The Baptism of Nikki Kim

"Yeah, I know," Nina said, her voice softening. "Sorry, I came straight from work."

"It's okay," I shrugged. "I'm just glad to see you."

"Let me get a drink," she said. "Then, we can... talk."

...

After Nina came back with a glass of wine, we both just stood quietly at the high-top, waiting for the other one to say something. For a moment, part of me wished that William would come back over just so that my sister would tell him out to break the silence.

"You wanted to talk," Nina finally said, her voice a bit standoffish. "So talk."

"I don't know what to say," I offered meekly.

Nina rolled her eyes in frustration.

"I--I'm sorry, unni," I said softly, looking down. "About what... what happened."

"You're sorry?" she asked sharply, taking a sip of her wine.

"I... I shouldn't have," I whispered, my voice cracking. "I just... I don't know what happened..."

"You know exactly what happened," Nina said bitterly. "Because you watched it all."

"I didn't mean to!" I protested softly. "I... I didn't know what was going on, and then it... it just happened so fast..."

"Do you know how humiliating that was?" Nina said, getting choked up. She was always so cool and collected. I wasn't used to seeing her like this. "Do you have any idea how that felt?"

"I'm sorry!" I pleaded. "Unni, please... I--I didn't know..."

"That was the way I wanted it," Nina said, shaking her head. "You--you were never supposed to know..."

"Unni, I'm sorry," I said again, my face flushed with shame. "I don't know what else to say..."

"You know, I've done a lot of things that I'm not proud of," she said, looking out the window. "And I... I haven't always made good choices..."

"Unni--"

"But I've made peace with who I am," she continued. "And when it comes to other people, I don't really give a damn what they think of me anymore. It took me a long time to feel that way."

"Unni--"

"But you," Nina said, glancing back at me, her lips quivering. "You're not other people. You're my little sister."

"I know," I said, my eyes starting to well up.

"I care what you think about me," she said, her eyes getting misty. "I care a lot."

I reached for a napkin to dry my eyes.

"I always wanted you to look up to me," she whispered, reaching for her own napkin. "I always wanted you to feel proud of me."

"I did!" I said, wiping tears away. "I still do!"

"You shouldn't," she whispered bitterly. "How can you?"

"Unni, I don't care!" I said, reaching out to touch her hand. "It doesn't matter!"

"You don't even know," Nina said, shaking her head. "You know, but you don't know..."

"I do, unni," I said softly. "Because I'm... I'm like that, too..."

"No, you're not," she said, pulling her hand away. "You don't even know what you're saying."

"How can you say that?" I said, a hint of anger mixing with my sadness. "Maybe you're the one who doesn't know what she's talking about..."

"You're not like me," she said defiantly. "You can't be."

"Why's that?" I shot back.

"Because I wouldn't let you," she said. "I did way too much for you to end up like me."

"What does that even mean?" I said angrily.

Nina took a sip of wine and stared past me out the window.

"Do you think it was easy growing up in your shadow?" I asked, scowling at her. "Did you think that you were helping me?"

She just sat there, saying nothing, and this only made me more upset.

"What did you do for me, unni?" I asked. "Was being popular at school something you did for me? Was all that attention, all the boys who flirted with you--was that for me? Sneaking out at night, going to parties, leaving me behind with Mom and Dad--was that for me?"

Nina rolled her eyes and sighed.

"You just... you could have included me," I whimpered.

"No, I couldn't," she said softly.

"You wanted me to look up to you?" I countered. "Unni, all I wanted back then was to be like you, but I didn't know how, and you never showed me. You were this... this mystery, this magical girl who was just... just a better version of me in every way..."

"I was a better version of you?" Nina laughed bitterly. "Seriously?"

"Prettier, more athletic, more popular," I said, rattling off the list. "The girls liked you better, and the boys definitely liked you better..."

"But Mom and Dad liked you better," she said softly. "They loved you more."

"No, they didn't," I said.

"Oh, yes, they did," Nina hissed. "Yes, they did."

"Only because you fought with them about everything!" I cried. "You picked every fight you could!"

"Because I couldn't have it both ways," she sighed. "I could be the daughter that they wanted, or I could be the girl that everyone else wanted. Not both."

