The Last Story of Mina Lee

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

  “Maybe he was trying to find you,” Margot said. “He could’ve pushed her, right?”

  Mrs. Baek tossed her passport, slapping the surface of the table. She thrust her hand into the red purse and pulled out a black handgun.

  Margot jumped. The last time she had been this close to a gun was when she and her mother had been robbed as they had parked in front of their apartment. Her mother had surrendered her purse to the stranger, whose face was covered. Any wrong move would result in bullets, blood sprayed on shattered glass. At ten years old, Margot had remained in the back seat, frozen—still as a deer swallowed in headlights.

  She remembered her mother shaking and crying after the man had left. Her arms folded over the steering wheel, her head down, her hair disheveled. Margot had been too terrified to comfort her mother, who could never call the cops for help. She could never trust the police, never knew what she could be deported for and when, what could happen to Margot if she were taken away. She had worked so hard in this country for so little, which could be destroyed at any moment—either by criminals on the street or men in uniforms.

  “Look familiar?” Mrs. Baek asked, checking on Miguel behind her. Holding the gun, her hand trembled. “Do you recognize this?”

  Margot shook her head.

  “This was your mother’s.” Her voice cracked.

  Of course. Who else would protect them but herself?

  “She wanted me to keep this in case—in case Mr. Park—” Mrs. Baek wept, her face bright red.

  “What?” Margot glanced at Miguel, immobile by the door, frozen with fear.

  “She tried to give this to me, to protect myself,” Mrs. Baek said, gently setting the gun on the table. The room relaxed. Margot could breathe. “They all worked at the supermarket together, before you were born. Mr. Park was the owner.”

  “The same one where my father worked?”

  “Yes.”

  “So my mother knew Mr. Park from back then?” Margot stared at the muzzle of the gun, lying down but pointed in her direction.

  “One day...there was a woman in his office. She had been screaming. Your mother said that your father stopped Mr. Park as he was attacking a woman named Lupe. Your father hit him.”

  Margot covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Your father left LA after that. He didn’t want to get in trouble.” Mrs. Baek’s eyes met Margot’s. “He didn’t have his papers. Maybe Mr. Park might’ve reported him.”

  A beat of silence passed as Margot tried desperately to absorb this information. Finally she asked, “Did you know the entire time that you were dealing with the same Mr. Park, the same Mr. Park from her past?”

  Mrs. Baek shook her head as she sat down at the table, where the gun rested between them like a border. Margot joined her and sat on one of the dining chairs. She had the urge to turn the gun so that it faced the wall instead of her. But at the same time, the idea of touching a potentially loaded weapon, reaching for it, and how that might cause Mrs. Baek to react, unnerved her. The gun remained where it lay—silent and volatile.

  Sweat beaded on Margot’s face.

  Miguel backed himself onto the couch, about ten feet away from them.

  “When did she find out about what Mr. Park was doing to you?” Margot asked.

  “After your father died, she finally told me about her relationship with him. How they reconnected this summer, what had happened to him and her and Lupe before he disappeared. She never told me that story before. I don’t know why. Maybe she was ashamed?” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “I told her the truth about why I had left Hanok House—Mr. Park bought the restaurant to be closer to me.”

  “Did you ever go out with him?” Margot asked.

  “We went on a few dates at the beginning of the year. I never returned his calls. He bought the restaurant and started showing up everywhere—downtown, the park where I used to walk. So I quit working at Hanok House.” She groaned, exhausted. “I’ve spent so much of the past nine months looking behind me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her earlier?” Margot asked. “Maybe she could’ve helped you somehow? Have you told anyone?”

  Mrs. Baek shook her head. “We hadn’t seen each other in over twenty years. What could she do? All she would do is worry about me. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted us...to start over again.” She placed her head in her hands, elbows on the table. “But after your dad died, and she told me the truth, your mom and I—we realized that it was the same person. Mr. Park is the same man who tried to rape Lupe years ago. Who knows how many people he has hurt?” Her voice broke.

