All You Can Ever Know

by Nicole Chung

  The next day, I asked my teacher for a library pass at recess.

  One night during her visit, Cindy caught me absently writing on my dinner place mat. Not with a pen, but with a fingertip: up and down, across the edge of the mat, invisible letters I could almost see in my mind’s eye. When she commented on it, I explained, a little sheepishly, that the note-taking was a lifelong habit. It happened when I was talking with or listening to people—sometimes intentionally, the words related to our conversation, but usually without even realizing it.

  “Our dad does that all the time! Sometimes he writes in English, sometimes in Korean. I do it, too. I always thought I picked up the habit from watching him.”

  “Maybe not,” Dan said.

  Laughing, we began to muse about whether there was a “writing with no paper” gene. The invisible writing on any nearby surface was a habit that had been good-naturedly mocked by friends and family for as long as I could remember. People had remarked upon how strange they thought it was. My boss at my first job, back in high school, had called it “distracting.” Now it was something more, too: another little link between Cindy and me, and to our father the writer.

  After dinner, Cindy and I went for a walk while Dan and Rick cleaned up. Cindy joked about what devoted spouses they were for taking care of the chores and giving us more time to talk, but I was too busy thinking about the question that had been weighing on my mind, the question I still hadn’t asked.

  We were as closely related as people could be, products of the same parents but with vastly different homes and lives. There had been no reason to expect that our personalities would mesh, that our lives would fit together like pieces of the same puzzle just because I might want them to. I had tried so hard to manage my expectations leading up to this visit. But my hopes were another matter entirely. I wanted so much of Cindy—what if it was too much?

  She would be going home in just a few days. My chest felt tight. I remembered something Rick had said to me once, right after I got in touch with Cindy: In her own way, she was as alone as you were. Maybe some part of her needed me, too? Anxious as I was, I knew this moment, this one request, was so important. And I was running out of time.

  “I really don’t know how to be a sister, because I’ve never been one before.” I was talking too fast; my words tumbled out in a rush, as if someone else were pulling them from my throat. “I know that you aren’t used to expecting much from your family. But I want you to expect things from me. I want you to feel like you can trust me and tell me things, and know that I will support you.”

  I felt Cindy’s eyes and stopped. Stopped talking, stopped walking, right in the middle of the darkened, rain-drenched street. She tilted her head and pursed her lips ever so slightly, assuming a thoughtful expression that was—like so many of her mannerisms—eerily familiar.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, determined to salvage the conversation, reassure her that I wasn’t as desperate as I felt. It had come out all wrong. Too fast, too sudden, too much.

  “I know it will take a while, and that’s okay; I can be patient. I just want you to know—because I hope we’ll always be honest with each other—that that’s the kind of relationship I want to have someday. I want us to be real sisters. Do you . . . do you think we could get there, someday?”

  I could barely discern Cindy’s expression in the dim light cast by streetlamps, even if I’d had more practice at reading her face. She didn’t seem to pick up on my emotion, how afraid I was that she would refuse. She reached out and took my hand, her fingers strong and warm, squeezing mine tightly.

  “You’re already there with me, Nikki.”

  She smiled, and I did, too, the darkness hiding my tears. The two of us circled the block two more times. We must have kept talking, but later I would never remember exactly what we said. All I could think about, the whole time, was how happy I was.

  I still wasn’t sure if my birth parents were glad I had found them. I still didn’t know if or when I would meet them, or what to think about their decision to give me up. But I believed Cindy when she said that she wanted us to be family—real sisters—because in the time we had known each other, she had offered me nothing except for the truth. I knew that she’d been alone, too, probably more alone than I was. I could just believe that maybe she needed me as much as I needed her.

  Though we’d forged a different bond than siblings who grew up together, it was, I now understood, no less important for being so new. It didn’t matter how different we were, how much we had missed, how long we’d been apart. We had been family once, and now we would be again. We were sisters, at last, because we had decided we should be.

  Part IV

  Cindy called me on March 12, almost one year to the day since we met. “I’m pregnant again.”

  I willed myself not to shout with joy, even though I wanted to. I understood why my sister’s voice was more cautious than thrilled. In the year since her ectopic pregnancy and surgery, she’d also had a miscarriage. “If it happens again,” she had told me a few months earlier, “I don’t know if I’ll be up for another try.”

  Now she said she was about six weeks along. “We haven’t told anyone else.”

  “Not even your dad?”

  I still never referred to him as my dad. Rick had suggested Abeoji, Father in Korean, because that’s what he called my birth father. For me, though, it didn’t make a difference whether the word was in Korean or English; the meaning was the same, and even if Father or Dad had felt right to me, I did not know if my birth father would agree. Harabeoji could be used for a respected elder, not necessarily a grandparent, but that, too, felt wrong—he was my biological father, not a more distant connection. In emails, I addressed him by his first name and just felt awkward about it, as if it were disrespectful, but he never asked me to do otherwise.

  “No, I’m not going to tell him until my second trimester, if I make it that far,” Cindy said. “For now, you’re the only one who knows.”

  I heard the fear in her voice and wished she had no reason for it. I wished this pregnancy could be something we laughed and joked about, even this early.

