One for Sorrow, Two for Joy [orig, PG]
Title: One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
Rating: PG
Summary: (Original.) A girl searches for a balance between both sides of her identity.
Note: My final for a class this semester. Phew! Started 12/17, Ended 12/18.
My mother always told me that a magpie meant that a visitor was coming in the near future. She died when I was six, about ten years ago. Whenever I think of her, I think of magpies. I think of when she would tuck me in at night. Her hair would shine from the night light by the door, and she’d pull the covers up to my neck, make sure I had my baby blanket, and tell me stories. The one about the magpie was my favorite. It was my mother’s taemong, her conception dream. I guess most kids don’t know about when they were conceived. Maybe it’s a Korean thing to tell your kid about it. Or maybe it was just my mom, I can’t be sure.
I used to ask her to tell me her dream. I never got tired of it. She would always start by saying, “I woke up, and I knew. I knew that I was pregnant and that you’d be the best little girl I could hope for.”
“How did you know I would be a girl?” I’d ask. This was our routine. I asked the same questions each time, and she’d tell the story the same way.
“I remember it perfectly,” she’d said. “It’s always this way with taemong. You never forget it your whole life. I didn’t know that I was pregnant with you yet. But I have this really clear dream. I am walking along a path between rows of tall trees. I come near the lake up ahead and there is a magpie there, just one, eating bright red berries, seeds and all. I don’t know what kind of berries they are, but the magpie looks at me and cries out, so I take a berry and eat it. It’s the sweetest berry I’ve tasted, almost like a blueberry, but brighter. I wake up and I cry because I know that it’s taemong, since I never had such a clear dream before, and not since then either. When we go to the doctor a few days later, I tell your father. He doesn’t believe me, but the doctor says I’m pregnant. The doctor says he don’t know yet, but because of the bird and the berries, I know I’ll have a baby girl. I know you would come to me healthy because the magpie in my dream told me so.”
I was always half-asleep by that point, half-lidded eyes and all. “And then, umma?”
She’d laugh if my leg or arm would twitch, like it does right before sleep. I’d drift off to her voice: “And then, I play a tape of magpies singing sometimes when you were still in my belly, for luck. And then, you were born in winter, magpie’s season.” Sometimes, if I wasn’t fully asleep yet, I’d hear her whisper, “넌 나의 까치야.” You are my magpie.
Looking back on it, I don’t think Dad knew what to do when Umma died. It was a car accident, on her way back from work. I don’t remember it so well, just snippets, from the hospital and the funeral. I’ve wondered a few times how I can remember my mother’s taemong story so well, but not her death. I guess Dad remembers it too well. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I always thought maybe that’s why he sent me away here two years ago.
I’m the only hapa here. This school is in really in the middle of nowhere, not much diversity. It’s a small school anyway, of course, about 30 per class: mostly white kids, a few black, even fewer Latinas. There are only a very small number of Asians here, and they spend all their time in the library anyway.
There are no magpies here. Dad used to say that Umma loved living in Washington because she would see a magpie every once in a while. But I’ve never seen one here. Mom taught me how to spot them: their black feathers, their white bellies and white-tipped wings, their long tails. I can recognize their short and choppy calls immediately. Apparently there are no magpies on the east coast at all. I looked it up to be sure. Sometimes I think that Dad wants to keep them for himself, even though the bird means nothing to him. It is my bird. He knows this; he didn’t even believe in the taemong. Even after I was born, he said it was coincidence. But what else am I to think when he stays there, where the calls of the magpie can keep him company during winter, and all I have are sparrows?
I only have two years left here, and then I’ll go back west. Even the mountains are not as impressive here. They are like hills. It’s still hot here when school begins. Some of us come to school a week early to get settled in and prepare for sports before we get caught up in classes. I guess I’m not that athletic, but it’s easier to get out of Dad’s hair for an extra week. We’re stretching out on the field before practice when Effie tells us about the new girl.
“Yeah, she’s gonna live next door to me,” she says. “She’s Asian; maybe she’ll be your new best friend, Michelle.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say. “We can have study parties in the library every night, it’ll be great.”
