Translations of Beauty

by Mia Yun

  But most of all, I hate my body. Standing stripped and naked on the sea-blue-tiled bathroom floor, where soggy towels lie in a crumpled pile, I can barely look at the awkward body inside the long mirror. The browning arms and legs, sticky from the coconut suntan lotion with its sweet smell that will linger even after the shower. Sunburned and peeling shoulders, round and sloping. The swimsuit-covered part as white as a fish belly. The strangely unfamiliar face framed by the hair matted from the sand and sea salt and wind. It seems all wrong somehow: too heavy and too big, more than I can carry and manage. I hate it enough to want to die. Later, standing under the scalding hot water in the shower stall, I cry and swear that I will never, ever marry.

  But like a miracle, we somehow get over the miserable hour. There is even a certain relief when we walk to the Bamboo Garden with Auntie Minnie and Uncle Frankie (it’s where they take us out after too many dinners of cold cuts and rolls). At the restaurant, sitting at the round table loaded with the usual spicy Kung Pao chicken, glutinous Moo Shoo pork, bland-as-hell Buddha’s Delight and greasy chow fun, Inah and I manage to smile at the lame jokes Uncle Frankie comes up with to cheer us up. But we must still look miserable, because he declares that he knows just the cure for our maladies, and before Auntie Minnie can stop him, verbally prescribes it—boys. Aghast, Auntie Minnie elbows him in the side, furiously signaling to him with her eyes to remind him how insensitive his remark was in front of Inah. Uncle Frankie heaves out a few embarrassed dry coughs. But Inah sits there perfectly collected and serene, striking a cool pose with the inscrutable expression of a stone Buddha. A little red in the cheeks from the complimentary sweet plum wine she sneaks from Auntie Minnie’s glass.

  At the end of the meal, Inah even provides a brief comic relief. Holding up the fortune strips she pulls out from the soggy fortune cookies like entrails from a fish belly, she reads out spontaneously manufactured fortunes: “‘Where there is no wind, the grass does not move,’” or “‘When in doubt, take the middle road.’” Garbling the lines half-remembered from The I Ching or some such book, and keeping a perfectly straight face. It invariably makes clueless Auntie Minnie wonder if that means good luck at the blackjack table that night. And, for a moment, it almost seems that everything is normal.

  SEVEN

  If there’s anything we look forward to, it is having the beach house (we hate so much during the day) all to ourselves at night. We anxiously wait for Uncle Frankie, his shirt front unfurled, and Auntie Minnie, drenched with lilac-scented perfume and dressed in a halter top dress or some such floral thing and beaded sandals, to emerge from their room for their night out. They usually head out to Beach Haven to the south or Seaside Heights to the north, where there is, we are told, more nightlife. When they feel particularly lucky, though, they will drive down to Atlantic City to play blackjack and poker, which means they won’t be back until three or four in the morning and will wake us up with their early-morning lovemaking.

  “How do I look?” Auntie Minnie asks us, pirouetting and then, for some reason, patting down her damp-looking neck.

  “Perfect!” I screech.

  “Don’t change a thing,” Inah adds. Auntie Minnie knows, though, that we are simply anxious to get rid of them, and she gives us that look.

  “Beautiful. So beautiful you will make Sophia Loren jealous,” Uncle Frankie says, winking at us and hurrying Auntie Minnie out the door. (We hear her asking him who is this Sopi Loren as they walk down the stairs outside.)

  Soon, crushing the gravel, Uncle Frankie’s car backs out of the driveway, and they are gone. We run to their bathroom and slather Uncle Frankie’s Noxzema shaving cream all over our sunburned arms and legs. Afterward, we switch off all the lights in the house and go out to the deck facing the sea and lie down, side by side, on the two saggy, creaky chaise longues, their salt-eaten, dented aluminum frames held up together at the joints by duct tape.

  It is the only bearable time of the day, when we lie there in the dark, feeling mint cool in the sticky, sea-borne breeze, listening to the night sea that stretches away, toward black nothing, forever, and watching the dark blue sky, buzzing and ringing with stars, like the palladium in the Museum of Natural History. After a while, we know, we won’t be able to think even if we tried.