  She lifted her face, revealing the depth of how crushed she had been, how so much of her life had been about finding beauty and wholeness, the kind of meaning that stories gave us, gluing herself back together—the perfectly lined red lips, the dark crescents for brows, the shimmering brown eyeshadow on her lids—after being smashed by the circumstances of her life over and over again.

  Margot closed her eyes. How each of these women deserved so much more from this world.

  “She told me to take the gun.” Mrs. Baek wiped her nose on the sleeve of her gray robe. “But...every time I look at it, I—I feel sick.” Her voice grew hoarse.

  Margot’s heart thumped. If she could reach for the gun, what would she do with it in her hand? She had never held a gun in her life.

  “She said she didn’t need it anymore, that I needed it to protect myself, but I kept trying to explain... I couldn’t explain to her...” She cried, covering her face again.

  “What couldn’t you explain?”

  “That...that my husband...” Mrs. Baek lowered her hands. Her eyes bore into Margot’s. “He would get so angry sometimes, so angry at the world. He would—he hit me in the face.” She grabbed her throat as if protecting herself.

  “God, I’m so sorry,” Margot said.

  “One day, he—pointed a gun like that at me.” She stared at the gun on the table. “It looked exactly the same. And I grabbed my purse and ran. I never went back. I left forever. He was going to kill me.”

  Margot imagined Mrs. Baek in her car like her mother, eyes hard, as she steeled herself for the long drive, that long drive once to Las Vegas. Mirrors and glass obscured by films of dust. Margot had never been to Texas, but she could picture the bright and wide landscape—all yuccas, breathtaking mountains, ocher land, and sage—as Mrs. Baek fled for her life.

  There was a sudden stillness as if the whole room was holding its breath at once; the silence before a tidal wave crashes down.

  “How did you end up with the gun if you didn’t want it?” Margot asked. She reached forward to touch Mrs. Baek’s hand, but she pulled away.

  “I was trying to... She was reaching toward me, to give me the gun.” Mrs. Baek closed her eyes, her face crumpling. “I changed my mind. She...she was so stubborn.”

  “Did you push her?” Margot asked.

  “I didn’t think... It all happened so quickly.” Her voice broke.

  “Did you push her?” Margot repeated.

  Mrs. Baek nodded yes.

  Margot burst into tears.

  “And you left her there to die?” Miguel asked, wiping his eyes.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I never wanted to... I couldn’t...” She sobbed weakly, covering her face with her hands. “There was no way to save her. She was gone.”

  Margot finally knew the truth. It had been an accident.

  “And you took the gun?” Miguel asked.

  “I didn’t want to leave it there in case...it would look suspicious.” Mrs. Baek hiccuped through her tears.

  Margot’s ears rang in the exhausted silence that followed. She was both heartbroken by her mother’s death and Mrs. Baek’s life and relieved to know that, in the end, Mr. Park hadn’t harmed her mother, that there was no malicious intent. In a way, her mo
ther was now free. She had died trying to help someone she loved, her friend.

  “What are you going to do now?” Margot asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m leaving town.” Defeated, Mrs. Baek stared at the ground. “Margot, I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t think—she never mentioned that you might be coming home.” She sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “If only that Mr. Park would’ve just left me alone.” She gritted her teeth. “This is all his fault.”

  “Should we call the cops?” Margot asked. “I mean, after you leave. We can’t just let him get away with doing this to everyone. You and Lupe, you can’t be the only ones, right?”

  Mrs. Baek shook her head.

  “I think we have to call the police,” Miguel agreed. “We don’t have to say anything about your mom’s death. It could just be about him, his stalking, his behavior. We could just—”

  “You don’t understand,” Mrs. Baek said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I don’t think you have to leave,” Margot said. “It’d be better if you stayed. We could do this together. I’m sure there’s other women, maybe at Hanok House, or from the supermarket back in the day—”

  Mrs. Baek seized the gun with two hands, knocking the dining chair down behind her as she stood. She pointed the barrel at Margot, then backed herself into a corner, arm trembling from the weight. It was the shaking of that arm that terrified Margot the most, as if Mrs. Baek was mustering all her strength to not shoot them all right now.

