by Angie Kim
Young stepped next to Mary. Mary didn’t move, kept her eyes focused on the charred submarine, tears still trickling. Young said in Korean, “I know today was hard, but I’m glad you’re able to cry about this, finally,” and reached to rest her hand on Mary’s shoulder.
Mary snatched her shoulder away. “You know nothing,” she said in English, choked in sobs, and ran into their house. The rejection stung, but that was momentary, soothed by Young’s realization that what had just happened—sobbing, yelling, running away, all of it—was typical of the real, pre-explosion Mary. It was funny, how she’d hated the teenage-girl melodrama and scolded Mary to stop that nonsense, and yet had missed it once it was gone and now was relieved at its return.
She followed Mary in and opened the black shower curtain demarcating Mary’s sleeping corner. It was too flimsy to afford her (or Pak and Young on the other side) much privacy and served mostly as a symbol, a visual declaration of a teenager’s demand to be left alone.
Mary was lying on her sleeping mat, face sunken into her pillow. Young sat and smoothed Mary’s long black hair. “I have good news,” Young said, making her words gentle. “Our insurance is coming through, as soon as the trial ends. We can move soon. You’ve always wanted to see California. You can apply to college there, and we can forget all this.”
Mary raised her head a bit, like a baby struggling with the weight of her head, and turned to Young. Crease marks from the wrinkled pillowcase lined Mary’s face, and her eyes were puffy slits. “How can you think about that? How can you talk about college and California when Kitt and Henry are dead?” Mary’s words were accusatory, but her eyes were wide, as if impressed by Young’s ability to focus on nontragic things and searching for clues on how to do the same.
“I know it’s terrible, everything that’s happened. But we need to move on. Focus on our family, your future.” Young smoothed Mary’s forehead lightly, as if ironing silk.
Mary put her head down. “I didn’t know that’s how Henry died. His face…” Mary closed her eyes, and tears dropped and stained her pillowcase.
Young lay down next to her daughter. “Shhh, it’s okay.” She brushed Mary’s hair away from her eyes and combed it with her fingers the way she had every night in Korea. How much she’d missed this. Young hated many things about their American life: being a splintered goose family for four years; discovering (after settling in Baltimore) that their host family expected her to work from six a.m. to midnight, seven days a week; becoming a prisoner, locked away in bulletproofed isolation. But the thing she regretted most was the loss of closeness with her daughter. For four years, she never saw her. Mary was asleep when Young got home and still asleep when she left. Mary visited the store the first few weekends, but she spent the whole time crying about how much she hated school, how mean the kids were, how she couldn’t understand anyone and she missed her father and missed her friends and on and on. Then came anger, Mary’s shouts accusing Young of abandoning her, leaving her an orphan in a strange country. Then finally, worst of all, silent avoidance. No yells, no pleas, no glares.
The thing Young never understood was why Mary directed her anger solely at her. Pak staying in Korea, the Baltimore host-family arrangement—everything had been his plan. Mary knew this, had witnessed him issuing commands and silencing Young’s objections, and yet Mary somehow blamed her. It was as if Mary associated all the transition pains of immigration—separation, loneliness, bullies—with Young (because Young was in America), whereas Pak, by virtue of his location, she grouped with her warm memories of Korea—family, togetherness, fitting in. Their host family said to wait, that Mary would follow the typical pattern of immigrant kids hyperassimilating, too fast and too much, driving parents crazy with their preferences of English to Korean, McDonald’s to kimchi. But Mary never thawed, to Young or to America, even after she started making friends and speaking exclusively in English on the rare occasions she deigned to speak to Young, until eventually those early associations became a mathematical truth, forever constant:
(Pak = Korea = happiness) > (Young = America = misery)
But was that over? For here was her daughter now, letting Young rake her fingers through her hair while she cried, being comforted by this intimate act. After five minutes, maybe ten, Mary’s breathing slowed to an even rhythm, and Young looked at her sleeping face. Awake, Mary’s face was all sharp angles—thin nose, high cheekbones, deep frowns that lined her forehead like train tracks. But asleep, everything softened like melting wax, the angles giving way to gentle curves. Even the scar on Mary’s cheek looked delicate, like she could brush it off.
