Yolk

by Mary H. K. Choi

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s the boyfriend?” I can tell she thinks Jeremy’s the reason why we’re not close.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” With my free hand I cling onto the cold wire of the chain-link fence, watching through the diamonds as a taller guy dressed in all black shoots a three.

  “Are we not friends anymore?” she asks in a small voice after a while.

  It’s the unexpected vulnerability that silences me. Makes me want to turn around and disappear into the subway station behind us. I pretend to be mesmerized by a guy strapping on a bright blue knee brace. His broad face is slick with sweat and his chest is heaving, but he’s grinning and talking shit the entire time.

  “Whatever,” says Ivy coldly. I don’t dare look at her. “You’re no fun anymore.”

  I can’t say what I’d expected. I’d entertained the thought of telling Ivy about June, forgetting for a moment who Ivy was. Who I was to her.

  “Where’s that vape?” I ask her instead.

  She hands it to me. It’s white with a gold ring around the middle. “It’s a really nice Indica forward hybrid,” she says. “You’ll like it.”

  I take a deep drag and hand it back. “Thanks.” When I hug her to leave, she smells like singed vanilla. “I’ll text you.”

  * * *

  I turn up Erik Satie on my headphones as I walk to work. When I approach Union Square, I notice how weird it is that I was just at a park by a movie theater and now I’m by another movie theater nearing an entirely different park. I realize I’m high, but I love the way the piano music turns the plaza into a movie. On the steps, there’s a protest, making the foot traffic that much slower. Little kids are holding signs. It’s about Medicare. I’m watchful for police presence and unmarked fed vans, keeping my head down.

  My posture gets shittier the colder it gets. Growing up in Texas means that you only ever need denim jackets and hoodies and maybe a peacoat if you want to be pumpkin spice latte about it. But New York is no joke. I have a bone-deep fear of cold weather, but at least this time of year, there’s a festive energy in the air. The Halloween decorations are up. Blink and it’ll be New Year’s Eve.

  I duck into the store where I work, Fishs Eddy. I was enticed over the summer by the busyness of it. The resplendent displays, the strings of lights, the barrels of raffia-bundled coasters, and so many candles. They have a chandelier made out of antique eggbeaters. It’s the land of milk and honey. The abundance is ridiculous.

  I have twenty minutes before my shift, so I wander down the aisles with everyone else, playing house. Checking out the new merch. Someday, when I have the kind of furniture where the sales associate orders fabric swatches, I’ll own all this shit and more. I scan the faces around me resentfully. All the customers feel rich. So many excellent jackets. Colorful scarves in complicated Parisian-seeming knots.

  I finger a smooth porcelain butter dish with a lid. I love the romance of it. The decadence. Not only a dedicated place for butter but a roof over its head for protection. Who thinks of such things?

  Even with a 30 percent employee discount, I’d never be able to buy everything I need. I want egg cups and cake stands and cookie jars and café au lait bowls. Antique milk jugs for succulents and the wooden, weather-beaten shelf to go with it.

  When guests come over, to my home, the place that will one day exist and be mine, I want to convince them that I grew up being this person. That I’ve always had so much crap. Superfluent in the superfluous. That I’d been allowed as a kid to pick a bedroom wall color other than white for self-expression.

  I’d roast chickens and mix pitchers of drinks, smiling, always smiling, appearing as though I were the type whose parents knocked—knocked!—before entering her room. Because sleepovers were things that I was allowed to host and attend and privacy was honored. I want to appear as though I’d had a family who knew how to celebrate Christmas. Real Christmas. With a tree and presents that are gift wrapped and asked for. Not stacks of SAT workbooks and a twenty-dollar bill folded around gas station candy.

  “Ay,” says Mari, looping her arm into the crook of mine and steering me toward the glassware. “I have tea to spill.” Mari started the same week I did but immediately started dog-sitting for people and going to Wednesday karaoke nights with everyone. She always has gum and tampons. I think she thinks we’re friends.

  Mari widens her eyes at Chinara and Trev at the registers. “He lost his virginity to her,” she whispers gleefully. I look over and try to imagine them having sex. It’s not altogether unpleasant. Trev’s short but lean, Latino, and sometimes brings a skateboard with him, and she’s Nigerian with a pixie cut and a nose piercing.

