"You've Got Two Feet, Sethe, Not Four"

On the wall above my desk is an arrangement of post-it notes, messy writing scrawled across colorful quilts of paper, quotes I’ve collected from my past few years of reading. Like the ticking of a clock, caught up in life I often forget this collection exists, but once in a while I look up and my dear Willy Shakespeare, Wilde, and Faulkner whisper to me from the uncrossed t’s and undotted i’s. I amuse myself observing my literary progression, noting a change in tone from Fitzgerald to Remarque and Hesse and Tolstoy, and back to America with Morrison, Ellison, and Steinbeck.

I stare at quotes from Beloved and Invisible Man: novels that undoubtedly shaped me as a person, and while their musings on individuality and hope and prejudice sing to me, there is a distinct disconnect. A glass wall better left untouched.

I live in Carmel Valley, arguably one of the most sheltered places in the world. I have always lived with a roof over my head, with enough financial comfort for that roof to be located in safe neighborhoods, in communities where the greatest concerns of families are their getting their children to college. Yes, I am Korean American, but I go to school with many others and my race has never been called into question. I feel like an imposter, so proudly displaying the liberation of scars that aren’t my own, associating with characters that I can not truly understand. How can I rave against social injustice when I myself am a passive contributor?

I close my eyes and I am there. My dad stands next to me, and the back of our shirts are darkened with sweat stains. It’s not the inescapable assault of the sun that beats down from above, it’s the smothering humidity of the soupy air that makes you want to crawl into your skin to create more space to just breathe.

It is the fourth day of the World Championships for my taekwondo association, conveniently hosted in downtown Little Rock every summer. We thought we would spare some money by opting out of renting a car for our trip, thus explaining our setting at the bus station. And though we aren’t strangers to public transit, it was never my main form of transportation, and it’s been a few decades since my dad was a commuter in Korea. 

I stare at the flimsy metro card, the edges soggy from the sweat of my fingertips. Numbered circles line the top of the card - for marking our rides, the attendant told us when handing them over - a system I had only seen before when redeeming frozen yogurt. I check my phone and I am surprised to notice only a minute has passed. Looking around, I notice the bus station is nearly deserted, with a few people sleeping on benches or next to shopping carts scattered across the station.

A breath of relief escapes me when I hear the wheels of our bus turning the curb. The doors open and the scent of gasoline and a trace of the distinct “school-bus” odor immediately engulf me. My dad looks on with slight impatience as two men board. Perhaps it is from my background in taekwondo and Krav Maga, but I can’t help but notice the sag of one of their back pockets and the black handle of a Bedlam knife. Something turns in my stomach. 

We board the bus. All conversation immediately stops. The silence hangs in the air as my father hands his metrocard over to the driver and instructs me to do the same. I must have followed suit, because I find myself seated next to my dad with the card in my hand. The hole is frayed because the paper is completely soaked through.

I take a hesitant glance around the bus, careful not to turn my head with my inspection. There are three people across the aisle from us, seated on the scratchy plastic seats reminiscent of the white folding tables used in school field events. From the rustles in the back I conclude there are at least four more behind us. There are two exits, doors in the front and the back - the windows will suffice in an emergency. In what feels like a fabricated stillness I hear the whirl of a fan, but the air is even thicker than it was outside, a different kind of density, suffocating and ubiquitous. 

Five stops in, a sizeable black man boards the bus, dully observes the passengers, and takes a seat next to me without greeting.

I fix my eyes on the shriveled end of a cigarette butt on the floor. A wave of rigidity sweeps through my body: I feel my muscles tighten as if a Victorian seamstress was threading the sinews through the last loop of her whalebone corset. I feel the weight of the man’s gaze scanning my brand-new red t-shirt: the printed text obnoxiously reads “I am a World Champion”, which must scream “I am a tourist and I have money” . He takes a breath and my arm stiffens. 

I’m definitely not racist, I assure myself. It’s because they are poor and could be dangerous. The saddening implication of this fails to dawn on me in this moment. I don’t consider Hesse’s disdain for the bourgeoisie, or Ellison’s disparagement of the ostentatious, feckless whites, or the countless school essays I have written analyzing social class and prejudice. I am certain everyone in the bus can hear my tell-tale heart beating out of my chest - my blatant privilege is my vulture eye and I will be found under the wooden planks here in a bus in the middle of a foreign city. I must have stayed like this for hours.

My dad nudges my leg. We have reached our stop. I note that his leg was not tapping during the entire ride, a microexpression that I’ve grown familiar with throughout the years. We get up, my heart pounding through my veins as my passing legs graze the knees of my silent boarder.

Only when I turn from the aisle towards the bus doors do I count five people sitting in the back seat, their dark eyes unreadable but their gaze heavy and concentrated. I rush out of the bus.

I hear the swoosh of the doors close behind me, the moan of the bus rebounding on its hind wheels, and the smooth rumble as it departs. I let out a breath that I didn’t know I had been holding.