by Mia Yun
the windows at some Chinese restaurants. I always find the sight a little disturbing. And I’ve never been into birds.
Besides, we never eat duck, and there must be a reason for that. I also know that in Korea, ducks are symbols of marital harmony. I hate to think someone has taken the life of a duck’s spouse.
“Where’s Jessica?” I ask, wondering whether Inah has snitched on me to Michael, about what I said about him being gay.
“She’s coming over later,” Inah says. The kettle starts whistling. I mix the Ovaltine and take a long, slow sip. The hot, sweet liquid chases the chill down my spine, and my whole body shakes with satisfaction.
“Yunah,” Michael says, looking up and showing not even the tiniest sign of a grudge.
“Hi, how’s it going?” I say, avoiding his eyes, which always seem to read my mind. I pick up the mug to go up to my room.
“It’s going OK. I am about to pump the duck. You two can give me a hand.” I look at him and Inah, clueless. I have no idea what he means by pumping the duck. I shrug, put down the mug and follow Inah to the table. I am not that dense though. I can see Inah can easily do the job alone. I mean the duck isn’t so humongous, but I decide to go along.
“Just hold it down by the legs,” Michael says. Inah casually gets hold of one. I hold the other. In my hand, the cold leg feels rubbery and slippery.
“Yuck!” I say in disgust. Michael laughs and starts pumping a bicycle pump attached to the duck through a hose. He explains that the air, pumped in, will separate the duck skin from the meat. Slowly the duck starts ballooning up, transforming into a kind of obscene shape. I try not to look at it, but it is not that easy. Inah, struggling not to laugh, bites
down on her lips hard and holds her breath. Soon her face is turning bright red, and all the facial muscles are getting distorted. Then our eyes meet. That does it. Her lips burst open like the seams of a too-tight dress: “Toot-toot! Prrrrrrt! “ Inah doubles over in a hysterical laughing fit. She’s shrieking and writhing and jumping up and down, all the while trying to hold on to the duck leg.
“Stop it!” I scream. Inah looks up but after a quick look at my tortured face, she plunges right back into her laughing fit. Dismayed, Michael shakes his head at Inah laughing and wiping the tears from her eyes. Suddenly, the bicycle pump falls off the tube.
“Oh, holy duck!” Michael cries, looking down at the hose and the pump in his hand. I can’t take it any longer. I let go of the leg, and right away, the hose attached to the neck springs off, too. And before we know it, the slippery, naked bird leaps off the table and sails off into the air like a launched rocket. Wingless and featherless. Michael swiftly lunges after it, catches it in the air, slips and ends up on the kitchen floor, flat on his back, cuddling the bald duck in his arms. Inah and I go completely bonkers. We run around the kitchen in circles, shrieking and laughing and wiping tears and holding our sides with our hands. Inah cradles her jaw with her palms, as if she has had one too many jawbreakers.
Michael is still lying on the floor, cradling the duck, looking completely calm.
“Michael!” Inah calls scoldingly.
Michael closes his eyes and launches into an Irish lullaby: “Loora, loora, loora. Loora, loora, lie! Loora, loora, loora, that’s an Irish lullaby.”
Mom walks in to see what is going on. Her face is shiny with the cold cream she has massaged on to take off makeup. Seeing Mom, Michael bolts right up, scrambling
off the floor, and, with a completely straight face, presents the duck to Mom with two hands and a deep bow. Mom doesn’t know what to make of it. She looks at it and then at Michael. Obviously, she’s shocked the way it is being handled. As it is Mom thinks “Americans” lack a sense of hygiene. For one thing, they keep their shoes on inside the house.
“No way I am going to eat that,” Inah says, having recovered from her laughing fit.
Later, we rinse it and do the whole thing all over again and help Michael glaze the pumped-up duck. We then take it out to the pantry and hang it to dry on a hook shaped from a wire hanger over a pan placed on the floor to catch the drip. Inah and I go down to the basement and bring up the electric fan.
“At least the duck’s got a good, pampered afterlife,” Michael says, turning on the fan. The wind will dry it faster, but it will still take hours.
