The Last Story of Mina Lee

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

  After she filled Miguel in, he said, “They found his body on Christmas Day? Lord. She fed those animals.”

  “I mean, it had to be Mrs. Baek, right?” She hurried down the street toward her mother’s apartment. “Not to be messed up, but... I’m glad we didn’t call the police.” She ducked under a scattering of pigeons, wings flapping treacherously close to her head. “I am still worried about her, though.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “She lured him somehow to take her up there. He was naked. Ugh.” She shuddered at the image. “Maybe she tricked him into thinking that she changed her mind, that she was interested in him and wanted to hook up or something? People go up into the park for that, you know.”

  “What else is nature for?”

  She laughed. “Maybe she told him that they had to go into the bushes.”

  “And she shot him in the leg?” Miguel asked. “This story is a gift, Margot.”

  She crossed the road before a car careened in front of her.

  “And no one heard his cries?” he asked.

  “Maybe it was kind of remote. In the middle of the night,” she said, catching her breath.

  “And the animals ate him?” Miguel asked.

  She tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk and couldn’t help but laugh at both herself and the absurdity of life. She had for whatever reason imagined a Disney-animated version of all the wildlife—Snow White’s friends, round and wide-eyed—flitting and dancing around Mr. Park’s body.

  “And they haven’t caught her, right?”

  “Nope, not from what I can tell. I googled it. He parked his car, got out, and removed his clothes at some point. Someone in the online comments thought it might be the mob or a gang or something. Anyway, I hope she’s okay.”

  “What are you gonna do now?”

  The sun disappeared behind the buildings and the world appeared to be melting around her. Bathed in the sharp air of the oncoming night, Margot inhaled the faint aroma of a leftover pork pozole reheated on a stove through an open window. She still dreaded returning to the apartment.

  “I’m pretty exhausted,” Margot said. “I think I’ll sleep until the new year.”

  “Do you want to go out on New Year’s Eve next week?” Miguel asked.

  “I don’t know.” A part of her wanted to head back to Seattle as soon as she could get rid of everything. She could take the contents of the safety-deposit box with her. She had Mrs. Kim’s phone number; she could always reach her later to find out more about her father. She didn’t need to stay in LA anymore.

  But the other part of her longed to remain in this city to recover something she had left behind—not just history or her past or her mother’s, but whom she had always dreamed of becoming. She had abandoned that side of herself here, too.

  “Maybe you could use a distraction?” Miguel asked. “This guy I met invited me to go drinking downtown with some friends. I’m thinking dancing afterward at the salsa club. You’ll come?”

  Margot stood outside of the apartment building as the sky glowed sapphire, and she turned to find the sliver of a moon. She could see inside people’s lives through windows—the flickering of television sets, bodies walking behind curtains, a little boy’s mouth, fishlike, pressed against the fingerprinted fog of glass. She could imagine the gills on the side of his face. She laughed.

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Margot said. “This is all you.”

  He paused. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but it’ll be fun. You should come. I want you to come. If the guy turns out to be a dud, I’ll need someone to dance with, right?”

  “You always dance with strangers anyway,” she said.

  “But I want to dance with you,” he said. The sweetest words she had heard in a long while.

  She closed her eyes. She felt as if he understood her, they understood each other, precisely at that moment.

  There was nothing left to say except, “Okay.”

  Wasn’t that the thing with words? It wasn’t just their surfaces—sometimes serene and shimmering, others violent, crashing, and brash—but what they, when carefully considered, conveyed: we are more than friends. We’re family.

  ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, Margot loaded up on snacks and booze at the nearest Korean supermarket, whatever she could get her hands on to feed the crew that would come over—Miguel and his new friends, a group of five or six people. Instead of imbibing at a crowded bar, they’d hang out at her mother’s mostly vacant apartment and carpool to the salsa club afterward.

  Growing up, she and her mother had never invited people to their home. There was hardly any room, both physical and spiritual, for entertaining when her mother had spent six long days out of the week at work. The seventh day was always for running errands—grocery shopping, preparing meals, mailing payments for bills, or waiting in lines at the bank. There was never time for rest or celebration and Margot now wanted to change that if she could.

  She maneuvered a cart through the produce section, which featured boxes of fruit as gifts, amping up the volume and variety this time of year. She packed several Asian pears in a plastic tear-off bag, then moved on to the most perfect Fuyu persimmons, smooth, orange, and firm. She had always been embarrassed when her mother had given people such odd and practical “Korean gifts”—the boxes of apples or even laundry detergent—when in reality, outside of America, these objects might have some rich symbolic relevance that perhaps Margot didn’t understand.

  If she thought of the labor and resources that went into each piece of fruit—the water, the light, the earth, the training and harvesting of each plant—a box of apples could be special, a sacred thing. Perhaps in this land of plenty, of myth and wide-open spaces, trucks and factories, mass production, we lost track of that: the miracle of an object as simple as a pear, nutritious and sweet, created by something as beautiful as a tree.