Young closed her eyes and matched her breathing to her daughter’s, and she felt a pinch of dizziness, of unfamiliarity. How many times had she lain next to Mary and held her? Hundreds of times? Thousands? But all years ago. In the last decade, the only time she’d allowed Young to touch her for sustained periods was in the hospital. People talked so much about the loss of intimacy between married couples as the years progress, so many studies about the number of times a couple has sex in the first year of marriage versus the remaining years, but no one measured the number of hours spent holding your baby in the first year of life versus the remaining years, the dramatic dissipation of intimacy—the sensual familiarity of nursing, holding, comforting—as children pass from infancy and toddlerhood to the teens. You lived in the same house, but the intimacy was gone, replaced by aloofness, with splashes of annoyance. Like an addiction, you could go for years without it, but you never forgot it, never stopped missing it, and when you got a dab of it, like now, you craved it more and wanted to gorge on it.
Young opened her eyes. She brought her face close and touched her nose to Mary’s, the way she used to long ago. Her daughter’s warm breaths blew on her lips, like gentle kisses.
* * *
FOR DINNER, Young made the dish that Pak pretended was his favorite: tofu-and-onion soup in a thick soybean paste. His actual favorite food was galbi, marinated short ribs—had been since they’d met in college. But ribs, even poor-quality scraps, were over four dollars per pound. Tofu cost two dollars per box, which they could manage if they stuck to rice, kimchi, and the dollar-per-dozen ramen the rest of the week. On his first day home from the hospital, she’d served this soup, and he’d breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the pungent zest of soybean curd and sweet onions. He closed his eyes after the first bite, said that four months of bland hospital food had left him craving strong flavors, and declared Young’s soup his new favorite. She knew he was just saving his honor—Pak was ashamed of their finances and refused to even discuss them—but regardless, his obvious delight with every bite had pleased her, and she’d made it as often as she could.
Standing over the simmering pot, stirring in the curd paste and watching the water turn a rich brown, Young had to laugh at how contented she felt, at the fact that this was the happiest she could remember feeling in America. Objectively, this was the lowest point of her American—no, entire—life: her husband paralyzed; her daughter a catatonic mess, her face scarred and psyche shattered; their finances nonexistent. Young should’ve been in despair, so weighed down by the bleakness of her situation, by others’ pity, that she could barely stand.
And yet, here she was. Enjoying the feel of the wooden spoon in her hand, the simple motion of stirring sliced onion into the current of the liquid, breathing in the tangy vapors wafting up and warming her face. She replayed Pak’s words about the incoming insurance money and, even more, the way his hand had nestled hers, the warmth of his smile. She and Pak had laughed together today—when was the last time they’d done that? It was as if being deprived of joy for so long had made her oversensitive to it, so that even a sliver of pleasure—the everyday kind she expected and therefore didn’t notice when life was normal—now left her in the kind of celebratory state she associated with milestones such as engagements and graduations.
“Happiness is relative,” Teresa had told her once, a few days befo
re the explosion. Teresa had arrived early for the morning dive, so Young invited her to wait in the house while Pak got the barn ready. Mary stopped on her way out to SAT class. “Ms. Santiago, nice to see you again. Hi, Rosa,” Mary said, bending down to put her face level with Rosa’s. It amazed Young how friendly Mary could be, to everyone except her mother. Even Rosa responded to the cheerful lilt in Mary’s voice; she smiled and seemed to strain to say something, a half grunt, half gurgle coming from her throat.
“Listen to that,” Teresa said. “She’s trying to talk. This whole week, she’s been making so many sounds. HBOT’s really working for her.” Teresa put her forehead to Rosa’s, mussed up her hair, and laughed. Rosa closed her lips and hummed, then opened her lips, making a “muh” sound.
Teresa gasped. “Did you hear that? She said Ma.”
“She did! She said Ma,” Mary said, and Young felt a tingle rush through her.
Teresa crouched down, looking up at Rosa’s face. “Can you say it again, my sweet girl? Ma. Mama.”
