My father's Sins.

It's a sunny and bright morning, I woke up in my lone apartment. It has been fourteen years since my father's crimes. Seven years since I packed everything I could fit in a backpack and bought a bus ticket from California to Pennsylvania on my eighteenth birthday. I needed a new beginning. I even changed my last name from Loone to Lee. I needed to try and be happy away from my mother and my sister like our. My sister, Dana, and I still talk occasionally. My cell phone rings, and I begrudgingly roll over to answer it.

I do not even look at the caller id before I click the answer button and bring it to my ear.

"Happy Birthday!" Dana yells at me through the phone. "Thank you, thank you," I grumble at her. I hear her exhale of smoke, followed by a long drag. "what's the plan today little brother?" She askes casually. I hadn't really thought about it. Birthdays stopped being important to me when my mother stopped celebrating it. "I'm working tonight," I lied. "

"That's too bad." "Yea," I agreed. Its not the first time I lied to Dana. No sense in worrying her needlessly if I can help it. "How's Mom?" I ask, quick to change the subject. If Dana notices, she does not acknowledge it. "You know mom, "She says gently. "She's gotten big into painting. She made the basement into a art studio." "

"She any good?" "No, not at all. Its god awful but it keeps her happy," Dana says. I can't really imagine it, mom was never creative. "I got to go Dana, "I say, eager to end the conversation.

"Okay Eric. Happy 25th birthday," She said. "Thanks. Bye Dana"

"Bye. Don't be a stranger." I hung up feeling drained. As much as I loved Dana, there felt like there was a disconnect between us. She was still trying to hold on to me even though I didn't want to be held on to. I moved away without even saying goodbye. It's been seven years and I have never reached out to her or our mother. I only speak when she reaches out to me, and I'm cold to her. I don't have to be, but when she backed our mom in her defense of our father, she treated me like an outsider. She fell in step to the new pecking order. Of course, I knew it was an act, but still. Now that I'm gone, she calls me in secret while pretending with our mother that I no longer exist.

I wish she would stop calling me. I wish I had the balls to b lock her, but I guess some small part of me clings to the attachment that is family. I sit up in my bed and notice the time. 7:45. I should get up. I should do something. Not sleep until noon again. I get out of my bed and head to the kitchen. Its basically bare. I own one pot, one bowl, one spoon, one fork and one cup. I don't entertain and I spend most of my time alone. I open my fridge and there's a carton of eggs and half a gallon of milk. I need to go shopping. I grab two of the five eggs out of the carton and put them in the pot with water and place it on the stove top.

The burner comes on with a loud click followed by a blue flame. I called off work for today and tomorrow off. I needed time to get things together. I went into the bathroom and quickly took a hot shower. After drying off, I opened my medicine cabinet. There are two medicine bottles with my name on it. Thirty 100MG of Trazadone, and twenty-two 10MG of Ambien. Tomorrow night, I will take them all and end this life.

I've known that this is what I wanted to do for the last year. I've tired. Tired of trying. Tired of being purposely. I've been slowly getting rid of things in the last three months. Living a minimalist life. I still have so many things left, but I'm sure the landlord will take care of it and make sure it goes where its needed. Tomorrow I'll have my final supper. All the things that I love to eat. Steak, roasted potatoes, shrimp fried rice, kimchi stu, Blue moon ice cream, and two bottles of Soju. If death row inmates can have a last meal then so can I. But then all of a sudden like as though I got into a different realm, for once in many years I thought thoroughly of all that has happened. I sat on the edge of my bed and recalled my whole life Story bit by bit, as though my soul was intending to give my body a recap of my unfortunate and wretched life history. This maybe my soul's way of giving me a deep insight of my life before I take the ultimate planned decision, of taking my exit from this world which I now detest so much, of course my planned suicide. I sat there and my imagination brought to life all that has happened in my life, how I grew up in Korea, with my parents and elder siblings, a brother and sister. The events that unfolded in the course of living with my pedophile father, the atrocities he'd committed all of which led to me being regarded as the villain. I viewed from my imagination my whole life story.

