Loveboat in 서울

𝟛𝟝

The world is vibrations. Thunder. Particles.

Appa and I barrel into the woman in the floral skirt. She screams and my shoe flies off and my arm wrenches in its socket, shooting fire into my body. We're a tangle of hair and limbs hitting the sidewalk, rolling, bruising, as the horn falls in pitch behind us, then fades.

"Suzy! Are you hurt?"

My shoulder and upper arm burn. I can't move it. The pain comes in waves that threaten to drown me but slowly I realize I'm lying on top of Appa. He gropes at the pavement. His glasses have fallen off and I snatch their wireframes off the ground. One thick lens is cracked, but I shove them into his hands and he fits them to his face.

"Suzy." His face is more mole-speckled than I remember, his graying hair wild tufts on his head. "Suzy, are you okay?"

Something is wrong with my body. But I scramble to my knees and wrap my good around him, which I cannot remember doing since I was a child. He smells like soap, like Tide, like newspaper.

Like home.

"You could have died," I sob.

All around me, people babble, prod, kneel, and fuss. But all my focus is on Appa's hand, hesitantly stroking the back of my head, another something I can't remember happening since my early years.

"It's just my ankle. Better than my head, thanks to you," he adds when I pull back.

A flare of pain washes my vision white.

"Suzy!" Apa grips my arm as I cry out. "What's wrong?"

"Shoulder—" I grate. "My shoulder—"

"You've dislocated it." He grips my shoulder blade, his other hand my arm above the elbow. The worry fades from his face, replaced by a calm focus I've seen at parks and events, when he's kneeling before a medical emergency, and knows what to do. "Hold still, this will hurt."

With a wrench and pop, he jams my arm back into its socket.

The extreme relief collapses me against him.

"You'll be fine." He strokes me back with that tentative hand. "In a few weeks—"

"You lost this." A man hands me my shoe. "Paramedics are coming."

Sure enough, a white ambulance, red-cross logo and red flashing lights, is moving up the street toward us.

Appa grips my hand. His next words tumble out, as if he'd dammed them in his entire flight, his entire search for me, and he needs to get them out before the paramedics are upon us. "On the plane, I was remembering a time we brought you to the park. You were four. A man was playing a violin and you danced barefoot on the grass. Everyone came and watched you. A woman told us to enroll you in dance classes. That was when we put you in Zeigler's."

All I wanted to do this summer was dance.

Appa heard me.

That four-year-old day, I don't remember. I didn't even know that was the reason I'd ended up in the studio that became my second home. But the story is a gift. Dancing has always been a part of me—and Appa's seen that.

"I'm sorry I let you down." This reunion is nothing like Mulan and her father. I'm not bringing him the emperor's crest. From his point of view, he sent his elder daughter over the seas and she went berserk. He's not entirely wrong either. "I'm sorry about the photos."

"You talk to your friends and guidance counselor more than us," he says. "Sometimes, when you come home, you speak English so fast we can't understand. Sometimes we are scared we haven't raised you right. All we wanted was for you to have a better life. What if we came to America for that, and we lost you instead?"