Chapter 36

chapter 36

I sneak up to Mom’s bedroom.She and Dad are watching TV downstairs, June’s in the shower. When I was little, I’d take off all my clothes—underwear and everything—and get into Mom’s bed pretending I was her. An adult. A beautiful woman. A desirable woman.

Little kids are such creeps.

I slide the mirrored panels of her closet aside. The scent of mothballs overpowers Mom’s perfume. I breathe deep. I love the feeling of the fabric on my face. I dig in the back, beyond her everyday boring work stuff, for the white garment bag. It’s all still there. Unworn. Waiting. I unzip it, pulling the hanger through the hole in the top of the nylon bag, freeing just the blazer’s shoulders. Her suit is tiny. With the prim, shiny, outdated buttons so close together that it gives the impression of doll’s clothes. I hold my cheek against it, the crepe whorls scratchy against my skin.

I return it and search for my favorite. Mom’s hanbok. It’s still as delicate as I remember, but as I pull it closer, I see them: pinholes of light. A series of holes. A greedy moth’s meal clustered under the armscye of the jeogori. An ache branches along my chest at the stolen potential of all these beautiful clothes. Saved with such earnestness only to be ruined.

When the water stops, I return the clothes and slide the closet door back.

I’m watching June as she watches Mom watch TV. This is it. I’m on pins and needles wondering if she’ll tell them everything. The cancer, the surgery, that she won’t be able to give them grandkids.

“See, this is not representative of contemporary Korean entertainment,” June says to me instead. I glance up at the screen. It’s some show where contestants come out singing, while wearing huge, strange masks or cartoon mascot heads.

Our parents are on the couch while we’re lying on the floor at their feet. June’s using the wooden block that Dad keeps trying to convince us promotes circulation as a pillow and my arm’s going numb from supporting my head while lying on my side.

“They remade it here,” says Mom, unblinking. June shoots me a look. We’re always surprised when Mom actually listens. “Masked singer,” she says in English, without tearing her eyes from the screen. She does this sometimes. Defies the version of her in our minds. Like senior year when I discovered she had strong opinions of the Spurs starting lineup.

A cat face sings “Memory” with its head hitched at an unnerving angle, as if its neck is broken. It’s made only more creepy by the rich male voice and the slim-cut red suit on the body below.

The camera cuts to a close-up of a young woman in the audience swooning.

“This is why you never got into K-dramas,” June says to me. “You’ve been watching boomer TV. Your Korean would be so much better if you got into it. It’s passive learning.” She turns her pillow longway, as if there’s a more comfortable angle on a literal block of wood on your skull.

“Um, excuse me, you only ever watch Gilmore Girls,” I retort.

“First of all, it’s because my Korean compared to yours is incredible. Second of all…” She sits up for this part. “Two words: Lane Kim.” Satisfaction lands on her face like a gavel thwack. “And don’t you talk about Lorelai and Rory like that. Pull it together. And Sookie. Also, Jess.”

“Lane’s Mom is sus, though.”

“That Mom had a lot of disappointments in her life,” she says, lying back down. “You can tell she’s seen shit. Show some respect.”

Dad changes the channel again. Now it’s a supercut of sons returning home from the military and bursting into tears as their mothers alternately leap and collapse into their arms. The classical piano music swells without release.

That gets us both right in our feelings.

I think about the YouTube video of Danny Song’s return to the states after he did his two years. I wept openly. That one hit different since he was Korean American. Still, I hear my sister clear her throat discreetly as Mom switches the channel over to the CCTV that monitors the restaurant.

“How many times do I have to ask Cherry not to wear white sneakers?” Mom tsks to the screen at the unsuspecting waitress, who can’t hear her.

She scans the grid of images and enlarges selectively.

The aerial view of the front of the restaurant by the hostess stand is full of people waiting. Dad straightens up, alert. Mom quickly clicks through to the main floor of the restaurant. Then the view of the booths to the side.

“It’s building,” says Mom.

Dad’s already on his feet and pulling on his puffer vest.

Quick as a flash Mom starts brushing her teeth, kicking off her house shoes, and returning to the TV as if anything’s changed in the last fifteen seconds.

Honestly, you’d think they were firefighters.

June’s sat up to watch them.

They’re ready in less than two minutes. “Don’t wait up,” says Mom, not even looking back at us. Dad’s already in the car because I can hear the garage door opening.

I don’t believe them. I look over at my sister to see if she’s disappointed that they’ve abandoned us on our last night.

She takes the remote and shuts off the TV.

The silence bears down on my shoulders.

Other families would have a special activity planned. They’d watch a movie together with a big bowl of popcorn. They’d talk to each other. “Why are they like this?”

