I nod approvingly. “You’re really lucky,” I offer.
“Look, just come to my house,” she says. “It’s so fucking cold and depressing here. And you have fucking roaches.”
“I had a roach,” I correct her. “One. And it’s dead.”
“Okay, asshole, do you want to stay here or…?”
“No.”
“Besides,” she says, ordering an Uber. “You can’t sleep on someone else’s cum stains. That’s just not right.” I shove her as she laughs.
We take a black car back. With Halloween surge pricing it’s a depraved amount of money and it has heated seats. I settle in, feeling warm inside and out. June leans over the middle seat to show me something on her phone that I barely register. When she gets back on her side, she feels far. On long car rides as kids, she’d twist, practically strangling herself with the seat belt as she hurled her legs over mine to stretch out and sleep. It never seemed particularly comfortable. It was more the principle of it, that she could because she was older.
I bite my lip to stop from smiling. June really is such an asshole.
chapter 18
“Okay, so Buc-ee’s we gotta go to for jerky….”
June’s counting off all the stores we need to hit while we’re in Texas.
“Totally.”
Buc-ee’s also has the absolute hands-down best bathrooms in the entire solar system. Clean and enormous.
“Also, I want the Izzy roll.” The sushi rolls at Mom and Dad’s restaurant are the size of burritos. “And I want migas. And puffy tacos. And Taco Cabana chips.”
I realize there are things I miss about Texas. Sweet tea, the velvety quiet nights, people in flip-flops and shorts who don’t discuss prestige TV shows like it’s a competitive sport, the eye contact and nodded acknowledgments in grocery store aisles. I might not miss the house we grew up in, but there are plenty of nice things to be said for San Antonio. Like how it’s 82 degrees right now.
We stop by June’s dedicated mail room. That might be my favorite feature of her building. At my place and the one before, if you ever actually received a package, it was a miracle. Plus, none of the bougie tenants at June’s apartment ever want their catalogs. There’s always a stack in the recycling area. I bend over to scoop the L.L. Bean and a Harry & David for the holidays.
June grabs someone’s New York Times, still in its blue sleeve, which has been left on the marble shelf. “What?” she says when I shoot her a pointed look. She flashes the address label at me. “4C’s an asshole. Have you seen the way he treats his dog?”
“June.”
She rolls her eyes and puts it back. Then she reaches over and snatches the Harry & David from me. “Hey,” I protest. She smiles gummily. “Maybe if you’re good, I’ll be inspired for Christmas.” She waves the rest of her mail in my face until I carry it. We know the deal—while June’s paying for everything, I have to be her rent mule. “So, I got those Delta tickets,” she says. I’m presuming the ones she’d shown me in the car. “It’s the only direct. But I sprang for Delta Comfort Plus. Even for you, you fucking freeloader.” She pushes the elevator button a trillion times as if to make it hurry.
I look through the rest of the mail while she flips through the catalog and land on a bill in a familiar envelope. I didn’t know June and I had the same health insurance. Mom once told me June’s coverage was so baller, she could get chemical peels for free.
That’s when I see. That the envelope is addressed to me.
“What the fuck is even up with these pears?” June asks, shoving the Harry & David catalog back at me. “I don’t get why they’re so expensive. Everyone knows Korean pears are superior. These ones don’t even have that white mesh protective jacket thingy.”
I’m barely listening. When we get inside, I open the envelope while June’s back is turned.
Listed are blood tests for cancer antigens.
Transvaginal ultrasound.
In-office biopsy.
“What is it?” June asks when she realizes I’m silent. I confirm the name. It’s repeated on every single page. Jayne Ji-young Baek. Jayne Ji-young Baek. Jayne Ji-young Baek. It’s the diabolical headfuck of reading your own name on a tombstone.
“Wait, what is that?” she asks again. “Did you open my mail?”
“June?” I show her the paperwork, the page after page of deductibles and explanation of benefits. “How come…?”
