mikeShriver

“Where are you coming from,” The agent checked her passport again, “Dong-Yeon?”

“San Francisco.”

The agent glanced over his glasses at her, “You live in San Francisco?”

Dong-Yeon took a moment to think over the question. American order agents had a very particular way of communicating. They asked specific questions, but never seemed to want specific answers. “No, I live in Seattle. I was visiting family in Seoul.”

“Ok, So you are coming from Seoul.” again, he peered over his glasses, “Were you raised in Seoul?”

“No. I grew up in South Gyeonsang Province.” She paused for a moment, the agent silently continued to examine her travel documentation, so she continued, “I grew up on Namhae Island. It’s a long bus from Seoul, about 7 hours. The village I’m from is small. I did not even go to the mainland until I was seven years old.”

Dong-Yeon Oh doesn’t fully understand why she is telling all of this to the border agent. He is still silently poring over her documents, and she is not quite sure he is listening to anything that she has been telling him. She finds the silence nerve-wracking, and does her best to displace it with whatever idle conversation she thinks he might find relevant. The last time she went through a customs check, the agent asked her all about her uncle in Seoul. She did not think her uncle in Seoul was very relevant to her entry into the United States, but it was the only thing that came immediately to mind.

“We went to visit my uncle.” The security guard glanced up at her quizzically, which made her hesitate for a moment. “To Seoul, when I was a child, My grandmother took me on the bus to Seoul to visit my uncle that lived in the city. That was how I first got to see the mainland.”

The border agent was now entering information into his computer terminal. He made a short muffled grunting noise. Dong-Yeon could not tell whether it was directed at her or the machine.

“He had a,” here she struggled for a word, “A bell. On his door. I had never seen that before. There was no such thing in my village in Namhae. It was just like the houses that were on television. I played with the bell all afternoon, until my grandmother–”

The agent cut her off, “OK, What was your business in Seoul?”

The abruptness of the question threw Dong-Yeon off her guard. She had been a nurse in Seoul may years before, but she did not think that this was what he meant by the question.

Impatiently, it seemed to her, he reframed the question, “Where you traveling to Korea for business or personal reasons?”

“Oh,” she understood now, “Personal reasons. I used to work there. I thought maybe you were asking me about that.”

“Do you go to school in Seattle, or are you employed, here?”

“I used to take classes at the community college, for ESL. But now I work at a hospital. I am a nurse.” From her perspective border agents do not have their priorities straight. The questions they ask have no real importance. She could tell the agent many important things if he only asked the important questions.

Dong-Yeon stared at the agent for a moment. He had asked about her job in Seattle, but did not ask about the people she knew. It was the people that were important. She could be telling him all about her family, her grandmother, and her uncle in Seoul. She could talk about the people she has met in Seattle, since moving here. Without them she would not have the life she now enjoys. If he had asked, she would have told him about her classmates in the ESL program: Mizuki and Quan, who she explored museum openings with. She could tell him about the time Jia-Jia slipped and fell on the wet stone in front of the Sheraton while walking downtown in the rain. Dong-Yeon stayed with her in the lobby of the hotel until the rain stopped.

Karen, her host mother during those three quarters, had first suggested she try to find a permanent job in the US. Without that, who knows where she might have ended up. Where might she be without the friends she made at the public library’s “Talk Time” sessions, or what about her roommate that spent so much energy convincing her to attend the sessions in the first place? Each person had a small and important role in making this city like a second home to her, but the agent did not seem concerned with any of this; He did not even seem to recognize that this city could be her home.

The agent’s stamp fell heavily against her visa, and brought her out of her contemplation. He looked at her over his glasses again as he handed back her papers.

“Welcome to the States, Dong-Yeon. Enjoy your visit.”

Tags: Creative Writing.