  “I’m trying not to obsess over it,” she added. “Every day feels like a victory, though. Another bridge between me and this baby.”

  For now, as my sister waited and worried, I decided not to mention our decision to try to have another baby—I could wait until she was safely in her second trimester. “I’m thinking about you both,” I said, wishing I could hug her instead.

  We both knew that the fate of this pregnancy had no connection to my thoughts, our wishes, or anyone’s prayers. But she was my sister, and she wanted this so badly. I hoped for her as hard as I dared, knowing a part of her was still afraid to hope for herself.

  I did get pregnant, too, confirmed by the test I took three days after my twenty-ninth birthday. By the time I shared the news with Cindy—sending her a video of Abby announcing, “I’m going to be a big sister!”—my sister was in her second trimester and feeling optimistic. Thrilled to be pregnant at the same time, our phone conversations were filled with talk about cousins and favorite name combinations. Abby, by then a precocious and highly chatty two-year-old, was certain both babies would be girls.

  Dan and I had booked July flights to visit Cindy and Rick before I learned I was pregnant. “The trip won’t be a problem,” I assured my sister. “Can you just make sure your freezer is well-stocked with popsicles? I can’t be pregnant without popsicles.”

  “That’s not a problem. By the way, I’ve been wanting to ask . . . would you like Dad to come and stay with us for a couple of days while you’re here, so you can meet him, too?”

  I didn’t say yes right away.

  Wasn’t this what I had wanted, envisioned when I searched—the chance to meet and talk with a biological parent? As much as I loved my sister, as close as we’d become, I had not gotten my looks, my traits, my flesh and blood and bone from her
. We were stems that shared common roots, but there were some things I simply could not know unless I met one or both birth parents. I’d given up on forging a deeper connection with my birth mother. But I was willing to meet my birth father, and assumed I would one day. The meeting would likely have already taken place if we lived on the same coast.

  “Was this his idea, or yours?” I wasn’t sure why this mattered, but it did. I didn’t want to frighten him, or force him into a meeting he didn’t want.

  “I told him you would be here, but he’s the one who asked if you would like to meet.”

  He and his wife had offered to come and spend a couple of days with us at Cindy’s house. They wouldn’t stay the whole week—Cindy wanted to be sure that she and I still got plenty of time together. “I know that he would like to see you, but you can say no,” she said. “He’ll understand if you’re not ready. But he is. It’s what he wants.”

  I did feel ready, in a way. I might not be ready to stay with him, or have him stay with me, for long—but visiting with him at my sister’s house, with her there for support, sounded like the easiest possible introduction.

  Yet if I’d once worried that I would disappoint Cindy, it was nothing compared to how much I feared disappointing our father. He and I came from different generations, different cultures, different traumas. I was not the person I would have been if he had raised me. And I was not a good Korean daughter, obedient and respectful, like my sister had been right up until she learned about me and shook off a lifetime’s worth of conditioning to demand answers—if I had once feared alienating her with my bluntness and outspokenness, what chance would I have when I met our father? Sometimes, when he closed himself off from questions, or reiterated that he didn’t want anyone else in the family to know about me, I still feared he was ashamed of me. Or, if not me, at least the history I represented.

  But I did not want to continue going to visit my sister regularly, ignoring my father’s requests to meet. I did not want to be estranged from both my birth parents forever.

  “It’s going to be weird,” I said. It wasn’t a refusal to meet, or an argument against it, just a fact.

  “Super weird,” my sister agreed. “But this is our family we’re talking about. What else could it be?”

  Dan, Abigail, and I landed in Portland on July 9. My birth father and his wife were due to arrive the following afternoon. I was, as I had known I would be, in the depths of early pregnancy fatigue, worn out and cranky after ten hours of travel with a toddler. I had expected a night of poor sleep in my sister’s guest bed, but my anxiety over meeting my birth father was no match for first-trimester exhaustion. At least I was prepared for it this time, and past the worst of my nausea.

  The next morning I was the last to rise. While I ate breakfast, Cindy asked if we wanted to go to Multnomah Falls. I had not been there since childhood, and the promised short hike and lovely views seemed far preferable to sitting in my sister’s living room, staring at the clock while we waited for our father. As we walked over trails and damp bridges, Abby often riding on Dan’s shoulders, the sun broke through the hazy cloud cover above, making the waterfall gleam silver amid all the green. At Abby’s request we bought hot dogs and ice cream cones from the snack bar and sat near the base of the falls while we ate, listening to the water cascading behind us.

  Either Dan or Rick took a spectacularly bad picture of my sister and me with our arms around each other’s shoulders, both our faces rounded by pregnancy. We look so alike in this one, I thought as I looked at the photo, the two of us half smiling and squinting in the sun, strands of black hair escaping from matching ponytails.

  As we drove back to Cindy and Rick’s house, Abby nodding off in her car seat, I fell silent. The whole car was quiet. Rick and I tended to carry the small talk when the four of us were all together. I felt like I did before an important interview, or the first day of school, wondering if people would like me. Worried about the impression I’d made. “Dad told me that he’s nervous, too,” Cindy said.