  One evening, after Uncle Frankie and Auntie Minnie leave, Inah rummages through the basket by the gray-and-peach Comfort Inn couch in the living room and excavates a thin paperback from a stack of old magazines like Redbook, People and Sports Illustrated. Someone must have left it behind many summers before; the yellowing pages are warped and curled. It’s a French novel called Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan. Inah holds it up and reads out loud the description of the novel on the partly ripped and buckled egg-yellow and baby-blue cover: “‘The classic bestseller about amoral youth on the French Riviera.’” It sounds simply too delicious to resist.

  We take it out to the deck and, taking turns, read the book out loud to each other in the dim yellow deck light. It’s a fast read, as easy to down as a syrupy summer drink. It’s about shallow rich people with insatiable appetites. It’s about a carefree summer that a spoiled seventeen-year-old French girl, Cecil, spends in the sun-drenched French Riviera with her playboy father and his girlfriend, Cyril, which ends tragically.

  “‘Bonjour, tristesse!’” Inah reads the very last sentence, closes the book and adds her own epilogue in her cynical voice: “And, of course, they lived happily ever after!” And then, inspired, if only in a sad way, we stare out at the dark sea, churning and crashing ashore in an endless repetition. Helpless as unwelcome thoughts crowd their way into our heads.

  “Let’s celebrate!” I jump up from the chaise longue. I go inside and filch one of Uncle Frankie’s unfiltered Lucky Strikes from an open pack sitting on the kitchen counter. I return to the deck and display the cigarette and a matchbook. “Look what I’ve got.”

  “Oh, shit,” says Inah, delighted, surprising me as she often does with her puzzling lack of judgment. She sits up and cups her hands for me to light the cigarette. I take a puff and hand it to her. She holds it pinched between her thumb and forefinger like it was a joint and takes a long drag, imitating the narrow-eye look of a seasoned smoker. Then she breaks into a coughing fit and giggles. I get up and turn off the deck light. In the dark, we sit hunched on the wrecked chaises and take turns at the strong cigarette. It is strangely mesmerizing to watch the red disk of light crackling on the cigarette end as it burns its way up in the dark.

  After a while, we feel dizzy and collapse into the chaises, which sag underneath, creaking sadly. The breezes carry a faint whip of cigarette smoke and drying Noxzema shaving cream, which I have been unconsciously and obsessively rubbing off all night, shedding it like dead skin in thin, floury rolls.

  I wonder what it will be like after Inah leaves for college at the end of the summer. It will be just Mom and Dad and me at home. Then I wonder what Mom and Dad are doing now. It has been only a week, but it already feels like such a long time ago, the Friday afternoon that Dad drove us down here from Flushing. The traffic was bumper to bumper all the way down on the Garden State Parkway. I remember suddenly noticing how Dad looked so old. It was after we got off the parkway. We were driving through local roads, where the scraggly and deserted-looking commercial buildings were enduring the sluggish afternoon, submerged in deep pools of black shadows. The bright, late-afternoon sunlight was blinding, and both Inah, watching out for the Manahawkin Bay Bridge sign, and Dad, driving, were squinting hard. Maybe it was the new band of gray hair above his ears. It was as if the years had caught up with him all at once.

  I asked him (I still don’t know what made me) how come he didn’t paint anymore. My question seemed to surprise him. He said, “How come?!” As if he himself wondered about the very same thing. He then said he was not an artist anymore. In fact, he had stopped being one a long time ago. Just as a tree doesn’t grow by itself—it needs an inspiration to grow: nutritious soil, wind, sun and rain—an
artist doesn’t grow out of thin air. That he was more like a transplanted tree, its roots shriveled away, unable to adjust to the new soil. That he wouldn’t know what to do even if someone seated him down with the best brushes and paints and canvases money could buy.

  “But Dad, you are not just any tree,” I said. “You’re a special tree.” Dad just smiled. I remember how sad he looked.

  Inah flicks on the flashlight and shines it on the empty night ocean, where the sound of waves are now like howls of the wind. Suddenly, it seems all so clear. I know that I will have to be the one to stay close to home and to our parents, to make up for Inah’s absence, and also for Dad’s loneliness. As for Mom, I know she will survive. No matter what.