My father Jung loone is a Korean American. He was from Seoul, in the North Western part of South Korea. He was born and brought up there, where he lived with his poor parents. My father was the only surviving child of my grandparents, as they had lost two daughters in infancy to blood cancer. His father was a basic school teacher, while his mom was a house wife. As a school teacher, his father received little salary, with which he catered for his family and relatives. This of course was much of a burden for a typical Korean resident. This situation resulted in my father dropping out of college, when financial burdens hiked. His father, my grandfather as of when my father was in college suffered from kidney failures and lung cancer due to his smoking habit. He had to be placed on dialysis therapies to manage his condition. With such expenses, it was now difficult to bear my father's educational expenses, so he dropped out. Shortly after that, my grandfather died, and my father was left to cater for his mother. He toiled in engaging in all sorts of little jobs.

He engaged in automobile repairs, hawking of flowers and snacks, he and his mother fed from hand to mouth. My father began to hear of the American lifestyle, the ease of living and surviving in America, how it is the easiest place to succeed. This motivated him to start making plans of how to make enough money and fly to America. But after struggling for months, he still couldn't make it enough to bear the travel expenses. He approached various of his father's friends and relatives but all were of no help. He picked several jobs a day all in the effort to achieve his quest.

He worked as a hand for an old man in his shop, during the day, in the evening he hawked flowers and snacks at the playgrounds and parks, and at night he worked as a waiter in an hotel. All this went on for a couple of years, yet my father couldn't bear the expenses to fly down here to America. It was painful to encounter such with all the hard work. On a particular night when he was narrating all this to me, and his whole ordeals before I was born, I could clearly remember the emotions he fell when he narrated his strive in coming to America and making a living and to live the American lifestyle. In his narrations at some point he would grin and keep mute at intervals as if he doesn't want me to learn about his ordeals. But then I was only a kid, who understood little. In my later life when I recall such narrations, I grasped and understood much of it. If at all there is one thing I understood from his ordeals in striving to come to America, was that the man is left alone to achieve his aspirations and that none would help at a pressing hour. This lifestyle of hustling round the clock continued for my father. There were many other things which he never told me in his narrations and of course he shouldn't, not even if I were an adult. Though when I recall his shameful atrocious actions he did my sight, and involved me in, I wonder what need there was for him to hide anything from me. Right from Korea, in his college days my father he'd been a pedophile. He lures and harasses young girls. He took advantage of his relatives' young daughters whenever they come visiting, the kids on several occasions complained but my father's parents suspected nothing. This went on until my father became obsessed with this act. While he worked as a waiter in the hotel he saved as much as possible to fulfill his quest. In the course of this, he stole large amount of money from the hotel proprietor's office to pay his travel expenses in coming to America. On the fateful day he carried out this act, he rushed out of the hotel in the cover of the night, and went to pass the night in a nearby town. There he met a high school friend of his, an American Korean who had informed him much about America. This friend of his had mobilized him to make arrangements and move here to the US. On reaching his friends destination, he informed him that he now had the money and that he should help in making arrangements for him to take his flight. Meanwhile the hotel proprietor realizing that money was missing, summoned all the staff with immediate alacrity. In the course of this investigation he realized only one of the staff was missing without any report, that of course was my father. There was no doubt at this point whatsoever that he was the culprit. The proprietor at once checked the staff book for his address. My father together with his mother live beside a large canal, that cuts through most of Seoul, at Jump street. Their house was a simple wooden duplex, with it's outings already worn out. The proprietor quickly alerted the police who at once dropped at my father's residence. But it was only his mother they found. All efforts to get him proved futile. Due to the theft he had committed, he made arrangements quickly to leave Korea for America without even going to see his mother again. His mother lamented what he has done, and worse for her she was left alone without any care. In the next couple of days my father took his flight and arrived here. He did this without the knowledge of his mother, and that was how my father came to live here in the United States. Despite his shortcomings, my father had intentions of bringing down his mother to America, when he settles and makes enough fortune. He had great attachment to his mother, she had always taken his side even when he was wrong. Hence his sudden departure was something she couldn't bear. She suffered depression and panic attacks after the incident. My father on his side had his foremost intention to bring down his mom once he had made enough in America. Little did he cared about the fact that he carried out such an action that could claim the life of his dear mother. Shortly after his arrival, news reached him of the death of his mother from heart failure. On many occasions, my father had told me how attached he was to his mom, how he spent most of his times with his mother, in absence of his father, who was hardly at home during the daytime hours due to his teaching job. In most instances, my father almost broke down, narrating his connection with his mom. He always says, the only thing he ever regretted was leaving his mom without informing her and assuring he would be taking care of her. He had once told me " look Eric, I so much wish my mom, your grandmother was here with us".

