As the metal gate of the garage opened, chain squeaking and rattling, she realized with an overwhelming, enveloping sadness that a small part of her always wanted her mother to disappear. Not to die, but to leave her alone. She had imagined that kind of loneliness as freedom, but instead, here she was, treading water, without answers, without any land or any relief in sight.
Mina
Summer 1987
ON THE LOCAL bus that grunted down the long roads, Mina traveled to work among a mix of people, mostly Latino, Asian, Black, and an occasional white person, usually elderly. Mina had imagined America to be filled with white people as it was in the movies—all John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant. She had never seen such a hodgepodge of individuals in one space. Who knew people could exist in quite this way, and could this project, America, even last?
Still unsure of herself, the languages, the gestures around her, she prayed that no one would speak to her. She tried not to make eye contact but watched peripherally, observing. A Latina mother escorted her two children, a girl and boy of about eight or nine, to school. A Black mechanic, jumpsuit greasy from work, rested his eyes, his arms folded into his body like a cocoon. An elderly woman with a walker, who always wore long dresses like a lady going to church, nodded at Mina. Smiling softly, Mina bowed her head in return.
After the past two weeks of stocking shelves at the supermarket, she learned that she preferred the dry goods aisles, which were not as busy as the produce section where customers zigzagged around with carts, asking questions on where to find this or that.
The same cashier from that first time she had shopped at the supermarket would pass, bowing his head, face square, eyes soft and brown. In the aisles, she would see him once or twice per day. And something about the fact that he would walk by, limbs lithe, acknowledging her without asking for anything, comforted her, put her at ease, unlike the customers or the owner, Mr. Park, who always wanted to chat. Perhaps she simply enjoyed looking at him—handsome, energetic—rushing past, but always stopping briefly to meet her eyes and smile. She still didn’t know his name.
On her first day of work, she had showed up in a white short-sleeved blouse tucked into a floral skirt of blues and greens and pinks that reminded her of Monet’s water lilies, which seemed inappropriate for breaking down boxes and stocking produce and shelves of dry goods all day. But she didn’t care. She didn’t have much to wear and wanted to look good. Meeting strangers always made her nervous. Dressing up a little and putting on some makeup boosted the scant amount of confidence she had.
After checking in with one of the cashiers her first day, she had met the owner, Mr. Park, who was only a few years older than her and incandescent like a man who enjoyed the finer things in life—beach vacations, imported cars, golf. Accentuating his tan, he wore a polo shirt of striped pastel colors, a large gold watch.
“You sure you can do this?” he asked, grinning in a condescending way as if observing a small animal who suddenly did something human, like a mouse walking on rear legs.
“Yes, I think so,” she said.
“A lot of lifting.” He sucked between his teeth.
“I can do it,” she said with resolve, unable to hide her annoyance.
She spent half of her first day in the produce section alongside a man in his early thirties named Hector. Wearing an old black T-shirt, sneakers, and jeans, he walked with a small limp, which didn’t slow him down as he demonstrated how to stack the fruit so that they wouldn’t fall. He carted out the boxes from the back, and she emptied them out, apple after apple, pear after pear—a simple system that worked despite different languages and backgrounds.
At first, the job hadn’t seemed so bad in its mindlessness, almost meditative. But after about four hours, exhausted and drinking a 7-Up in the back of the store, sitting, waiting for her next task, she felt utterly dismantled, as if she had been one of those cardboard boxes, unloaded and broken down. Her white blouse had become dirty and wrinkled. She tried not to think at all, tilting her head back and feeling the fizzy drink fill her mouth. But a part of her, no matter how hard she tried, wanted to cry. She felt like an idiot for abandoning her comfortable desk job where she spent most of her hours sketching and designing—yes, boring, but at least accessible—clothes. She missed the coffee and tea breaks and lunches with her coworkers.
But it was only day one. She had to keep trying. She couldn’t go back now. She closed her eyes and prayed silently, Please, God. Please help me. Please let me know that it will be okay. Please.
After her ten-minute break, she stocked shelves with instant noodles, ramen, and moved on to condiments, soup bases, soy sauce, and doenjang. She sweat as she got up and down on her knees to replenish the bottom shelves. Her skirt became filthy, streaked with dirt over the once-pretty pastels. She felt like a fool now for caring so much about how she looked. What did it matter when all she saw were bottles of sauce, vegetables?
She should get used to the nothingness. It was so much better than being at home in Seoul, her empty apartment, all those reminders of the past. She was free now. She was free.
Mr. Park mentioned that eventually she could move to the cash registers up front. But she preferred the lack of social interaction, the invisibility of working in the back or stocking shelves. In the aisles, she could hide, blur into a wall of doenjang. She could disappear in a vacuum of condiments, bottles, and jars. Only the occasional glance of the handsome Korean man mattered. The fact that he appeared younger than her, in a way, made her attraction feel safe. It was silly and harmless.
Yet she also knew that she could not do this work forever. How many years could she spend lifting and kneeling? She was only forty-one, but still she felt day by day her body getting older, hurting microscopically more and more.
