by Mia Yun
Love, Your twin, Yunah
As I start down from the Piazzale Michelangelo, the sun slips behind dark blue clouds and the afternoon light turns into a flat gray. I stop at the Ponte Vecchio over the languorously flowing Arno River, milky green and as opaque as melted jade. It’s the muted light, everything looks vivid and clear: the distant hills of dark green olive trees and cypresses, and the orange-tile-roofed houses into which the Arno silently disappears, as if strolling away. On the sandy bank below, a woman sits in a white canvas chair, gazing out at the river. In a white pants suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat banded with a flowing magenta ribbon, she looks like a figure of pointelle strokes in one of Seurat’s paintings Dad once took us to see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Impressionist exhibition. Inah and I were eleven or twelve. That was long, long ago.
ELEVEN
Friday evening, I answer the door and find Jessica Han and this Michael O’Connor standing under the yellow porch light. Looking like a pair of wet seabirds blown ashore by a gale wind. Apparently, Inah has sweet-talked Mom into letting their Friday night cooking club meet at our house, promising to deliver her a spanking clean kitchen afterward.
As if struck by lightning and not believing my eyes, I stand there and stare at this Michael. To Mom, Inah described him (he graduated from Stuyvesant the past sum-mer) as an aspiring chef. (Not a cook, a chef, Inah emphasized, saying there’s a difference.) Of course, the only chef I know is Chef Boyardee, in that funny chef ’s hat that looks like a chimney funnel, and a white medic gown straddling over his huge girth. Maybe that’s why I expected some nerd with a pimply face, gangly arms and a shocking mop of red hair to show up. Instead, slim and tall and with black hair
and a beautiful, pale face, he looks more like a celestial version of Bono of U2 or an Irish version of John Lone, who has that cold, unapproachable and unflappable beauty about him.
A pretty face always does wonders, because Mom makes a terrific fuss over Michael. Whatever reservations she had about him (he didn’t go to college) instantly evaporate. She gushes to us in Korean how he looks like a gui-gong-ja, a noble prince. I roll my eyeballs, Inah giggles, and Jessica Han, playing her cheerleader bit, tells Mom how these days cute chefs are like rock stars and supermodels, touted around by press agents.
Put off by his pretty face and burning with twisted jealousy, I decide to stay clear of the kitchen. I go up to my room and crawl in bed with my French grammar book. But I can’t concentrate. I hear them laughing, and cupboard doors banging in the kitchen downstairs. I lie around fuming. After a while, I invent a perfect excuse and go down for a hot cup of Ovaltine. The kitchen is in complete disarray.
The counter is littered with Hershey’s chocolate chips escaping from the ripped bag, and sticky, runny eggshells, and measuring cups, spoons and aluminum tins. The rest of the kitchen looks like a crime scene after the finger dusting; every surface their hands have touched is smeared with some sticky goo and flour dust. And there were Michael and Inah, standing at the counter side by side, whipping up egg yolk in a big glass bowl. Jessica Han has propped herself next to them, like a decorative plant, and is gibbering on the phone, her hand hitching up her shapely hip bone.
“Hey, Yunah!” Jessica sings, waving her fingers and switching the cordless phone to the other ear. She looks really girlie in a tacky way. Her pink, waxlike lipstick seems
to have been ironed on permanently, and her long hair is roller-set wavy. She is the Queens version of a California Valley girl cum cheerleader. Inah resolutely ignores me stomping around, banging and slamming the cupboard doors.
Finally Michael says, “You’re really welcome to join us, Yunah.” With such assumed familiarity! I think I am going to break out in hives.
“No thanks. Cooking is one thing I hope I will never have to do.” Inah loudly snickers. I decide to forgo Ovaltine, pour myself a glass of water and stomp out again.
The next Friday night, I am even more obnoxious. But Jessica Han behaves unerringly and unwaveringly pleasant, greeting me in her high-pitched, giggly voice, and Michael not even once betrays a sign that he is irritated by my less than stellar behavior. (That slightly amused look on his face gives me a fit every time.) Inah throws me a sidelong glance now and then but says not a word. I bump into her on purpose and pinch her hard at the arm, just to rattle her a little, but she doesn’t even wince, determined not to give me the satisfaction.
