Translations of Beauty

by Mia Yun

  I realize there’s no point. It’s hopeless. No amount of reasoning and talking and screaming would do any good. She just is not here. As I am about to let go of her arm, though, Inah angrily jerks it, loosening it from my grip.And I just lose it. I grab her backpack on the bed and smash it down to the floor. And then violently pushing her out of the way, I storm into the closet and drag out her knapsack. I pull a bunch of her shirts and jeans out of it and hurl them into the air. And her journal falls out, bounces across the floor and lands like a broken wing.

  “What are you doing?” Inah screams. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “You think I’m crazy? You haven’t seen how crazy I am!” I pick up one of her wash-worn, discolored white T-shirts and rip it open and stomp on it, smearing it with my sandal-prints. And all the time, I feel strangely detached from it all. In my head, I am calmly watching what I am doing, and I even see my own face, all distorted with anger and rage. Inah doesn’t try to stop me. Instead, she bends down and starts picking up the shirts and jeans strewn around the floor. I go over and push her away.

  “What are you, goddamn stone deaf? How many times do I have to tell you, Inah? You don’t need these stupid clothes! Do you have any idea what you look like in these? A goddamn creep, that’s what you look like.” I tug at the handful of shirts Inah has gathered in her hands. But she isn’t about to let them go. She holds on to them dearly, as if it is her last stand. As if those ugly, oversized T-shirts were her lifeline. “How long are you going to hide behind them, Inah? How long? I’m so sick of them. I’m so sick of your clothes, your hair, your glum face. Sick of everything about you!” Inah glares at me, her eyes bright and intense and fierce, giving me a spark of hope that she will fight back. But she just bites down hard on her lip and turns her head away.

  “No, no, no, Inah. Don’t look away! Look at me! Look me in the eye and say something! Anything! What’s on your mind? What do you write in your stupid journal every day? I don’t know who you are anymore. What’s happened to you? You used to be such a fighter. So feisty and spirited. Remember? Remember those mean kids who used to say terrible, cruel things to you and call you all kinds of names? You used to fight back. What happened to that feisty girl, Inah? I miss that little Inah. I feel I have lost her.” I hear my voice break hoarsely. Inah stands still, staring into space. The long fluorescent tubes over the oxide green desk flicker and hum. I am so unbearably sad that I can hardly breathe.

  “I know it’s hard for you, Inah,” I continue, driven by desperation. “But can’t you see that it’s not easy for me, either? I don’t know why it happened. Why it happened to you and not to me. I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times. But there’s no answer. It’s hard not only for you but also for everyone else around you. Try to understand that. No one, no one has it easy. All of us struggle. Isn’t life hard enough? We have to just go on as best as we can with what we have. You’re never going to solve anything by running away. How about the sacrifices Mom and Dad made for you? Do you remember? It was for you, Inah, that we came to America. Dad gave up everything. His job. His art. His lifelong friends. Do you know he broke all of his painting brushes before he left Korea? He came although he was way too old to start all over again from scratch in America. He gave up so much. For you. For us. Doesn’t it count? Even just a little? And we’re not teenagers. We are twenty-eight years old, Inah. A little bit too old to blame everything and everyone but yourself. It’s time for you to take some responsibility. Time for you to get on with life. I will do anything to make it easier for you. You know that. But I just can’t live like this anymore.

  “Please, Inah. I am begging you. Why are we here, so far from home, fighting in this depressing hotel room when we could be having so much fun together instead? Why does it have to be this way? Tell me, because I don’t know why.” I grab Inah’s arms and shake them. “Please, Inah. Say something! Anything! I am begging you. Don’t just shut yourself up like this. You must have something to say. No?”

  But Inah just stands like an empty sack, like a wilting plant, letting me shake her. She doesn’t even try to defend herself. She doesn’t even try to fight back. She doesn’t even want to prove me wrong. She doesn’t do any of that. She just stands there, staring at the floor. Why? What’s wrong with her? Whatever I say or do isn’t doing any good. I let go of her and throw myself across the bed and sob, fueled with self-pity.

  I don’t know how much time has passed. When I look up, she is still standing on the exact same spot. By the bed. Noiselessly crying. It kills me.

