“Are you saying that my choice here is either Yujun or be an outcast in the Choi family or maybe even society?”
“No,” say Jules and Sangki, but I keep my eyes on Bomi, who nods sadly.
“It is a hard answer to give, just as Sajang-nim is risking that you will not love her because of the actions she takes now, but it is better now to steer you in a different direction before your boat strikes the iceberg. You may only see a small portion of the danger and dismiss it, but underneath there is an unmovable mountain.”
“Is that how you really feel?” Jules demands.
Bomi hesitates before giving a short nod. A hurt sound escapes from Jules. She gathers her purse and stands. “I’m finished for the night. One more drink will ruin me.”
As she walks out without a look back, we all know it’s not the alcohol that she’s talking about.
I turn to Bomi. “I thought you hated Chuseok. You said that you had to cook twenty dishes while all the men in your family did the ancestral rites, and after they ate, you had to clean.”
“I do hate Chuseok, but I’m a female and Yujun is the eldest son of an eldest son. Choi Wansu has hosted the Korean thanksgiving for the entire family ever since I can remember. Choi Yujun has always loved it, hasn’t he?” She looks pointedly at Sangki, who is busy staring at the label on the tequila bottle.
“Sangki?” I prompt.
He doesn’t want to answer, but Bomi and I aren’t moving on. “Yes, he enjoys it. He’s an extrovert! He loves people. He loves his family. He has little cousins that he adores and he gives them special gifts at Chuseok, but no one in the Choi family is going to refuse to come to Choi Wansu’s home because Yujun-ie is dating someone inappropriate.” He squeezes my shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
But, of course, I worry.
Later that night I FaceTime Ellen.
“Mom, I miss you.” A wave of homesickness sweeps over me when her face appears on my screen. Life was simpler back in Iowa. One mother. No stepbrothers. A father who ignored me. Friends who bickered and said occasionally unintentionally racist things. Okay. Maybe home wasn’t that great.
“Darling, darling, I miss you, too.” She waves and smiles. “How is your Korean going?”
“Not great.”
“I read that your brain stops learning languages after the age of ten or so. Something about how your brain needs to be rewired.”
“Is there a machine I can be hooked up to?”
“I’m sure it’s going much better than you think. You never give yourself enough credit.”
I’m tired of talking about myself. “What are you doing today?”
“I’m going to the farmers’ market to buy flowers and the fixings for pico de gallo. Louise is coming over this afternoon and we’re going to weed the garden and then cut out quilting squares.”
“Since when do you quilt?”
“I’m learning! Louise makes these gorgeous ones. She even won a ribbon at the fair. I’m going to make one for Wansu. Do you think she’ll like it? What colors should I do?”
I close my eyes and try to picture a multicolored quilt in this contemporary shrine. “Black and white?”
“Pshaw. That’s so boring. Why don’t you go around and take some photos of the home and of her clothes. Whatever color she wears the most is her favorite.”
“Black and white. Sometimes red.” I yawn.
“What time is it there? I can never remember. Let me look at my phone. I added Seoul to my world clock.” Her voice gets more distant as she pulls the phone away from her mouth to check the time.
“It’s eleven.”
“Eleven!” Her face returns to the screen. “Go to bed, Hara. You look tired and you’ll be exhausted at work tomorrow.”
“It’s Friday.” And I’m waiting for Yujun to call.
“Still, you should be going to bed at a reasonable time and not sleeping in even on the weekends. I love you, darling. Good night!”
I hang up and place the phone on my pillow and wait for Yujun to call. The device is maddeningly silent. To make the time pass, I pick up a book that I’ve been reading to Yujun’s father, but that doesn’t hold my interest. I scroll through YouTube and watch street-food vendors make everything from chocolate-covered waffles to bread shaped like bears and filled with cream. I fall asleep hungry, the phone clutched in one hand and the jade duck in the other.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I wake the next morning, I smell bacon, and suddenly I’m back in Iowa with Ellen cooking breakfast in the kitchen. I close my eyes and try to tug back that comfort space, but the sunlight bouncing off the marble wall opposite my bed brings me back to reality. My bedroom back in Iowa has white plaster walls with two small wildflower prints my mom and I made together my senior year. Mom had watched this home decorating show where two designers competed to have the homeowners stay or move. It was Mom’s favorite, and almost always the designer who renovated the existing home won due to some sentimental hook. In this particular episode, the designer pressed petals from the homeowner’s wedding bouquet onto a giant canvas and hung it over the mantel in their old home. The resulting work was an abstract depiction of a bird rising from a nest of flowers that looked as if it was exploding. The bride burst into tears and the groom bit his lip and stared at the ceiling for a good ten seconds, which does not seem like a long time, but is an eternity on television. I was really moved. Of course, the couple chose to keep their renovated home.
Watching that romantic moment didn’t stir any desire for marriage in me, but I did think that using flowers to create an abstract piece of art was brilliant. Mom agreed. The main problem was that we didn’t have a flower garden and buying blooms at the grocery store didn’t hold the same charm.
The next weekend, we trekked to Brown’s Woods, a forest preserve of almost five hundred acres, and picked wildflowers along the path. It’s illegal to do this, but Mom didn’t have the patience to grow plants and I was born with a brown, withering thumb. I killed a cactus and three succulents in college. Mom wasn’t much better, and after a few years of trying to nurture a rubber tree, which a local greenhouse said would survive even the most forgetful of owners, she finally gave up and bought semi-fake artificial plant decorations. We didn’t realize we were supposed to spray them with water once every couple of weeks until the leaves dried out and turned brown. In other words, we weren’t winning any horticulture awards at the state fair.
I’m not proud of my ineptness, but we agreed we were better off paying whatever fine for the wildflowers should we get caught than using the few weeds in our backyard as the centerpiece of our art project. We didn’t get in trouble but neither did our resulting works look anywhere as good as the designer’s piece on television. I guess it was karmic retribution or the fact that the designer had a special eye for design and my mom is a homemaker and I’m—or was—a copy editor for a magazine. More simply put, there’s a reason the designer had a television show that Mom and I watched from the sofa in our small brick two-bedroom home with its pale yellow walls and its half-country, half-rustic decor.