Her body had changed dramatically in her thirties from caring for her daughter. She had become strong, but now all she had were food items to lift, to raise. Now all she had was food. If she thought about it too much while working, she started to cry. So she worked harder and faster to kill the pain, the thoughts.
Once, in the back of the store, she had been lifting boxes of soy sauce off the ground onto a rolling cart. A door squeaked open, a slant of light on the floor. Adjusting his waistband, Mr. Park emerged from his office with a large black canvas bag in hand. The wooden grip of a pistol gleamed at his belt.
“Are you sure you can do this?” He winked almost imperceptibly as if he had dust in his eye.
“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.” She tried not to look at him.
“How are you liking America?”
“It’s okay. I’m getting by.”
“Tough, ha?” He dropped the bag with a dull thud by his feet. Mina had the impression that it was filled with cash. He was on his way to the bank. The gun.
Bending his knees, he loaded one of her boxes onto the cart. “Well, no matter how hard it is, you got to keep going. Keep trying.”
“Yeah.”
“I worked hard, very hard. And now, I’m the owner. I own all of this.” He gestured toward the entire building, the entire universe as if it all belonged to him, too. He grinned so widely she could see the gold tooth in his mouth.
Aware of the gun at his side, she stepped back. “That’s nice.”
“Yeah, I’ve been here for—what, let me think...1962.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah, but you see what happens when you work hard?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“It pays off.” He lifted his brows and bent down to pick the bag off the ground.
She wanted to say, Really? She didn’t buy any of that. Not exactly. It was impossible to believe in a meritocracy when everyone around her, the women she lived with and the people she worked with at the store, could never own a supermarket no matter how hard they worked. They’d be lucky enough to own anything ever. Like her, they’d b
e renting rooms in houses. Everything in their lives would be hand-me-downs. Who did this smarmy man think he was? He probably thought she was some lonely woman he could tease and would be grateful for his attention, any attention.
She remembered her husband always had so much faith in her. He would never speak to anyone this way. He treated her like an equal. That may have been unconventional, but that was why she loved him so much.
“Yes, work hard, make money. All goes somewhere. Not a waste at all.”
“Okay,” she said, trying not to roll her eyes. Bending her knees, she picked up a box from the floor. He grabbed the cart, stabilizing it.
Using her foot, she pulled the cart back from his grip. “I got it.” She hauled the box on top and pushed it through the strip door out into the aisles, relieved to get away from him.
MINA DIDN’T KNOW the other renter’s name, but that didn’t matter much. She referred to her as female friends do in Korea—unnie, “older sister.” The other renter spoke English well, with even a bit of a Southern accent, a twang that sounded out of the Westerns Mina’s husband had watched. Unnie helped her set up her first phone account and shared all her maps and bus information so that Mina could get around town more easily.
Unnie loved Asian pears and tangerines so Mina would carry home a few of those, as well as something refreshing and cold, such as sikhye—a malted rice drink—which happened to have been her daughter’s favorite, too. On a hot night, Mina could drink a gallon of sikhye in a single sitting, but she restricted herself to a glass after dinner when she’d rest sometimes in the dining nook, damp with sweat, listening to the crickets through the open windows and the landlady watching the Korean news.
Because unnie often worked at night, only if their schedules permitted, she and Mina sat down to eat together, once or twice per week. They would talk about the day usually, or America in general, or unnie would translate a document, a billing statement for her, and that was it. They would never go into each other’s rooms where unnie read large English novels or listened to classical music that, even muffled through her door, elevated the entire house—notes connected and smooth.
One night in late July about a month after she had arrived in Los Angeles, Mina went into the kitchen, which smelled of onions and doenjang jjigae, to prepare something simple for dinner, enough to fill her stomach so she could go back to bed and fall asleep to the sound of the crickets playing their wings. At the stove, unnie stirred a large stainless steel pot.
“How’s work?” she asked.
Mina opened their refrigerator. “Oh, it was okay. It’s not so bad—could be worse, I guess. How’s work at the restaurant?”
“Eh, everything’s the same.” She glanced at the egg in Mina’s hand and smiled. “I’m making some more jjigae. Would you like some?”
“That’s okay, you’ve been too nice to me already.”
“Don’t worry about it. You look tired. Let’s eat together.” She grabbed the egg from Mina’s hand before opening the fridge and placing it back in its carton. “Just have a seat. I’ll take care of this.”
Mina arranged paper napkins on the vinyl place mats along with spoons and chopsticks. Who did this woman remind her of? Maybe one of the nuns at the orphanage? So many of those years, and the people within them, had all been a blur that she had blocked out of her mind—first through work, then through marriage and family.
After eating together for several minutes in silence, Mina asked, “How long have you been living here?”
“A couple years.”
“In America?”
Unnie laughed. “No, just in this house. I’ve been in America longer than that. I used to live in Texas. Do you know Texas?”
“I’ve heard of it. Yes.”
Unnie wiped her mouth. “Why did you come to LA?”
“My friend, a coworker from Seoul, lives here now. I haven’t been able to meet up with her yet. She’s always at her dry-cleaning shop.” She tried to smile. “But I’ll see her this Sunday at church. She’s going to pick me up.” The prospect of reuniting soon with Mrs. Shin, whom she hadn’t seen in years, had been a bright spot in her life.