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

"I couldn't let you be like me," she said quietly. "Mom and Dad, they... they needed you. They needed one of us to be like you."

"But you... you chose for me," I murmured. "You should've let me choose for myself..."

"No, you--you were different," Nina said, almost to herself. "You didn't want to be like me back then..."

"But I did," I mumbled. "I am. I just didn't know it back then, but I... I could've been, if you'd let me..."

"What do you remember about yourself, back in high school?" Nina said. "Tell me."

"I just remember feeling... invisible, especially compared to you," I said. "They only saw you. Boys only saw you. Even now--even Johan. Once he saw you, he forgot all about me."

"Is that really what you think?" Nina balked. "God, you really are still so naive."

"What are you talking about?" I asked

"You remember the boys in my class?" she said. "The ones I used to... you know, hang out with?"

"Of course," I said, taking a sip of wine. "You used to sneak out with them all the time."

"Well, they all wanted to fuck you," she said, drinking from her own glass. "Like, badly. Like they wouldn't stop talking about it."

"Bullshit," I said, rolling my eyes. "They never even spoke to me."

"That's because I wouldn't let them," Nina said. "I made sure they knew that you were off-limits."

"I don't believe you," I murmured.

"You wanna know how I kept them all in line?" Nina said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You wanna know how I kept them away from you?"

She paused, letting silence hang there, the white noise of the wine bar all around us.

"There were these five guys, and one of them... well, at first, I made this deal with him," she whispered slowly. "But then his... his friends found out, one at a time... so eventually, I had to make deals with all of them..."

"What... what kind of deals?" I whispered.

"My senior year, they... they divided up the week," she continued. "And each of them got one day..."

I could see a tiny sparkle in my sister's eyes as she gazed out the window.

"They were all these rich white boys, so they all had their own cars," she whispered. "And depending on whose day it was, that's who would drive me home from school..."

I took another sip of wine, hanging on my sister's every word.

"Of course, I didn't want you or Mom or Dad to see them, so they never took me straight home," she continued. "Instead, they took me to the church parking lot around the corner..."

I could sense the makings of a smirk hovering at the edges of her mouth.

"The parking lot was always pretty empty at that time of day, but they would park in the way back, just to be safe..."

I knew that church parking lot. I could picture it in my mind. We walked to mass at that church every Sunday.

"And then," she said, licking her lips. "I would 'thank' them for driving me home."

"Unni," I whispered. "Do you mean...?"

"You know what they called me?" Nina said, unable to suppress a tiny smirk. "'No Scope' Nina."

"No Scope?" I asked quizzically.

"It's a video game thing," she said, rolling her eyes. "Because I took so many headshots."

My jaw fell open.

"So no, Nikki, you're not like me," she said, taking another sip from her glass. "Because I gave a blowjob after school every day of my senior year. Five different days, five different guys."

"Unni," I said in shock.

"I sucked them, and I swallowed them," Nina said flatly. "And in exchange, they left you alone."

"But--but why?" I asked. "Why would you do that?"

"So that you wouldn't end up like me," Nina sighed. "So that Mom and Dad would still have one Korean daughter they could be proud of."

"You... you didn't have to do that," I said, shaking my head. "You shouldn't have done that..."

"I did what I did," she said, shrugging. "Now, I have to live with it, the same way you have to live with everything that happened with... him."

"But unni, you... I didn't need your protection," I shook my head. "Not--not like that..."

"Yes, you did," she replied sternly. "Clearly, you still do."

"No, unni, you're not listening," I said in frustration. "What I needed... I should've been free to try things for myself, to figure out who I was... You should've let me make my own choices."

"You mean I should've let you make your own mistakes?" Nina said crossly. "The same mistakes that I made? The same mistakes that Mom and Dad will never let me live down?"

"But what if they weren't mistakes?" I pressed. "You never cared what Mom and Dad thought, and I... I was always jealous of that."

"You're wrong about that," she said. "I cared a lot about what Mom and Dad thought. But I also cared about what everyone else thought, especially back then. I wanted to fit in, and I wanted boys to like me, but then... It was like Dad just stopped treating me like a daughter. I was just some disreputable girl living in his house. And that just made it even easier to look for validation elsewhere, because I wasn't going to get it at home."