  As Margot considered the large pile of napa cabbage, the grooved white to pale green heads, a hand reached over in front of her. She jumped back and turned to see Officer Choi there. He looked different in his casual clothes—a heather gray V-neck sweater, a collared shirt underneath, and a pair of dark blue jeans.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that your cabbage?” He smiled.

  “No. Actually...yes, that was my cabbage.”

  “Here, allow me.” He grabbed the head, placing it in a bag for her.

  “Wait, that one was...I don’t know, not cabbagey enough. How about that one over there?”

  He laughed. “Okay.” He picked up the cabbage he had placed in her cart, put it in his own. He palmed another one at the top of the pile. “This one?”

  “Actually, Officer Choi—the other one, the one with all the leaves.”

  “Oh, I see. The one with all the leaves.” He crossed his arms across his chest. He looked clean and handsome, like a J.Crew model that wasn’t too snobby and also wore Hanes. Boxers or briefs? She blushed at the thought of his underwear.

  “Call me David,” he said. “I quit.”

  “What?” She gazed at him and, for a second, forgot how to use language entirely. “The police?”

  “I mean, it wasn’t easy, but...new year, new me.” He shrugged.

  “How come?” she asked, relieved.

  “I was kinda burned-out anyway.” He inserted his thumbs into his pockets. “And something about what you had said to me... I realized why I joined in the first place.” He scratched the back of his neck. “You were right.”

  Her three favorite words. “Really?”

  “That first phone call? Remember how upset you were?”

  She nodded, remembering most of the words. You might think we’re some kind of burden on your workload, but my mother worked her ass off, and she paid taxes like everyone else... People like my mother hold up this sham as much as you.

  “Because you wan
ted answers, and you didn’t feel like you were getting any,” David said. “And that your mother deserved better.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “She did. She does.” He avoided her eyes. An ahjumma nudged her shopping cart into Margot’s. They moved away from the napa cabbage as she passed with a hmph.

  “Why did you join?” Margot asked.

  “I had an older brother who died when I was a teenager. Everyone thought it was suicide, but... I couldn’t believe he killed himself. So I wanted to help people if I could. There weren’t a lot of Korean officers—at least not back then. And I thought the cops were just blowing my family off because my parents didn’t speak English.”

  “I see. I’m sorry,” she said, a heaviness building inside her chest.

  “That’s all right.” He sighed. “I’ve spent the last couple years doing boring-ass paperwork, busting people who are trying—maybe in not the most legal or ‘moral’ ways, but trying—to survive. I wasn’t helping people in the way that I want to. And to be honest... I’m tired all the time. Really tired.” He shook his head. “Anyway, this is way too much—”

  “No, it’s not. I’m glad to know. I’m just happy that you realized all of this.”

  “What about you?”

  What should she tell him now? “I think I’m...accepting it. My mother’s death. I’m getting there at least, knowing what I know about my mom now. I got a kind of closure from all this. Maybe an opening, too.”

  “Good.” He rested his hand on his cart.

  Silence grew between them and they exhaled at once.

  “Are you making kimchi?” he asked, pointing his chin toward the cabbage.

  She could make kimchi this week? “Ha, I wasn’t planning on it, but I guess now I am? I wasn’t even sure how long I’m staying.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Koreatown.”

  She paused. Around them, last-minute shoppers perused and collected vegetables—yellow and white and green onions, chili peppers, knobs of ginger.

  “Are you hosting tonight?” he asked. Another ahjumma bumped her cart into Margot’s.

  “I’ve got friends coming over,” she said. “What about you?”

  “I don’t have any real plans, so I’m going over to my parents’ house. My other brother will be there with his kids. It’ll be nice and chill.”

  How does Officer Bae not have any plans? “How many kids does he have?”

  “Two. You wouldn’t believe that he’s actually four years younger than me.”

  Two grandmothers turned over the heads of napa cabbage, disappointed. One of them tore off a piece of leaf, popped it in her mouth, and nodded. Her hands were powerful and wrinkled—so much like her mother’s. How much Margot loved those hands that would create the long peel of skin before slicing the fruit for her. How much she missed those hands.

  “Well, I’ve got a few more things to pick up,” he said. “It was nice seeing you.”

  “Likewise.” She couldn’t help but smile.

  He freed himself from a traffic jam of carts, bowed his head to other shoppers, excusing himself.

  “David,” she called, self-conscious about her loud English voice in this space.

  “Yeah?”

  Startled, an ahjussi shot them both dirty looks. Those voices. American kids. How rude.

  Smiling, she abandoned her cart temporarily, threaded herself through the crowd, and stopped a couple feet from him. “Now that you’re unemployed—could I ask you a favor?”