After Mom goes to bed, Jessica Han comes over. With Auntie Minnie’s stash of Jim Beam whisky, Michael makes us quasi-Irish coffee with a high cone of whipped cream on top, and we play crazy four with black beans. From the “Irish coffee,” our faces turn tomato red. Inah and Jessica act like their brains are rattled. They come up with one stupid joke after another involving animals. Then every time Michael goes out to the pantry to check on the duck and empty the catch-tray, we troop after him and get into a laughing fit all over again. We find the duck hanging in the pantry with the fan sending the wind up incredibly hilarious. “It committed suicide,” Inah says, “indignant at the way we treated it.” We quiz Michael about whether it is a male or a female and how can one tell? Michael can’t believe how silly we are.
THIRTEEN
Sunday morning, I find Mom standing at the stove, stirring a thick pine nut porridge in a stainless steel pot.
“Mom, who’s that for?” I ask, greedily sniffing at the delicious smell of pine nuts.
“Wash up and get dressed. I want you to take this to Auntie Minnie. Poor thing, all alone,” Mom says, ladling the hot porridge into the thermos.
Auntie Minnie has been recuperating at home after surgery to remove a huge fibroid mass growing in her uterus. She found a doctor who used the latest laser surgery technique and traveled all the way to New Orleans to have it done by him. Two days ago, Mom and I went to pick her up at La Guardia airport when she came back. They wheeled her out of the plane on a wheelchair, still all doped up on a prescription narcotic painkiller. She looked like a sick hen with her dilated, out-of-focus eyes, and she could barely spit out a word. And then as soon as we installed her
in the back of the car, Auntie Minnie slumped sideways and fell into deep, soundless, motionless sleep, scaring the hell out of us. We thought something was wrong.
“Make sure she eats it,” Mom says, putting the cover back on the thermos.
“How come you’re not taking it to her yourself?”
“I will be late for church. Go with Inah if you don’t want to go alone.” After Mom leaves, I go up and ask Inah. She says sorry, she has to do laundry.
“Take a bus,” Inah hollers to my back as I close her room door. It’s not that cold, so I decide to walk. Auntie Minnie lives behind Queens Botanical Garden. It’s a good fifteen-minute, fast-paced walk. It’s a typical winter morning. Gray and damp. Everything flat, washed out of color.
The sky, dull silver. The crowds are even thinner down Main, where Chinese and Korean grocery stores and restaurants give way to Middle Eastern grocery stores and spice shops, video stores and Indian sari shops. I make it in ten minutes.
When I come back from Auntie Minnie’s, Michael’s green storm boots are sitting at the foyer. He hasn’t been around since the Peking duck night. Several days ago at dinner, Inah casually mentioned that Michael got accepted into a famous culinary institute in the San Francisco area and would be leaving sometime in February. Mom, who really likes Michael, seemed real sorry to hear that; she kept saying, too bad. I feigned indifference, but, strangely enough, I felt kind of betrayed.
On the way to my room, I stick my head into the kitchen. Apparently they haven’t heard me coming in. They are standing side by side at the counter. Inah is slicing something on the cutting board, and next to her, Michael is expertly beating eggs in a bowl. He then kind of pauses and leans over Inah’s shoulder.
“Ooh, Inah!” Michael says in mock horror. “I can see you’re going to make a hell of a good cook! Look, how thick you cut the mushrooms!” He then playfully pokes Inah in the side. Inah, shrinking, giggles a little girl’s giggle. I feel blood rush up to my head. I’m su
ch an addle-headed idiot. So what about Inah’s face? Michael genuinely likes her. I know that if Michael weren’t so gorgeous, I wouldn’t have such a hard time believing it. I just want to slip away quickly, unnoticed. But just as I turn, a sneeze comes, and, trying to stifle it, I end up almost gagging. Michael’s and Inah’s heads turn at the same time. Inah quickly averts her eyes. She looks pissed. She probably thinks I have been spying on them.
“Yunah,” Michael says, quizzically scanning my red face. There isn’t a hint of embarrassment in his beautiful, breeze-cool eyes.
“I am sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I am about to flip some mushroom omelettes. If you want one, just say so.”
I am not hungry and I don’t even like mushrooms. I mean, mushrooms are some kind of fungi, aren’t they? They can’t possibly be good for you. Without waiting for my answer, Inah takes out paper napkins and forks and knives and sets the table for three. From the way she keeps quiet, I know I am an unwelcome intruder. I notice a freshly brewed pot of hot coffee sitting at the coffeemaker.
