Chapter 31

chapter 31

“You get in line,”she says to me the next morning, shoving the shopping cart toward the register. Mom’s a genius when it comes to tricking us into manual labor. June wanted Mom to take her to the Korean store to get snacks, and I’m a sucker, so I tagged along. There are about four people ahead of us in line. I used to hate this as a kid. Having to awkwardly let people go ahead when my mother invariably vanished at the crucial moment. “You, see if you can find some glutinous rice flour.” She directs June down another aisle. “The good kind. If they have the Vietnamese variety, even better. It has an elephant on it. Also, grab a fish sauce, the one with the three crabs on the label, not the one with the fish.”

I’m pretty sure June doesn’t know what she’s looking for.

“I’ll be back,” Mom tells us both.

June saunters over with the right fish sauce but the wrong rice flour. “This is my fault,” she acknowledges.

“Yeah, it is.”

We’ve already been to the bank. I had to run in and deposit a blue leather envelope of cash while June and Mom got to wait in the car with the AC running. I am the youngest, which means I draw short straw until death.

“Let’s have lunch at the restaurant,” Mom says as she oversees us loading the car in the parking lot. “You, take this,” she says to June, rolling the cart over. “Jayne did the bank.”

June meets my eyes before trundling away. There’s no telling what we’ll have to do at the restaurant.

Seoul Garden is Korean in name only. Truthfully, the cuisine is more Pan-Asian to cover all the bases, with a sushi bar right in the center and Korean barbecue, as well as Chinese noodle dishes trooping out of the kitchen at all times. Logistically, it’s a clusterfuck splitting tickets between the kitchen cooks, the raw bar chefs, and the actual bar staff serving drinks.

The parking lot’s jammed. Mom bypasses the customer lot, driving through the narrow alley to the additional parking in the rear. She stomps the brakes at the blind corner as another car barrels toward us. As she does, Mom instinctively sticks her arm out, crossing June’s chest. “Sorry,” she says softly, and pats my sister’s hair. I watch June watch our mother with such tenderness that my heart cracks open.

We pull into the active driveway of the back door.

We follow Mom, who carries her purse tucked into the crook of her arm, trailing her like ducklings past the dishwasher, the walk-ins, the slip mats squishy under our feet. It’s been forever since I’ve cut this course with her. “You remember my daughters,” she says as we pass the heat of the kitchen. June and I bow slightly. Wave. Say hi. Mom instructs various people to unload the supplies from the car.

Our usual table, the one where we did all that homework, is laden with a gilded red melamine boat heavy with raw fish.

“Is that for us?” asks June.

There are bowls of miso soup and rice and iced tea for the four of us.

“I called Rodrigo to have it ready,” she says. Rodrigo’s their sushi man. There’s June’s Unagi Enchilada roll, which resembles a wet burrito more than it does a purist’s idea of sushi. And the Izzy roll, my favorite. The whole thing’s deep-fried. There’s also gyoza, kimchi pancakes, and jewels of nigiri sushi dotted throughout. This is why I can’t ever bear to pay for sushi in New York.

Mom turns to us and peels off a few twenties from a brick of new bills. I wish she’d hold it up to her face like a phone so I can take a picture.

“You didn’t bring tip money, did you?” she chides, shaking her head. “Waiters don’t like credit card tips. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

No matter how stern she sounds, I know she’s pleased that she timed the meal perfectly.

“Ji-young,” she says. “Get your father.” Dad’s office is back behind the kitchen. When I pull out my phone to text him, Mom kisses her teeth. “If I wanted him texted, I would have done it,” she says. “Have some respect.”

I get up, and June smiles at me, sugaring her tea.

“Hurry up,” says Mom. “The sushi’s going to get cold.” It’s an old joke. Now they’re both cheesing at me.

Both of them are firstborns. And firstborns can suck it.