Her eyes widen as she snatches it from me. “Fuck,” she says, and then swallows.
“Why does this…?”
“Fuck,” she says again, this time inspecting my face.
There’s not enough air getting to my lungs. It’s the way she looks. She hasn’t blinked in a minute.
“Is everything okay?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” she says finally.
“June.” I’m smiling again. That stupid, idiot smile. “What’s going on?” I hear the rising edge in my voice.
“Jayne, okay,” she says. And then, “Do you want to sit down?”
I shake my head.
My sister exhales noisily. “Fuck, shit. So, for the whole past year I knew something was wrong,” she says hurriedly, watching my eyes. “I could feel it. Even before they told me to get an ultrasound, I knew. They thought it was fucking polyps or cysts or endometriosis, but I knew.”
I shake my head, confused. “But why does it say my name?” I snatch the paperwork back and show her. “June, why do I have cancer?”
“I got laid off nine week ago,” she says.
“What?” I don’t understand why we’re having two separate conversations, but the fact that June could be jobless reorganizes everything I thought I knew. “Are you going to be o—”
“There was no other way,” she says. Her mouth sets. “I had no health insurance so I used yours from school. I stole your ID and…”
“What?” I keep shaking my head like a dummy. I know I’m still smiling. I look to my sister helplessly.
June pulls out her wallet from her purse and shows me an ID. It’s mine. My Texas one. “I know you have mine….”
“I never—” I start to protest. She’d asked about it, but I’d stonewalled.
“Jayne,” she cuts me off. “I know you’ve been using mine as your fake ID. I saw it in your wallet a year ago, so—I took yours. Just to fuck with you. I was going to give it back, but then I didn’t.”
She hands me the card, and I take it. I stare at my face smiling up at me. Mom hates this picture. I wore spaghetti straps that day. With my hair down, I look naked. It’s the worst ID. The hideous vertical format for Texas minors. Everyone unfailingly wanting to know why it’s not a driver’s license and why I didn’t learn.
“Nobody noticed.” She looks up at me, wide-eyed. “I changed the address for the mail because I didn’t want to scare you. I had to get the diagnostic stuff done as you so that if I needed surgery or treatment, I could do that as you as well. I had no other choice. I did my due diligence. Your deductible is huge, but I can pay that. You have to know that I did everything I could. I looked at every single angle. I gave it a lot of thought.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and chews on her lower lip.
It finally dawns on me. This isn’t a clerical hiccup. A typo that erased the two people that we were and made us one. June did this.
“I couldn’t afford to pay out-of-pocket for cancer,” she barrels on, rapping a fingernail on her kitchen counter. “It’s like twenty thousand dollars for the surgery alone. The testing and hospital…”
I place the ID facedown on the kitchen counter next to us. My head swims.
“But I thought companies have to offer health insurance for a few months.”
“Well, not this one. It’s complicated.”
“What about Obamacare?” I blink rapidly. I’m still smiling, still trying to be helpful, still angling to give my sister an out.
She snorts. “The first bill went to Mom and Dad’s for some fucked-up reason, and they never o
pen their mail so they dropped me for nonpayment.”
Our parents aren’t the type to be overly concerned with fat envelopes from New York State of Health. Mom and Dad’s genius strategy is to wait to age into Medicare and fly to Korea for the big shit.
“It’s so fucking typical. Other people fuck up and I’m left holding the bag.”
“Wait a minute.” I raise my hand. “That’s your read on this? That you got fucked over? You stole my identity. You took my health insurance without asking me, you made a mistake with your permanent address, how are you left holding the bag?” I pick up the paperwork from the kitchen counter and shove it at her.
“You could have fucking asked me.” Finally, my voice rises. She glances at me, warily. “You don’t just take something like that from someone, June.”
“I did it to protect you,” she says. “Why would I implicate you?”