“Well, I’ll have some coffee. I love it when it’s fresh and scalding hot.” I pour myself a half mug and sit down. I am self-conscious, and even I can barely stand myself. I wish I hadn’t backed out of the trip to Manhattan this morning with the girls from school.
Michael brings the first batch of omelettes on a plate and puts it down in front of me. I notice how his fingers are so long and skinny and pale, plantlike. I feel so stupid. Of course, Inah can see it. It is useless to try to hide it. It’s written all over me. I can’t stand it. I am making a fool of myself and Inah.
“How’s Auntie Minnie?” Inah asks, breaking the omelette on her plate with her fork. I absentmindedly pour a river of ketchup over my omelette. Michael looks at me and the ketchup-bathed omelette with alarm. I take a big gulp of the scalding hot black coffee and think I am going to die.
“All right, I guess,” I say, cringing as the hot coffee makes its way down, burning the pipe. “She made me watch this video of her surgery. Before the operation, they insert this thing attached with a tiny camera through a hole cut right below her belly button and kind of poke around inside, looking at the liver and stuff. You can hear the doctor saying that her liver seems a little swollen, flicking at it with the rod or whatever that’s in there. Auntie Minnie thinks it’s real funny. Remember the expression Mom often uses? Telling Auntie Minnie that her liver is swollen when she gets extravagant. Don’t look up a tree you can’t climb? Be yourself?” I know I am being gross. Inah looks at me like she can’t believe it. I don’t dare to look at Michael. I go on, deadpan.
“Anyway, after removing the fibroid,” I go on obnoxiously, “cutting around it with the laser—it’s like a blowtorch, you can see the flesh burn off—the doctor holds it up for the camera. As if it’s some kind of archaeological find. It’s a big, solid mass. The size of a big grapefruit. Kind of round and waxy and flesh-colored. And it’s got these red blood veins all over. Auntie Minnie asked for it as a keepsake. It’s sitting on the kitchen counter in a big kimchi bottle, soaked in alcohol. When you go see her, don’t forget to take a look at it.”
“Yunah?! Gross!” Inah blurts out and screws her face up. “Thanks a lot. I can’t eat now.”
“Me neither,” I say, meaning it, putting down the fork. “Sorry, Michael.” Michael looks me full in the eye, as if trying to figure me out. I notice he is sitting in Dad’s seat.
PART FIVE
ONE
On the train to Rome, Inah’s out cold. In her wrinkled, out-of-the-backpack clothes, and tanned dark, she looks even dingier than she did the day at the Venice airport. And the way she sleeps, curled tight, arms folded, her head squished against the sunlit window, she reminds me of a wounded animal, bracing herself for more attacks. Incredibly tense and yet inexplicably vulnerable.
Last night, back from Siena, Inah hinted, in her usual oblique way, at what might have happened at Oxford. I don’t know what prompted her. It was probably the fight we had: Imagine how it must have stung her, all the horrible words I hurled at her.
It seems that while at Oxford Inah befriended a girl from Canada. They lived across the hall from each other, and over time, developed a close friendship. Inah refused to elaborate on it, but it was clear that something horrible happened to her. The way Inah spoke of her made me think that she was no longer alive. That was the end of the story, if it was a story. Inah had already decided how much to tell me beforehand, so there was no point for me to push her for more. It would have seemed nothing more than a prurient curiosity on my part, anyway. And after all, there are many ways to tell a story. By omitting, adding, editing, twisting and glossing over, you can always stitch a story together. As long as it contains a truth, what does it matter, I thought.
That’s all, Inah then said: That’s all. Of course it wasn’t. Knowing her, whatever had happened must have shaken her up badly. She wouldn’t admit that was what ultimately caused her to abandon her studies, but I think it did precipitate what happened later. Inah began to struggle again. Then, bit by bit, her life just spiraled out of control. I can see that. It must have been all the more difficult because she thought (as we did) she had put behind all the stumbling years and reached a place where she could somehow manage life with some semblance of peace. Unless it had reached a point where she simply couldn’t go on, Inah would not have taken off like that. Naturally, she couldn’t tell Mom. Not then, anyway. Imagine the way Mom would have reacted to her decision. So Inah must have agonized over it. Alone. It couldn’t have been a decision she had made lightly. Not by any means.
