“Yes, I was in the back. I noticed you sitting with a man. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I see.” Mina leaned her hip on the counter. “I knew I recognized the banchan from somewhere.”
“Who is he?” Mrs. Baek asked. She ladled the batter onto the hot pan where it cooked almost immediately, the edges hardening.
“He’s a coworker. I work for him.” Her stomach rumbled.
“Oh, that makes sense,” Mrs. Baek said, still focused on the pan.
The microwave dinged. Mina scooped hot rice into two bowls from her drying rack.
“Do you like him?” Mrs. Baek nudged the pajeon with the spatula so that it wouldn’t stick.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Mina settled in the breakfast nook, the wood benches cold despite their cushions. The smell of squid and scallion pajeon, hot and crispy, filled the kitchen. With her pale bird legs, feet covered in red house slippers, Mrs. Baek shuffled toward Mina carrying a heavy plate and a small bowl for the dipping sauce. The pajeon was perfectly golden and browned, sliced into quarters.
“Go ahead and have some. Let me clean up a little bit.”
Mina waited until Mrs. Baek slid onto the bench in front of her.
“Go ahead,” Mrs. Baek said.
“No, you first, please. Thank you for sharing.”
Mrs. Baek picked up her metal chopsticks, lifted a piece of the pajeon onto her bowl of rice. “He’s handsome.” She raised her brows.
Mina smiled, dipping a piece of pajeon into a tiny bowl of soy sauce and vinegar. “He is.”
“Is he nice?”
“Yes, so far, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone, I guess.” She sighed.
“I’m the same.” Mrs. Baek nudged the mak kimchi, Mina’s favorite, toward her. “You can never tell with men, you know?”
Mina nodded, tasting the mak kimchi. Perfectly tangy and ripe.
“I don’t think I’ll trust any man again,” Mrs. Baek said.
Mina wondered about what kind of history Mrs. Baek might have had, but she could tell by the resentment in Mrs. Baek’s words that to resurrect those experiences here might only shatter the safety, the precarious lack of judgment between them—two women, adrift in a foreign country, without any apparent family.
After eating in silence for a couple minutes, Mina said, “Everything you cook is delicious.”
“It’s hard to cook for one, you know?”
“I agree. I only make ramen or the same jjigae nowadays.” Mina remembered her daughter’s favorite meals—kalguksu, sujebi, braised mackerel in the fall and winter, naengmyeon in the summer—and how much time and care she put into feeding them all back then. She wanted her daughter’s life to be full so that she would never suffer, so that Mina could erase all the hardship and deprivation she had herself endured.
But the past always had a way of rising back again when so many of the questions had remained unanswered, wrongdoings remained unacknowledged, when a country torn by a border had continued for decades to be at war with itself. Both the living and the dead remained separated from each other, forever unsettled.
“Were you ever married?” Mrs. Baek asked.
In Seoul, by now, the leaves hanging would be their brightest, their most beautiful against a gray sky. The gingko and maple would glow yellow and red down the streets and up the hills. The crisp fall air would pierce her mouth, her throat, her lungs. She and her daughter ran through the fallen leaves, kicking and laughing.
But she hated those red leaves now, the season that took her husband and daughter away from her, too.
“He died,” Mina said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Mrs. Baek placed her chopsticks on the table. “Was he sick?”
“No. It was an accident.”
Mrs. Baek reached out and squeezed her hand, the first time Mina had been touched with purpose in a long time. She could feel something sprouting inside of her chest as if Mrs. Baek’s kindness was the amber-colored light stretching longer and longer each day in spring.
But it was still only autumn. A season of dying. And when she thought about those trees, how they must look at this moment—the saturation, the brightness—ablaze, all she could imagine was the blood that must have been in the road, after a reckless driver, rushing on his way to work, mowed her family down.