  “Recently?” They’ve got to be in their late twenties at least.

  “No.” Mari shakes her head sharply and rolls her eyes. “When they were in high school.”

  “Oh.” I smile, unsure about the appropriate reaction. “That’s cool.”

  “But don’t you think that’s so New York?” She gestures hugely, platter-eyed and expectant. “They hadn’t seen each other in ten years before they both got jobs here. Plus, she married someone else!”

  “Random.” I nod carefully. I know I’m disappointing her. I’m dying to know the right words to say, but I’m still a little stoned and failing. She probably thinks I’m a freak.

  “See.” She sticks her tongue out and grins. “See, that right there. That’s why you’re hard to be friends with.”

  As I go stow my stuff, I’m reminded of something I overheard a few weeks before I was kicked out of my old apartment. We all had shitty drywall bedroom walls, and mine had a six-inch gap where it didn’t meet the ceiling. I heard my roommates talk about how I was selfish because I was an only child. I remember thinking how absurd that was. Everything about me is a little sister.

  As I’m restocking displays in the four-thousand-square-foot store, I can’t stop thinking about June. How we used to play restaurant with real cups and dishes from the kitchen because we didn’t have toys. The way she brushed my hair. How she’d make me eat things like whole garlic cloves and once her toenail clipping, laughing when I would.

  In a slatted wooden fruit crate beside a stack of trays that read YOU’RE A MESS, there’s a burlap-lined tangle of bright-orange bottle openers. The chalkboard sign reads $12. I flip the corkscrew part out like a switchblade. It snaps out beautifully, and snaps back in. It’s perfect.

  As I walk it up to Mari at the register so I can buy it on break, my heart rate quickens with how easy it would be to put it in my pocket. The only reason I don’t is because it’s for June and that feels unlucky. If I wind up karma-killing my sister because of a stupid $12 wine opener, I’d feel like a real dumbass.

  After work, when I get back to my block, I’m gripped by a cold wave of nausea. I take a deep breath, press my ear to the apartment door. I haven’t responded to Jeremy about his stupid portrait. He hit me up a few times but thankfully he’s not home. I kick off my shoes, shuck off my clothes, and toss myself onto the bed in my underwear. My face mashes against a pillow. I’m so exhausted I could sleep for days. I miss this bed. My bed. But now the sheets smell of him. Not unpleasant but just the way his skin smells. It’s incredible how attraction works. I used to love the familiar scent of him. The plane of his chest. His hair. And now it’s othered. Dank. Musky. Foreign.

  I get up, pulling the elastic straps of my cotton Calvin Klein sports bra down and leaving it looped around my waist. I’m too lazy to take it all the way off. I throw on my Jonas Brothers sleeping sweatshirt. I’m happy that Nick came back. He’s always seemed like the smart one. I can’t help but wonder how the other two managed to bully him into returning. What exactly they had over him.

  I investigate the fridge and the cupboards and then I ransack both.

  I fill up a jar at the faucet. They call New York tap water the champagne of water. They say bagels and pizza taste different because of it. I’ve never told anyone, but sometimes when I’m drinking it,
I wonder if it’ll imbue me with an essential New York something.

  Even if it’s trace amounts of lead.

  I chug it in great tidal gulps, spilling it down my chin, feeling like a snake eating an egg, the fluid sluicing through my throat with such force that I almost choke.

  I raise one hand above my head and heroically burp into the living room as I lower it.

  I put the kettle on for tea and make myself a mug of rooibos, immediately burning my tongue. Fuck. This always happens. For twenty years of life you’d think I’d have a cup of tea that was the exact right temperature at least once. I fling open the freezer door. Of course he’s finished the vodka. Or maybe that was me.

  Honestly, fuck Jeremy. I’m glad I never sent him the photo he needed. Fuck all these awful Jeremy feelings. My fuck-it switch is flipped as I shake off the shame and dread and heartache.

  I pull out my phone, scrolling and chewing. I’ve been checking Patrick’s feed obsessively without liking any of the photos. He doesn’t post often, but he’s tagged on random images. But this time, feeling nostalgic and lonely, I DM him. Hey. Nice photos. Like some kind of poet laureate.

