Translations of Beauty

by Mia Yun

  In the middle of every fight, though, Inah storms off to her room and locks herself in. She does it because she knows it gets me mad like nothing else. And what do I do? Bubbling and boiling with rage, I follow her and park myself outside her room. Banging at the door and jiggling the doorknob, I scream and yell at the top of my lungs, telling her to open the door. According to Mom, a pig being slaughtered wouldn’t sound as ugly and horrible. Of course, Inah is no fool. She isn’t ever going to make me happy by opening the door. She taunts me from behind it while I rant on and on “like a maniac.” It’s a good thing she locks herself in the room, because otherwise she might just end up missing a limb or two.

  It’s a matter of pride. I can’t ever bring myself to back down. After a while, I just change my tactics, turning the tables. Through the crack of the door, in my little-girl voice, I call out to her, using her various nicknames: Pootz, Pootzy Poot, Pootzy Pringle, Pootzeroon, Whoopsie Daisy, Rap Scallion, Sparkle Plenty and so on.

  “Come on, Pootz, Pootzeroon, Pootzy Poot, open the door,” I croak. That sends her off to the roof. Incensed, she will grab a book or something and throw it at the door. Screaming, “Go away, you freak! Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier!” Or something incredibly stupid like that. And I holler back, “Oh, why don’t you drop dead, you geek!”

  Not wanting to be accused (by me, of course) of taking sides with Inah, Mom waits and waits patiently, hoping we will stop. But when she’s had it, she will race up the stairs, her face all flushed, and haul me downstairs and herd me into the kitchen so we will be out of Inah’s earshot when she and I have a talk.

  Then I have to stand there and listen to Mom saying things like how she’d rather die than see us fight like this all the time. She won’t let me put in a word. Every time I try to explain the situation, she just shushes me. It doesn’t matter who’s right, she says. Let Inah win. To keep peace. Do that for me, Mom asks, if you can’t do that for Inah. Another favorite line of Mom’s is that after she and Dad are gone, Inah will be all I have. But really, what kind of logic is that? All I ask Mom is just to be fair. I don’t think she has ever listened to what Inah says to me. I mean, what right does she have to call me a slut just because I put on a tight T-shirt? Why do I have to constantly look over my shoulder? Why do I have to live like this? Mom can’t and won’t answer these blazing questions of mine.

  And so, while Inah sulks and wallows in self-pity and gloats in her warped sense of victory behind the locked door of her room, Mom and I go back and forth, arguing; Mom, in her rapid-shooting Korean, and I, in my rude and insolent-sounding English Mom just can’t stand. The whole point lost in translation. It is like shadow boxing. Frustration galore.

  But I am not that dense. I know, and I think Mom does too, that all these fights and skirmishes we have are not really about these petty things. It’s the onset of our puberty, and fear. Naturally, in the confusion of fear, every little thing gets snowballed into an epic struggle. But the way Mom sees it, I have the face Inah lost. Isn’t that enough of luck and fortune? What more could I want? I should try to put myself in Inah’s shoes. Instead, all I do is stir up the pot. Rubbing it in. Rubbing what in? For one thing, try not to pay so much attention to how you look, Mom says. I can never win. If I put on a tight-fitting T-shirt, it’s to flaunt it. But I do what other girls do at my age. Is it such a bad thing, wanting to experiment with simple lip gloss? But nothing I do will ever seem innocent to Mom (or to Inah). But I can’t do what Mom wants me to do: She wants me to cloak it and hide it. Just as Inah does. As if that’s going to do it.

  The day I got my first period, Mom rushed me to the bathroom, locked the door and kept saying in a whisper, “Already?!” She seemed more scared than I was. Not for me but for Inah, who had yet to start her period. I remember squatting on the toilet with a bad cramp. Mom asked me not to tell Inah about it. Why, I asked, puzzled, and Mom said she didn’t have to know about it. As if it might give Inah a wrong idea. That’s when I realized how Mom was so frightened of the idea of Inah growing up and becoming a woman. Shunned and ignored. Mom couldn’t bear to imagine the pain of rejection Inah would have to go through.