Rosa hummed again, then said, “Ma,” then again, “Ma!”
“Oh my God!” Teresa kissed Rosa all around her face, feathery pecks that made Rosa laugh. Young and Mary laughed, too, feeling the wonder of the moment ripple across them, binding them in shared amazement. Teresa put her head back, as if in a silent prayer of thanks to God, and Young saw it then: tears streaming down her face, her eyes closed in bliss so complete that she couldn’t contain it, couldn’t keep her lips from stretching so wide, her molars showed. Teresa kissed Rosa’s forehead. Not a peck this time, but a lingering savoring of Rosa’s skin against her lips.
Young felt a jolt of envy. It was ridiculous to feel jealous of a woman with a daughter who couldn’t walk or talk, with no college, husband, or children in her future. She should feel sorry for Teresa, not envious, she told herself. And yet, when had she felt pure joy like that radiating from Teresa’s face? Certainly not anytime recently, when everything she said caused Mary to frown and yell or, worse, ignore her and pretend she didn’t know her.
To Teresa, Rosa saying “Mama” was a miraculous achievement, something that gave her more happiness than … than what? What had Mary done, what could she do, to make Young feel that much wonder? Get into Harvard or Yale?
As if to underscore this point, Mary said a warm good-bye to Teresa and Rosa, then turned to leave without saying anything to Young.
Young felt her cheeks flush and wondered if Teresa noticed. “Drive safely, Mary.” Young put a false brightness into her voice. “Dinner is 8:30,” she said in English, not wanting to be rude to Teresa by using Korean, even though she felt self-conscious speaking English in front of Mary, knowing that her accent, like everything else, embarrassed Mary.
Young turned to Teresa and forced out a chuckle. “She is so busy. SAT classes, tennis, violin. Can you believe she is already researching colleges? I guess that is what sixteen-year-old girls do.” Even before she said it, she’d wanted to stop her words. But it was as if she were watching a movie already made, unable to stop what was coming. The fact was, for a moment—the briefest moment, but long enough to do damage—she’d wanted to hurt Teresa. She’d wanted to inject a dose of dark reality into her bliss and snap her out of it. She’d wanted to remind her of all the things that Rosa should be doing but was not and never would.
Teresa’s face went saggy, the corners of her eyes and lips drooping dramatically, as if some invisible line holding them up had been cut. It was exactly the reaction she’d sought, but as soon as she saw it, Young hated herself.
“I am sorry. I do not know why I said that.” Young reached out to touch Teresa’s hand. “I was very insensitive.”
Teresa looked up. “It’s all right,” she said. Young’s doubt must have showed, because Teresa smiled and clasped her hand. “Really, Young, it’s fine. When Rosa first got sick, it was hard. Every time I saw a girl her age, I’d think, ‘That should be Rosa. She should be playing soccer and having slumber parties.’ But, at some point”—she stroked Rosa’s hair—“I accepted it. I learned not to expect her to be like other kids, and now I’m like any mom. I have good days and bad, and sometimes I’m frustrated, but sometimes she does something that makes me laugh or something new she’s never done, like now, and then life is pretty good, you know?”
Young had nodded, but she hadn’t really grasped how Teresa could look happy, be happy, when her life was, by any objective measure, so hard and tragic. But now, kissing Pak’s cheek to wake him for dinner, seeing him smile as he said, “You made my favorite. That smells wonderful”—she understood. It was why all the studies showed that rich, successful people who should be the happiest—CEOs, lottery winners, Olympic champions—weren’t, in fact, the happiest, and why the poor and disabled weren’t necessarily the most depressed: you got used to your life, whatever accomplishments and troubles it happened to hold, and adjusted your expectations accordingly.
After waking Pak, Young walked to Mary’s corner and stomped on the floor twice—the faux knock they used to enhance the illusion of privacy—and opened the shower curtain. Mary was still asleep, her hair wild and mouth agape like a baby rooting for milk. How vulnerable she looked, just the way she’d looked after the explosion, body crumpled and blood streaming from her cheeks. Young blinked to dislodge that image and knelt next to her daughter. She placed her lips on Mary’s temple. She closed her eyes and let her kiss linger, savoring the feel of Mary’s skin against her lips, the rhythm of her blood pulsing underneath, and wondered how long she could stay like this, joined to her daughter, skin to skin.
