Yet, everyone needed art. Why else did her mother assign so much care into the fruit that she sliced, that long peel of skin, a ribbon that revealed the tenderness of the flesh inside? Or the tiny flick of her eyeliner that she angled perfectly in the mirror, the arrangement of the outfits that she hung on the walls of her store. Her mother, who was in another life a clothing designer, had sometimes caught Margot drawing. Once when Margot was in the sixth grade, still young enough to not understand how distant her own tiny family had been from ideal, she had been sketching a portrait of her mother’s face—the high cheekbones, the narrow chin, the soft brown eyes that shone as if on the verge of tears, water lapping at a lake’s edge.
“Let me see.” Her mother grabbed the drawing. Squinting, she held it to the yellow light above the dining table. “Am I this old already?”
Margot didn’t have a response. Her mother was the most beautiful person in the world.
It became difficult for Margot to understand what to create. As a child, she hated to upset her mother. Instead she stuck to close-ups of flowers or trees—evergreen in winter or deciduous and mustard yellow and blood orange in the fall—pastoral landscapes that she copied out of wall calendars, which bored her, but what else could she do? She hated to draw her own face—a face she couldn’t quite recognize in her mother or anywhere else on TV or in the movies—the face of a stranger, a foreigner, anonymous and plain.
Later as a teenager, abstract sculpture like that of Ruth Asawa and Lee Bontecou, assemblage, and installation had captured her imagination. She would have the urge to topple trashcans over, scour for materials, but how could she explain this to her mother? And where would she store all her projects? Their apartment was too small. Of course, she’d have to run from this place.
But after she had finally left for Seattle, after college, her student debt had grown and she settled into a desk job, the first one she could find that also might benefit society. At the nonprofit, all of the clients and many of her coworkers were blind or had low vision and navigated the world in ways that startled her—a white cane and GPS, Braille watches, software that read screens out loud.
The first year or so had been almost inspirational, a marvel, but quickly her administrative tasks had become insurmountable piles, deadening levels of repetition on her desk. Her life smelled of printer toner, sounded like the gulp of the water cooler, the beep and whir of the copy machine. Of course, after three years of this, her relationship last year with Jonathan, a coworker, had been thrilling—the warm animal breath, the pulse, the tiny hairs on her arms rising. She needed danger. The thrill of sex drowned out her burning questions, replaced the real dangers that, when pursued, might actually kill her. Who was she? What would happen if she were unafraid of herself?
Margot had always guarded the different parts of her life from each other—her mother, her friends, past boyfriends, coworkers. If none of those things touched, if she could keep them in isolation, she could never be hurt or destroyed entirely. The constant yet quiet construction of separate rooms, compartments around her. But most of the time, she felt alone in the center of that building. Lightless and airtight.
Her mother’s death had burned that structure of Margot’s life to the ground.
She attempted now to draw her mother’s face again on a blank page—the soft brown eyes and narrow chin, her hair in a bob—just as Margot had remembered her the last time she had seen her. And then on the opposite page, she drew her father’s face as best as she could from her memory of the obituary. She carved the outlines of their faces in pencil, the wrinkles around the eyes and between the brows.
When she stopped to rest, exhausted, she realized that when she closed her notebook, pressing together the pages, they would nearly kiss again—features overlapping each other’s.
Mina
Winter 1988
WITH MR. PARK, Lupe, and Mr. Kim gone, the day passed with a silent and intense melancholy. Word had gotten out, and although no one said a thing, no one acknowledged what happened or what could’ve happened, Mina could feel the tension, the sadness as thick and inescapable as the city’s smog.
Everyone sensed that neither Lupe nor Mr. Kim would ever be back and that if they, too, wanted to keep their jobs, they better avoid getting in the way of Mr. Park. Perhaps it had been that way all along and Mina only noticed it now, naively. When she thought about everyone’s interactions and air around him, they each had already been taking their precautions as most people do around powerful people in even the tiniest universe of a supermarket. Perhaps they each silently knew that their positions were always tenuous, that they could each become someone’s prey.
Standing at the register, heavy as a sack of grain, she tried not to think about Mr. Kim or Lupe, or the gun that she had taken from him this morning. She had crept up to him, still snoring. She yearned to smooth the creases between his brows where she kissed him, inhaling his morning breath, which she had never minded. It was the smell of his comfort, his rest. She slid the drawer open beside his bed. The gun bag was lighter than she had expected. As she rode the bus to work, she kept her large brown purse on her lap, cautious about putting any pressure on it, as if it possessed a wild animal, a snake, tranquilized for now but vicious and unpredictable.
Now Mina listened for the beeping sound and stared off into space, only paying attention when she received cash from the customer and doled out change. At this point she had memorized most of the produce and could enter the codes without having to look at the keypad.
During her break, she called Mr. Kim on a pay phone outside of the supermarket. No one answered. Who knew what he was going through now? Was he already in jail? She wanted to contact Lupe but didn’t have her number. She, too, must have been figuring out what to do, how she would find work to help Mario, to feed her kids.
