Begging for Salt

Jae Min wore a shallow threshing basket over his head and down his back. He knocked on the apartment door and a woman with a large ugly mole on her cheek answered. Jae Min lowered his eyes, bowed deeply, and held out a small wooden bowl with both hands.

“Salt please,” he said.

“Are you serious?” the woman asked.

Jae Min stared at the woman’s bare feet. Her toenails were long and yellow.

“What are you, from a farm?” she asked.

“Yes.”

His family had just moved to Seoul and Jae Min was still getting used to seeing tall metal apartment buildings.

“Tell your parents it’s the twenty-first century,” she said. “This is a barbaric tradition and doesn’t help. If anything, it’ll only make it worse. You should see a chiropractor. Or a psychiatrist.”

“Can I have salt, please?”

“No.”

She slammed the door shut, almost knocking the wooden bowl out of his hands.

Jae Min clenched his hand on the wooden bowl and straightened the large straw bed-wetter hat. If the woman thought it was such a barbaric tradition, she should have just given him a lot of salt and he could stop begging. His mother wouldn’t allow him back into their new apartment until the bowl was filled to the top with salt.

Although some people were sympathetic, they weren’t willing to part with too much salt. They’d give him a spoonful or so. His bowl was about half full when he knocked on the door to apartment 718.

The door opened and Jae Min’s jaw fell open. A foreigner stood in front of him. Her eyes reminded him of big blue soccer balls. She wore Nike tennis shoes.

“You shouldn’t wear shoes in the house,” Jae Min said. “It’s bad for your health.”

“Hi.” She smiled. “You’re a cute one, aren’t you?”

Jae Min didn’t understand a word she said. She was speaking some sort of foreign language. He sighed, bowed, held out the bowl, and said, “Give me salt, please.”

“I can’t understand you,” she said. “But I like your costume. Is this like Korean Halloween?”

“Give me salt please,” Jae Min repeated.

“Okay,” she said. “One second.”

She walked over and opened the cabinet above the sink, took out a plastic bag, pulled out a few fun size Snickers bars, and dropped them in Jae Min’s basket.

The candy bars sat on the salt like big black bugs on rice. Why didn’t foreigners learn Korean?
Now he would have to act it out using charades.

He set the bowl with the Snickers bars on the floor, where the foreigner’s shoes should have been.

He pointed to himself. Then he pressed his hands together to make a pillow, laid his head on them, and made soft snoring noises.

“You’re tired?” the foreigner guessed.

He slid his palms down his thighs and made splashing noises with his mouth.

“You have to go to the bathroom?”

She stepped aside and waved him in.

“Please, go ahead,” she said.

Jae Min stared at her. Why was she inviting him into her apartment? He guessed it was because of the different culture. Maybe in America, when children showed up at the door wearing a bed-wetter hat, you invited them inside before giving them salt. Jae Min took off his shoes, picked up the wooden bowl, and walked into the apartment.

He looked up into the open cabinet above the sink and saw several boxes of pasta, canned vegetables, croutons, pancake mix, and a Tupperware container, filled with what looked like salt.

“Salt,” he said and pointed at the Tupperware container.

“Are you hungry?” the foreigner said. “Do you need some kim chi?”

Jae Min pulled the Snickers bars out of his bowl, slammed them on the table, pushed the bowl towards the foreigner, and pointed at the salt inside it.

“I don’t understand,” the foreigner said. “Are you tired? Hungry? Have to go to the bathroom? All of the above? You’re quite the little whiner, aren’t you?”

Jae Min felt his ears burning up but reminded himself the foreigners had a different culture. In America, maybe when children wet the bed and had to wear the bed-wetter hat and go door to door begging for salt, instead of giving the children salt, the children had to get it for themselves.
“You’re not a missionary, are you?” the foreigner said. “You seem too young, but you never know with these missionaries.”

The cabinet was too high and he was too short, so Jae Min climbed up on the sink.

“Hey, what are you doing?” the foreigner said. “Be careful!”

Several cups filled with soapy water were on the counter and Jae Min stepped around them. The counter’s surface was wet and soaked through his socks. He balanced himself with one foot on the faucet and one on the counter. With the wooden bowl in one hand, he used his free hand to take the lid off the Tupperware container.

“Okay, you need to borrow some salt,” the foreigner said. “Come on down. I’ll give it to you. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Jae Min scooped with one cupped hand into the bowl. There would be more than enough there to fill up the bowl. Several times over if he had to come back another day.

Just as he filled the bowl to the top, his foot slipped on the counter and he fell backwards. He grabbed onto the Tupperware container to stop his fall but it came down with him. His head smacked into the ground and a sharp dizziness shook him. The foreigner shrieked. Jae Min heard cups crashing and the wooden bowl spinning.

“Are you okay?” the foreigner asked.

Jae Min felt something wet under him and realized the soapy water from the cups spilled on the floor. He saw that his bowl had spilled it’s salt on the floor. So had the Tupperware container. The soapy water turned all the salt into sludge. He would have to start all over again. Tears rose in his eyes and his chest felt heavy.

“Don’t cry,” the foreigner said and tried to help him up.

He pulled away from her.

“You crazy dog baby!” he screamed.

It didn’t do any good. She couldn’t understand Korean.

He snatched the empty bowl, picked up his bed-wetter hat, put it on his head, stuffed his wet,
floppy socks into his shoes, and stormed out the door.

He wished he knew English. Then he could tell this foreigner how stupid American culture was. They made small Korean children climb up on the sink to get the salt, when foreigners were tall, enormous really, and could easily reach the topmost shelves.When he finished filling his bowl with salt and could return home, he would get his mother to enroll him at the foreign language academy so he could learn how to say, “Go back to the States,” in English.