MARY YOO
SHE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of her mother’s voice. “Meh-hee-yah, wake up. Dinnertime,” she said, but in a whisper—as if, contrary to her words, she were trying not to wake her. Mary kept her eyes closed and tried to quell the surge of disorientation she felt, hearing her mother say “Meh-hee” in a gentle tone. For the last five years, her mother had used her Korean name only when she was annoyed with her, during fights. In fact, her mother hadn’t said “Meh-hee” at all in a year; since the explosion, her mother was being extra nice and used “Mary” exclusively.
The funny thing was, Mary hated her American name. Not always. When her mother (who’d studied English in college and still read American books) suggested “Mary” as the closest approximation of “Meh-hee,” she’d been excited to find a name with the same starting syllable as her own. On the fourteen-hour flight from Seoul to New York—her last hours as Yoo Meh-hee—she’d practiced writing her new name, filling an entire sheet with M-A-R-Ys and thinking how pretty the letters looked. After they landed, when the American immigration officer labeled her “Mary Yoo,” rolling the r in that exotic way her Korean tongue couldn’t replicate, she felt slightly glamorous and dizzy, like a butterfly newly emerged from a cocoon.
But two weeks into her new middle school in Baltimore—during roll call, when she was secretly reading letters from friends back home and she didn’t recognize her new name and didn’t answer and the kids started tittering—the newborn-butterfly feeling gave way to a sense of deep dissonance, like forcing a square into a round hole. Later, when two girls reenacted the scene for the cafeteria, the ramen-haired girl’s crescendoing repetition of her new name—“Mary Yoo? Ma-ry Yoooo? MA-REEEEE? YOOOOO?”—felt like hammer blows, her square corners shattering.
She knew, of course, that the name wasn’t to blame, that the actual problem was not knowing the language, customs, people, anything. But it was hard not to associate her new name with the new her. In Korea, as Meh-hee, she’d been a talker. She got in trouble constantly for chatting with friends and argued her way out of most punishments. The new her, Mary, was a mute math geek. A core of quiet, obedient and alone, wrapped by a carapace of low expectations. It was as if discarding her Korean name had weakened her, like cutting Samson’s hair, and the replacement came with a meek persona she didn’t recognize or like.
The first time her mother called her “Mary” was the weekend afte
r the roll-call/cafeteria incident, during Mary’s first visit to their host family’s grocery store. The Kangs had spent two weeks training her mother, and they’d deemed her ready to take over the store’s management. Prior to the visit, Mary had envisioned a sleek supermarket—everything in America was supposed to be impressive; that was why they’d moved here—but walking from the car, Mary had to sidestep broken bottles, cigarette butts, and someone sleeping on the sidewalk under torn newspaper.
The store vestibule was like a freight elevator, in both size and looks. Thick glass separated the customers from the vault-like room containing the products, and signs lined the lazy Susan transaction window: PROTECTED BY BULLETPROOF GLASS, CUSTOMER IS KING, and OPEN 6 A.M. TO 12 A.M. 7 DAYS A WEEK. As soon as her mother unlocked the bullet- and apparently odor-proof door, Mary got a whiff of deli meat.
“Six to midnight? Every day?” Mary said before she even stepped in. Her mother gave an embarrassed smile to the Kangs and led Mary down a narrow corridor past the ice-cream cooler and deli slicer. As soon as they reached the back, Mary faced her mother. “How long have you known about this?” she said.
Her mother’s face crinkled in pain. “Meh-hee-yah, all this time, I thought they wanted me to help them, as an assistant. I only realized last night—they’re considering this their retirement. I asked if they’d hire someone to help, maybe once a week, but they said they can’t afford that, not with what they’re paying for your school.” She stepped back and opened a door to reveal a cupboard. A mattress was stuffed in, almost fully covering the concrete floor. “They set up a place for me to sleep. Not every night, just if I’m too tired to drive home.”