  SEVEN

  Dad is not just having a quick fling, although Uncle Shin repeatedly reassures Mom when once a week he drives over from his wholesale store in Manhattan, making a long detour to his home in Staten Island. He brings us samples of custom jewelry, handbags and knit caps his company imports, and also Dad’s salary in cash, which he hands to Mom in a white envelope, like the “comfort money” Koreans bring to funerals.

  Every time, Mom sends us off in exile, and then when he’s leaving, Inah and I go out to the foyer to stand demurely next to Mom while Uncle Shin huffs and struggles to slip his swollen feet into his expensive leather loafers. His square-jawed face is usually muddled red from the soju he has had.

  “You two, don’t worry about anything,” Uncle Shin says to us. “Everything’s going to be fine. Your only duty is to study hard. Remember that. Your mother and I will take care of the rest.” Sometimes, as if on second thought, he pulls out a thick wad of cash from his trouser pocket, wets his thumb and peels off two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and squeezes them into our shrinking hands as Mom vehemently protests.

  “Buy what you need for school,” Uncle Shin says and walks out the door. We thank him to his back in our mosquito voices. Mom stands holding the door open, and we watch him walk to his car, his breath frosting, his toes pointing upward and outward, defiantly jabbing the cold air, and we feel strangely safe. Uncle Shin might be greedy and crass and might be the ugly Korean whom America loved to hate for his success, his big house, his expensive car and his money in the bank and for being unapologetic about it, but despite all the faults and bad taste, Uncle Shin is solid and reliable. Every time we watch him walk out into the night, for a wistful second, we wish Dad were a little bit like him and feel ashamed.

  Of course, Auntie Minnie is a lot more cynical. She insists Uncle “Sin” relishes it, the chance to take care of us. She knows he has always secretly coveted the role of the head of our loosely connected American family. Not that she articulates it that way.

  “Uncle ‘Sin’ think he godfather! It all show off. He do it because it make him feel good,” says Auntie Minnie, blowing out blue strands of cigarette smoke through her nostrils like chimney stacks at a Jersey oil refinery. She is often sleeping over and is already in her frilly pajamas: a turquoise slip-gown with an embroidered laurel of pink rose on the chest.

  “So what?” Mom says. “What do you do? You just sit around and talk, talk.”

  “Unni,“ Auntie Minnie hollers in exasperation. (She’s older than Mom, but she calls her “big sister” in deference to Dad.) “You not know Uncle Sin! How his mind work. He never go to university, not like you and uncle. He got …” Auntie Minnie turns to Inah and asks, “You so smart, Inah. What the word?”

  “Inferiority complex?” Inah answers po-faced from the living-room sofa, channel surfing. “Or carrying a chip on his shoulder?”

  “‘Complex,’ that the word? Anyway, he think, ‘Oh, they have university degree but they need my help.’ That the way he think. I know it. You wonder why I call him Uncle Sin!”

  Inah hates it when Auntie Minnie, presiding over the kitchen table, doles out outrageous advice and her cheap opinions to Mom in her “brook-clean” English. Saying things like, “Think it easy to fall in love? It even more easy to fall out of love!” or “Everything work. Even love!” or “Men think with their you know what.” Inah usually responds to Auntie Minnie’s pedestrian pop psychology with fr
equent eyeball rolling and groans, but sometimes she can’t help it: She falls off the couch, laughing and screaming.

  “Unni, how the old Korean saying go? ‘A house and a woman, they fall apart if you not take care of them’? So true! And how about the other one, ‘Silver no shine automatic. You got to polish it.’ About time you take care of yourself. Can’t just blame Uncle about what happen. Your fault, too. All you care about is your kids. This America, not same, same like Korea! You think Korean way and sacrifice everything for your children. And you think they be thankful? No. They think they so smart, they did it with no help. And now look what happen! Uncle run off!! That what I’m saying. Who care you born Miss Korea? Use more makeup! And if you like, I give your hair highlight. You laugh, but Uncle no different. He a man, no? And men who say they don’t care for flashy woman, they lying! And how you compete with that kind woman? She pro. She come on to Uncle, wagging tail. Uncle no made of stone. He not mind. Who mind? Men all same!”

  Finally Inah can’t stand it anymore. Hissing, she zaps off the TV, picks up her books and storms upstairs to her room. Not that Auntie Minnie notices.