Margot
Fall 2014
UNDERNEATH VAULTED CEILINGS and stained glass catching the faintest of morning light in delicious jewel tones, Margot could feel how beautiful and safe a church could be—the sinuous burn of incense, the calm lemon oil on wood, the rituals, the incantations and song. It had been years since Margot had gone to church herself. In her teens, she had fought with her mother about what she viewed as the oppression, the boredom of worship. But seeing the windows now, she remembered how as a child, she would stare at the stained glass and think of pieces of candy like Jolly Ranchers. She had wondered what the windows would taste like if she could climb up and lick them.
The Irish priest greeted the gathered in Korean with a bit of his native lilt. The pipe organ played and the choir sang clearly. Every cell in her body vibrated with music. She couldn’t understand the lyrics, but she could feel their meaning, the seduction of their gentleness, their meekness in front of a God who would reward them, a God who would always restore order and peace to this world.
She closed her eyes. Did her mother believe in any of this? Or did she just need to belong? Did she only need to return here every Sunday to restore order to her spirit and mind? She could understand why her mother needed to believe there was a heaven after all of this—after all her anxiety, her loneliness, the frailties of a body that could be taken from her, apparently, at any moment, this body that suffered, that belonged to and dissolved into the earth like that of any animal.
And her mother’s ashes. What would she do with them? What would her mother have wanted for herself?
Whether she was in heaven or simply gone, Margot ached for her mother. Umma. Tears streamed down her face, dripped from her chin onto her chest. She licked the salt away from her lips. Amen hummed around her. While the priest read from the scripture, his Korean calm and fluid as a creek, she kept her face lowered, collecting herself. She wished she could understand the words, but instead the Korean washed around her like water, chest-deep. Her head spun from the frankincense. She couldn’t sit still any longer.
After the homily, more prayer, she stood to receive the communion, but instead of walking toward the altar, she bolted out the front door into the morning light where she could finally catch her breath. The sun glowed through haze and smog like an ember dying. She sat on the cold concrete steps as finches flitted and chirped through trees. Pigeons cooed under roof eaves.
After all those years of fighting with her mother who feared Margot would go to hell one day, Margot was now here searching for what everyone else was—answers, safety, relief.
She had hoped to speak to the priest or a deacon after the service, find out what she might do for her mother, her ashes. At the same time, she was embarrassed by the fact that she couldn’t afford to do anything proper for her mother. First she had to sell her mother’s store and car. Suddenly, she felt a profound sense of shame—as she had always felt around most other Korean Americans—that she had grown up fatherless and poor. Among Korean Americans, many of whom were Christian and from middle-to upper-class backgrounds as a result of status-filtering immigration laws, a child out of wedlock, a missing father, seemed to be particularly embarrassing when family success represented all that you had in this country far away from home. Anyone who failed was defective. She and her mother had been defective—not the dream, not the conventional shape of a family and success.
Their existence was criminal. Her single mother was undocumented. Margot was fatherless. Shame, shame on them all.
The heavy wooden doors crashed open as th
e parishioners emerged. Margot stood at attention, searching the crowd that streamed around her. With a jolt, she recognized Mrs. Baek dashing by in the shuffle. Margot almost said something, but instead she followed her to the congested one-way parking lot where groups of people, mostly middle-aged and elderly, chatted, while cars backed out of spots with care.
Mrs. Baek had reached her car and went to unlock it when Margot caught up with her.
“Mrs. Baek,” Margot said.
She jumped and turned around with her keys, sharp, sticking out of her hand, while teeth flashed between her red lips, the edge of a snarl. Startled, Margot raised her hands up in front of her chest as if protecting herself. Why was Mrs. Baek so scared?
“Oh my God,” Mrs. Baek said, eyes wide, catching her breath. “You scared me.”
“Sorry, I was happy to see you. I don’t know anyone. You go to this church?”
“I just started,” she said. She smoothed the bun on top of her head and loosened her grip on the keys. “I never really did, but my first time was last week.”
“I see,” Margot said, wondering why she had begun attending.
“Did you go to church with your mom?”
“While I was growing up, but not recently.”
Mrs. Baek nodded. “Are you going to have a service?”