She arrives at the end of the week, two days before class began, but I don’t see her until history class on Monday, 8 o’clock AM. She looks like all the other Asians. Earlier, Effie told me her name is Sue. It’s a boring name, I think. It matches her boring black hair, her boring glasses. She wears khaki pants and a black shirt with white sleeves. If I was interested at all in a new girl coming to school in the first place, I’m not so much anymore. She seems reserved, if not shy, and she listens intently to the teacher. Another studier, all right. She looks a little bit lost when class ends, like she doesn’t know who to talk to before the next class starts. I think for a moment that I should say hi, maybe, and ask if she knows where to go for Chemistry next period, but Effie asks me to go buy a snack with her and we walk off to the vending machine on the first floor.
It turns out that she’s not in the same Chemistry period as me. I see her sitting with the other Asians during lunch. They always flock together; I should have known she would seek them out immediately.
“She had her eye on you during history,” Effie says, mouth stuffed with mashed potatoes. “Looks like she found the better Asians though.” She laughs.
“Whatever, I’m not really Asian anyway,” I answer.
“Dude, you’re like half Korean or whatever; you’re so Asian. Look at you, Asian eyes and everything.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I don’t feel Asian.”
I don’t properly talk to Sue until a few weeks later. I’d met her, of course, and talked with her a little bit in class. We live in different dorms, so I didn’t talk to her much, but I know that she had moved from Korea to Virginia a few months earlier so that she could come to school in the US. There’s a paper due tomorrow in AP English. I go to the library so I can focus, and of course she’s there studying, too. She’s in AP English with me, which surprised me at first. I mean, I’ve been studying Spanish since middle school and there’s no way I could write a paper in it or really be able to pass a class taught in it, much less an AP class about Spanish literature.
Everyone talks on the first level of the library, so I go upstairs where it’s actually quiet. Most of the seats are open. I sit down at a desk, and she arrives a few minutes later, sitting at a table near mine. She pulls out AP Physics books and a notebook. I hear from Effie that she’s in mostly all AP classes. Plus, since she’s already bilingual, she doesn’t need to talk a language class. Talk about unfair.
It’s been about an hour, but my word document is still mostly blank. I don’t know how I manage to procrastinate so much when they block all the good websites during study hall hours. I look over; Sue is still working on her physics problems.
“Hey Sue,” I say. “Have you written your paper yet?”
She doesn’t look up from her notebook. “Yep, I did it last night,” she says, erasing something. Damn over-achieving Asian. “I wanted time to get the writing center to look over it for me. For grammar, you know.” Oh. So that’s why.
I nod. “Did you do yours on…?”
“The Awakening,” she says. I hated that book, but I don’t say anything. “I thought it sucked,” she continues.
“What?”
“Well, you know,” she says, and blushes a bit. “In Korea, I think most people would think it was, you know, something good that she killed herself in the end. What’s the word…admirable? That she would do that to save her children. But I just think it was stupid. I don’t know how killing yourself protects your kids. It seemed really backwards to me.” She’s still blushing, though I can’t think why.
“I thought it was stupid too,” I say, and she gives a tiny breath of relief. Or maybe she’s just sighing. “Plus, the whole thing was kind of boring. Even when she was having affairs and stuff, they weren’t doing anything, really.” She smiles and nods, goes back to her physics. Her eyes almost disappear when she smiles like that, crinkling her nose a bit. It’s so Asian, but then it’s kind of cute, too.
I get about halfway through my paper by the end of study hall. It looks like I’ll be pulling an all-nighter tonight; I’ll look like hell tomorrow. Sue stays in the library until after I leave. I’m pretty sure she got about three times the amount of work done that I did.
I see her in the morning in History.
“You look like shit,” she says. Again, she surprises me. I’d never thought of her as the type to curse. I guess American life is rubbing off on her or something.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Tell you what.” She sits next to me. “Come eat lunch in the dorm with me today. I’ll make you some food and you can rest up a bit.” It’s kind of a weird request - we’re not that close, really - but I accept anyway. Tomorrow is chicken strips day, so I’m probably not missing anything at the dining hall today anyway.