  Margot held her breath as if underwater. She imagined them all submerged, tumbling in the waves, trying to hold on to each other. But this time she wasn’t worried about her mother. She was worried about herself. She was worried about Miguel. She would do anything to save them.

  “I’ll figure it out, okay?” Mrs. Baek said, gasping. “I need you to—I need you to leave now.”

  Was that a faint smile? A glimmer appeared in her eyes as if she had designed a solution. As if this gun, Mina’s death, had been part of her story, its symmetry, all along. Its purpose was clear.

  Mrs. Baek lowered the gun and said, “I am ready.”

  A DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, Margot stepped outside of her apartment building into a bright yet hazy late-December light—an atmosphere with that specific quiet deflation after a major holiday, as if the air had been let out of the world until the impending celebration on New Year’s Eve. The sulfurous smell of leftover fireworks mixed with exhaust added to the afternoon’s malaise, like the entire city was hungover.

  Margot had spent most of yesterday at her mother’s apartment with Miguel discussing what they should do after the incident at Mrs. Baek’s. She had a gun. She had killed Margot’s mother. But they couldn’t call the police, could they? It was an accident. And Mrs. Baek could’ve harmed them if she had wanted to, but she hadn’t. Instead, Margot and Miguel had slid out the door and run downstairs into the car parked on the street.

  Mrs. Baek had clearly suffered enough. She needed freedom. She didn’t deserve any more pain than what had already threatened to break her—an abusive husband, a stalker, a dead best friend. Crime and punishment. She would have to live with herself somehow, and escape Mr. Park, this city that sometimes chewed you up and spat you out.

  Margot wished that she had gotten Mrs. Baek’s number so that she could contact her somehow, make sure that she was safe. But it was too late. And although she had been relieved to finally understand what had happened on the night of her mother’s death, she still didn’t have answers about her mother’s life—the safety-deposit box.

  Who was the other family—the husband and child, pigtailed in a red T-shirt and leggings? Did Margot have a half sister somewhere? And where was her mother’s mother, Margot’s grandmother, who Mrs. Baek said had survived the war? Was she still alive? Did Mina ever contact her? Would she want to know about Margot, or would she be ruined by the death of her Mina, the daughter she had lost in the war?

  Now haunted by the weight of these questions, Margot finally felt like an adult.

  Choosing if and when and how to share the truth might be the deepest, most painful necessity of growing out into the world and into yourself.

  Sometimes we wrongly guessed how much others could bear. It was in the curve of a question mark—should I or shouldn’t I?—in which we all lived. In the end, her mother had decided to keep Margot and her father a secret from themselves, to protect them both. Margot would need to forgive all of them—Mina, her father, Mrs. Baek—so that she could one day begin to forgive herself.

  After several minutes of feeling the sun on her face, Margot untied her gray hoodie from around her waist. She walked with purpose, although she had no idea where she would end up—which direction and where. Like a fire, she needed air. She even had the urge to run for the hell of it.

  She passed a small park with a playground. Children rode the swings high or chased each other down slides, laughing and running, a commotion of joy. She walked in front of a gas station, then a Korean grocery store, and found a strip mall with several businesses, including a salon, huge posters of women with ’80s hair in the windows.

  Her mother used to cut Margot’s hair in the dim light of the dining area next to the kitchen. She laid sheets on the floor, draped a towel around Margot’s shoulders, and, with a comb and scissors in hand, worked her way around Margot’s head.

  “Your hair is so shiny,” her mother said. “So soft.”

  Margot never knew how to receive her mother’s compliments because she had grown accustomed to her barbs—about her acne, her wrinkled clothes, her creaseless eyelids, the beginnings of a double chin. It was as if her mother believed that any ego at all would be too big for this home, too big for this family. Her fundamental responsibility was keeping Margot in check.

  But every now and then, her mother would direct her attention to herself, brandishing a quiet and devastating memory—a cold injection, almost a relief, a reprieve from her gaze, into Margot’s veins.

