back his share all at once. He shuddered, and then recovered himself and brought the glasses to the sink. He was never much of a drinker.
Clean all this up well so she doesn’t see it
, he said hoarsely in Korean.
Then help her with the windows.
He gently patted my back and then left the house and drove off to one of his stores in the city.
    The woman, her head forward and bent, suddenly padded out from her back rooms in thickly socked feet and stood waiting for me, silent.
    I knew the job, and I did it quickly for her. My father and I used to do a similar task together when I was very young. This before my mother died, in our first, modest house. Early in the morning on the first full warm day of the year he carried down from the attic the bug screens sandwiched in his brief, powerful arms and lined them up in a row against the side of the house. He had me stand back a few yards with the sprayer and wait for him to finish scrubbing the metal mesh with an old shoe brush and car soap. He squatted the way my grandmother did (she visited us once in America before she died), balancing on his flat feet with his armpits locked over his knees and his forearms working between them in front, the position so strangely apelike to me even then that I tried at night in my bedroom to mimic him, to see if the posture came naturally to us Parks, to us Koreans. It didn’t.
    When my father finished he rose and stretched his back in several directions and then moved to the side. He stood there straight as if at attention and then commanded me with a raised hand to fire away.
    â€œ
In-jeh!
” he yelled.
Now!
    I had to pull with both hands on the trigger, and I almost lost hold of the nozzle from the backforce of the water and sprayed wildly at whatever I