by Mia Yun
Coming over, Inah gives me a quick look-over. Not missing a thing: my long hair, which I put up at the airport in Milan, my knee-torn blue jeans and tight tie-dye T-shirt and the Miu Miu sandals. (At Kennedy, Mom, so unhappy with the way I was dressed, tried to make me go to the bathroom and change.) Without uttering a single word, Inah still manages to make me feel defensive.
“Inah!” I grab her, wrapping my arms around her bony shoulders and squeezing them. She smells a little sweaty and dusty, like a child who’s been out playing on a hot, sticky summer afternoon. She grudgingly endures my claustrophobic arms, then pulls away.
“How was the flight?” she asks, but I know she doesn’t mean it to be a question; it’s just sort of a defensive bumper she throws around her perimeter.
“So-so. Just a little tired,” I answer. “I hope you’re not pissed off waiting.” Inah doesn’t say anything. She has only now noticed the ugly dinosaur of a suitcase sitting at my feet. She looks at it disapprovingly. Somehow, it looks even more hideous than it did at Kennedy.
“Sorry, Inah. Mom brought it to the airport and I couldn’t say no. It’s for you, although I don’t know what it is. I had to lose her kimchi, though. She brought it in a huge bottle duct-taped like an Egyptian mummy.” But she barely listens. She couldn’t care less. “Mom kept begging, saying it was your favorite radish kimchi,” I continue obtusely. “I left it at the bathroom at Kennedy. By the trash bin. I bet someone called in a bomb squad. Anyway, if Mom asks you about it, I am afraid you’ll just have to lie to her.”
“Whatever,” Inah mutters, shrugging her shoulders. “Wait here. I am gonna go and get the bus tickets.” She takes off.
I see the Italian man from the plane. Carrying the blue-striped burlap sack in one hand and a brown battered suitcase held together with a cloth belt in the other, and flanked by a short, plump woman and a cherubic, rosy-cheeked boy with splayed brown hair, he’s heading for the door. Beaming, no longer chipping away at waiting but in a happy hurry to get home.
FOUR
Daddy doesn’t come home that weekend because of the snowstorm that blankets the mountainous eastern region. On Monday morning, Inah wakes up all cranky and tails Mommy around the house like her little shadow, all fixated on her. Begging and pleading with her to stay home and play with her.
“Go tomorrow,” she begs again for the tenth time when Mommy sits down in front of the vanity mirror. “Stay home and play with me.”
“You know I can’t,” Mommy says. “But soon, when school closes for the winter, Mommy will stay home and play with you every day.”
“But I want you to stay home today,” Inah insists.
“Haven’t I told you to leave your mother alone and come and eat?” Grandma yells at her again. “It’s not like she doesn’t feel bad enough already, and I tell you I am not going to chase you around the house with a rice bowl and a spoon. Like an old slave.” Inah looks at Grandma uncertainly, angrily turns her head away and sits around with a sour face, pulling at her hands. Then she notices Mommy’s handbag lying on the floor, and her eyes light up. She springs to her feet, grabs it and runs out of the room. It’s all right, Mommy says when I tell her. Soon Inah rushes back, and she doesn’t have Mommy’s handbag with her anymore.
“Umma,“ she says, sticking her head over Mommy’s shoulder, making her eyes big and putting on a surprised look. “I don’t know where your handbag is!”
“Not to worry. I am sure we’ll find it,” Mommy says, powdering her nose.
“No, no! I am telling you. It’s gone. You can never find it!” She squeals fanatically, but Mommy just smiles. Looking dejected and miserable, Inah impatiently watches Mommy inside the mirror, coloring her lips with her lipstick that she swivels out of a shiny black tube.
Out in the alley dark as a rainy day, Inah whimpers and hangs on to Mommy’s coat. Grandma asks her what’s the matter. Let go of the coat and say good-bye. Only Inah clings on to Mommy even more desperately, clutching her coat with both of her hands.Mommy pats her on her head and tells her to be good. She will bring her favorite walnut cookies later. Inah shakes her head hard and says she doesn’t want walnut cookies, she only wants Mommy.