“I think so, still trying to figure it out. Her ashes are at the mortuary. I don’t think I’ll be able to have a service until after I sell my mom’s store, her car. Maybe at the end of the month, or in early January.”
Mrs. Baek fixed her eyes on the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. “She never told you or asked for anything, right? She never had any requests?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“She wouldn’t want you to spend so much money.” Mrs. Baek reached out and squeezed Margot’s arm. “Now that you’re alone, you have to take care of yourself, right?”
Margot nodded and tilted her face upward to blink back sudden tears, noticing a white trail in the sky like a scar. She looked back at Mrs. Baek, whose eyes had softened into dark brown pools that shimmered in the morning light. Despite the distraction of her red lips, she had the soulful face of someone who felt deeply. She was the kind of woman Margot would want to be one day—stylish, genuine, self-possessed, and confident.
“There are ways to honor your mom privately, don’t you think? I think that makes the most sense. It would probably just be me and Alma, you know, if you had a service. Maybe some people from church.” She smiled. “But she wouldn’t want you to spend a lot of money.”
Margot suddenly remembered what Miguel had suggested about Mrs. Kim after snooping around the Calabasas house on Friday night: that if she had fought with Margot’s mom, who was having an affair with her husband, her only motivation would be money. She already had a lover. She couldn’t have been jealous romantically. But if Mrs. Kim was motivated by money, a desire to protect herself financially, what could that reveal about whether or not Mr. Kim was Margot’s father? Could her mother have been seeking support? Maybe Mrs. Baek would know.
As Margot was about to ask, Mrs. Baek turned away toward her car. Opening the door, she said, “I miss your mom.” Her voice trembled, eyes downcast. “Maybe—maybe that’s why I came here, you know? I just had this impulse to come here.” She glanced at Margot before wiping tears from her cheeks. “Maybe I was hoping to see your mom? That’s silly, I know. She was always here on Sunday.”
Margot hesitated, deciding it wasn’t the right time to question her.
After shutting the door, Mrs. Baek started the engine and backed out of the spot. Margot watched as the windshield reflected a plush solitary cloud in the gray-blue morning sky, obscuring Mrs. Baek’s face. Her hands, slender and long, guided the steering wheel. Her tires squealed unexpectedly. Finches flew, a flurry of tan feathers, before landing and pecking again at the asphalt, whatever scrap they could find.
LATE AFTERNOON THE next day, Margot returned to the swap meet to ask Alma and the neighboring store owners if they knew someone who might want to purchase her mother’s store outright. Earlier that morning, she had gone to the bank with her mother’s death certificate, and since Margot had been listed as a beneficiary, she was able to withdraw her mother’s funds—$562—and close her account. But she needed more than that to cover her mother’s cremation and unpaid bills.
In the parking lot of the swap meet, large speakers vibrated and bumped to banda music. A man in a cowboy hat grilled chicken in a cloud of delicious smoke. Inside the old warehouse structure, merchandise overflowed into the aisles where people perused and picked over items for sale. Her mother’s store had remained untouched, the gate still padlocked, undisturbed.
Margot couldn’t help but worry that someone, knowing that her mother was gone, had broken into the place and taken everything. And now that her mother was dead, how much was her store—the clothing, the racks, the display cases, the hangers, which her mother had worked over twenty years to acquire—worth? Margot had enough of her own savings to cover rent in Seattle but not enough to remain in LA past the holidays.
As Margot unlocked the accordion gate, Alma emerged from her store—jam-packed with Christmas decorations—wearing a Santa hat delightfully askew. Strings of flashing multicolored lights and metallic tinsel garlands dazzled in the overhead fluorescent light. Alma hugged Margot, kissing her on the cheek, a benediction of sorts. “Ven conmigo.”
She offered Margot a mug of champurrado, easing Margot’s mind with the familiar smell, the taste of hot chocolate, cinnamon, and masa kept warm for hours.