"They just didn't understand," I said. "But I do. I would have understood, but you... you never let me in. I was your sister, but it was like you didn't trust me."

"Who do you think they would've blamed?" Nina asked. "If Appa saw you come home after curfew in a white guy's car, would he have screamed at you? Would he have called you 'brainwashed' or any of the shit he said to me?"

"Unni--"

"No, he wouldn't have," she continued. "Because you were his perfect little girl, so you would never do something like that. No, it would have been my fault. I was the bad girl, the bad influence. He would've taken it out on me."

"But if I... if I'd had a chance, back then... I never tried anything, unni," I said, pouting. "Maybe if I had, then this thing... this thing with Johan might not have happened..."

"You think sleeping with a white guy is a box that you can check off?" Nina laughed. "You think it's something that you can just get out of your system before you go and marry a nice Korean guy like Steve?"

"I don't know!" I cried. "That's the point! I never did anything, so I don't know anything!"

"It's not, Nikki," she said, shaking her head. "If anything, it gets into your system and stays there. You think you would have ended up with Steve if I'd let you mess around with guys like Johan back in high school?"

"Those guys back then, the ones that you did... you know," I whispered, leaning towards. "Were they--were they like that, too?"

"In the ways that a lot of rich, white, teenage boys are," she sighed, playing with her wine glass. "Arrogant. Aggressive. Entitled. Think they can get away with anything. They're even worse when they're with their friends, because they all want to show they're the alpha or whatever. It's... typical."

"But I mean--you know what I mean," I stammered. "Physically, are they... are they all like that?"

"Oh my god," my sister giggled, shaking her head. "You mean, were they all... hung? Is that what you wanna know?"

My face turned bright red. I shrugged, as if I were just making conversation, as if this was some idle question to pass the time.

"I mean--not all of them, no," Nina smirked. "A few of them were pretty average. Johan, he... he was pretty gifted in that department, even for a white guy. But one of them..."

Nina closed eyes her and shook her head, the smirk widening into a knowing smile.

"One of them, he could've put Johan to shame," Nina whispered. "He's the one I made a deal with first, the one that I was the most worried about when it came to you. But then... he started telling his friends, and that's what really got me into trouble."

"He was... bigger?" I hissed, clapping a hand over my mouth. "Bigger than Johan?"

"Well... yes, Nik, but it's not just about that," Nina said. "Hung or not, Johan's just a bully, and that means at the end of the day he'll always be a small man. But this guy... confidence doesn't even begin to describe it. It was more like magnetism, or charisma, which is rare for a guy that age."

"Wow," I said, wide-eyed.

"He never forced me to do anything," Nina said, finishing her wine. "He just... had a way of making me want things. He made me feel seen, which made me feel good, and that... that made me want to do things that made him feel good."

I lifted my own wine glass and drained it, a tipsy buzz running through me.

"With his friends... he was the reason I did it," Nina said, gazing out the window. "I didn't... I wasn't that kind of girl, you know, but then he... I did it for him, because that's what he wanted. Because that made him a god to the rest of them, the fact that he could... he could just give them a girl like me, just cause they were friends."

She snapped her fingers for effect.

"Without him, the rest of them, they couldn't... I wouldn't have done something like that. But for him, somehow, I wanted to do it," she sighed. "Anyway, they worshipped him after that."

"Unni, are you sure you're okay?" I said softly. "That's... that's really intense."

"That was a long time ago," she said pensively. "Just a bunch of old memories."

"Unni, who... who was he?" I asked. "That guy. Your guy."

"C'mon, Nikki," she laughed, her face breaking into a smile. "If I wouldn't tell you back then, why would I tell you now?"

...

By the time I got home that night, Danny and Riley were already in bed. Steve was still up, but he was sitting in front of the TV with his headphones on, playing Call of Duty or some other shooting game. He nodded at me as I walked past him, acknowledging my presence but not bothering to set the controller down.

I knew why Steve was annoyed with me, and I couldn't really fault him for it. We hadn't had sex in weeks, not since before Johan's visit to LA. For awhile, Steve had been considerate of my perceived lack of interest in sex, even expressing some concerns about my mental and physical well-being. But after weeks of excuses, my husband had grown understandably impatient with my inability to articulate why we couldn't sleep together, and this frustration had begun to manifest as an aloofness I'd never seen before.