“Like what?” She gets up on the leather couch, lies down, and stretches out extravagantly.

“They just left.”

June yawns. Irritation charges through my spine. She only doesn’t care because I care.

I get up and sit right on her legs. “Aren’t you mad?” She squirms beneath me. “They could have done this any other night,” I continue. “Like, any night that we’re not here.”

Instead of shoving me off, June pats my back. “People aren’t abandoning you just because they go.”

“Whatever.”

I stomp upstairs, washing my face to go to bed. The room’s stifling. It feels as though the carpeting’s heating up the memory foam of the fold-out mattress. I can’t tell if it’s hotter down here or cooler since heat rises. I’m fuming. Livid at June’s patronizing tone, pissed that our parents are so insensitive that they can’t tell when something is so obviously amiss.

There’s a glow-in-the-dark plastic Virgin Mary, a holdover from the eighties, about the size of a G.I. Joe action figure, presiding over us from the bureau. A dim, judgy night-light.

“Hey.” June pushes the door open.

I ignore her.

“You literally went to bed a second ago,” she says.

I still don’t open my eyes.

“Jayne.”

“Jesus, what?” I kick the covers off.

“I’m sorry, are you busy?” I can hear the amusement in her voice.

Finally, I sit up. “What do you want?”

June stands in the doorway, backed by the hall light, and I can’t see her face. She turns and walks away.

“June?”

I hear the stairs creak. It reminds me of when she used to run ahead, hide, and jump out to scare me as revenge for following her around the house. And how, later, when she was in high school and I was in eighth grade, she’d call me in the middle of the day and bark, “What?” making me think I’d called her. It takes every ounce of restraint not to see where she went.

“It’s so fucking hot,” she says when she returns. She’s brought the old electric fan out from the garage. A Sanyo with blue fins that we used to put our faces right up against. We loved the way it garbled our voices and blew our hair around.

She sits down on the floor with her back up against the bed and switches it on.

Finally, some air circulation. The breeze is fluttery on my skin.

“We should open the window too, though, right?” I ask her.

She rolls her eyes, huffs, gets back up, and mangles the venetian blinds with a plasticky clatter. I get up to help. The vacuum-sealed window lifts after a moment. The house alarm beeps twice in rapid succession. My brows rocket up to my hairline.

“They don’t set it anymore,” she says and shakes her head. “God, you were so fucking bad at sneaking out. How hard was it to remember that the alarm code is Mom’s birthday?”

She sits back down next to me. I feel her warmth settling along my side even though we’re not touching.

“Should we open the door?” I ask her.

“You’re so dumb,” she says, laughing, extending her leg out to hook it open with her foot. “There.” This is the best part of having a sister. Since we were raised by the same lunatic, under the same conditions, June knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“It’s not a thing, you know,” she says. “Fan death.”

“Fan death” is a pervasive Korean superstition that if you fall asleep with a fan running without opening a window or door for ventilation, you’ll suffocate. It makes no sense logically or scientifically, but there’s no convincing Mom. Or me, evidently.

“I just don’t want to hear about it in the morning,” I reason.

“Sometimes I think most of what Mom told us is stuff she made up.” June’s voice is becoming raspy. She’s pressed her cheek against the knee of her tented legs. Once her foot twitches or she coughs dryly, she’s about to fall asleep.

“Fan death is a myth,” she says. “Just like lying down after a meal won’t turn you into a cow.”

“I love how that only applied to kids. Meanwhile Mom and Dad always passed the fuck out after lunch on their days off.” I smile at the memory.

“Writing someone’s name in red would definitely kill them, though,” says June. “That’s just science. And possibly the story line to a Grudge sequel.” She leans and knocks her shoulder to mine. I smile. The first time we watched that movie, I slept in June’s bed for a week.

We sit in silence for a moment.

“It’s so weird.” I stretch my legs out in front of me. “I didn’t ever believe her, but I didn’t not believe her. I don’t think to question anything she’s ever told me.”

“Yeah, I get that.” June stretches her legs out next to mine. “I always thought that if I just did everything the way she told me to, or the way she’d do it, that she’d love me more.”

I stare at June’s doll feet.

“I always figured Mom didn’t like me anyway so what was the point?”

“She loves you,” says June gruffly. “She’s just the worst at letting you know. I don’t think you can change people by acting a certain way. Just like how being skinny or smart doesn’t make them treat you differently.”

“I just want Mom to like me.” I reach behind my sister and pull on the white bed skirt, releasing it from where it’s hitched up on the box spring like a girl with her dress tucked into her panties. I don’t mention the part where I wish my sister liked me, too.

June pats my leg with uncharacteristic affection.

“She likes you,” she says and then laughs. “She told Helena Park, so it must be true.”