  EIGHT

  The morning Inah leaves for college, I wake up with butterflies in my stomach. Then, afraid to open my eyes, I keep them closed. I can tell it’s going to be another hot day: The air in the room is still, and not a breeze blows in through the open window. I slide back under the sheet, lie there, sweaty, full of dread and half-awake, drifting along in the muffled sounds of morning: Dad’s footsteps in the backyard; water hitting the bottom of the watering can; and the dull, chopping sound in the kitchen downstairs. I think about all the summer mornings that started just like this, with the same muffled sounds that promised another uneventful summer day ahead filled with the usual chores and boredom. But it isn’t one of those mornings. In a couple of hours, Inah will be leaving, and it will never be the same again.

  I hear Inah run up the stairs and go into her room. She comes back out and from the top of the stairs shouts to Mom in the kitchen downstairs, “Mom! Am I taking an iron?” After she races back down the stairs, I finally quit the bed, slip into cutoff jeans and a tank top and go down. The hallway smells of freshly cooked rice: sweet and soft and warm. I walk out barefoot to the porch. The sun is burning through the morning fog, and it already feels like a steam bath. The sky is white and shimmery. And Dad loading the trunk of the car parked at the street curb looks fuzzy and grainy. He’s driving Inah to Yellow Springs, Ohio.

  Carrying a duffel bag, Inah comes out. She flashes me a quick, lopsided smile and heads down to the car, navigating her long, lean legs. When she comes back up, I follow her back inside to the foyer and help her carry a box Mom packed with bottles of kimchi and containers of banchan, the side dishes she has prepared for days.

  “You’re going to stink up the whole dorm the first day,” I say. Inah just shrugs. She’s thrilled and excited at the prospect of her new freedom but is trying hard not to show it too much.

  At the breakfast table, Mom, afraid of a moment of silence, talks nonstop, bombarding Inah with questions: “Are you sure you packed everything? If you forgot anything, just buy it instead of calling long distance to ask me to send it. It’s cheaper that way.” Inah nods. “And don’t skip meals, make sure you eat on time.” Mom’s still upset that she can’t go with Inah to the school. Inah didn’t want her to.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Inah says, nicely for a change.

  “Why do you have to go so far away?” Mom says. “There are so many schools here.”

  “It’s not that far,” Dad says.

  “Then how come I can’t just take a subway and go see her?”

  I briefly debate whether to make a joke about Yellow Springs—in Korea, they say you go to Whangchon, Yellow Spring, after you die—and then decide that even as a joke, it won’t go over well with Mom.

  Dad straightens up his back and shuts the trunk. The dull thud sends cold shivers down my back. I can barely breathe. Dad gets in the car and starts the engine. Inah turns around and gives Mom a quick hug, averting her face. Inah, once such a solicitous, perky and feisty kid, has grown up and is leaving home an aloof, cool and detached teenager who hates demonstrativeness and has no use for emotional frills. I am afraid Mom is going to hold on to Inah and won’t let go. But she releases her easily, if only to spare Inah the sight of her tears. For a second, Inah’s hand lingers on Mom’s arm, and then she seems to decide it’s better not to get her started.

  “I’ll call, Mom,” Inah says. Mom nods and just barely manages to say, “Just take good care of yourself. That’s all I want.” I open the car door for Inah.

  “Bye, Inah.” I wrap my arms around her. Her still damp hair from the shower smells fresh. Like scents from the woods. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Bye,” Inah says calmly. “Don’t fight with Mom.” I laugh and push into her hand my parting gift. Inah looks at the small box wrapped in blue-and-silver paper. It’s a silver antique picture frame with a snapshot of us as two-year-olds when we were still perfect twins with big smiles permanently pressed on our unmarred, jade-smooth faces. I spent hours in the hot, dusty attic, going though stacks of old pictures from Korea, sitting inside the moldy shoe boxes, vanished by Mom, curling and sticking in the dust and humidity of the attic, like old memories waiting to be rescued and pasted together.