Sue cooks ramen for lunch. It’s spicier than I’m used to, but I like it. She’s cracked an egg inside. She drinks a Coke; I drink lots of water.
“I could have put less spice in,” she says. “I thought you’d be used it, I guess. In Korea, people say hot and spicy food is refreshing, so I thought this might help. You looked dead during history today.”
“Oh,” I say, “that’s ok. My dad doesn’t like spicy stuff, and my mom-. Well she died when I was young, so I don’t actually eat much Korean food at home. Not much spicy food either.”
Sue stares at me for a moment. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know-.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t really talk about it. It was a long time ago, anyway, no big deal.” We slurp at our ramen for a bit. What a conversation killer. Now it’s awkward, and I’m sitting here, on the floor in Sue’s room, eating too-spicy ramen from a hot pot over old newspaper and not even saying anything to fix it.
She gives a little cough and sips from her Coke. “So, have you been to Korea yet?”
“What?” I say, a bit surprised that she would be the one to break the silence. “Um, yeah, Umma and Dad took me when I was really young, maybe about three, so I don’t remember it so well. I just remember it was really hot. We went to Daegu; all Umma’s relatives are there.”
“Daegu’s the hottest during summer. But you haven’t seen your relatives since you were three? Not even your 조부모님*?”
“They came for Umma’s funeral, when I was six. But I don’t think they liked Dad much, so I haven’t seen them since then.”
“이쉽네*…” she says. I can’t understand and I don’t ask her what it means. “You must miss them. I miss my family a lot, and I’ve only been here since the summer.” I’m confused. I though she moved here with her family. She gives a little laugh at my furrowed brow. “I lived with one of my aunts for the summer before I came here, since it’s not far away. My parents and the rest of my family are back in Seoul.” I feel sorry for her all of the sudden. I don’t really miss my Korean family, since I barely know them. But she’s away from everyone she loves. I wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she acts.
We spend the rest of lunch chatting about classes and the like. I leave her room fifteen minutes before class to get my books for the afternoon.
“Michelle,” she says just before I’m out the door, “you can call me Soomi if you want.”
I smile. “Ok, sure. Um. I guess you can call me Minjo…if you want. No one else really does, though,” I say with a shrug. I feel my cheeks burning a little. I’ve never told anyone here that I even have a Korean name.
“Minjo,” she says, rolling my name around in her mouth like she’s tasting it. “우리 죽마고우처럼 느껴지네*.” She smiles in a way that I can’t quite place, and even though I don’t understand the Korean, I smile back anyway.
“See you later,” I say, and head back to my dorm.
Effie sits next to me in Spanish next period and scribbles notes to me in the margins of her notebook: where were you during lunch? infirm? you should’ve just stayed & napped longer, they’ll let you if you say you’re really tired.
I wait until Señor Matthews turns to write on the board and write back: i was in sue’s room, she cooked ramen lol
seriously?, Effie writes. so asian lol
she’s nicer than i thought, I answer. Señor Matthews makes us interview each other in Spanish before we can exchange more notes.
I ask Sue to sit with Effie and me during dinner. We eat pizza and salad.
“So I’m being replaced as best friend, huh?” Effie jokes on the way back to the dorms. Sue had split up with us when we passed the library. It’s a Friday night, but she said she should work anyway.
“Yeah right,” I answer. “She’s just nice, is all. And she’s still new, you know. I mean, yeah, she studies a lot and stuff, but I think she’s pretty different from the other Asians.”
“Yeah,” Effie agrees. “Though all I ever hear from her room is Asian music. I can’t understand a bit of it!”
I get a call from Dad several weeks later. It’s almost time for final exams and, after that, winter break. I’ll be going home for Christmas, as always.
“Are you studying hard?” he asks.
“Yes, Dad. I have papers for some classes, though, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Michelle, I have some news.” He sounds worried and a bit confused. “Your grandfather,” he starts. I hear him sigh through the receiver. My chest is already starting to clench. “Your grandfather in Korea, he had a heart attack. There wasn’t anything they could do. The funeral is in a week.”
