Yujun clamps his mouth shut. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
Don’t be greedy, Hara. Don’t be greedy. “What does this blind date entail?” I ask.
“Hara!” exclaims Yujun. “This is unnecessary. What goes on between you and me is our business and no one else’s.”
“And how would you enter her in our family registry when the law officially recognizes her as your sister. It cannot be done, Yujun. It is best that you two move on now before you hurt yourselves more.” Wansu turns to me. “Meet him for coffee. There is no commitment being made here. It is like trying on a new dress or a pair of shoes to see if they fit.”
“She already fits with someone,” Yujun interjects.
“Do you want Hara to be accepted by your friends? To not be shunned here in her mother country? Or do you want her to be the subject of hateful gossip, a trending topic on the internet forums for being a nappeun gijibae?”
Yujun fumes but he has no response. I do not want to be the subject of hateful gossip or a nappeun gijibae. I don’t know what that is, but I’m certain it’s bad. Neither do I want to be separated from Yujun. I don’t have a solution right now, so I need time. We both do.
“I’ll meet him.” I take my folder. “Set it up.”
When I walk out, I keep my eyes in front of me so I don’t see Yujun’s hurt expression.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My phone pings when I reach my room. I know it’s Yujun.
YUJUN: I heard Kim Seonpyung hates animals.
I burst out laughing, a little wildly, on the verge of hysteria, but it’s a laugh. That wasn’t in my report
YUJUN: You can’t go on a blind date with someone who hates animals
ME: I’m not! I’m pacifying your mother
YUJUN: She’s your mother too
ME: Which is the problem
YUJUN: Right
The three ellipses show up and then disappear and then reappear. And then disappear. He doesn’t know what to say and neither do I.
YUJUN: She’s kicking me out of the house. She gave me containers of banchan and told me to go to my apartment. I’m retreating for now. We can talk at work tomorrow. Don’t go on that blind date. I love you.
I rub the red silk cord between my fingers and then type back. I love you, too.
After a moment of hesitation, I pull out the blue portfolios. The top one is the animal hater. The second one, ironically, is a dog trainer, and Bomi has written in the margin Kind! Patient!
I toss them aside and face the ugly truth. I’ve been a people pleaser all my life. Ellen was right. Because I was abandoned, I have two modes: avoidance or capitulation. Either I reject you before you can reject me or I do everything I can to make you like me. Since the latter is a sad and humiliating way to live, I opted for the former most of the time.
Here, surrounded by Yujun and friends, having found my birth mother, ensconced in this beautiful modern palace, I have let my guard down and allowed people inside. I find myself wanting desperately to be liked by my coworkers because they are the ideal version of me—smart, chic, Korean. If I was accepted by these two women, then I would belong here. Until then I would be the perpetual outsider in this country in which I was born. Everyone looked like me on the outside, but there was something infinitely American about me on the inside, and that part was on display like a billboard in Times Square. Look here, in flashing letters, a gyopo—an overseas Korean who hasn’t bothered to learn the language and is pretending she fits in.
I don’t.
I will always be a girl raised in Iowa, and yet, in Iowa, I will always be the one who doesn’t look like anyone else. At least here, if I never open my mouth, I will be one of them.
What misery. I don’t need anyone’s approval. Not those girls at work and not Wansu here. I’ve been going around proclaiming I have two mothers, but I only have one, and that is Ellen. She didn’t give birth to me, but she raised me. She sat by my bedside when I had nightmares, sang songs to chase the monsters away, commiserated when I failed but pushed me back on my feet. We have laughed together and fought each other, and I know that if I don’t see her or talk to her for six months, she’ll still open her arms upon seeing me and press smacking kisses on my forehead all the while sobbing about how much she missed me.
I stomp into the dressing room and dig around for my old suitcase. I swing it up onto the center island of cabinets and begin packing. My old jeans, the one polka-dotted dress I brought, my cardigan, all get tossed into the case. I’m leaving everything else here. Wansu can live in this marble tomb of a place by herself. I am going to be with Yujun. I’m going to—a sob catches in my throat.
Sometimes Wansu will talk about her job and her love life. . . . She’s lonely.
I clasp my hands on the edge of the suitcase and sink to my knees. The metal edging bites into my hand. Wansu is my mother, too. She carried me for nine months. She tried to keep me, but she couldn’t. Her family didn’t support her. There was no government aid that could feed me. She made the ultimate sacrifice. She gave me up so that I could have a better life, and now I want to take everything away from her.
What would Bomi put in the margins of my dating profile. Demanding! Confused! Irrational!
Selfish.
I will not be the older brother that comes to ruin. There has to be a way. There has to be a way to make this work. Yujun believes there is. We can’t see it clearly right now, but if we give it time . . .
I push to my feet and walk through the sitting room and into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. What we need is time, I decide. Time for Wansu to get used to the idea of Yujun and me as a couple. We will go through Chuseok and jesas and whatever else she said Yujun would not be invited to, and she will see how her worries are for naught.
Dinnertime rolls around. Completely composed, I join her at the dining room table. If she’s surprised by my appearance, she doesn’t show it. Dinner is hand-packed spinach ravioli with a mixed green salad, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese. Red wine is the drink of choice. I have two glasses.
Wansu speaks of the weather—the cool weather is nice; the pollution—I’ll need to carry a mask with me in case the air quality grows bad as it does in the late autumn months; and even the drama she’s watching—it’s outrageous.
It’s the most verbose she’s ever been. At the end of the meal, having eaten everything on my plate and tasted nothing, I let her know that tomorrow night I will not be home for dinner.
Her mouth tightens, but maybe because she doesn’t want to know the answer, she doesn’t ask why. She wouldn’t like my response.