“Someone told us about it at the hospital,” my father said. “He said it was magical. I thought it would be good for when Haejin comes. Remember how you used to catch fireflies in the backyard?”
I nodded.
“You used to make wishes on them,” he said.
“No we didn’t,” I said. We’d wished on stars back in the day, not fireflies.
“No?” He sounded confused. “We used to catch them and make wishes on them,” he said. “Didn’t that happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was sure we hadn’t, but his confusion confused me. “Maybe we did.”
In the following week, my mother was busy planning Hannah’s arrival, and my father was busy making plans for the festival. He spent hours on the computer looking things up. He was so excited I couldn’t help getting excited, too, even though it made my mother anxious.
I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that Hannah hadn’t said anything to my mother about our conversation in Los Angeles. I told myself it didn’t matter: I’d told Hannah our father had cancer. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known.
At the end of that week, my mother took me aside. “Don’t encourage your father about Muju,” she said.
“It might be good for him,” I said. “He’s looking forward to it.”
“He’s doing it to please you.”
“Why would he think I wanted to go to Muju?”
“He thinks this will bring us all together.”
“The firefly festival?”
“Yes,” my mother said, laughing a little. “But it will make him sick.” Her voice broke, and she turned away.
After that, I couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm about the trip. I watched my father, and I saw how sometimes his hands trembled when he unfolded the map of Korea, and how it fluttered like a leaf between them. He began to sleep longer than he had, getting up later and going to bed earlier.
Meanwhile, news came from Michigan that our house had sold. The buyer was willing to take all of our bedroom furniture. From afar, we gave the agent permission to sell everything still in the house in an estate sale. Around that time, a strange and unrelated thing occurred. It was announced on the news that the father of the hermit girl who’d been discovered in the mountains had been killed. While his daughter was in Seoul, becoming famous, he’d been robbed and murdered in their solitary mountaintop hut. The hermit girl, newly orphaned, was stranded in the city, surrounded by well-meaning, guilt-ridden strangers, and besieged by reporters. She was all over the news, glimpses of her stricken, bewildered face that had not yet learned how to prepare another face to present to the world.
I was surprised by my interest in the hermit girl: how much I longed to make some connection between her story and my own. Like the rest of the country, I wanted to claim her as mine. I thought of her father, hidden with her in the mountains for all those years, and how he’d been found out at last. His daughter had left, and strangers had come to steal whatever was his. There was no safety in the world: no hiding.
I thought of the temple tiles my father had written our names on to go up on the roof next year. What else lay hidden in the mountains? I wondered. What else lay hidden in our bodies and souls?
17.
When Hannah finally arrived, she was as lean and stylish as the last time I’d seen her, pulling behind her a soft and nubby dove gray suitcase. In her hand was a photo album, which she held out to us as we went to meet her.
“I brought pictures,” was the first thing she said, and my mother checked mid-step, so that my father and I surged forward, and my mother was left behind us, on the patio, holding the door.
“Pictures of us, from before,” Hannah continued, slowing down. “I took them with me to California,” she said, presenting them like a gift.
“I didn’t know you had those,” I said.
“How would you?” she asked. She met my eyes. In that moment, I knew at least that whatever she had told my mother, she hadn’t revealed that I’d told her not to come, that I’d said she was unwanted here. Perhaps she had told her nothing: perhaps they hadn’t talked about me at all.
I looked at my father: his face was aglow. His hand gripped my sister’s shoulder. Hannah seemed to shrink away from his touch the tiniest bit. But he ignored this, or didn’t notice, and pulled her forward by her shoulders then, into an embrace. Her arms came up, and she hugged him back. He was not one to hug others, we had never been that kind of family, and something about his doing so now both moved and angered me. In this unexpected pose they both looked fragile.
I reached out and took her suitcase, and she pulled her hand away quickly as she relinquished it, as if she was afraid.
My mother, who had been waiting all this time, stepped out of the house. “Come in,” she called. She waved at the cloud of insects hovering in front of the door. And my father, a kind of light working on his face, took my sister’s hand in his own and led her in.
“We’re all tired,” my mother said, once we were inside. “Unless you need anything, let’s just go to bed for now, and talk in the morning.”
“That sounds good,” Hannah said.
“We’re not going to ask her what she’s been doing all this time?” I asked.
“Later,” my father said. “There will be time for everything later,” and he touched her arm.
“You’ll sleep in that room,” my mother said to Hannah, pointing at my room. “With your Unni.” She leaned forward and gave my sister a kiss on the cheek. “Sleep well.”
That night, Hannah slept on a sleeping mat next to mine. The heat came up through the floor and warmed us. We didn’t say anything to each other. I wanted to sit up and turn on a light, and draw her the diagrams my father had made on my first night here: I wanted to tell her how our mother had ironed her clothes under the mattresses with her sister. I wanted to ask her if she’d wondered about us, and if she’d really believed me when I told her not to come.