I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know him, not besides a few Christmas gifts and that visit when I was three years old. But before I can stop myself and think it over, I’ve blurted out, “Can I go?” I don’t even know why I said it. I could never go all the way to Korea, by myself, to stay with a family that I don’t know. How would I get there? But as Dad answers, my mind is always whirling around, searching for answers, explanations.
“Go?” he asks. “To the funeral? To Korea?”
“Um…yeah,” I say lamely, “I guess. Why not?”
“Why not?” he repeats. “Are you kidding? You can’t go all the way to Korea. You have exams, and Christmas, not to mention how expensive it would be to get you there. Where would you stay?”
“With family, right? And I can finish exams early; you know how lenient they are about that kind of thing here. If I tell them that halabeoji died, they wouldn’t mind, for sure.”
“That’s not the point, Michelle. We don’t have that kind of money. Your tuition is expensive, it’s just not realistic,” he sighs.
“Dad, I don’t care if you don’t get me any Christmas presents, or birthday presents, just let me go, please. I don’t know why, but this just seems important.”
“It’s out of the question, Michelle,” he says, apologetic, but firm. I know better than anyone that once he says no, it’s no.
I can feel my throat closing up, can feel those little pricks behind my eyes, and I know I’m about to cry. I can’t speak for fear of tears spilling over. I can’t even think of why I want to go so badly, why I feel like I need to go. I muster up all my courage, and speak before I give into my tears.
“You just don’t want me to go because you don’t want me to be like Mom.” I hang up before he can answer. My cheeks are wet already, my vision blurry. I think of Umma and her magpies. I remember a book that I read when I was middle school, a book of rhymes. I remember the poem about the magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a funeral, four for a birth….
I’m sitting on my bed, looking out the window at the leftover drifts of snow on the ground, when I hear the knock on my door. I wipe away the tears left over on my cheeks as the door opens. It’s Sue. Soomi.
“Hi,” I say. My voice is scratchy, like I haven’t used it in days.
“Michelle,” she says, eyes wide. “Are you ok?” She comes to sit on the end of my bed. I can tell she feels uncomfortable, now that she knows I was upset. She sits, back upright, on the very edge of my mattress. But she reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder. It’s warm and her eyes are sincere.
“My halabeoji died. Dad won’t let me go.” I don’t say where, but Soomi seems to understand. She scoots closer, sits fully on the bed.
“You’ll get there. I know you want to be there now, but you still have a long time ahead of you. You’ll get there.” She pauses and looks closely at my face, as if she’s trying to see into my brain, trying to find there, somewhere, what she should say. “Unless you drown yourself in the ocean like Edna,” she says, cracking a smile. I laugh, but it cracks a bit anyway.
“I won’t,” I say, sniffing against a fresh set of tears. “I just-. I don’t know, I had this feeling like I needed to go. I can’t explain it.”
Soomi smiles and rubs my shoulder. “I know. Even though you don’t know them, they’re your family. Your halabeoji is still connected to you. I know that feeling. But you’ll be ok.” I nod and give her a little smile. She doesn’t seem convinced.
“You know what’s funny,” she says. “Your name: Minjo. It has a meaning in Hanja, the Chinese characters. If I’m right, the ‘min’ means sky, and the ‘jo’ means bird.”
Like a magpie, I think, and I remember my mother’s words: 넌 나의 까치*. I nod. “Yeah,” I say, “I think so.”
“My name,“ she continues, “Soomi. It means ‘beautiful tree.’ See? Even we are connected. I am your tree, and you are my bird.”
*
조부모님 = grandparents
아쉽네 = that's a shame.
우리 죽마고우처럼 느껴지네 = i feel like we're old friends.
넌 나의 까치 = you are my magpie.
Also, icon requests are still open here!
Rating: PG
Summary: (Original.) A girl searches for a balance between both sides of her identity.
Note: My final for a class this semester. Phew! Started 12/17, Ended 12/18.