  But there’s nothing Mom can do to stop me or Inah from growing and changing. Inah doesn’t live in a cocoon. She goes out every day. She sees and hears and thinks. That’s why she’s getting so quiet and withdrawn. She has known for a long time that being smart isn’t enough. Out there. In the real world. Mom can’t shield Inah from what’s inevitable. Still, she tries. In her blind hope. But how is Mom going to stop Inah from becoming a woman? She can’t spare her the pain. Still, Mom can’t help herself.

  Inah must feel and smell the fear that burns and scorches Mom. The fear that emits short, hot waves and stokes up such anxiety. That’s why her body hardly changes. Fourteen years old and all she’s got are narrow hips and small buds for a chest. Even though we are identical twins, our bodies couldn’t be more different. It’s as if Inah wills her body to stay that way. To quell Mom’s fear.

  “You will see. It’s a mansion,” Mom says out of the blue. She’s back to the topic of Uncle Shin’s nouveau riche house she’s been telling us about for weeks. We already know all about the marble-floored bathrooms, whirlpool baths, cathedral windows and big oval-shaped swimming pool. Mom’s voice is thick, poisoned with envy. It’s the voice she uses when she talks about other people’s cars, other people’s houses and other people’s kids. When she says other people, she means other Koreans. We know Dad hates it when she does that, but he doesn’t say anything. Inah sighs audibly.

  The anemic air conditioner suddenly spurts back to life, and whizzes and purrs, blowing out musty air. Dad shuts it off. Inah and I roll the windows all the way down, letting in the sticky, warm air. Mom obliviously goes on, saying how some people move upward in life and others she knows—we know whom she means—stay in the same place, like going through a revolving door.

  “Mom?!” I whine.

  “What?” she says. “Have I said something wrong?” She casts a sidelong glance at Dad and adds, “Don’t worry. Your father, as usual, hasn’t heard a thing I said. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”

  “Dad, is it true?” I ask.

  “Uh? What’s true?” Dad says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. Mom grimaces and clucks her tongue. It’s now as hot as an oven in the back. Inah, who’s been trying to tune Mom out, pulls her propped arms in from the windowsill and stares at the back of Dad’s seat. I grab the New York City Five Borough Pocket Atlas Dad keeps in the car and flip through the pages.

  “Did you know there are zillions of cemeteries in Queens?” I ask Inah, effectively annulling the fact that we’re in a cold war. “It’s got to be the world’s capital of cemeteries.” I notice her right leg has strayed into the DMZ.

  “So?!” she says tersely, putting back down her leg.

  “Look at all these cemeteries: Calvary. New Calvary, Mount Zion, Mount Olive, Lutheran, St. John’s, Mount Hebron, Flushing, St. Mary’s …” I point at them, shaded in lime green. “What do you think it is about Queens that attracts all the immigrants and the dead?”

  “The land is cheap in Queens,” Inah states drily.

  “Like you should know!” I put the Pocket Atlas back onto the ledge behind the backseat. Inah slides her hands under her butt and, slouching, stares out the window with a faraway look, listlessly peeling her sweaty legs off the seat. The sucking sound drives me crazy, but I don’t say anything, not wanting to be blamed for starting another fight.

  I notice we are passing the dark underpass curve that climbs out and merges into the westbound B.Q.E. near the Kosciuszko Bridge. The bridge marks the border of Queens and Brooklyn, and the traffic is always heavy there. In anticipation of merging, Dad puts on the left-turn signal. Then, just as we slowly merge into the traffic on the B.Q.E., the old clunker gasps and purrs, and we notice a thick gray column of steam spewing out of the front hood. It quickly turns into blackish clouds outside the windshield.


  Mom immediately starts to panic. Because of what happened to Inah, she can’t stand the sight of fire or smoke. It doesn’t help that she hasn’t a clue as to how a car works (not that we do). She’s so sure that the car is about to blow up any minute in a fireball, tossing us into the air, blown apart in bits and pieces.

  “Get out of the car! Quick!” Mom yells at us in her frantic, fear-stricken voice. Mad at Mom, Dad screams at her that she is going to get all of us killed.

  “Stay in the car! Stay in the car!” Dad shouts, trying to maneuver the car back over to the shoulder. Inah and I push our heads out the windows and frantically wave, trying to warn the cars behind us. All the while, paralyzed with unbearable fear, Mom sits with her eyes crushed shut and her hands closed in tight fists.

  “No good! It’s dead!” Dad announces. “Get out of the car and go over to the shoulder. Watch out!”