“Good, then Yunah can have all the walnut cookies to herself,” Grandma says, and Inah bursts out crying. Mommy is frustrated; she’s going to be late. She asks Grandma to hurry and take the twins inside before they catch cold. Grandma peels Inah off Mommy, and Mommy hurries down the alley. Inah shrieks, shakes off Grandma’s hand and runs after Mommy all the way to the end of the alley where the narrow strip of gray sky unfurls into a curtain. But Mommy doesn’t stop or look back. The fluttering hem of her coat turns the corner after her like a flag, and she is gone. Inah squats down in the middle of the damp alley and bawls.
“Umma! Umma! “ squeals Inah. Her cries bloom in echoes and escape like frightened birds into the narrow sky above. Don’t know what’s wrong, Grandma says. She has never done this before. Grandma starts toward her, and Inah gets hysterical.
“Go away!” Inah screams, flailing her arm.
“Stop crying!” Grandma yells. “People will think your mother’s dead or something!” Grandma comes back, takes my hand and says we are going in without Inah. Let her stay here and cry all day, all alone, until she’s hoarse and sick in the throat and frozen stiff like a winter pollack. No one’s going to come but the alley ghost to carry her away on his back.
“No, no, no,” Inah shrieks and screams.
“Stop crying then! How long are you going to cry? Can’t you see I am too old for this? If you don’t like to be with your old grandma, tell your mother to quit school and stay home. I’ve been taking care of you two long enough. I’ve had it. I’d much rather spend my days in the country watching the clouds roll in the sky.”
Grandma pulls my hand and pretends to walk away. Inah bolts up as though on a springboard and runs after us, screaming and stamping her feet. “No, Grandma! No!” But as soon as we stop, she squats right back down and sobs on hoarsely between jerking hiccups. She’s freezing. Her face is goose bumped. Her nose drips like a faucet. Her lips are blue and purple. She trembles and shakes. Grandma runs back and angrily grabs her arm and yanks her off the ground.
“Stop crying! How many times did I tell you? How many times? You cry the first thing in the morning, it brings nothing but bad luck!”
“I hate you, Grandma, I hate you,” Inah cries.
After a nap and lunch, though, Inah is in a good mood again. Sprawled next to me on her stomach like a starfish, she’s looking at our baby pictures in the little blue vinyl pocket album. Turning the pages back and forth and finger-rubbing the pictures, she sings and talks and laughs and kicks her legs in the air.
“You see that?” Grandma says, stabbing and pulling back her knitting needles. “Some kinds of moods she has! They change more often than the summer monsoon sky.”
After a while, Inah sits up and blankly stares at the picture I am drawing—Mommy in a red coat with a big toothy smile and a blue flower in her hand.
“Halmoni,“ says Inah, turning to Grandma.
“What’s the matter? Are you already bored looking at the pictures?”
“I am hot,” Inah says.
“It’s not so hot. Keep your clothes on if you don’t want to catch cold.”
“But I am hot,” she says again, but Grandma just grunts. Inah gets up and goes over to the toy chest and pulls out a xylophone and a drumstick. She brings them over and sits down and starts banging away. The jangled notes she plucks out fly and spatter the walls and spray the warm and stuffy room like broken pieces of glass. On top of the potbellied iron stove, flared up in a red shimmery glow, the barley tea that Grandma sips all day like a fish starts boiling again in a big dented yellow aluminum teakettle. Coughing up clumps of thick white steam, hissing and shrieking like a stoned bird and rattling the lid in a rhythmic click, clack. The gray sky outside the window swells and sags lower and lower, and the room grows warmer and stuffier and gloomier.
Glassy-eyed and looking sweaty and flushed in the face, Inah, peeled off down to her undershirt and long johns, recklessly bangs away at the xylophone.
“You’re making a racket!” yells Grandma, getting up, as if she is hearing it only now. After turning on the light switch, Grandma goes over to the stove and pours cold water into the teakettle: Right away the shrieking bird goes quiet. Inah throws down the drumstick and asks Grandma if we’re going to the bus stop to wait for Mommy.
“Look at the sky,” Grandma says, picking up her knitting. “It’s going to dump snow any minute.”
Inah looks up at the window and says, “Halmoni! Look! It’s snowing already!” Excited, Inah claps her hands. Grandma glances up at the window, where tiny snowflakes land, sticking.