My mother always told me that a magpie meant that a visitor was coming in the near future. She died when I was six, about ten years ago. Whenever I think of her, I think of magpies. I think of when she would tuck me in at night. Her hair would shine from the night light by the door, and she’d pull the covers up to my neck, make sure I had my baby blanket, and tell me stories. The one about the magpie was my favorite. It was my mother’s taemong, her conception dream. I guess most kids don’t know about when they were conceived. Maybe it’s a Korean thing to tell your kid about it. Or maybe it was just my mom, I can’t be sure.
I used to ask her to tell me her dream. I never got tired of it. She would always start by saying, “I woke up, and I knew. I knew that I was pregnant and that you’d be the best little girl I could hope for.”
“How did you know I would be a girl?” I’d ask. This was our routine. I asked the same questions each time, and she’d tell the story the same way.
“I remember it perfectly,” she’d said. “It’s always this way with taemong. You never forget it your whole life. I didn’t know that I was pregnant with you yet. But I have this really clear dream. I am walking along a path between rows of tall trees. I come near the lake up ahead and there is a magpie there, just one, eating bright red berries, seeds and all. I don’t know what kind of berries they are, but the magpie looks at me and cries out, so I take a berry and eat it. It’s the sweetest berry I’ve tasted, almost like a blueberry, but brighter. I wake up and I cry because I know that it’s taemong, since I never had such a clear dream before, and not since then either. When we go to the doctor a few days later, I tell your father. He doesn’t believe me, but the doctor says I’m pregnant. The doctor says he don’t know yet, but because of the bird and the berries, I know I’ll have a baby girl. I know you would come to me healthy because the magpie in my dream told me so.”
I was always half-asleep by that point, half-lidded eyes and all. “And then, umma?”
She’d laugh if my leg or arm would twitch, like it does right before sleep. I’d drift off to her voice: “And then, I play a tape of magpies singing sometimes when you were still in my belly, for luck. And then, you were born in winter, magpie’s season.” Sometimes, if I wasn’t fully asleep yet, I’d hear her whisper, “넌 나의 까치야.” You are my magpie.
Looking back on it, I don’t think Dad knew what to do when Umma died. It was a car accident, on her way back from work. I don’t remember it so well, just snippets, from the hospital and the funeral. I’ve wondered a few times how I can remember my mother’s taemong story so well, but not her death. I guess Dad remembers it too well. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I always thought maybe that’s why he sent me away here two years ago.
I’m the only hapa here. This school is in really in the middle of nowhere, not much diversity. It’s a small school anyway, of course, about 30 per class: mostly white kids, a few black, even fewer Latinas. There are only a very small number of Asians here, and they spend all their time in the library anyway.
There are no magpies here. Dad used to say that Umma loved living in Washington because she would see a magpie every once in a while. But I’ve never seen one here. Mom taught me how to spot them: their black feathers, their white bellies and white-tipped wings, their long tails. I can recognize their short and choppy calls immediately. Apparently there are no magpies on the east coast at all. I looked it up to be sure. Sometimes I think that Dad wants to keep them for himself, even though the bird means nothing to him. It is my bird. He knows this; he didn’t even believe in the taemong. Even after I was born, he said it was coincidence. But what else am I to think when he stays there, where the calls of the magpie can keep him company during winter, and all I have are sparrows?
I only have two years left here, and then I’ll go back west. Even the mountains are not as impressive here. They are like hills. It’s still hot here when school begins. Some of us come to school a week early to get settled in and prepare for sports before we get caught up in classes. I guess I’m not that athletic, but it’s easier to get out of Dad’s hair for an extra week. We’re stretching out on the field before practice when Effie tells us about the new girl.
“Yeah, she’s gonna live next door to me,” she says. “She’s Asian; maybe she’ll be your new best friend, Michelle.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say. “We can have study parties in the library every night, it’ll be great.”
