Chapter 5

chapter 5

“I’ll just take the subway;it’s faster,” I tell June in a stage whisper. I’m keen to let the people in the lobby know I’m with a resident. In the same way I always make sure I have my purse if I’m carrying a plastic bag so that no one mistakes me for a delivery person.

“Okay,” she says. June’s thrown her trench over her robe. If she had curlers in her hair, she’d look every part the suburban mom in a sitcom waiting for the school bus, and the visual churns my guts. I wonder what womb surgery means for having kids. June’s an asshole sister, but she’d be a good mom. At least she wouldn’t be worse than ours.

“Okay.” I give her a little wave.

“Okay,” she says.

I don’t move. I don’t even know what I’m waiting for. It’s not as if we’re going to hug. “Thanks,” I tell her, which is entirely the wrong thing. “Um, keep me posted.”

“Thanks for coming by,” she says, and just as I nod stiffly and turn around, I almost bodycheck a woman with an enormous clear trash bag filled with recycling slung on her back.

“Whoa,” I yelp. She’s tiny, a hundred years old, and bent over to boot. The dimensions are surreal. It’s mostly plastic bottles and cans, but the load is twice her size. She’s like old-lady Asian Santa. Or Atlas. With veins purpling the hand clutching the neck of the sack. She smiles and extends her other palm. She’s holding a piece of paper. She’s closer to me but dismisses me to talk to June.

“Kalambosewko,”she says, extending the note and nodding. Everyone asks June for directions. It’s a thing. The woman’s eyes disappear when she grins, and her mouth is so puckered she looks like she’s missing all her teeth. Her hair’s pulled back into a bun.

“I don’t read Chinese,” says June, enunciating as if volume is helpful. Mom made us take Mandarin because it was the “language of the future,” according to Korean Christian radio. We took it for three years before she gave up. We retained astonishingly little.

“She’s probably going to East Broadway, right?” June asks me.

“I’m sorry.” I shrug, smile apologetically, and show her my palms in the universal sign for total uselessness. The woman bobs her head a few times, still smiling, and turns to leave.

“Wait!” June holds out her phone. “I have this app for real-time translation. Say again?”

The woman tries again. Also louder this time.

“Oh my God.” I urge June out of the way. “She’s going to Columbus Circle. She’s speaking English. We’re such morons.”

I give her directions to the R and W, showing her the map on my phone.

“Yellow line.” I pull out a pen and write on her paper R/W to 57th Street. Columbus Circle in tidy capital letters in case she needs to show someone else on her trek.

The woman smiles again as featureless as a fist and nods appreciatively before leaving. She merrily jaywalks at a diagonal, far from the crosswalk.

“Columbus Circle? What the hell is she going there for?”

I shrug.

“I would have put money on East Broadway or Flushing,” June says, shaking her head. “When did I become so racist?”

I turn to my sister, ready to tell her she’s always been racist, when I stop. June has dark smudges under her eyes, and her hair’s stringy. It startles me. I recognize her so essentially that she may as well be an avatar. She’s sick. I hadn’t known that June can be sick. I’m overcome with the urge to touch her.

“You know, I’ve never seen a recycling lady on a train before,” she muses, watching the woman go. I stand next to her, nudging her shoulder slightly with mine.

“Me neither.”

The observation reminds me of all the times I’ve wanted to call her over the past two years. The list of things in my phone that I know June would love to weigh in on.

“You think the churros lady at Union Square takes the train?” I’ve never seen her haul the cart downstairs.

“No way. Her man drives her. He has to help with the stairs. She gets up at four in the morning to make them, and she sells them, too, because he bitches too much about all that standing. He has to make up for it by driving.”

We keep watching as the recycling lady gets small. “I’ve never seen a recycling lady at night,” I tell her.

“Really?” My sister turns to me. “I’ve never seen one during the day.”

I imagine the woman on the train, clutching the subway pole because no one will give up their seat for her. I want to fight them all.

“Don’t you kinda want to go with her? Make sure she gets where she’s going.”

“Yeah.”

The canner seems so small yet certain. She turns the corner. I’d hoped she’d look over and wave.

“How are you gonna keep all this from Mom?” I ask June finally. I haven’t seen them in over two years, but June talks to her every day.

June smacks my chest with the back of her hand, laughing. I turn in surprise. “Mom would be so fucking pissed that you thought of her because of that old-ass woman.”

I shove her back, smiling.

It’s true.