“A few dancing flakes, that’s all,” Grandma says. “They will just dust the ground like dandruff and melt right off.” Inah and I sit and watch white snowflakes float down. They get bigger and bigger, and soon they turn into a wet, dizzy flurry, pelting and streaking the window.
“Halmoni, it’s snowing harder,” Inah says. Grandma looks up again and says, “Aiigoo! I must be losing my mind! I’ve forgotten all about the laundry.” She puts down her knitting, gets up and reties the belt around her ballooning chima. “I am going to bring the laundry in. Don’t run around, and stay away from the stove!” Winding the knitted scarf around her neck, Grandma hurries out of the room. The door settles behind her with a tremble.
On the floor, Grandma’s knitting on three bamboo needles rests like a squirrel, the ball of mauve yarn attached to it like a tail. Inah looks about and spots a doll’s arm sticking out from behind the toy chest. She goes over, pulls it out and holds it up in front of her.
“You’re a dirty, dirty baby,” she says to the doll in her high-pitched voice, mimicking Mommy. She wets her finger and rubs at the doll’s face, which is smudged all over with magic pen makeup.
“It’s OK. I will take her to the bathhouse,” I say, pulling at its torn jacket, which Grandma stitched up from an old scrap of cloth. The jacket falls apart at the seams and easily comes off in my hand.
“No, no, no! I am taking her to the bathhouse,” Inah says, pulling back the doll. I grab its arm and yank at it hard. It comes off at the socket. Surprised, Inah looks at the now one-armed doll, turns around and darts up, clutching it. I throw down the arm and run after her.
“Give her to me! I want it,” I shout.
“No, it’s mine!” she shouts back. “She’s my baby.” Dragging the doll behind her, upside down, she runs to the other end of the room, turns, circles around the hissing and blazing stove. Shrieking and shrieking every time I come close to catching her. Going around and around in circles. Stopping once long enough to push the hair away from her sweaty face. Before long, I am hot and out of breath, and my head swims, and cheeks throb, but I keep running after her, strangely fixated on the doll Inah carelessly drags behind her along the floor. With her plaited black hair undone, her wide-open brown eyes fixed to the ceiling, and the one arm, twisted up and backward, scraping the floor, the doll looks miserable and frightened. She seems to be pleading for my help as she is being dragged away, and I am determined to rescue her.
But suddenly, a strange thing happens. I am stopped in my tracks by a pair of clawed hands grabbing my ankles. I falter a little around my tangled feet. And then, I can’t move. It’s as though my feet are glued to the floor.
It happens the very moment Inah trips on the metal tray placed underneath the blazing iron stove.And all I do is just stand there frozen and watch as hot and cold shivers shoot up through my head in millions of tiny sparks of fireworks: Inah falling and tumble-landing on her knees as if after a bad somersault attempt; her hair flying out and over her.
As I watch, another thing happens. Like a fuse blowing out, a soft pop goes off in my head and everything goes very quiet. All the sound is lost and gone. And I keep standing there, watching and watching as everything in the room shifts. All at the same time. In no particular order. In a chaotic and jumbled but also very slowed-down and drawn-out movement. The aluminum teakettle holding the boiling barley tea atop the stove comes unhinged, as if tossed from underneath, and flies off into the air. It then slowly drifts back down. Bouncing in an undulating motion. Vomiting into the air jet-stream gulps of brown, steamy liquid, which jump in splashes of breaking waves and scatter in particles of a waterfall.
Then just as abruptly, sounds return again. The kettle crashes onto the floor, making a simple and light clanking sound. The fired metal of the stove hisses madly, burning off the black water marks, shriveling them fast in jagged patterns of worm-eaten leaves. The stovepipe above snaps at the joints in a loud thunder-crackling noise and comes crashing down only to halt at midway, dangling from a steel wire like a badly broken arm. Finally, the smell of something burning. Meat. Wool. Hair.
I look down. Next to the doll spread on its back, Inah is sitting crunched on the floor. Her small body is tightly curled over her knees, and she’s frantically flailing her hands and arms about her face, which is covered with hair and spattered with scalding hot, brown barley tea. And she is howling and howling. It is the most awful sound I will ever hear—the howls she spits out. Ferocious, piercing and jagged-edged, they seem to be exploding out of her little bent-around body. Not out of her mouth. Splitting and tearing open her skin. I coil in terror, yet my mind still can’t grasp what is happening. Just seconds before, we were two happy kids, the “winter twins” who will never catch cold, playing and running around the room.
