Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh

Author:Ellen Oh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

“SO, GRANDPA, HOW DID YOU end up in New York and then Maryland?”

Clearing his throat, Grandpa asks me for a cup of barley tea. “Junie, please pour me some boricha if you want me to keep talking.”

Grandma brews a large pot of barley tea every day and leaves it on the stovetop. It is still hot, so I pour it into two mugs. I put a few ice cubes in mine, because I don’t like to burn my mouth. It smells earthy but in a good way, with a hint of sweet nuttiness. I bring over the mugs and watch as Grandpa sips his hot tea and says, “Ah, delicious. Now, where was I?”

“New York?”

“Right! Our friends told us that it would be better for us to move to New York to be around more Asians. Back then, there weren’t many in Atlanta. So, we packed everything up and drove to New York. We decided it was a great time to sightsee. This is such a beautiful country. But even that was hard. It was 1971, and your uncle was four years old. We would drive around and see beautiful landscapes, and then at night we would struggle to find a motel that would take us.”

“What do you mean, take you?”

“We were foreigners who spoke English with an accent,” Grandpa said. “Many nights we would drive up to a motel with a vacancy sign, only to be told at the front desk that there were no vacancies. Some nights we had to sleep in the car at a visitor’s center parking lot off the highway. At least we’d have a bathroom to use and water to drink. Several times we walked into little diners or restaurants that would not seat us. Or if they did, the waitresses would ignore us and finally we would be forced to leave hungry.”

My blood is boiling. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been for them.

“We had a hard time.” Grandpa smiles ruefully. “We were on the road for five days, and only one night could we get a motel room.”

“That’s horrible!”

“Yes, racism was really bad back then. But we finally arrived in New York City and we were able to stay with friends until we found a small apartment in Queens. We opened up a small jewelry store with the money we had saved from our jobs. We both learned to make jewelry, and we imported some Korean products, like vases and jewelry boxes.”

Korean vases are beautiful and very different looking. My mom has a few that my grandparents gave her, and she cherishes them. And I have a jewelry box that Grandma bought me a few years ago. It’s black with a mother-of-pearl design of flowers and butterflies. The only thing I keep in it is the gold baby ring that most Korean kids get at their one-year birthday. It is my greatest treasure.

“I didn’t know you owned a store!” I say. “Are mom’s vases from back then?”

“No,” he says as he takes a sip of his hot boricha.

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