  I cringily jump up and down a few times to get the douchechills out of my spine.

  When I go for my tea, it’s ice cold.

  I drink it, looking over the rim of the mug at the wreckage. The emptied tub of ice cream, the crinkly bag of Life cinnamon crumbs, scattered Cheerios, and the square crusts of Jeremy’s oat bread where I’ve bitten out the pillowy centers.

  There are seven of them. I arrange them into diamonds.

  chapter 10

  The coffee tastes burnt but sweet and my heart skips when I see her. Thank God. Hot-pink sweatpants with exactly matching coat and shoes. She’s holding her slice of pizza, and the pockets of her fuchsia fur jacket are stuffed with napkins. I check the time—we’re both running a little behind.

  I’m heading east from Eighth Avenue. It’s almost residential over there since the broad side of an apartment complex pretty much takes up the whole block. And as I hustle back under the shadow of where the art and design center bridges over Twenty-Seventh Street, there she is.

  I don’t know her name. In my head I call her Cruella. She has Vantablack hair. It’s the kind of black where no light escapes. Its blackness is as eye-catching as neon. It’s usually teased like cotton candy on top of her head, and today it’s in a beehive.

  We’re walking toward each other on the same side of the street. She must live nearby because I see her all the time. Usually with a plastic bag around her wrist. Sometimes with a small white Chihuahua. She’s alone today, but she’s wearing my favorite outfit. She only ever wears three different sets of monochromatic clothes with renditions in miniature for her dog.

  The first time I noticed her was because she walks like a newborn foal. It registered somewhere in my peripheral vision as someone falling, but that’s just the way she moves. It’s that clattering mayhem of a fifteen-year-old Eastern European couture model on a catwalk, where the hips and knees slice through the air several feet ahead of her chest and arms, which dangle way back. From the side she looks like she’s limboing.

  She’s so thin it makes my teeth hurt.

  Her skin is powdery white. With a slash of crimson lipstick. I try not to stare as she folds her slice in half, tacoing it in her paper plate. She lets the oil from the cheese drip onto the street for a moment, off the rumpled wax paper onto concrete.

  Just as I pass, she chews off the tip of her pizza and works her jaw in a rhythmic rabbitty fashion. I lock eyes with her for a second as we pass, and it feels exquisite. I turn around as if to check the street sign. She pulls out a napkin. I know she’s spitting into it.

  I wish I could break the wall and talk to her. I wonder if she notices how often she sees me. God, what I wouldn’t give for a four-hour documentary on her. I have so many questions. She searches for fucks to give, this woman. The first time I saw her do this with her food, I couldn’t believe it. That it was happening in public. It was a Papaya dog, and it was as revealing as a man masturbating on a subway car. Another time I saw her unfold the paper towels and deposit the spit-sodden masses into a bush, calling to a squirrel. It was performance art. In New York there’s at least one of each of us.

  Seeing her always makes my day.

  My phone comes alive in my hand as I take another sip of coffee. It’s June. Calling.

  This time I do something crazy and pick up. My sister asks me to come over later. I find myself wanting to go.

  Class is itchy. It’s disrespectful how slowly time goes by. Sometimes I think about the other me. The me I’d be if I’d gone into design instead of merchandising. I’d be insufferable and self-satisfied. “Je m’excuse?” I’d drone. “How is the Serger broken again?” I’d be wrapped up in all the high drama of calling forth a physical product. “Garments,” never “clothes.” “Pieces,” if you’re serious. “Wearable art,” if you’re a dilettante with an Etsy page.

  I had no idea a plural for dilettante is dilettanti.

  After several hours of monastic focus, I check Instagram. I like saving it, waiting until the messages pile up, especially after setting thirst traps in stories. I tap the paper airplane. My insides go liquid.

  Patrick.

  Hey, it reads. I never check DMs. And then Holy shit Jayne from Texas. And a phone number.

  I check to see if he’s viewed my stories. He hasn’t. I’ll wait at least a few days to text him back.