Just at that moment, the door flings open, and Grandma charges in like a gale of wind. The armful of frozen laundry she carries falls and litters the floor like stiff dead bodies as she bounds across the room. She seems to be floating, although below her cotton-padded pants, her small feet paddle furiously. Her wrinkled walnut face is all bunched up, ugly and dark. From her eyes, red sparks shoot out. Her mouth hangs open as if her jaws are stuck. Her chalky white hair spreads out from her head like fine steel shreds. She is screaming and calling out to Inah, but all sound is lost to me again.
Grandma reaches down, scoops up howling Inah into her arms as ferociously as a vulture snatching its prey, and flies out of the room. Spilling the ends of the blanket she has piled on Inah. Forgetting to put on her shoes. Forgetting to close the door. Forgetting the whole world but Inah. Crying and screaming, I run after them, out of the room, out of the house to the snowy alley. But there is no trace of either one. It is as if Grandma has flown off into the narrow sky above. Carrying Inah in her thin, old, ropey arms.
FIVE
On the bus to Venice from the airport, Inah isn’t much in the mood for talk. After a perfunctory “How’s Mom and how’s Dad?” she is silent as a wall. She keeps her head averted, her squinting eyes fixed on the murky, sun-shot bus window, which frames blurry pictures of single-story brick houses with flowerpots and small wrought-iron-fenced-in gardens.
Something about the scenery reminds me of the outskirts of Veracruz, where I spent a miserable week the first summer at NYU. Across the aisle, two middle-aged American couples, the only passengers other than us, are talking—they have that twangy Texas drawl—and laughing with that peculiar gaiety people on vacation develop. They are all dressed like plumed birds, even the men, in intense polyester pinks, turquoises and yellows.
“Oh, darn, Jimmy, I don’t care what you think,” says the thin, middle-aged woman whose bleached white hair is gathered up into a feather duster. She has a shrill, pinched, nasal voice that is grating to the ear. “Julie and I ain’t gonna leave Venice without a gondola ride. I hear those gondolier boys are so darn cute!” They burst into laughter. Inah rolls her eyes and grunts.
The sun has all but burned through the morning fog when we get off the bus at Piazzale Roma. The narrow roads that peter away from the circle are throttled with noon traffic, and the air chokes with fumes. A little dazed by the heat, I hang back while Inah militantly heaves out Mom’s ugly suitcase from the luggage
compartment of the bus. She plunks it down and looks on impatiently as I adjust the straps of my backpack. Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a stocky man in a tricolor shirt striding over in our direction.
“Miss, want water-taxi ride?” he says in a booming voice, raising his arm. He has a dark, sun-grizzled face with a bulbous nose punctuating the middle. Inah flashes me an angry, black look as if it were my fault. “Promise! You enter Venice like queens!” he declares in his oddly Brooklyn-accented English. What a great line, I think. Borrowed from an opera? But aren’t we in Venice? Confused, I look at Inah. I can tell she isn’t terribly impressed. She has heard that exact same phrase before. More than once.
“Don’t be gullible, Yunah. It’s BS. And we’re walking,” she says.
“What hotel you stay?” he says again. “Just tell me.”
“No, grazie,“ Inah blurts out tersely and picks up the handle to Mom’s suitcase. It must have been the glare of the sun. He is only now seeing Inah’s face. A look of surprise flashes through his eyes. Then, as if he can’t help himself, he briefly stares at her face, turns around and takes off up the road. Without another word. Huffing. I almost expect him to spit.
His blatant display of hostility catches me completely off guard, and I stand dumb and speechless. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been through this sort of thing before. Indeed, how many times? More than enough. And I haven’t forgotten any of that. I was there, wasn’t I, when mean kids called Inah every imaginable name? And haven’t I seen the looks on the faces of people, the hostile stares and furtive glances? But none of that helps, and it’s something I never get used to. I am never prepared for the next time, and the hurt is always fresh. I am stunned, taken aback, helpless and angry. But more than anything, I feel stupid.