  “When the nuns cut my hair, they never cared,” her mother once said. “They never made it pretty.”

  Or: “There was a girl at the orphanage who would beat me,” she said. “She told me that she was going to destroy my face, set fire to it.”

  Margot never knew how to respond to these intense sudden offerings of the self, bottomless and rare, as if the statements had been at the edge of her mother’s psyche, the edge of her mother’s survival, and any further conversation could push her over the brink, plunge her head underwater. Instead, as her mother cut her hair, Margot waited in silence for the signal that she had finished—removing the towel as a cape, brushing Margot’s shoulders, picking off the bits stuck to her face. And then Margot was temporarily set free.

  Inside of the salon, which smelled vaguely of hair dye and perms, a slim young woman with chestnut-colored hair, a French-striped shirt, and trendy chunky white sneakers, greeted her eagerly. Margot sat in the waiting area where she noticed, among the one-inch-thick beauty and lifestyle magazines, a copy of the local newspaper in Korean. On the cover was an image of Mr. Park, sympathetic, genial with his Paul-Bunyan-teeth smile. Margot seized the paper, trying to decipher what she could—the photograph of him and the image of a silver Mercedes sedan parked on a dirt road.

  “I’m ready for you now,” the stylist said, both gracious and curious about Margot, like a visitor from a foreign planet. She never paid much attention to her looks and it was obvious.

  Margot held out the newspaper. “Did you see this? Do you know what happened to this guy?”

  The stylist peered at the front page and said, “Oh. They found him dead yesterday afternoon.”

  Margot gasped. “On Christmas?”

  She remembered Mrs. Baek’s arm trembling from the weight of the gun, Margot holding her breath. Her smile, the glimmer in her eyes, as if she had figured out the solution to this mess—Margot’s mother
, her friend dead, a stalker with a past of terrorizing women, abusing his power. I am ready, she said.

  “He was retired but owned a restaurant in Koreatown. A rich man.” She motioned for Margot to rise.

  “What happened?” In the black pleather chair, Margot faced herself in a clear mirror, wide and ceiling-high.

  The stylist draped a gray cape over her body and untied Margot’s long hair—releasing the tangled mess that it had become. She grabbed a wide-tooth comb and tried to break apart the knots without tearing too much.

  “A jogger in Griffith Park. She found some clothes on the road, a wallet, keys, cell phone. So she called the police.”

  Margot tilted her head, following the motions of the comb. Her heart raced.

  “They found his body. He was less than one mile away, in the bushes.” The stylist raised her brows and smirked as if amused by the calamities of men. Margot liked this woman at once.

  “The bushes?” Margot asked. She imagined the dense gray vegetation in the hills—the mixed chaparral and sage scrub. The sunbaked and herbaceous scent. The dry fuel.

  The hairstylist lowered her voice. “Naked.”

  “What?” Margot cringed.

  “He was naked.” She escorted Margot to the sink to wash her hair. “Someone shot him in the leg.”

  “In the leg?” Margot tilted her head back. “But how did he—”

  “The animals ate him.” The stylist adjusted the towel under Margot’s neck. “One of my customers said that his whole face, arm, almost everything gone,” she said, before the blast of warm water.

  Margot could feel they were both trying their hardest not to laugh. Yes, death was sometimes funny. Maybe it was a Korean thing, but after these weeks of pain and stress, she couldn’t help but delight in the absurdity of it all. It was almost a piece of performance art.

  Bravo, Mrs. Baek.

  * * *

  Standing on the sidewalk, Margot called Miguel as soon as she left the salon—hair angling down toward her chin in a sharp bob. The sun had begun its descent, blasting wildly from the west. She shielded her eyes with her hand, inhaling the exhaust of cars zooming by, kicking up the dirt and bits of dried leaves that would stick to her skin. A ragged palm tree across the street basked in the last of the golden light before the city bathed in a soft dream of pinks and purples—changing and fleeting—and the brash glare of street-and headlights, the adrenaline, the thousands of feet on the gas, ruined the romance.