“Your mouth is sticking out a mile,” Inah informs me in a loud whisper when I brush past her again, using the Korean expression for sulking. I could sock her in the ear.
After everyone leaves, I go down to the kitchen, where Inah’s cleaning up. It has been a “chocolate mousse night.”
(Lots of eyeball rolling here.) On the wooden lacquer tray, little clear plastic champagne cups are sitting, filled with swirls of chocolate mousse. My mouth waters with a sugar craving.
“Want one?” Inah asks. “I’m going to put the rest in the fridge.” She hands me a spoon and a cup of mousse. As I shovel in a spoonful, Inah says, “You know it’s really embarrassing the way you act so hysterically every time they are here.”
“First of all, they’ve been here only twice. And I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. So if you do, shoot,” I say, sotto voce.
“I don’t have to say it, do I? It’s so obvious,” Inah says.
“Okay. I know what you are thinking, but let’s just say that it has nothing to do with Michael, the pretty Irish boy.”
“Huh!” snorts Inah, looking incredulous.
“All right, Miss Dense. Do I have to spell it out for you?
What I don’t understand is how you could have this stupid, mindless cooking club shit going. It’s not like everything’s perfect and worry-free on the home front.”
“Mom said okay. You got a problem with that?” Inah says curtly. “And it’s not my fault Dad’s having an affair.”
“Anyway, I bet he’s gay,” I say, trying to change the subject but unable to resist a dig. “A big pretty boy playing with flour dough and whipped cream and egg yolk. If he isn’t, why would he be hanging around with you and that floozy Jessica every Friday night.”
“You sure are warped in the head,” Inah says.
I don’t know if she lodged a complaint with Mom. The next Friday evening, when I stomp out of the kitchen to go up to my room, Mom follows me to the bottom of the staircase. “Why are you so rude to Michael?” Mom says in an angry whisper. “Did I teach you to treat a guest like that?”
“Mom! He’s not my guest. If he is, then how come I don’t remember inviting him?”
“Inah did. I did. So you behave,” Mom says.
“What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees and kowtow to him?” I sound so insolent, Mom grits her teeth.
“All right then. I can’t explain it, but I just can’t stand him.”
“Why, what’s wrong? He’s so nice!” Mom says, genuinely puzzled. I don’t know since when she thought so highly of a man who likes to cook. Korean men never cook, although I am sure that at Korean restaurants all the chefs are men.
Dad doesn’t cook. Mom doesn’t even like him hanging around the kitchen. It’s a glaring sign of schmaltziness.
What woman likes a schmaltzy man? If Michael were Korean, I am sure Mom would wonder what’s wrong with him. Americans are different, that’s what she would say if I pointed that out, so I don’t.
“What’s wrong?! I can’t believe you’re so gullible. Can’t you see what he’s up to? He wants to be a chef. He’s just using our kitchen because his stepmother won’t let him at their home and they got kicked out of Jessica Han’s! And I know, too, if Dad were here, you wouldn’t let Inah’s boyfriend hang around the kitchen, cooking.”
“Who says he’s her boyfriend? He’s just a friend,” Mom says defensively. “And what about Jessica? She’s here, too.”
“He’s not Jessica’s type! Really, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. I know you will have a fit i
f I bring a boy around.
But for Inah, the rule is different. You’d be dancing with joy even if it was Pee Wee Herman Inah brought home.”
“You can bring your friends any time.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Anyway, who’s this Pee Wee Hermit?” Mom, who tells me how she used to love poems by Rilke and Paul Verlaine (in Korean), has no idea who Pee Wee Herman is. She thinks I am talking about a cartoon character. Not that she’s too far off the mark.
TWELVE
Four days after Christmas, Auntie Minnie and Mom and I go to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. It’s Auntie Minnie’s idea: Mom needs to get out of Flushing. I go along only because it is the night the stupid “Michael O’Connor Cooking Club” is making its long-talked-about Peking duck, and I don’t want to hang around, being the odd duck out, so to speak.
It is already dark when we drive over the Manhattan Bridge and head west. The parking lots we pass all have FULL signs, and the chance of finding a parking space on the street in Manhattan this time of year, to borrow Auntie Minnie’s expression, is as slim as going to heaven after a life of debauchery.