Instead, I listened to her breathe. She was only an arm’s length away from me. I could almost imagine that our breaths rose and fell in unison. We had not slept in the same room like this since we first moved to America. We had listened for ghosts then, her hands clasped around mine. One if you’re sleeping, three if you see a ghost.
The next day, relatives and several of my parents’ friends de-scended upon our house. They were all anxious to see Hannah. First my grandmother and uncle and my father’s cousins came. Hannah sat in an armchair, her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands clasped together.
“She’s so ladylike,” my grandmother said, talking about her as if she was a doll. When anyone had a question to ask her, they looked to me to translate.
“She could be Miss Korea,” my uncle said, looking her over shyly.
My grandmother said to her, “If you only learn how to speak Korean, you will be the perfect granddaughter.”
Everyone called her Haejin. For most of her life, only my parents had called her that. I remembered that my grandmother, who had had to live with a Japanese name for her entire childhood, had not been publicly called by her own name until she was an adult. Even now she would not tell me what her Japanese name had been; not even my mother knew.
For the most part, Hannah played along. She smiled and nodded at everything that was said to her. She laughed when they told stories of when she was a baby. My parents passed around the photo album she’d brought to our guests. It was filled with pictures of us from childhood. “She brought it all the way from California,” my father said.
And then, “Tell Uncle what you’re studying,” my father said. “Tell Auntie about your senior project.”
And Hannah, leaning forward with a serious look in her eye, talked about wildlife rehabilitation—in English—while my father nodded his head enthusiastically and translated from time to time.
“Actually,” Hannah said, looking at me, “I’ll finish my studies this year and then I’ll probably go to grad school.”
“Another baksa in the family,” Big Cousi
n said, laughing out loud. “I am jealous of you,” he said to my father. He turned to me. “And how is your research coming?” he asked. “Will you win a Nobel Prize, or will your sister beat you to it?”
I squirmed. I hadn’t been spending enough time on my work, and I was aware of falling behind. Recently, I’d found it increasingly difficult to find my way back into my own ideas.
Hannah surprised me by interrupting. “I was thinking maybe for my grad work I’d study biodiversity in Korea.”
“That’s what I would study if I had the chance,” my mother said approvingly. “What would you focus on?”
Hannah talked about the wildlife that had been killed during the occupation and the war. About Agent Orange and what it had done to the forests. She talked about the wildlife flourishing in the DMZ, how it might be the only place in the world where Siberian tigers still lived.
“I want to go there and see things,” she said. “I want to learn more.”
I realized that Hannah actually knew things about this place. I had thought that she had cut herself off from us entirely, but there were these threads she had thrown out in our direction, and followed. She had been tracking us, paying attention, when I thought she was wholly gone.
Still, we kept our distance from each other. If our parents noticed, they said nothing about it. As for Hannah, she and my parents acted as if the last year and a half of estrangement hadn’t happened. They were polite and careful with each other, and if Hannah was a little reserved with them, my parents were tentatively affectionate. No one asked any difficult questions. We acted as if no such questions existed.
Hannah and I still hadn’t really spoken when we went with my parents to the city for my father’s chemo session that week. There was a new group of patients in the treatment room. They were not particularly talkative, but sat quietly in their beds from the very beginning. My family followed suit, sitting around my father’s bed while he laid his head back and dozed.
Afterward, we went to the doctor’s office and waited. My father was unexpectedly radiant, smiling at my mother, then me, then Hannah. He was proud to have his whole family with him.
My father’s doctor did not notice. He greeted my mother and father, and glanced briefly at Hannah and me. Then he said without any preparatory remarks, “It’s growing, just as I expected.”
We took this in.
“About thirty percent in just two weeks,” the doctor continued, “which is faster than I anticipated.”
My father’s face was frozen in place; I could not even look at my mother. His expression reminded me of myself when I was trying not to reveal a wound. I wished I could protect him from this conversation.
It was Hannah who spoke. “Ask him how he suggests we move forward,” she said.
I asked the doctor her question. I added, “Can we switch to another kind of treatment?”
The doctor shook his head. “All we can do now is slow the growth,” he said. “It will do no good to change the treatment.” He turned to my parents. “I thought I was clear about that.”
My father nodded, and I realized that they had already had this conversation. My parents had brought us here knowing what to expect. My father cleared his throat. “And if I discontinue treatment?” he said.
The doctor blinked. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said blankly.
“I’ve heard people can survive on alternative treatment or no treatment at all,” my father said. “Do you know anyone who’s done so?”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “I know one man who left and tried alternative treatments and survived. But there is no medical reason for that to have happened,” he said. “No one knows why that person survived. It might have been the medicine; it might have been a miracle.” He shrugged.
“Do you know anyone in my situation who has survived on chemo?” my father asked.
The doctor shook his head. “No. But you have to consider the fact that it may actually make you more comfortable,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t meaningfully extend your life. We’re aiming for palliative care now.”
“I see,” my father said.
“Ultimately,” the doctor said, “the decision is up to you.”