  This did not make me feel better. “What if we’re both so nervous we don’t have anything to say?”

  “Well, then, you can just stare at each other for a while, and then we’ll eat delicious Korean food.”

  I was so grateful, so glad she was with me for this meeting. Sometimes I tried to imagine reuniting with my birth family with no Cindy in the picture. How would it have gone? Would I have ever met my birth father? Even if I hadn’t, everything I’d gone through to find my family would have been worth it, I thought, as long as I ended up with this woman beside me.

  “You don’t need to worry, Nikki,” she said. “I know he’s happy that the two of you are finally going to meet. Just . . . don’t be too offended by anything he says, okay?” I think she meant to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “I meant to warn you before—I think sometimes Koreans can be really blunt.”

  I didn’t want our father to be blunt with me—not right after we met—unless it resulted in untrammeled praise. His emails to me were kind enough, but also brief. I still didn’t know how he truly felt about me. What did it mean if your own father didn’t like you?

  “What if he’s disappointed?” I said in a low voice, meant only for my sister. “What if he thinks I should be . . . you know, more Korean?”

  I was glad she didn’t laugh, though I thought I saw a glimmer of mischief in her eyes as she replied, “Then I think you can tell him he knows perfectly well why you’re not.”

  Back at the house, I didn’t even have time to take off my shoes or fix my mussed ponytail before the doorbell rang. Rick did an about-face. “They’re early! Usually they’re late because they get lost. Family trait,” he added, grinning at me. “You all have a poor sense of direction.” I would have liked to throw something at him, but I knew he was right.

  He opened the door. My birth father and his wife stood on the porch, their arms full of luggage, gift bags, and two enormous containers of marinating meat I imagined I could smell even through the Tupperware. He looks so much like Cindy, I thought.

  In appearance, my sister truly was a younger, female version of our father—something I had not fully seen until this moment, despite all the photos. They had the same eyes, though his were sharp behind his glasses and I was more accustomed to seeing my sister with her contacts in. They had the same nose, the same freckles. Their faces were shaped the same as well, not as round or full as mine, both concealing more than my wide-open book of a face. I’d known that they looked alike, of course, from photos, but the resemblance was so much more striking in person—and it seemed fitting that the daughter who’d grown up under his eye looked more like him than the one he’d never had a chance to know. I must look like our mother, I thought. And then I wished I didn’t, in case it gave him another reason not to like me.

  I had scrutinized his dark eyes and stern mouth in photographs, unable to find any real resemblance between us. But in person, there was something familiar in the determined set of his chin, the quick movement of his eyes that seemed so familiar. He held himself like someone with discipline. I knew myself to be disciplined, but probably did not appear so to others. He moved with purpose and care, like Cindy, and when he halted in front of me he seemed to size me up. I wondered if his mind was churning as fast as mine. I was conscious of straightening my spine, trying to meet his gaze without fear. He was only an inch taller than me. He should not have seemed so imposing, this trim, fit Korean man nearing seventy.

  But I felt small in his presence. And so very, very young.

  “Hello, Nikki,” he said.

  “Hello,” I said, leaving off both the uncomfortable Dad and the unthinkable Mr. Chung, still too nervous to smile. I envied his oh-so-easy use of my old nickname as he held out his hand. Our handshake seemed too formal, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to hug him yet.

  “You’re looking very plump.”

  “I’m pregnant,” I reminded him, my voice a shadow of w
hat it would have been if one of my adoptive parents had said that to me. “Thirteen weeks.”

  His wife, who immediately hugged me as if I were her own long-lost daughter and not only her husband’s, nodded at my sister. “You look the same size as Cindy, but she is much farther along than you.”

  I looked at my sister. First her stomach, then her face. I warned you, her raised eyebrows seemed to say. “It’s my second pregnancy. You start to show earlier,” I said. For some reason, our absurd exchange made me think of my birth mother, who Cindy had said never showed even when she was several months along—already, I felt, I was not measuring up to expectations.

  For a few moments, we all bustled about, finding places for bags and luggage. Rick kept asking questions that were sometimes answered in Korean; Cindy would translate. Would every exchange we had be like this? My sister explaining what our father had said to me? Even if he spoke in English—which he spoke very well—were there nuances, inferences, cultural references I would miss unless Cindy drew my attention to them?

  Stomach in knots again, I was seized by the desire to flee. I didn’t know what I was doing here, or why I’d thought this meeting was a good idea. I should have waited. I should have given us more time. He was going to be disappointed in me, I was sure of it, if he wasn’t already. I was jet-lagged, pregnant, still slightly sweaty from hiking, and now distracted by my daughter, who was very loudly requesting a snack.

  As it turned out, Abigail saved me, cranky or not; Cindy’s stepmother had swooped down on her, giving her the biggest Minnie Mouse doll I had ever seen. I was grateful for the moment of distraction, the chance to shore myself up as Abby was given her first Korean lesson: Kamsahamnida, Halmeoni, Harabeoji. That much even I knew.

  “We brought you something, too,” my birth father said. He gave Cindy and me copies of Walden and Civil Disobedience. “Have you read this?”