Someone Else's Love-Letter
I've saved a certain love-letter for more than ten years. It was never sent to me. And I never meant to send it.
One February afternoon it just appeared, random and delicate, on my doorstep. It was folded origami-style into the shape of a gift-box, complete with bow. On the bow was typed in both English and Korean: I LOVE YOU.
I love you—a golden thread I couldn't help but pull at.
I undid the note. This took five motions as I climbed, slower than usual, to my second-floor converted row house apartment.
In the top left corner in tiny letters the author had penned this title: To: Chinese Lady.
The writer had used for stationery a torn-out page from a religious songbook. One edge was rough and uneven, evidence that the author had torn it out hastily. On one side was a song, "JESUS, I LOVE YOU." On the other side the writer had composed his plea.
Dear Chinese lady,
I am very sorry that you are scared of it.
I am not a bad person.
Yesterday night, I wait for a long time here. To see
your face. But I cannot meet you.
I hope, I want you not to be scare of me.
Because, I am a very good gentleman, and
very handsome guy.
So, I want to see you again naturally.
Thank you,
(Korean) David Y.
Could this note, I thought, be intended for my downstairs neighbor? Maria was not Chinese. Still, I couldn't be sure. I briefly thought of the author, David Y., at that very moment loitering and whispering about our Philadelphia neighborhood, hoping for a chance with this girl. Briefly I even worried that he had seen me lift the note, and that he wouldn't appreciate this. Eventually I decided, however, that my finding the note was purely a chance occurrence. If it was caused by anything, it was caused by the wind.
Over the next ten years I hoarded David's letter. I wondered about what had happened to him. The Chinese lady had never received the note, or had cast it aside. Either way, had David found another way to meet her? Perhaps he'd originally spied her in church, hence, the note was written on the song-sheet. Her singing voice may have been lovely, her hands on her Bible small and gentle. If she went to church she must be a good girl, a clean girl. Perhaps, he thought, she loves her family, she'll make a good wife.
Or she may have been very young and worn short skirts and laughed loudly outside the Vietnamese coffee shops, flirting with the tough kids—Vietnamese, Italian, Cambodian—on their way to high school.
Maybe she was a little of both, and attended Maria Goretti Girl's school, where the nuns take such pride in teaching the girls to respect themselves.
The Chinese lady was his secret, I'd bet. Possibly because his own family wouldn't like him dating a non-Korean. Or, despite his looks, he might be penniless, not much of a catch for her. These might be his speculations, his rationalizations.
In reality, he'd made her fear him, somehow. He'd shown his obsessive hand, too soon.
I wonder why I had been so eager to pick up the letter in the first place.
I carried it with me when my husband and I moved on a whim to Tokyo, Japan. I packed the letter in a large envelope full of notes, scribbles, and various paper mementoes.
I ended up living there for five years, and during that time kept David's letter in my top desk drawer, along with some miniature screwdrivers, pictures of babies somehow related to me, least favorite pens, and spools of assorted threads.
At this time of my life David's broken English evoked great sympathy from me. I wondered why he had originally left Korea, how old he had been then, and whether or not the move had been his choice. I was drawn to it because I was learning firsthand the frustrations of surviving in a foreign place, and of trying to carry on meaningful conversations in a troublesome language.
As if the language of love isn't trouble enough.
I felt short on nostalgia, and wondered, had David ever felt the same?
In my case, I had trouble connecting, at least at first, with much of anything that was happening around me. The letter provided a valuable point of reference for me. It was familiar.
Unexpectedly, subtly or not, when we live in a distant place the familiar will appear. Once I was walking home in Taishido, my Tokyo neighborhood, and a man passed by who happened to be whistling the opening sax lead from John Coltrane's "Good Bait," a single strand of syncopated notes that hooks me every time.
I've never heard anything like that on any Philadelphia street, though Coltrane spent part of his youth there.
I'm always listening as I walk, but also looking down, and sometimes I pick things up, as was the case with David’s letter. A couple of years ago I relocated back to Philadelphia, and in front of my new apartment I picked up a plastic game piece on which was written the number "51." Some things just don't change, naturally, no matter where we have been or how long we’ve been there.
And there's much more I've scavenged over the years, but few errant items have captured my attention like David Y.'s letter.
For a time last year I carried his letter around in public. Once I pulled it out at a party and showed it to an entire roomful of people. They were talking about novels and what novels should or could be about. I told them I kept trying to write a novel—a serious, literary novel—about this David but kept losing the trail after the first few chapters. It was a problem of place. I felt he was never happy in any particular place. Yet, when I tried to make him search for a better one he wouldn't cooperate.
Also, he would not talk. He clammed up, which isn't surprising. He doesn't possess, after all, one of those loud, yammering voices we're led to think wield so much power in this world.
For a while I held out hope that his life turned out like a romance in which the object of his intentions finally sees him for who he is, a nice and handsome guy.
The wind-blown love letter would play a pivotal role. Perhaps the Chinese lady tragically never received this letter, which is the main reason she never came around to seeing David's strong points. Perhaps her self-centered boyfriend found the letter and punished her for having read it, and kept it. Perhaps, unknown to David, she and her boyfriend, some slick Romeo, had been secretly married but had kept this from everyone. Ultimately for this Romeo, the Chinese lady was merely an exotic prize, a trophy of his prowess. He continued to pursue his preposterous dream of becoming a prize-fighter or crime-king. He didn't even care if his lovely wife finished college, or if she was happy, at all. As time passed, he'd tire of his wife, but David would still be there to act the part of friend, if not lover.
By now, ten years since I found the letter, the settings of David's dreams must be American. I quiz my friends on this subject. It takes at least five years before most people start climbing the staircases or falling through the skies of their adopted lands.
By now I also want to think of him as a success, an owner of property.
I've always maintained a strong impression of how these people look. Not having allowed them to age, however, or move out of Philadelphia, or make other life-changing decisions, I have surely done them a disservice. My editor has even pointed out to me how I've squeezed them into some one-size-fits-all outfits, in the stereotypical immigrant's tale style.
So I've finally quit thinking about David. At least I have tried to do so. It's true I have looked up his name in the telephone book.
I'll admit that likely as not both David Y. and the woman he earnestly sought have forgotten the original details surrounding this incident
I should probably just throw the letter away. I resolve to do this. But before I get the chance to act on my resolve my unscrupulous husband has already sent it the way of the chicken carcass, the worn-out sneakers, and the announcement that we have just won a free trip to Hawaii. He has sent it out to the curb, to be hauled off tomorrow, Tuesday, trash day.
This essay originally appeared in The Drexel Online Journal.
Copyright © Valerie Fox 2007 - 2008