Eventually, we park at a lot all the way west near Tenth Avenue and walk back, negotiating the long blocks of the limo-lined theater district, the crowded, light-blazing Times Square, and Radio City Music Hall. It’s bitter cold.
It hurts just to breathe. Mom shivers in her thin black wool coat. Her head is bare. She never covers her head, no matter how frigid it gets. According to one of those strange theories only Koreans can come up with, you’re supposed to keep your head cold and your feet warm; you get dumb and dumber when you keep the head warm.
“What you gonna do with your high IQ after you freeze dead?” Auntie Minnie says, handing Mom her pair of fur earmuffs, but Mom insists she’s fine, this is nothing.
“That must be why Koreans so smart,” Auntie Minnie says sarcastically. “And smart people, they give you only headache.” After a while, my feet turn numb and it feels like I’m walking on two pieces of stone.
The promenade at Rockefeller Center is packed every inch with a bundled-up crowd. It is next to impossible to see ahead or take a step in any direction. Trapped in moving walls of people, milling about, pushing and shoving, Mom, clutching her pocketbook, holds on to my arm, afraid that we might get separated.
“Hold on to your bag tight,” Mom whispers to me, as if relaying a best-kept secret.
“Keep moving! Keep moving!” Auntie Minnie barks like a drill sergeant, militantly shoving Mom and me from behind. She says at the rate we move, come midnight, we will still be standing here in the exact same spot. Mom laughs at Auntie Minnie. It is fun, though. The collective festivity in the air, it’s infectious.
Gradually, we inch our way to the railing, close enough to get a peek at the light-flooded skating rink, where people, pirouetting and stumbling, falling and sailing, go around and around the floodlit ice floor, aglow in silver, below the impossibly tall and splendidly decked spruce and the gold Prometheus. Buildings soar around us like chiseled
rocks. It is a vertical city filled with noise, lights, more noise, music and laughter and smells of burning pretzels and roasted chestnuts. “Cold as a witch’s tit,” an old man behind Auntie Minnie says, not unhappily.
“Mom, glad we came?” I ask, hoping Mom has noticed how people do go out just to have fun. Her face is all goose-bumped and greenish yellow in the lights. Mom looks at me and smiles. Her smile says: Of course, what do you think, just like everyone else, I would like to enjoy things and have a good time, too, but I am deferring everything for you kids.
Soon Auntie Minnie is getting antsy to get going. She says her nose is about to fall off her face. As we cross Fifth Avenue, I can feel Mom’s mood plunge: Her mind is slipping away to a faraway place. She is thinking about Dad ensconced in Chicago with his lover and about Inah, who is going to leave home for college in the coming summer.
The line outside the Christmas display window of Saks Fifth Avenue department store is long and slow moving.
We decide it’s way too cold to stand on it and head for St.
Patrick’s instead. The humming and smoky and echo-filled church feels impossibly huge and cavernous. Auntie Minnie whispers to me that they build churches like this on purpose to stir up fear inside, and to make people feel small. But Mom is quiet. She is squarely back to her crowded life again. In my head, I keep seeing Michael’s pale, freckled, pretty face. Smiling. And every time, I feel my stomach churn.
We walk out of the church. It’s not yet seven, and Auntie Minnie suggests that we go to see Trump Tower. But Mom wants to go home. “Already! As if you’ve left some treasure there,” Auntie Minnie snickers. We can come back another day, Mom tells her. Trump Tower isn’t going anywhere. But we are here, Auntie Minnie protests. How often do we
come to Manhattan? Don’t you want to see Trump Tower?
Mom’s lack of interest is genuinely puzzling to her.
“What about you, Yunah?” Auntie Minnie asks me. I am not in a hurry to get home, I reply. I am all for going to see Trump Tower. Outvoted, Mom reluctantly agrees.
At Trump Tower, distracted, Mom gives only perfunctory glances to the shop windows. But Auntie Minnie is virtually salivating. Her eyes literally pop out with unhindered lust. She loves the glitter. And all those goods and goods and goods, pulsating with invisible dollar signs. She looks completely rejuvenated. I bet Ivana can have anything here, Auntie Minnie says, driveling with envy. What does that tell you? she says, poking me in the side. Remember that it’s all about meeting Mr. Right, she says, meaning Mr. Rich.