Mina wished she had a cigarette to smoke so that she had a reason to be outside, feeling self-conscious after a few minutes of standing as if waiting, but waiting for what? She went inside. Avoiding the rear of the store altogether, she didn’t even use the restroom. She would wait all day until she got home.
Later that night at the bus stop, she stood, light-headed and nauseous, by the transit sign alone. She had almost forgotten about the gun in her purse. She sensed that things would never be the same again, that Mr. Kim would have to find a new job, that she, who wouldn’t be able to look at Mr. Park, had to find a new one, too. How could she get into this kind of disaster so quickly, after being in America for less than a year?
As the headlights of the bus approached, she had the sudden urge to step out in front. Just one foot.
Like a deer in the road, crossing, unaware. It would be that simple and pure. An erasure. Another body in the morgue.
The bus swerved, screeching to a halt. The driver, her eyes wide and mouth open, appeared shocked, sad, then upset.
Mina thought to run away but where? How could she keep running?
Instead, she got on the bus with her head hanging, eyes on the ground.
“What are you doing?” the driver demanded. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? You’re trying to get us all killed?”
Mina walked through the center aisle, past the perked ears, the watching eyes. She wedged herself between two passengers, one who didn’t care at all, and the other an older woman who was in shock.
Mina glanced forward to see the driver raise her hands in exasperation, letting them fall at her thighs with a slap. In the rearview mirror, the driver’s face softened into a broken heart, as she mouthed, “Fuck,” to herself. She shut the heavy doors, driving toward the next stop.
* * *
In the kitchen, Mrs. Baek stood at the stove, stirring a pot.
Trying to go unnoticed, Mina slipped off her shoes and headed toward her room. She yearned to disappear. She hadn’t slept at all last night. But before she could reach her door, Mrs. Baek asked, “Did you eat d
inner yet?”
“No, not yet. I’m very tired.”
“You don’t look so good. Are you getting sick?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want to join me?”
“That’s okay. I have a phone call to make.”
Mrs. Baek suspended the wooden spoon in the air, like a baton in a marching band. “Why don’t you join me after your phone call?”
“Um...”
“I can wait. Go ahead and make your call.”
Without any energy left, Mina unlocked her bedroom door, and once inside, dropped all her belongings on the ground. She picked up the phone on her nightstand and spun by memory Mr. Kim’s number on the rotary dial. No answer.
After using the restroom, she sat in the breakfast nook across from Mrs. Baek, who had been sipping on a mug of barley tea, waiting.
“You don’t look good at all,” she said.
“I’ve been working a lot,” Mina replied. “Stomach problems.”
“Like what?”
“When I get stressed out, I have trouble eating. And when I do eat, I want to throw up.”
“Your boyfriend—everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?” Mrs. Baek placed her hand on top of Mina’s. “Maybe you have some kind of stomach bug? You look very pale.”
“Yes, that’s probably what it is.”
“Let me make you some rice porridge,” Mrs. Baek said, standing up.
“Don’t trouble yourself. Thank you. No, really.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t take long. Why don’t you go back to bed? I’ll wake you up when it’s ready.”
Mina dragged herself to her room again where she lay down and cried, blotting the corners of her eyes with her blanket. She didn’t want Mrs. Baek to see her that way—just another woman sobbing in a room by herself. But that’s what she was, wasn’t she? She had this crushing feeling that she’d never see Mr. Kim again. How could she feel like this, how could she allow this to happen?
She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep until she heard a knock, maybe ten or thirty minutes later, she couldn’t tell. Before she could say anything, Mrs. Baek poked her head in through the door.
“Sorry to wake you up,” she said. “I have your porridge.”
“Oh, that’s okay. Thank you.” Mina tried to rise up from the bed on her elbows in time to meet Mrs. Baek, but her arms collapsed beneath her.
“Oh,” Mrs. Baek said, approaching to help. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think I ate yesterday.”
“You have to eat something before you fall asleep then.”
Mina slumped over on the bed, leaning against the wall. Mrs. Baek held the bowl of porridge with a metal spoon, contemplating Mina’s face.
“Here, take a bite,” she said, holding the spoon up to Mina’s mouth.
The tenderness of the gesture made Mina’s eyes water again. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she couldn’t help but cover her face, as if to shield herself from the kindness of someone else.
* * *
The phone rang, waking Mina from a deep sleep she had achieved only after a few hours of tossing and turning and pounding the mattress with her fists in sadness and in rage. She grabbed the receiver, suddenly wide awake.
“Mr. Kim?” she asked.
“Yes.” His voice was weary.
“Are you okay? Where are you?” she cried. “Where are you? Are you leaving me?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m... I’m at the airport.”
“What? What are you doing there?” She couldn’t control herself. She knew what he was about to say. She knew this was going to happen. She kept repeating this over and over again to punish herself, to teach herself a lesson. Just like the women at the orphanage who would punish her when she was bad, when they caught her stealing, when she spoke up against them. She knew this was going to happen. This is why nobody wants you, they’d say.