Then he told my father that the doctor from Texas who’d referred my father to him in the first place was in Seoul for a conference. “He asked about you,” the doctor said. “I was sorry not to have better news to report.”
“Thank you,” my father replied. Then there was another moment of awkward silence, before the doctor wished my father luck in a way that made it clear that he did not think that there was much hope of anything.
We drove home very quiet, though my father continued to attempt cheerfulness. I could not join in. We were alone, I thought. Medicine had given up on us. We’d been cut loose.
At home, my father asked if I would e-mail the cancer specialist from Texas who was currently in Seoul. “Why would we do that?” I asked.
“Just to tell him how I am,” my father said, smiling. “Since he’s here, don’t you think he’d want to know?”
“He already knows,” I said. Didn’t he remember how impatient that doctor had been with us? How he’d told us this was the only chance we had? This afternoon his own doctor had just said there was no hope. I wanted to shake him for not learning to stop going to these people for answers.
“Maybe I could take him on a tour,” my father said. “Maybe I could show him the city.”
“You can’t take anyone on a tour,” I said. “You’re exhausted all the time.”
“I think I should send him an e-mail,” my father said. “Will you draft one for me?”
“That’s not what he’s here for,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of his disappointment when the doctor rejected him. “He doesn’t want to see you. He can’t help you. None of these people think you will make it.”
My father smiled then, shrugging, and that smile shamed me to my core. “What do you think he can do for you?” I began angrily.
Before I could continue, Hannah stepped in. “I’ll send the doctor an e-mail,” she said. “It’s no big deal.” My father turned his head and smiled at her gratefully. “I’ll do it right now,” she said.
“It’s a waste of time,” I said, but they ignored me. Then she and my father turned their backs to me, wrote their e-mail, and sent it off. In the end, the doctor from Texas never replied, but it didn’t matter. We never spoke of it again.
That same evening, I heard my father ask Hannah if she thought he should stop chemo. He asked her quietly and seriously, and she did not flinch.
She answered like an adult, “What are the risks and benefits?”
My father drew a chart and began to diagram his decisions. I bit my tongue and went into the garden to pull all the stubborn weeds that had put down deep roots since Hannah had arrived.
They were still going over it at dinner, their heads close together, neglecting their food. My mother sat calmly enough, occasionally commenting on trivial matters and pushing more food onto their plates.
“Why wouldn’t you continue?” Hannah asked.
“I’m tired,” my father said to Hannah.
I interrupted. “You still look good,” I said.
“I can’t taste my food,” my father said. “Everything tastes like metal.”
We fell silent.
“I care about quality of life,” my father continued. “I don’t want to be on chemo just to live an extra month.”
“Does chemo decrease your quality of life?” Hannah asked.
My father shrugged. “I have headaches,” he said. “Everything tastes wrong.”
Hannah looked down at her plate. A few years after we first moved to America, she had started refusing to eat Korean food. She wanted hot dogs and grilled cheese and ice cream. She wanted American-people food. By the time she went to college, Asian food had gotten trendy, and I’d noticed she’d started eating it again. Now she seemed fine with everything.
“Once th
e tumors start growing, it’s unlikely the chemo will be able to shrink them again,” my father said. “But the doctor also says it’s the best thing left to do. It’s the only thing he thinks might slow the growth.”
“What about alternative options?” Hannah said.
My father listed the names of two people who specialized in desperate cases; both of these alternative practitioners had saved relatives of my parents’ friends, after their doctors had given up.
“But the doctor said alternative options have an even lower chance than chemo of working,” my mother said.
My father snorted. “The doctor says there is no chance of the chemo working now.” He shook his head. “So how can there be less hope than that? How can there be negative hope?” He laughed.
I tried to laugh, too, but I felt gutted. Negative hope.
Hannah cleared her throat. She looked down at her plate. We all looked at her. “You know there’s this bird,” she began, fiddling with her chopsticks, “that I’d like to track down while I’m here. It’s native to Korea, and happens to be the only known species that can survive a certain fatal fungus.”
I’d heard cancer described as a kind of fungus spreading within the body.
“What happens after the bird is infected?” my father asked.
Hannah settled in her seat and set down her chopsticks. “Well, it usually dies,” she said. She leaned forward now. “Let me tell you how it happens.”
Hannah had always been a storyteller. She’d scared her friends with ghost stories, she’d made them cry playing house because someone in the game, the baby, the mother, the sister, would always die.
She told us now that as the fungus spreads, the infected bird becomes covered in a sort of mold, and can no longer fly because its feathers grow stiff and heavy. Its beak begins to soften, and when it tries to peck insects out of trees, the beak bends and becomes deformed. Even its claws begin to rot and fall out one by one. Most of the birds that get this disease, she said, starve to death. Not even their predators will touch them. “When my professor lived in Korea she discovered one of these sick birds,” Hannah said. I noticed as she spoke how in control of my parents she was, how completely they were her audience.
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