  Inah and I scramble out the back door and help Mom out. And then, holding her by the arms, we make a dash toward the shoulder like border-crossing aliens. Gripped with fear, Mom can barely move. But Inah is absolutely calm. It’s morbid, but even as I dash toward the shoulder with Mom and Inah, in my head I can almost see our mangled and twisted bodies lying on the road and Mom crumbled over us, wailing.

  Dad’s face is drenched with sweat when he finally makes his way over to join us. Our car, an old dung-colored Oldsmobile, sits in between the two merging lanes, belching out black smoke from under the propped-up hood. Mom asks Dad what’s wrong with it and what we are going to do. We know for sure we are not going to make it to Uncle Shin’s for the housewarming party, and won’t get to admire his nouveau riche house. Dad says we will have to wait for the tow truck. But it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon. The traffic is already backed up for miles. And the other side of the B.Q.E.—bottlenecked by the new asphalt-laying work—looks as bad if not worse. We can see a long swath of a yellowish-gray smoke trail hanging in midair like clouds.

  Peering up and down the road, Dad paces restlessly. Against the corrugated, rusting rail, Inah and I stand around Mom. It’s almost surreal. The glare of the sun. The boiling heat. The humidity. The dust. The hot air, reeking tar. The constant ping, ping metallic hum coming off the bridge. Miles of snarling traffic without end.

  Dad finally says he’s going to go and look for help. Inah and Mom try to talk him out of it, but he takes off anyway, down the hill, heading toward the Meeker Avenue exit. Mom, recovered from the initial shock, gets all mad. She says she knew something like this would happen sooner or later. She has been telling Dad to get rid of that “junkyard” car for months. Inah and I, crushed by the heat, keep our mouths zipped.

  “At least the view is great,” Inah mutters ironically. But it’s really true. We have miles of unhindered view stretching all the way to Manhattan. The spot is any photographer’s dream. Below us, the stagnant Newtown Creek lazily coursing away like worn, relaxed yarn looks oddly pastoral; its oily surface, glossy and flat like a black mirror, reflecting the hazy summer sky dappled with white clouds, and the smokestacked, rusting, industrial buildings. To the right, the sprawling Calvary Cemetery looks like an immense, hunkered-down lion, gasping and panting, impaled by a million corroding, blackened stones of the dead. Suffering from its own traffic jam. Even if only a muted one.

  “Mom, look at the view!” Inah pleads, trying to distract her, but she’s too shaken, too hot, and too upset to give a hoot about the view. We know that if she could, Mom, being a true-blue Flushing bourgeoise, would bribe God with everything she had just to be about any place in the world except here. She’s most probably worried about being seen—by people we know and she knows, like people from her church who may just happen to go by—standing huddled in the heat like a bunch of refugees, and our car, the ugly, rust-eaten Oldsmobile (Uncle Shin calls it “Oz-mo-bill”) sitting there in the middle of the highway like a war relic, belching smoke.

  “Now everyone knows,” Mom says, reacting inappropriately as usual, as if anyone gives a hoot about what kind of car we drive. Inah mumbles to herself that she didn’t know it was our best-kept secret.

  “Knows what, Mom? And who’s everyone?” I ask.

  “Why, the people passing by. They can see,” Mom says, wiping the rivers of sweat on her forehead with a ball of tissue.

  “So what? It’s not like you’re famous. And what do you care? You are not ever going to see these people again. And you always tell us not to care about what other people think.”

  “Shut up, Yunah,” Inah says. “You always have to make it worse.”

  “And you don’t,” I hiss.

  “And you two have to fight even here,” Mom says, worryingly and anxiously peering toward the Meeker Avenue exit. No sign of Dad or a tow truck. From every car that crawls by, people still gawk, rubbernecking. A beat-up, acid-burned Mustang rolls by with several tattooed, beefy guys in it. (Remember? Dad once wanted a Mustang!) They shower us with catcalls, banging the sides of the car with their hands. Inah sticks her tongue out and I give them the finger. Horrified, Mom yells at us to turn around and stand facing away from the traffic. But it feels really indecent standing like that. Like we are mooning the whole world.