But if Steve's sudden coldness was meant to punish me for rejecting his advances, it wasn't having the desired effect. If anything, my husband's behavior felt petulant and childish, which only made it easier for me to ignore him. I was already the primary caretaker for two little boys, and the last thing I needed right now was a grown man acting like a teenager.

In fact, Steve's juvenile brooding gave me cover to rationalize my own behavior. I wasn't interested in having sex with him because his sulky attitude was very unattractive to me. This was all totally unrelated to the withdrawal symptoms I'd been experiencing since Johan's departure.

As my husband's face remained glued to the TV screen, I walked down the hallway to the back of the house, where a set of stairs led down to a partially finished basement. Then, I padded quietly over to a wooden bookshelf where we stored photo albums, old birthday cards, and other bits of family nostalgia. I scanned the shelf for a minute and found what I was looking for.

Walking back across the room to a beat up old loveseat, I sat down and stared at the object in my hands. It was the yearbook from my sophomore year of high school, which also happened to be Nina's senior year.

I flipped it open, smiling as I saw the handwritten messages from friends and classmates all over the inside cover. I couldn't remember the last time I'd looked at this, and I made a mental note to reach out and reconnect with some of my old high school friends. But I didn't linger on these messages for long. I had something else on my mind.

I flipped through the pages quickly until I came to the photos for that year's senior class. Then, I stopped flipping and began to look.

There were so many faces, some familiar, others not. This was my sister's class, two years ahead of me, so even the familiar faces were ones that I hadn't seen or thought about in years. I remembered some of the names from school announcements, clubs, and sports teams. These were the older kids, the cool kids, the ones that I'd looked up to back then as a skinny little sophomore. But I was looking at them a little differently now.

Because some of these boys had been with my sister. At least five of them had made "deals" with her, deals that involved blowjobs in the church parking lot everyday after school. They had called her "No Scope Nina."

And one of them... one of them had made it all happen. One of the boys in this book had been her Johan.

But according to Nina, even that comparison didn't seem to do him justice. To hear my sister tell it, this guy was more charismatic, more magnetic, and more manipulative than Johan. And somehow, he was even bigger, which seemed almost inconceivable to me.

The fact that this boy was hiding somewhere in the pages of this book was incredible to me. The fact that I didn't know his name was equally maddening.

With forensic intensity, I scrutinized the boy's in Nina's class, studying their pictures one by one. Some of them were smiling. Some had goofy expressions. Others were more serious, perhaps trying to project a maturity beyond their years.

Nina had withheld the details, so I only knew that he was a white guy from a wealthy family. That description could've applied to half the boys in her senior class, if not more.

What would he be like, I wondered. What kind of 18-year-old boy would be capable of controlling my sister, coercing into an arrangement the involve several of his friends? My mind raced with all of the possibilities.

He couldn't be some anonymous, average guy. To exert that kind of power over Nina, there must have been something special about him, something that would go well beyond his prowess with women.

Was he a star athlete, rippling with muscles and youthful vigor? The class president, beaming with confidence and charisma? The valedictorian, smart enough to solve her like a puzzle? The captain of the debate team, so skilled at persuasion that he could talk her into anything?

The more I thought about it, the less certain I was. Instead of narrowing the field, I found myself making up stories about each new face, imagining new ways that each one might have seduced her.

I realized that I had to change my way of thinking about this question. I didn't know anything about this boy, but did know a thing or two about my sister.

As I switched my focus to Nina, a clearer image began to form inside my mind. Some girls might go for the valedictorian, but my sister wasn't all that impressed by smart guys, especially back then. She was an athlete, a star herself on the volleyball team. She might have respected a skilled debater or a savvy politician, but she openly admired people with athletic talent, regarding physical gifts as somehow more special than other abilities.

So, an athlete. But what kind? I couldn't see my sister with a short or stocky guy, no matter how good an athlete he might be. That took most of the wrestling team and a bunch of soccer players out of the running. There were plenty of tall guys on both the track team and the swimming team, but I wondered whether Nina would gravitate towards these kinds of individual sports. Growing up, she always preferred to play team sports, and I wondered if that might extend to her taste in men.