“Wow.” My sister is incredible. “Well, thanks for looking out for me.” I cover my hot eyes with my cool palms as another thought clicks into place. I pull my hands away. “That’s why you didn’t want me to come to the doctor with you, isn’t it? You were hiding this from me.”
I can’t help it. This time, I really do laugh. “God, I can’t believe I was worried about you.” I shake my head. My sister’s mercenary.
June’s mirror neurons fire because she’s smiling too but her eyes are watchful.
“You were being so weird. I thought you were depressed or…” I feel my fingers rake through my hair. “You just didn’t want to get fucking busted.”
“You didn’t want to be there anyway,” she shoots back, pointing at me. “I could see it on your face. You hate when people need anything from you. It terrifies you. I know it does. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not with your bullshit Florence Nightingale act. No one has any expectations of you, Jayne. Ever. You’re always going to run away with your loser friends that treat you like shit and get fucked up. That’s what you do. That’s who you are.”
All the air in my lungs escape. I have never doubted that my sister, as alienated as we were, had my best interests at heart. I knew I annoyed her. I knew she judged the way I dressed, who I hung out with, the way I studied, but even when we were at each other’s throats in high school, I knew that somewhere deep down she loved me. She might not have liked me, but she loved me.
“You know what? You’re right. You’re so right. Everything you’ve ever thought or said about me is right. Thank you.”
I grab my bag off the floor.
My sister watches.
“See?” she says, shaking her head with another bitter smile.
I open the door.
“God, you’re predictable,” she adds.
I glare at her. My sister is not a good person. And she is not my friend. And the pathetic truth is, I’m devastated. I was better prepared to hate her before she came back into my life. A kaleidoscope of images troop through my mind. Of us at different ages.
Making each other laugh at church.
Speed-washing glasses at the restaurant.
How she’d look up from her homework late at night waiting on Mom and Dad to get home.
“Are you still coming to Texas?” She says it quietly. In a tone I don’t know how to parse. I let the door close behind me.
I can’t deal. I can’t feel my face. As I frantically hit the elevator button, heart speed-bagging the back of my throat, I realize that she never once said she was sorry.
And that, despite it all, I left my ID for her on purpose. Just in case she needs it.
chapter 19
“You could be twins,” says everyone when they find out that June’s name is Ji-hyun and that mine’s Ji-young. “Both your names are Ji!” As if anyone would ever name twins the same thing. Nobody would do that. Not even sadists.
Mom and Dad thought June would be easy for an American name. It’s basically a portmanteau and it’s a breeze to pronounce in Korean and easy to say in English. For June, Ji means “meaning,” or rather, “purpose.” And the Hyun means “self-evident.” It’s a strong name. No wonder she’s had Columbia banners on her wall from infancy. She’s known what she wants since in utero.
My Ji means something else. That’s a thing with certain Korean families, that siblings’ names have the same first syllable. Homonyms. My Ji’s not as good. It means “seed.” It’s diminutive. I’m a fleck, a crumb, a mote of something but not my own thing. It sort of reminds me of the way people are named in The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m Ofmyparents. Ofjune.
I’m not wild about the “Young” in my name, either. It means “petal.” Teeny and pretty and entirely inconsequential. I wish I’d been named after a war general or some kind of poison. When June and I got our green cards renewed, before we got our US passports, people couldn’t get over how close our names and social security numbers were. Someone even remarked, “Oh, you’re Ji-young and you’re younger. That’s how you remember.” As if June and I need a mnemonic device.
I march downtown from my sister’s, hugging myself, tears streaming down my face, mayhem in my heart. It’s freezing. My breath puffs out in little Miyazaki clouds with each step. With so many crews of people in matching costumes, I’ve never felt lonelier. I hadn’t known it was possible.
There’s no need for a mnemonic device to distinguish you from your sister when the difference is so apparent. With sisters, like twins, there’s always a better one. Around our house and certainly at church, June’s and my assets were public knowledge to be debated right in front of us. June’s grades. My hair. The paleness of my skin. June’s coding camps. My lissome limbs. Her accelerated math courses. With us, there was a smart one and a pretty one.