“I can’t talk long. I went to see Lupe yesterday. She’s going to be okay. She has some people at church, family to help her, so don’t worry about her, okay? She’s going to be fine. Worry about yourself, okay?”
“What about you? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a cousin in Chicago. I’m going to...leave for a little while.”
“How long?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“A while?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No, I don’t think that’s best for now.”
“Why don’t you take me with you? Why don’t you take me with you?” Her voice rose, echoing throughout the house. She didn’t care who heard her. “Why don’t you take me with you?”
“It’s not that easy. I would. There’s just... It’s too dangerous right now. I’m sorry.” She could hear him crying. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I didn’t think—”
“Then take me with you. I have nothing here. Take me with you.”
“I can’t. It’d be easier to hide by myself. It’s safer for you this way.” He paused, gulping breath. “Did you take the gun?”
She didn’t answer, heart racing.
“Be careful with that. It’s loaded, okay? Don’t take it out of the bag unless you need it. Protect yourself, okay? Be careful.”
“I can handle him myself.” Her voice shook like an earthquake, rattling every bone in her body.
“Just, be careful. I’m—I’m sorry. I love you.” He hung up the phone.
She threw the receiver, which hit the wall with a loud crash. The sound of the dial tone drove her to pick the receiver up and smash it into the phone with a crack, crack, a hollow plastic sound. She didn’t care anymore if she broke it. This was the time now. This was the time to end it all. She could hang herself in her room. She had sheets. She could tie them around the door, slip them around her neck and end everything, the way she should’ve ended things before coming to this strange country, before Mr. Park could ruin all of them, before, before...
Before the Ferris wheel, before the salt in the air, the taste of hot chocolate, once again, falling prey to the dazzling deception of the world, the blush and the bloom inside her chest.
But she could kill Mr. Park before taking her own life. She could find him in his office. She had the gun. She could end him. She could end him in front of everyone. Who knew how many he had terrorized? How many he had cannibalized for his own gain? How many of them had he hurt? How many more lives could he ruin? She had nothing to lose now.
Someone pounded on the door.
Mina cried out, “Not now.”
“Are you okay?” Mrs. Baek asked.
“Go away.”
She could tell that Mrs. Baek still stood on the other side, waiting for her, for anything.
“Go away,” she screamed. She grabbed a pillow and threw it at the door.
Mrs. Baek tried the knob. Finding it locked, she pushed her way through the flimsy wood.
Shock and terror distorted Mrs. Baek’s face at the sight of Mina on the floor.
Mina saw herself through Mrs. Baek’s eyes. She wanted to kill herself even more.
Mrs. Baek knelt to the ground beside her, trying to help her stand up.
“Get your hands off me.” Mina vomited a yellowish fluid, right onto her own chest.
Mrs. Baek wrapped her arms around Mina, dragging her to the restroom where she had her sit on the floor beside the toilet. Mina threw up the sad remains of last night’s paltry dinner, the rice porridge. Mrs. Baek grabbed a towel and wiped down Mina’s face, covered in tears and snot like a child’s. She then handed the towel to Mina, who blew her nose.
She couldn’t stop crying, her breath rushing in and out.
Both
of them knew as they sat on the floor beside the toilet that Mina was pregnant.
Margot
Winter 2014
THE MONDAY BEFORE Christmas, Margot was finally feeling better. She had been in bed for the past several days, overcome by weakness and nausea. Was it simply grief and exhaustion, the beginnings of the flu, or poisoning? Miguel had offered to drive her to a clinic or hospital, but she had refused, unwilling to deal with the worries of insurance, in-or out-of-network.
And for the first time in a while, she woke up early this morning with the urge to prepare breakfast, sunny-side up eggs on rice. Afterward, she cleaned out her mother’s kitchen, emptying cupboards and drawers, still sticky from a life rushed between work and home. The nutty dark amber of sesame oil—heavy and clinging—remained in a half-full bottle. A squeeze bottle of honey—crystallized into sugar, rough on the tongue—had glued itself down, leaving a dark footprint, a sweet oval on the lining of a shelf.
Margot had already touched most of everything in the kitchen with a practical intimacy her entire life—no secrets, no other lives. But even the utensils, a hodgepodge of stainless steel, became tiny monuments—sharp, reflective, serrated, and curved with feeling.
Growing up, she had hated using chopsticks. She had refused them, seated at the table with her mother—different instruments in their hands—as if the inches between them were as expansive as a continental divide, the dark rift of an ocean. And yet, despite this daily breach, this rupture between mother and daughter, hands posed around shapes foreign to each other, she remembered the bowls of rice her mother had fed her, the banchan, the stews, the fruit she had meticulously peeled and sliced, and how food was perhaps the most practical and necessary means by which Margot could access the stories and memories, the sap running inside her mother.
The Last Story of Mina Lee Page 20