  “Don’t open it until you get to Ohio,” I say. Inah nods and looks at the box again. Dad honks. Inah turns around and climbs into the car next to Dad, and I close the door. For a second, I am almost frantic with fear. I can’t imagine Inah not being around. And what will it be like for her in Ohio? Will she fit in? What if she gets sucked into Middle America and dissolves without a trace? We are immigrants’ children, we are supposed to be biodegradable. But still.

  Dad makes a wide U-turn and honks one more time and drives down the street. Inah rolls down the window and waves. Smiling. In the sunlight, she has that puzzled look of a child being sent away. Mom can’t take it anymore. She turns around and heads up to the porch. I stand and watch until the car turns the corner into Kissena.

  Finally, I turn and look at Mom. She is standing at the doorway, partly bleached in the morning sunlight. Looking like a figure in an overexposed black-and-white photo. When she sees me, she wipes at her eyes and throws open the door and goes inside.

  I look down Ash Avenue one more time: standing in the heat, empty and quiet and a little misty where it ends and opens to another world. Slowly, I walk up the steps, past the rosebushes, where the last flowers of the season are in lackadaisical bloom, in commiserating white clumps. I wait a while, to give Mom time to grieve by herself, and then open the door.

  The house feels cool and dark and strangely empty, like a big fruit, its inside carved out hollow. At the corner of the foyer, a worn pair of sneakers and a pair of see-through plastic beach sandals Inah left behind sit quietly, like lost goods. In the kitchen, I find Mom sitting at the table crowded with half-finished breakfasts. She is holding her hands tightly together, as if in prayer. She looks up when I walk in, almost relieved to see me. I pull a chair next to her and sit down. The quiet is overwhelming. In the huge vacuum Inah has left behind, Mom is utterly lost. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. I put my arm around her; Mom quickly crumbles like a sand castle and breaks into a sad sob. She really wanted to go with Inah to help her unpack and settle in and see the dorm and the campus so that she could at least later picture her in it: going to classes, walking around, sleeping and waking.

  “Mom, please. Don’t be sad. Inah’s only going to college. I know it’s not to Harvard or Yale.”

  “I don’t care about Harvard or Yale,” Mom says, sobbing and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, wide and squarish with long, nubby fingers. Just like Inah’s and mine.

  “Then why are you so sad? It’s not like she is gone for-ever,” I say, trying to squelch the fear that’s trying to rise up again.

  “You don’t know? Poor Inah! With that face …” Mom buries her own face in her hands and sobs hard. “Every time I think about it….”

  “I know, Mom….” I think about all the years Mom tried to make Inah believe that it’s the mind, what’s inside that counts, not the looks. But she always knew that out there in the world, face, physical beauty, counted a lot more than she was willing to admit. It goaded her, the thought that Inah would never experience th
e kind of pleasure, joy or reward most women take for granted. It was the reason she pushed Inah so relentlessly. She wanted so much for Inah to succeed, to be compensated for all that would be denied to her as a woman. Oblivious as to how her devotion and drive seemed to us to have less to do with Inah or her well-being and more to do with Mom’s sense of guilt and the pain she carried with her. But it doesn’t make any difference now. Mom will always live a life of regret. And no matter what, it will be hard for Inah and for the rest of us, too. All we can do is just to go on. Grappling. Scooping up whatever joy along the way.

  How I wish I could assure Mom that, growing up, Inah and I had our own share of happy days just like every other kid. But time adds pigments to memories, and I am not sure if that’s true. If it’s true for Inah. Anyway, it won’t be much of a comfort to Mom. For now, her heart is just breaking and breaking. Mom is grieving because Inah has flown the coop and she can’t protect her anymore.

  NINE

  Knowing that there’s nothing Inah hates more than saying good-bye in public, I ask her just to put me in a taxi. But she insists on taking me at least to Termini railway station, if not all the way to the airport. I relent because there’s no time to argue: Our two weeks have dwindled to a mere couple of hours, and suddenly, we are being chased by time. With Inah taking the luggage, we go downstairs to check out. The roly-poly middle-aged desk clerk—he looks just like Rodney Dangerfield—claims that Saturday is a good day to leave Rome. In the same malevolent, thick-tongued English in which he warned us every morning, as we left the hotel, about pickpockets, gypsies and dark people from other countries.