  Inah glumly gazes at the skyscrapers of Manhattan far away: steeples of steel and glass soaring like cliffs along the East River; a twelve-paneled screen, shimmering in silver and white and blue. After a long while, Inah heaves a sigh and says, “I can’t wait to go to college. I can’t wait to leave home.” She says it almost in a whisper, as if she is saying it to herself. “And I am going to go far away, too. And never come back to Flushing.” I am too scared to say anything.

  “You heard me, Yunah,” Inah says.

  TWO

  After a late lunch, Inah and I head up to the Boboli Gardens. The cone-shaped hill rises continuously in steep angles, and it makes an arduous climb in the thick heat. Above the hill, the sky around the sizzling sun is all bleached salt white.

  At the hilltop, we wander into a small, lovely garden. Its one end overlooks the low, rolling hills below, dotted with olive trees and dark green cypresses shaped like tall candle flames. At the other end stands a small, rococo-style fountain resembling a fancy tiered wedding cake, very different from the ones we’ve seen so far in Florence. It’s being repaired. In the shallow, green, scummy pool, a half-dozen hot-looking men are standing around, conducting a loud heated debate, we assume, about how best to go about doing the job at hand. Then all of a sudden, the debate escalates into a shouting match, and one of the men, in disgust, throws up his arms and walks out of the pool. We figure it’s time to leave.

  It’s then, following Inah back down to the wrought-iron gate, I notice the low green bushes in the flowerbeds. No flowers, but I instantly recognize those dark green, waxy leaves with serrated edges. They are peony trees. Who knew. There are peonies in Italy. For some reason, I’ve always associated them with Asia and Korea. And with Dad and his affair. I hurry out, hoping Inah hasn’t noticed them. I don’t know exactly why.

  Outside, discouraged by the heat, we agree to forgo the walk to the Forte di Belvedere and slowly meander our way back down the hill. Halfway down, we spot a bench in the shade and sit down. Around us, the sluggish afternoon stands breathlessly still, and there’s not even a hint of a breeze. Below us, from the huge, onyx-colored marble fountain, which we find absolutely hideous, gray columns of water soar silently. And beyond, through the thick, hazy heat, the gray-blue hills lapping away into the far distance seem to shimmer and shift. The only other people around are two shirtless, gangly American teenage boys loudly playing chess at a nearby bench. Their American accents couldn’t sound more foreign here. We couldn’t possibly come from the same country.

  I leave Inah on the bench and move to the grass under a tree and sprawl on my back. Inah makes herself comfortable and opens up a book. (It’s the kind of book found in the parapsychology section at bookstores.) I close my eyes, and instantly I am drifting down a slow-moving river. Soon,
germinated by this and that, thoughts crop up in my head, and smothered images spring back to the surface and grow branches before I can snuff them out. (Is it the peonies I just saw?) Miles and miles away, but life back at home still follows me. With all its cluttered details. Dad. Mom. My job at the Legal Aid Society. Other people’s troubled lives I deal with day in and day out. And even Tai, whom I broke up with months ago. Back home, they are all waiting to claim me back. Home that Inah strenuously avoids talking about. Because she knows it will be like punching a hole in a dam. But she must know she’s missing everything. The family that is getting older (and getting younger) all the time. Shrinking and expanding like the moon. But she doesn’t want to be any part of it. She wants to run away until she’s undefinable, unknowable and unreachable.

  By now everyone’s used to Inah’s absence from family scenes. Her name hardly comes up anymore. She doesn’t figure in at family functions. Sometimes, it seems she has never existed. I remember Cousin Ki-hong joking, “I hear Inah’s in India. Do you think she’s gonna come back a vegetarian?” Ha, ha. He thought he was being funny, but his casual remark had a bite.

  It was Cousin Ki-hong’s second daughter’s first birthday, and we were standing on the kitchen deck at his parents’ house in Staten Island. Barefoot and in shorts and a black Polo shirt, he was dangling a donkey piñata to the gaggle of excited kids down below in the backyard lawn where white kids, Korean kids, black kids, half-Korean, half-white kids formed a mini United Nations. It was hard to believe, but Ki-hong, once our idol, the Kiss fan who used to be a skinny, earringed rebel in black jeans with a Hispanic girlfriend, had married a Korean girl and long become a suburban family man, bloating in domestic bliss, driving around in a baby-seat-strapped Saab. I was sure the hole in his soft earlobe had long closed up.