Sitting down together, Alma pointed to her mother’s store. “¿Mi hermana quiere comprar la tienda?”
“¿Tu hermana?”
“$6,000?”
Margot had no idea how much her mother’s store was actually worth, but what could she do about that now? How much time and energy did she have? $6,000 was plenty, enough to cover her mother’s cremation and help with Margot’s expenses since she was taking unpaid time off work. And she knew that Alma and her sister would take good care of the store and customers.
“Next week? Dinero,” Alma asked.
“Okay. Sí. Can I call you?” Margot finished the last of her champurrado and motioned for Alma to add her number to her phone. “I’ll come back next week?”
A wave of sadness engulfed Margot. She couldn’t believe it had all come down to this, all those years her mother had spent protecting and growing her store. All those years, she had yelled, Amiga! Amiga! at the women’s backs as they walked away, swept the floors, complimented strangers after they had tried on clothes, Bonita. So young. Joven. All the women who had stood in the makeshift dressing room mirror, observing themselves from different angles, considering who they were and how they looked.
Alma embraced Margot, rubbing a circle on her back. Of course, this was how her mother would want things to be. How complete.
After placing her mother’s notebooks, receipts, and the foot-tall ceramic Virgin Mary in the biggest cardboard box she could find, she locked up the store.
Now that she had some money coming her way, she realized that maybe she should take Mrs. Baek out to dinner this week. They could go to Hanok House again. Her trip to Calabasas with Miguel hadn’t answered much about Mr. Kim—other than that his wife, Mary, already had another lover—and maybe Mrs. Baek might know more about him. Maybe she even might be able to answer the question of whether he was Margot’s father.
Margot strolled through the maze of shops decked out in tinsel garlands and flashing holiday lights. Children ran, screaming and laughing. Loud speakers in another section of the swap meet blasted “Feliz Navidad,” entangled with the music of various electronic toys for sale.
Margot thought of the years she had spent hating this place, resenting the work, the dirtiness, and the trash that accumulated in the aisles.
“I don’t want
to go to work,” Margot, as a teenager, had yelled. “I want to stay home. It’s my weekend.”
“Do you think I want to work?” her mother asked, voice cracking. “I need your help. I can’t do everything alone.”
“It’s not my fault that you have to work. Why do I have to go there? You’re fine there by yourself.”
“I need your help. Do you understand? I can’t do everything alone.”
And Margot almost always caved to preserve what little sanity, what little order could be kept in their home of two people struggling to understand each other, preserve what little control they could have over this world that seemed to shun them—poor immigrant outsiders. Yet Margot could witness now that this store, this swap meet, where her mother spent six days a week, was an extension of home, and the homes of all the people who worked here, including Alma, not just for money but because of love, the love they had for their families and friends, raised and supported here and abroad. Love, in all its forms, could look this way, too.
Margot stopped at the sight of the racks and display carts, once stacked with socks and underwear, stripped bare. The lingerie hanging from torsos made of metal wire, all of the merchandise had disappeared. A FOR LEASE sign hung on the wall.
“Oh, shit,” Margot said to no one, almost dropping the cardboard box. Mrs. Baek’s store was gone.
* * *
Margot went straight to Hanok House, where she met with Miguel for dinner after his first day at work.
She’d have to press someone there further to find Mrs. Baek now. It seemed like a good place to try since Mrs. Baek had worked there up until earlier this year. Why would she shut down her store without telling Margot yesterday at church?
Lone men in rolled-up sleeves slurped noodles. Families spoke in low hushed tones. Closer to the holidays, Korean immigrants, who often owned small businesses or worked long hours in the service industries, depended on this time of year, when people dined out and shopped more often, to survive. No one appeared to be celebrating anything at all. The scent of meat licked by flame, fat dripping on fire lingered, but tonight was a night of hardy, inexpensive dishes—jjigaes, kalguksu, yukgaejang. Tonight was a night of getting by, fulfilling oneself after an especially hard day, finding comfort and home in food.
The Last Story of Mina Lee Page 14