  “You watch too many talk shows,” Mom finally tells Auntie Minnie. “And speaking of the old sayings you like so much, how about this one: ‘Fanning a burning house’? That’s exactly what you’re doing!”

  At this, Auntie Minnie bursts out laughing, and Mom clucks her tongue, determined to keep her in her place so she won’t get too comfortable with her. I guess it’s a class thing. Even in Flushing, such a thing as class exists. Mom weaves it into a fine, complicated web.

  But it’s thanks to Auntie Minnie that we are able to forget, even if only for a while. The nights she’s around, the kitchen often looks like a makeshift beauty salon. Every inch of the dining table is covered with her tools of the trade she brings over, along with her aluminum makeup travel case. She hoists reluctant Mom onto a chair with a plastic apron around her for what she calls a “total makeover.” After lots of tinkering, Auntie Minnie picks up the sweating gin and tonic glass from the dining table, where, in the ashtray, a cigarette seems to be permanently burning like an incense stick, and regards Mom, sipping her drink and checking the newly plucked eyebrows or the hair job.Mom, growing ever impatient, wants to know then if it’s almost done, and Auntie Minnie asks Mom if she ever relaxes and enjoys anything.

  Later, hungry, Inah sneaks in for a snack and stands agog at the chaotic scene. She stomps around the kitchen, reeking with perm solutions and nail polish and other chemical cocktails, coughing and waving away the swirling cigarette smoke, and opening the windows. Then she glances at Mom, who is hoisted on the chair like a hostage, her hair iron-molested and brush-teased, her face turned into a palette of primary colors by Auntie Minnie, and says in her low voice, “Oh mi god. Oh mi god.” Alarmed, Mom asks for a look and expectantly searches for her new, transformed self in the hand mirror I hold up for her. Of course, Mom is invariably horrified. “That’s it,” Mom declares. “No more makeovers. It’s just not me!” Auntie Minnie laughs and laughs and asks us isn’t it fun, just us girls and says who needs men.

  And there’s Inah and me and Auntie Minnie, on Wednesday nights when Mom goes to church, sitting around the dining table, playing “go-stop” with a deck of wha-too, Korean flower cards Auntie Minnie brings in her overnight bag. “Go-stop” is similar to poker, only much more complicated, and once you get the hang of it, it gets really addictive.

  Inah goes nuts because at a crucial and suspenseful moment, Auntie Minnie stops the game, complaining of a hot flash attack. She puts down the cards and sheds her cardigan sweater. This goes on until she is stripped down to just her bra.

  “Wait till you have menopause,” she says every time Inah grumbles. But that does it. Inah can’t stand it-Auntie Minnie sitting directly across the table with nothing on but her bra. She can’t help notice the stacks of naked flesh rolling around her middle like lumps of dough, and her ample breasts-two white full moons barely staying put in the bra cups-threatening to spill out.

  “Ugh! Ugh!” Prissy Inah keeps hissing in disgust, and Auntie Minnie asks her what’s the matter, it’s just us girls.

  I perfectly understand Inah, though. The undeniable truth is that we are all getting too comfortable and too complacent without Dad around. We used to be a little more careful with everything, watching our words and tapering our behavior. And Inah misses those boundaries that restrained us from straying too far, overstepping the line where an unconscious gesture forms into a habit that is vulgar and ugly.

  EIGHT

  The way the doorbell bursts so urgently, we know that it can’t be anyone but Auntie Minnie. And as soon as we open the door, she charges in like a gusting wind, loaded with bags and carrying with her the smell of winter evening and cigarette smoke.

  “Help me take off my boots,” she says, clumping down at the vestibule and pushing out her tree-trunk legs in thigh-length boots. It’s a mystery how she puts them on to begin with. Taking charge of each leg, Inah and I pull the zippers down, and the imprisoned flesh pours out like rising flour dough. Inah and I then give each boot a quick pull and a jerk, and end up on our butts with a boot in hand. Auntie Minnie scrambles and rushes up the hallway to the kitchen, slipping out of her coat.

  “Where is your mother?” she asks.

  “In the laundry room in the basement,” Inah says.

  “Does she know your dad is in Chicago?” she asks in Korean. It’s news. Inah and I look at each other.