As a kid, I had little empathy for all this ordeals, and after all my own mom was alive and was with us, to me that was enough. What intrigues me though was, how comes I was more attached to my father while my father was more attached to his mother. Whenever I think of this, I simply conclude that it was because my father's father was always occupied with work, and had little time to be with his son. This sounded reasonable to me, and I easily accepted that otherwise male children should be attached to their fathers.

Ever since coming to America, my father first landed in Florida, and later moved to California where he got employed as a salesman in a major automobile company. In this company he met my mother who was a colleague and a saleslady. They got married and raised a family together, our family, the family which I deem a cursed one, a family responsible for my life predicaments a most dysfunctional family. But I can say from his narrations that settling down in America was not easy.

On his arrival, maybe my father thought he would easily stumble on some nice opportunity, or like magic become the successful person he had dreamt of becoming. He without logical considerations must have thought to himself that living in America will be easy, and there would be little effort on his side to make ends meet. However when he arrived, he realized that here in America too he would have to toil and find a job to make things work. My father thought there will be great lucrative opportunities for him, but instead this opportunities only favored the educated class, those with college degree. My father being a college drop out couldn't secure such an opportunity. Though he found that living here was much favorable than in Korea, yet it dawned on him that America is also a place to toil. Of course the standard of living was better, the economy offered much here than in Korea. My father landed his first job as a home teacher. Where he thought kids of grade school at their homes after their main school lessons. This Job brought some good bucks to my father, of course good enough for him to feed on, and pay the dues for his lodge.

During his time as a home teacher, my father on several occasions had lured and molested the female children in his pedophilic approaches. In absence of the parents, he would make them sit on his thighs, he presses them closely to him, and when the unsuspecting children found this strange, he would say he's teaching them how to relate with people. The parents of the children had no knowledge of this heinous acts. Sometimes he lured other children in the neighborhood to join the lessons, and on the pretext of offering to teach them, he molested the female ones among them. In all this encounters he was never suspected, in fact the gentleman who had employed him really commends him, and had promised to give my father an offer that would improve his life. The gentleman saw my father as a trustworthy and honest man who works really hard in training the children. After a couple of months my father had saved enough to rent an apartment. He would not be able to get a good place with the little he has, so he had to find a simple place to manage. That would at least be able to spare him of the immense expenses he bore at the lodge house. He was able to secure a bedsit house at the southern part of Florida. That was dolphin isles, Broward county. Here there were many bachelors like him who live in bedsits, managing to make ends meet. I his house my father never needed any much furniture or utensils. He had a simple bed and in fact that was all that he had in his apartment. He lived here for a year while still attending to his teaching job. Some of the female children had become so attached to him, because in his approaches, this kids suspected nothing but thought it was his way of showing them compassion. He made them feel that he is there to give them utmost care, which they rarely got from their parents, who are mostly at work. He made them to undress during the lesson periods, and they would willingly allow him to caress their body thoroughly. He sometimes used the pretext of applying body lotions for them, in that case he had his way satisfying his inhuman desires. When the little girls complained of pains in their organs, he quickly assures them it's nothing to worry, and convinced them not to tell anything of such to their parents.

After about two years working as a home teacher, my father got an offer that transformed his life a bit, that made him see the light of making a decent living in America, of course a middle class living, an offer that brought him to California. The gentleman who had employed him as a home teacher, is an owner of a major automobile company, and being very pleased with my father's diligence and intelligence, offered to give him a better job in his automobile company in California. At first he wanted to give my father a higher post, but with my father's educational background he could only be put as a salesman, this of course was better, far better than the teaching job, this job offers a payment that would give a middle class living. And that was how my father came to California.