As his fingers twine through mine, I realize that this is what love is. It’s when their pain is your pain and their loss is your tragedy as well, and you would do anything to absorb that hurt inside yourself so that the other knows nothing but a flower path.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Dinner is ready.” Mrs. Ji greets us at the door.
I toe off my flats, but before I can put them away, a hand appears and picks them up for me. My gaze travels up a pair of crisply pressed heather gray slacks and a matching cashmere sweater.
“We’ll be making songpyeon tonight,” Wansu informs us. “For Chuseok.”
“About Chuseok,” Yujun begins.
“You do not need to tell me what happened with Choi Juwon’s family. His mother already called me.” Wansu opens the closet door and stows my shoes inside. “Nothing that has happened will change our plans. We will introduce Hara to our family, honor our ancestors, eat our meal together. Afterward, the children will play yut nori. Tomorrow, we will visit the grave site, and the day after we will rest. Nothing is changing.”
The last sentence is said with such certainty that I think an earthquake would not move her. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not. I’m even more puzzled when I arrive at the table to see chopsticks, the matching long-handled spoon, a large shallow cast-iron pot on a burner, and six different dishes of banchan: lotus root, pickled radish, marinated cucumbers, kimchi, candied potatoes, and roasted sesame seed spinach. It’s a Korean spread.
“Tonight we are having mandu jeongol. Have you had it before?”
The smell wafting from the soup pot makes my stomach clench in delight. “No, but I watched a video on it.”
The chef used prepackaged mandu, or dumplings, as the seasoning for a soup made out of leftover ingredients from the refrigerator. Basically any vegetable that you liked in soup could be added along with a handful of mandu. The spices and seasoning in the dumplings flavored the water to create a broth. With a little garlic, ginger, and soup soy sauce, you had a complete meal. It looked delicious and so does this.
“Mrs. Ji made the dumplings last night for our soup. It is very good. Sit.”
I can’t move fast enough. Yujun is slower, but he, too, pulls out a chair.
“What did Choi Juwon’s mother say?”
“That Hara should not attend Chuseok.”
I stop reaching for the chopsticks.
“What did you tell her?”
“That she was welcome to hold her own charye.” Wansu eats a piece of radish banchan as if she hasn’t had an afternoon of fighting with her in-laws.
Yujun nods his approval. “Mrs. Ji, the soup smells delicious.”
“I put extra samgyeopsal in for you,” she says from behind the kitchen counter.
“Thank you. Did you know, Hara, that most Koreans don’t eat anything but samgyeopsal? Your food truck is unusual.”
Is this what we’re doing? Talking about pork eating habits? We’re going to ignore what happened in the parking lot of Hello Flour and that at least some part of the family is threatening to boycott this important holiday dinner because of my presence? I’m not okay with that.
“Is it because I’m adopted? Or because Yujun and I are seeing each other?”
“It is not you. It is me.” Wansu reaches over and places a piece of samgyeopsal, or pork belly, on my rice. “I am not a Choi and these are not my ancestors and therefore not your ancestors either. What is the purpose of you honoring them when they do not know you? That sort of thing.”
“Oh.”
“Not all families celebrate Chuseok like this anymore,” Yujun supplies. “No one cooks all the dishes for the charye. They buy their banchan at the banchan markets. There are more Christians, and they believe the honoring of the ancestors is like worshipping false idols, so they go on vacations to Jeju.”
“Or Hawaii.” Wansu sounds almost wistful.
I’ve always hated the holidays. I never felt particularly close to Pat’s or Ellen’s parents. Pat’s mother always seemed to wear a perpetual frown of disapproval. Maybe that’s why he turned out the way he did. She never expected him to amount to much and would frequently say so, and so he lived up to her low expectations. She had a sharp tongue and never spared anyone—not her son; certainly not her daughter-in-law, who never managed to get pregnant; and not me, the foreign-born adopted child. Ellen would never admit it, but the best part of divorcing Pat was never seeing his mother again. When Pat’s mother died, we went to the funeral, but Ellen didn’t shed one tear. For my mother, that was essentially the same as ringing bells and singing the refrain from “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from The Wizard of Oz.
Sounds like Wansu wouldn’t mind humming the same melody.
“I don’t have to attend tomorrow.” Hiding in my room or even going to stay in a hotel and enjoying the spa services sounds pretty grand to me right now.
“No. You’re my daughter and you have every right to attend a celebration of family in this, my own home.” That’s the end of the discussion for Wansu.
“Next year we should go to Jeju,” suggests Yujun. “These traditions are old-fashioned. Send the money in the mail and no one will complain.”
“Money?”
“Every year, Eomma hands out the red envelopes of money to every person. Most families do it for solely the kids, but Appa”—he points upstairs—“started it ever since IF Group went public as sort of a thank-you for their support. Eomma has carried the tradition on.”
“I’m sure they come for other reasons.” Wansu is mildly reproving.
Yujun pops a piece of pork belly into his mouth and considers this possibility. He swallows and shakes his head. “No. I don’t think so. These are miserable affairs, which is why when you said that I wouldn’t be able to attend these in the future if I stayed with Hara, I didn’t mind much. Hara and I can honor the ancestors by ourselves. Our offerings aren’t less valuable because we make them together instead of with spiteful relatives.”
“I mind,” Wansu replies. “I do not approve of the two of you together.”
I tense up, not wanting to get into an argument at dinner, especially after the day we’ve had.
“We know. About that pork, did you watch that series on pork with Chef Baek, Hara? He talks about how a lot of the pork is going to waste because there’s low demand. In the early days of the Gor-yeo dynasty, only the royals ate the pork belly and the rest of the pig was given to the poor villagers. They ate everything from the head to the hoof, but now we’ve reverted to eating only a certain cut. In America, you eat other parts, right?”