Mom looks at Auntie Minnie with pity and clucks her tongue.
At the mezzanine full of glitzy shops, we realize Auntie Minnie is missing.Mom and I look around for her. Where could she have gone? When we spot her, she’s pushing the forbidding, heavy glass door into Martha’s, the high-priced boutique. Aghast, Mom and I watch her strut in, looking dangerously unstable on the long and pointy heels of her leather boots. Through the glass, we can see an impeccably coiffured saleswoman, all blond and ivory, shooting a very icy, you-must-be-kidding look at her. Strangely, Auntie Minnie, who has seemed more glamorous and more American than any Flushing Korean, looks so outrageously tacky.
Her bleached, rust-colored hair, puffed up with a serious teasing and set with generous hair spray, looks like a bronze medieval helmet. And she looks seriously fashion-challenged in her short, capelike mink jacket and bright purple leather skirt she has somehow managed to squeeze into. In fact, she looks like an aging Las Vegas showgirl.
Mom doesn’t have the stomach to stand there and watch her being snubbed; she quickly looks away.
Finally, Auntie Minnie comes back out and strolls toward us. Mom just can’t help herself.
“Why go in? You can’t afford anything there,” Mom says scoldingly.
“How you know I no can? I have money,” she talks back defiantly. “You worry my money have ‘GI bride’ written all over?”
“Why do you always have to bring that up?” Mom snaps.
Upset, Auntie Minnie speeds off ahead of us.
“Mom, why do you always say such mean things to her?”
I ask. Mom doesn’t answer. When we catch up with her, Auntie Minnie says she’s going to the bathroom, and after that we will go home.
“Good!” Mom says.
As we ride the escalator down to the basement floor to use the bathroom, though, like an irrepressible weed, Auntie Minnie’s mood perks up right away at the sight of the cafe by the nineteen-foot-tall, pink marble waterfall, where piped-in Muzak plays a sappy symphony.
“Oh, nice! Let’s have coffee here before go home.”
“Don’t waste money on the overpriced coffee,” Mom says, fast shooting down Auntie Minnie’s idea. “We’ll have a cup when we get home.”
“Your coffee, Unni?! Only Maxwell instant! Here it real coffee. They make from original beans!” Auntie Minnie says, waving her hand.
>
“What do you mean, original beans? Some beans are copies?”
“Never mind, Unni,“ Auntie Minnie mumbles, looking thoroughly fed up. “You not know how to enjoy life.”
After stopping at the bathroom, not to give Auntie Minnie a chance, Mom heads straight to the escalator and up to the ground floor, then through the revolving door out to Fifth Avenue, which is swarming with multitudes of people. I feel so stupid and furious hurrying after Mom. Auntie Minnie is right: It is partly Mom’s fault that Dad ran off with another woman. Mom weaves life tight and dry. She only lives for tomorrows that will never arrive. With her, life is like the permanent sign on a bar window promising “Free Beer Tomorrow.” But isn’t now, this very moment, a “tomorrow”?
All the way back home, Auntie Minnie gives Mom the cold shoulder. I am just glad to be inside the warm car, after the long, freezing walk back to the garage. I can literally feel my frozen bones thaw.
When Auntie Minnie drops us off at the corner of Magnolia Place, Mom, now a little sorry, asks her to come in for coffee.
“Next time,” she answers curtly. As soon as we get out, she makes a wide swipe around the circle and guns her blue Ford away into the cold night.
“It’s the last time I go anywhere with her,” Mom says.
Inah feels the unhappy vibes coming from me. When I walk into the kitchen, she asks me how it was.
“Don’t even ask,” I reply glumly. I wash my hands, fill the kettle with water and set it to boil.
“Why? Mom didn’t like it?”
“You go and ask her if you want to know,” I say. I take out the Ovaltine jar and my big brown mug and line them up on the counter. Michael hasn’t looked up. He is bent over the dining table, inserting what looks like a tube into the neck of a plucked clean, bald-headed duck that resembles a Rubber Ducky with bumps. In the Chinese section of Flushing, you often see whole glazed ducks hanging on hooks behind