  “Unni,“ Auntie Minnie hollers toward the basement. “I am here! Leave your miserable laundry and come up!” Auntie Minnie quickly mixes herself a gin and tonic and takes a long sip. Inah and I wait with unbearable anticipation. Finally, Mom comes up carrying a plastic basket full of dried clothes and towels. Auntie Minnie quickly wipes the cigarette ash off the table for Mom to empty the basket. We all pick up something and start folding.

  “Unni, you find out where Uncle hide in Chicago? You have phone number? You called? No?! I no understand what you wait for! License from God?” asks Auntie Minnie indignantly. “Why you still here anyway? Why not in Chicago? If I was you, I already in Chicago, just to see that shame, shame love nest with my own eye!”

  “Is Dad really in Chicago?” Inah cuts in. “How come you didn’t tell us, Mom?” Mom ignores her.

  “Grab the bitch and drag her out! I tell you. You have every right. That kind woman no understand no nice talk. If you like, I go with you!” Auntie Minnie tilts her head back and blows smoke trails from her nose. “Or you plan to sit here with your high-nose pride and lose Uncle?” Inah throws down the towel she has been folding and gets up.

  “He’s not a child,” Mom says calmly in Korean. “I am not going to drag him back here if his mind is going to be somewhere else. I’d rather live with a scarecrow.”

  “Unni! That just what I mean. You too proud! So what you went to that high-nosed university in Korea, you call Pear Blossom or Cherry Blossom. You just no understand men.” Auntie Minnie jiggles the ice in the glass. One of her slip-on nails is missing. She glances at Inah, standing against the counter, sulking.

  “If you know men so well, why did you get divorced?” Mom says. “Who’s giving advice to whom? I don’t need your advice. Don’t talk. You open your mouth, nothing but garbage comes out. And is it just any mouth? So pungent, too. You give me nothing but a headache.”

  “How you say that, Unni? You know it not my fault we divorce. He butterfly plenty, that SOB. That the reason we divorce!”

  “That’s not the only reason! You don’t think I have eyes? I saw you scream and curse at him. What man would have stayed? That’s not the way Korean women behave with their husbands,” Mom says cruelly.

  “Aigghhh! No make me start on that black SOB. And you wrong. I not like American women. You know American men no have no balls because women make them cook, do dish and laundry and even go shop grocery. I no did that to him. But that not enough!” Auntie Minnie is nearly shouting, and gesti
culating with her hand holding a cigarette. Mom winces. Auntie Minnie lights another cigarette and takes a long drag. She looks at me across the table and sighs.

  “Yunah, you lucky, so young and pretty. Good days all gone for you and me, Unni,“ shouts Auntie Minnie to Mom, her voice suddenly shrill. “We like flower already open and close. Golden age, silver age, all gone. Woman, no matter how pretty, she finish after forty. Not worth even shit. For men, it different story. Not fair, but that the way it is.

  “I so young and pretty when I marry that Wilson SOB and come to Brooklyn with him. His old friends tease him and say Steady Q back from Korea with China doll bride. They whistle when I walk by in miniskirt and high heel, the fashion at the time. Ugh, but I no like to remember that time too much. Wilson never told me everyone black where we go live in Brooklyn, America. I come and I see whole neighbor around Classon Avenue black. I see no white, no Asian. All black people. I very much shocked. Not the way I imagine America. No big houses with big, nice lawn. No shine plenty, big fancy cars. I just scared. But what point sitting around feeling sorry for me. In Korea, people call me yang-gongjoo. GI bride. I no miss that. Beside, Wilson in love plenty then. He so crazy about me, he no can keep his hands off. He all over me daytime, nighttime!” Auntie Minnie crushes her slim Virginia Slims into the Niagara Falls ashtray. She sees my mouth hanging open and laughs.

  “Enough!” Mom says angrily. “Some things you just don’t say in front of children! I don’t understand how you just spit out whatever comes to your mind.”

  “Unni, how old Yunah? Fit-teen? Sick-teen? She no more child. In America, they know everything at that age,” says Auntie Minnie, picking a cigarette ash from her lip.

  “I don’t care what you say. She’s not an adult. Besides, can’t you see that I have enough to worry about as it is? I’m just not in the mood to sit around and listen to your fungi-ridden old stories.” Mom gets up with the pile of folded laundry. Auntie Minnie quickly gulps down the last sip of the drink and tugs at Mom’s sleeve.