“I see. That’s good you have a church.”
“What about you? Do you go to church?”
“No.”
The silence engulfed them again until the end of their meal when Mina stood to wash the dishes, eager to surrender to her bed.
And as the weeks passed, Mina could understand why unnie avoided church.
Although mostly well-meaning, the women there asked Mina about whether or not she had a husband, kids, as if they had forgotten her vague response from the week before. She wanted to lie and say that she never had either, just to avoid talking with them, but the women, without being explicit, looked down upon those who couldn’t marry. How could an attractive woman who had lived all her life in Korea, a country full of Korean men, not meet anyone? Something must be wrong with her. But what?
One Sunday, Mina and her friend Mrs. Shin sat with the other women in the dim downstairs dining area of the church after service for a lunch of gimbap, room-temperature japchae, and kimchi. After bearing their usual prodding questions, Mina finally became fed up with trying to avoid the stigma. She told them the truth.
“They’re dead,” she said. She said it again, louder. “They’re dead.”
The women froze, some with their chopsticks raised midair.
“All of them?” the nosiest one asked, food stuck in her teeth.
“Yes, all of them.” Mina paused. “All two hundred of them.” She smiled. “An entire cult. They were all mine.”
The women gasped. Beside her, Mrs. Shin choked on a laugh. The nosy one shot her a dirty look and raised her eyebrows at the other women, who fidgeted in their plastic folding chairs.
Mrs. Shin said, “Her daughter and husband are dead. Are all of you happy now? Really?”
After that day, the women avoided her. Perhaps they didn’t know how to identify with Mina, a relatively young woman without a family, or they didn’t like that joke about the cult. She at least still had Mrs. Shin, who had been in America for a few years already. She was always busy with work, a dry-cleaning business on Vermont Avenue, but after service, they would have lunch at church, or she would invite Mina over to her house where Mina would admire her family, her life. She lived in a large two-bedroom apartment in Koreatown with a funny and kind husband and two awkward teenage kids.
When they sat together eating lunch on Sundays, Mina wanted to tell her all about work but didn’t. She wanted to tell her how tired she was, how she hated the boss, but she didn’t. Instead, they ate mostly in silence. She asked questions about the kids. But they always avoided talking about Mina’s life.
Mrs. Shin hadn’t known Mina’s husband and daughter well, but enough to imagine what it had been like to lose them. Yet no one knew how to talk about death. As a culture and country, they had so many tragedies from wars already that they persisted in a kind of silent pragmatism that reflected both gratitude for what they had now and an unquenchable, persistent sadness that manifested itself differently in each person. Some had become drunks, surviving off the tenacity of their families in denial. Some had become obsessed with status symbols—luxury cars, designer clothes, and watches. Others worked diligently, a form of numbing the pain that at least had some kind of productive outcome—money in the bank, a roof over their heads, food on the table.
Mrs. Shin tried to fill the silence between them with gossip about people who lived in her building, about women at church. She told Mina about a woman in her forties who cheated on her husband with a younger man.
“She’s nuts,” Mrs. Shin said. “He’s, what, ten years younger than her?”
“Ten years?”
“And she’s saving up money to run away with him.”
They laughed.
“S
he’s crazy,” Mrs. Shin continued. “She’ll end up pregnant. And then what?”
Margot
Fall 2014
THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Margot had returned to the apartment alone after touring apartments for Miguel, close enough to his new job in Burbank, which he’d begin next Monday. He had gone out for a drink with a man that he had met online after Margot assured him she would be okay by herself. He promised to meet her back at the hotel tonight, the same hotel where they had been at since finding her mother.
They considered moving to Margot’s mother’s apartment in the next couple days to save money. Once Miguel found a permanent place this week, Margot would then stay at her mother’s alone until she could finish cleaning and packing or donating their belongings. Her mother had already covered the month’s rent, and Margot’s supervisor in Seattle had approved extended time off—unpaid.
According to the landlord, her mother had a boyfriend, a man who visited her often during the summer. Could he be the same person that she had been yelling at last weekend, the same weekend that she had died? Although Margot couldn’t quite trust the landlord, he had no reason to lie. She needed to figure out who her mother was with, if anyone, that night. Officer Choi had yet to return her phone call, but she didn’t have any more time. She couldn’t wait for him or anyone anymore. Her mother’s body was proof that sometimes there was not one more hour, one more day, one more week in this life. Sometimes, all you had left was right now—the seconds ticking away.
Margot switched on the overhead light inside her mother’s bedroom. Despite the sharpness of the evening air, she had left all the windows open for the past four days to release the smell of death that lingered in her mother’s apartment, their apartment, the one they had shared for as long as Margot could remember. She paused to parse through what she could sense outside—a rich red pork pozole next door, a skateboard rattling over cracks in the sidewalk, a woman speaking rapidly on the phone, the exhaust from a choking diesel car—both familiar and strange. This neighborhood had both changed and stayed the same.
The Last Story of Mina Lee Page 5