Except then I got ugly.
Or “healthy,” according to Mom’s church group, who’d gamely pat my love handles and pinch my cheeks. “It’s not the meals she eats at home that are the problem,” Mom would say in a stage whisper. “Texas sized means Texas thighs.” Once, one of the Theresas at church suggested that it could have to do with an unstable home and Mom looked as though she’d been slapped.
Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we’re born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax. God, how they must have wanted a boy when they tried a do-over after a dead baby girl.
A thought teases and then expands, collapsing my rib cage and wrecking my heart. June wasn’t worried when she came to the restaurant to find me. She saw me cutting class on her phone and needs me as a full-time student because of my health insurance.
I rummage at the bottom of my purse for my earbuds when I hit Broadway.
Flatiron building.
Bald man with the face of a baby, dressed like a baby.
Maleficent with a cigarette.
Sexy witch mom with a despondent preteen son.
Crosswalk.
I let myself cry. My face is instantly numb from the cold.
Whatever this feeling is, I never want to feel it again.
I hate that somewhere out there, somehow, June and I are melded into one. Even on paper. That me and June are together again in this way. I may as well be the twin that’s absorbed in the womb. I’m too scared to talk about it, but sometimes I worry that I don’t exist. That I don’t count. It’s not solely that June’s superior to me in every aspect. Or that I lack conviction, which I do. It’s that I have this awful, unshakable suspicion, an itchy, terrible belief that I’m some kind of reincarnation, the recycling of my middle sister’s spirit. That I don’t have my own personality or destiny and I’m just a do-over for someone else and that’s why my life doesn’t ever feel like it fits.
My family thinks it’s a play for attention. My depression. The anxiety. Or as June put it, my “emotional” nature. Mom thinks anxiety is about as insufferably first world as it gets. Like lactose intolerance. She thinks it’s an idle mind searching for things to bitch about at the lack of famine or war. If you’ve got a full belly, you’ve lost your right to bell
yache.
I’m too terrified to ask if Mom’s dead baby was called Ji-young, but I’m convinced of it. I know it’s not unheard of that people name their younger children after dead ones. Everything about my existence feels like a costume. And losing my name to June makes this wobbly feeling stronger.
It is my greatest fear to have this horrible nonexistent, disembodied feeling I carry with me realized. I brush the tears off my face and sniff hard.
I don’t know where I’m headed, but around Union Square, I weave through the road closures and find myself swayed by the current of people heading for the L train. I pull out my compact and salvage what’s left of my makeup on the subway platform. I’m a shop-worn trope. So many girls have done exactly this before me and so many more will. It’ll be fine, I tell my tear-stained self. I observe myself as though from afar. Asian girl. Hair. Decent boots. All that tristesse. It’s easier to watch myself be sad than actually feel sad.
I reline my eyes, fix my lipstick, and put away my reflection. I allow a smile to tease at my lips, summoning someone beguiling. I imagine myself in a movie. It usually helps. I glance around for any attractive people. Male, female, old, it doesn’t matter. Someone to see myself through.
I stare at the train tracks and imagine myself falling.
I want to text Jeremy but don’t. Instead I buy a pack of gum at the newsstand, pop all the pieces into my mouth, and chew big. I really need someone to look at me.
* * *
“Vodka soda!”
I hand over June’s ID and her credit card to a genuinely frightening Pennywise and drain my drink immediately. I also still have her house keys. Her stupid $200 “do not duplicate” house keys. I get another vodka soda. Pound it. I’m instantly drunk. I take a deep breath, praying that he’ll show. I’d almost told him to come to Léon just to see what would happen, but instead I’m in a terrible bar that’s a close second to how much trouble I can get myself into in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t matter if he flakes, I tell myself. I’ll just pick a different one.
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