By telling me what happened, Inah, I thought, was trying to reassure me. Now I wonder if she did it because she got sick and tired of looking at her image reflected in the mirror I held for her. And I wonder if I was ever really conceited enough to think that I would be able to rescue her. No, I don’t think so. It was Mom’s idea, and somehow, I bought into it. Or rather, I needed to believe what Mom believed. And it is only now, on the train to Rome, that I finally realize the very obvious: No one can save Inah except herself. (Who can save anyone from life?) And if only instinctively, she has always known that. She may still be lost, but at least she’s fighting and struggling to stay afloat. It should be a sign of hope, not of trouble. And if she’s determined to do it her way and on her own, no matter how difficult it is and however long it takes, then I should help her as best as I can.
It’s only that sometimes, in her struggle to stay afloat, she looks to us as though she is drowning. And from her instinctive desire to protect her, Mom feels she has to intervene. It’s impossible for Mom to be a spectator and wait until Inah asks for help. Not when she thinks she’s holding the rope that will pull her out before drowning. But Mom has to throw the rope away and let go. Give Inah a chance to learn to survive on her own. So much of our heartbreak stems from Mom’s inability to let go. But she will have to try. It will be very hard, for it will feel like giving up, but it really is the only way. She has to let go of her and hope for the best.
So it is with new resolve and something like a sense of relief that I arrive in the Rome Isadora Duncan called “a wonderful city for a sorrowful soul.” Happy to be released to become one of its free-floating, anonymous particles. I am probably imagining it, but Inah, too, seems almost gleeful at the thought of getting rid of me soon. Bit by bit, like old scabs, she sheds the strange focused urgency that tightly gripped her in Florence and emerges tender and more surefooted and less maudlin. Maybe it’s simply being back in Rome, for no matter how temporarily, it’s here where she makes her home.
Inah stays with me at the hotel (I checked in because she seemed reluctant to invite me to her place), and we spend several surprisingly good days. Every morning, bitten by the Korean Spartan bug and determined to make up for lost time, she hurries me out of the hotel, a small, nondescript building that stands near the foot of Via Maggio. She feels like it’s her town. I find it amusing and almo
st touching, the proprietary pride she displays shamelessly. She’s eager for me to discover that something which makes Rome so special. The Rome that effortlessly appeals to one’s sense of beauty and joy and the “now” and bestows on one a sense of bliss.
Under the Roman sky, a gilded fountain of light, we walk miles and miles every day with our blistering feet. Zigzagging through Old Rome and darting around the city, cramming in all the tourist sites. We eat too much gelato, drink too much coffee, and wolf down too many greasy slices of pizza, sold by the weight. And I mourn our fast dwindling days together in Rome. To think that it could be this easy….
TWO
After Michael leaves for San Francisco, intent on burying him in memory, we avoid talking about him as we do about Dad. But it’s hard not to notice the bottles of half-used vanilla and almond extract that lie inside the pantry like pieces of memory, pushed all the way into the back by Inah and me. And then, late at night, comes the sudden craving for Michael’s ginger sherbet or rice pudding, lemon soufflés or heavenly chocolate custards. So often, walking into the kitchen, my nose catches that imaginary whiff of grated rinds of oranges and lemon, and my mouth waters. At a moment like that, I can almost see it, too, the gelatin texture of ginger sherbet Michael used to pour into ice-cube trays and the counter that used to be crowded with flour and sugar bags, chocolate crumbs, stains of egg yolk and spilled milk. I miss Michael’s voice saying, “Just a pinch of salt,” or “We’re going to let it cool for a few minutes.”
But suddenly, spring is back in bright yellow forsythias and yellow and white daffodils. Freed from the long winter’s siege, Ash Avenue, shedding its hunkered-down look, slowly wakes up, ruffled with shabby brown patches of lawn and overgrown hedges and cracked sidewalks. It stays that way, desolate, even more so than in winter, until trees burst out in blooms all over, in clumps of hazy clouds. First magnolias, and then cherries, and then dogwoods. So dazzling are they in the sunlight that my eyes seem to turn watery just looking at them. I begin to notice, too, how people walking down the sunlit sidewalks past the flowering trees all look slightly dazed and feverish. And Inah comes and goes, with that vague, absorbed look on her face. Subdued and quiet, except when she battles Mom over her choice of college. Then one day, a cold spring rain falls, dousing the blossoms and temporarily muting the brilliance; I come home from school following the sidewalk dizzily strewn with wet, foot-crushed petals and sniffing (as Dad used to) at the air, pungent with a sweet-sick smell.