  * * *

  After exchanging phone numbers with David, who could help her translate her mother’s documents, Margot paid for her groceries and headed back toward the parking lot where amber floodlights illuminated cars and customers pushing carts. She had only a few hours to clean and prepare for her guests, who would arrive at nine. She rushed toward her car with a sense of levity, a giddiness about the new year and the possibility of living in Los Angeles.

  She’d find a new place, a smaller one, maybe a studio in Koreatown or Echo Park, or she could rent a room in a shared house just like her mother when she first moved to America. She’d fly to Seattle to pack up all her belongings and ship what she needed down. But the thrill of starting life over again animated her.

  She couldn’t quite see herself transplanting her same behaviors in an office job from one city to the next. She always knew that she wasn’t cut out for it—the hours indoors in front of a screen, the data entry, the filing, the water cooler outside her door—but what else could she do with so little experience, no connections, and an English degree? She’d have to do something fresh, reinvent herself. She could work at a coffee shop or a restaurant or in retail while she went back to school for art.

  Margot was struck by the memory of holding the corner of the net out to the sky, up against the shape of the Ferris wheel, imagining all the tiny silver fish—like her mother, shimmering and liquefied—that would swim through its weave.

  But she and her mother were now both free yet forever woven into each other. They could be both—separate and inseparable. They were not a rotten net but something more deliberate like threads of color, variations of blue, plaited, one after the other. Her mother’s death was not a knot but a temporary undoing. Her mother had been carrying the burden of so much truth, truths that she had protected Margot from, and now Margot knew: she, like her mother, could handle anything—even love, even family.

  ACCELERATING ONTO THE 10 in a Friday night snarl of traffic in the middle of January, she wondered if moving back to LA was, in fact, a terrible idea. She hated driving. She gazed at the sad disco of taillights, with her mother’s ashes in the passenger seat, thinking about Mrs. Baek, wherever she was, driving off to start all over again. What if she hadn’t made it anywhere far? She could hide in this city. It was easy to be anonymous, to find some nook within one of the suburbs, or even in downtown LA, to lie low until the trouble had passed. How would anyone know?

  Margot thought about how she could one day run into her, that perhaps driving down the street, she could glance at a car stopped beside her and notice a woman in the driver’s seat and wonder if that was Mrs. Baek.

  After a dinner of kimchi fried rice two weeks ago at his apartment in Echo Park, David translated some of the documents from her mother’s safety-deposit box. With the help of the investigator hired by Margot’s father, her mother had determined the identity and location of her parents in Gunpo, a city south of Seoul. Only Mina’s mother, now ninety-two years old, survived. But what was not obvious from the documents was whether or not Mina had ever reached out to her, or whether knowing her mother lived was enough.

  “Would you want to meet her?” David had asked.

  “I don’t know.” Margot stared at the grain of his wood dining table. The whorls reminded her of thumbprints.

  “We can call this investigator, Mr. Cho.” He studied the papers. “Maybe, if not about your grandmother, maybe he has some info on this other family?” His eyes were glossy. “The little girl with the pigtails, if she’s still alive.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. I’d have to sit with this for a bit first.”

  Afterward, she drove home and cried for her mother and father. She cried for her grandmother. Why did this world break so many people apart? Why was it so hard to be together? Would her grandmother be relieved to know what had happened to her daughter, or would she be struck by the kind of grief that could kill her, too? How did we decide how to live without breaking each other?

  She wept for days and could hardly eat at all. The following weekend, Miguel delivered groceries and made a dinner of enchiladas for them at the apartment with a red mole sauce that he had purchased from the restaurant they never made it to on Christmas Eve. They sat in silence mostly, which was just what she needed. All the things she felt were terrible and heavy. All the things she felt were different varia
tions of pain.

  She had then finally mustered the courage to call Mrs. Kim, who had at first not answered, but returned her call two days later.

  Sitting on her mother’s couch in the living room which was now mostly bare except for the most necessary of furniture, Margot asked, “Do you think that maybe... Do you know anything about what happened to my father after he left my mom? This would’ve been in the late eighties.”

  “We met in Chicago in 1990 or 1991,” Mrs. Kim said, voice scratchy and weak. “He was at that time working at his cousin’s import and export business, and he had bought a small supermarket there eventually. He never really talked about what his life had been like in LA. I figured it was because back in the day, when he was in his twenties, he had a wife who died.”

  “Another wife?”

  “Yes, that must have been in the early eighties so—before you, before your mom.” She coughed away from the receiver. “He didn’t have his papers. After we married, he got his green card. But he had never told me about your mom or what had happened between the two of them.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m not much help.”

  “How did you both end up back in LA?” Margot asked.

  “My family is in Orange County.”

  “I see.” Margot sighed. “Maybe you might be able to...tell me more about him? At least how you met? What he was like? I just want to know.”

  “Sure...okay.” Mrs. Kim paused. “Do you want to meet somewhere in Koreatown? I haven’t been there in years. I’m trying to learn how to drive again, so maybe after I take my lessons. Or I can hire a car.”