  On my way to June’s from school, I learn that endometrial cancer and uterine cancer are the same. Uterine cancer sounds meatier. As if it’s farther inside of you. I picture blooming cells with rows of teeth. I also hadn’t known that certain cancers are overfunded, like breast cancer and leukemia, whereas esophageal and uterine cancers are underfunded. Even the scariest diseases aren’t immune to branding. I catch myself stopping at a deli to consider buying flowers and immediately feel like an asshole. June would ridicule me if I stopped for a bouquet of daisies.

  I still have the wine opener in my bag. I vow to give it to her only if it naturally arises in conversation.

  “Hey,” she says when I come up. When she opens the door, there are clusters of jars and opened spice bags, with a large spill of peppercorns marching across her counter like an army of ants. I remember this about my sister, how you’d find stray ingredients for days after she cooked.

  “What are you making?” I take off my jacket and Vans. She’s leaning into a comically tiny mortar and pestle with unnecessary force and nods at the hall closet between us. There’s only a black parka and a camel trench in there. I hang my coat, marveling at the superabundant closet space. A life beyond breaking shitty plastic hangers every time you shove excess clothing aside.

  “Mapo tofu.” She resumes her grinding. It’s Dad’s favorite. “Since I’m doing the spices, I thought I’d do a big batch. You should take some with you.”

  “Thanks.” There’s a package of tofu on the cutting board. It’s deep-fried, not silken. And the cutting board is shitty and plastic, dinged up and discolored. Fobby. I fantasize about getting her a really nice checkerboard wood kind. The ultra-expensive Williams Sonoma one that lasts forever because it’s made of the butt ends of wood blocks.

  “Uh,” says June, bumping her elbow into me. I’m hovering, which she hates.

  “Do you cook a lot?” I perch on a barstool on the other side of the kitchen island. I imagine intimate get-togethers, dinner dates, charcuterie. She probably has a book club or something.

  “Not really,” she says, keeping her eyes on the pan. “Never had time.”

  She scoops up the escaped peppercorns. They look like tiny cannonballs. As she returns them to the bag, she wipes her brow with the back of her hand. “Careful with your eyes, Juju.” My jaw stiffens. She goes about her business, acting as if she hasn’t heard, crinkling the cellophane loudly.

  I hadn’t meant to call her that. It’s been years since I’ve called her that.
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  “How was school?” she asks after a moment.

  “Fine.” I sound sharper than I’d intended. I hate when she polices my whereabouts.

  She tosses the pre-fried bean curd from the cutting board into the sauce.

  “That’s not the right bean curd.” The adult part of me wants to bop the little sister part right in the nose.

  “So don’t eat it,” she says without skipping a beat and then sucks the ends of her cooking chopsticks.

  This shuts me up. It smells good.

  She stops midstir to study me.

  “What?”

  June looks pensive. Like a baby taking a shit. There’s no telling what she’s thinking.

  “Nothing.” She looks away. “I had something to tell you, but I forgot.”

  I wonder if she’s mad at me.

  “Seriously, what?”

  “Nothing,” she snaps.

  It’s probably about the tofu. Or calling her “Juju.”

  “Uh, um, so…” I hop off the stool and go to my bag, desperate to defuse the tension. “I got you something. It’s dumb. And small. It’s from my store—the store I work at. I just figured…”

  I offer her the paper sleeve. One of her hands is manning the pan that’s smoking; the other’s tossing its contents with chopsticks. “Sorry,” I say hurriedly, removing the corkscrew, crumpling the bag and shoving it in my pocket. “Worst timing for a present.” I lay it down on the counter. “It’s not even really a present. It’s more just… functional.”

  “No. It’s perfect. Thank you,” she says, a little too brightly, throwing her aromatics into the pan. They crackle, and the apartment air fills with a convincingly Szechuan bouquet. She coughs as the peppers smoke. “Oh shit,” she says, turning back to me. “Is that what you wanted? Do you want wine?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I mean, sure, but I can get it.” I open her fridge. I’m shocked by its contents. It’s crammed with random half-eaten, uncovered food. I shut the door, averting my attention, embarrassed to have spied. “I got you one because you couldn’t find it last time. Remember you offered me red because that’s the one you liked better, but…”