She arrives at the end of the week, two days before class began, but I don’t see her until history class on Monday, 8 o’clock AM. She looks like all the other Asians. Earlier, Effie told me her name is Sue. It’s a boring name, I think. It matches her boring black hair, her boring glasses. She wears khaki pants and a black shirt with white sleeves. If I was interested at all in a new girl coming to school in the first place, I’m not so much anymore. She seems reserved, if not shy, and she listens intently to the teacher. Another studier, all right. She looks a little bit lost when class ends, like she doesn’t know who to talk to before the next class starts. I think for a moment that I should say hi, maybe, and ask if she knows where to go for Chemistry next period, but Effie asks me to go buy a snack with her and we walk off to the vending machine on the first floor.
It turns out that she’s not in the same Chemistry period as me. I see her sitting with the other Asians during lunch. They always flock together; I should have known she would seek them out immediately.
“She had her eye on you during history,” Effie says, mouth stuffed with mashed potatoes. “Looks like she found the better Asians though.” She laughs.
“Whatever, I’m not really Asian anyway,” I answer.
“Dude, you’re like half Korean or whatever; you’re so Asian. Look at you, Asian eyes and everything.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I don’t feel Asian.”
I don’t properly talk to Sue until a few weeks later. I’d met her, of course, and talked with her a little bit in class. We live in different dorms, so I didn’t talk to her much, but I know that she had moved from Korea to Virginia a few months earlier so that she could come to school in the US. There’s a paper due tomorrow in AP English. I go to the library so I can focus, and of course she’s there studying, too. She’s in AP English with me, which surprised me at first. I mean, I’ve been studying Spanish since middle school and there’s no way I could write a paper in it or really be able to pass a class taught in it, much less an AP class about Spanish literature.
Everyone talks on the first level of the library, so I go upstairs where it’s actually quiet. Most of the seats are open. I sit down at a desk, and she arrives a few minutes later, sitting at a table near mine. She pulls out AP Physics books and a notebook. I hear from Effie that she’s in mostly all AP classes. Plus, since she’s already bilingual, she doesn’t need to talk a language class. Talk about unfair.
It’s been about an hour, but my word document is still mostly blank. I don’t know how I manage to procrastinate so much when they block all the good websites during study hall hours. I look over; Sue is still working on her physics problems.
“Hey Sue,” I say. “Have you written your paper yet?”
She doesn’t look up from her notebook. “Yep, I did it last night,” she says, erasing something. Damn over-achieving Asian. “I wanted time to get the writing center to look over it for me. For grammar, you know.” Oh. So that’s why.
I nod. “Did you do yours on…?”
“The Awakening,” she says. I hated that book, but I don’t say anything. “I thought it sucked,” she continues.
“What?”
“Well, you know,” she says, and blushes a bit. “In Korea, I think most people would think it was, you know, something good that she killed herself in the end. What’s the word…admirable? That she would do that to save her children. But I just think it was stupid. I don’t know how killing yourself protects your kids. It seemed really backwards to me.” She’s still blushing, though I can’t think why.
“I thought it was stupid too,” I say, and she gives a tiny breath of relief. Or maybe she’s just sighing. “Plus, the whole thing was kind of boring. Even when she was having affairs and stuff, they weren’t doing anything, really.” She smiles and nods, goes back to her physics. Her eyes almost disappear when she smiles like that, crinkling her nose a bit. It’s so Asian, but then it’s kind of cute, too.
I get about halfway through my paper by the end of study hall. It looks like I’ll be pulling an all-nighter tonight; I’ll look like hell tomorrow. Sue stays in the library until after I leave. I’m pretty sure she got about three times the amount of work done that I did.
I see her in the morning in History.
“You look like shit,” she says. Again, she surprises me. I’d never thought of her as the type to curse. I guess American life is rubbing off on her or something.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Tell you what.” She sits next to me. “Come eat lunch in the dorm with me today. I’ll make you some food and you can rest up a bit.” It’s kind of a weird request - we’re not that close, really - but I accept anyway. Tomorrow is chicken strips day, so I’m probably not missing anything at the dining hall today anyway.
Sue cooks ramen for lunch. It’s spicier than I’m used to, but I like it. She’s cracked an egg inside. She drinks a Coke; I drink lots of water.
“I could have put less spice in,” she says. “I thought you’d be used it, I guess. In Korea, people say hot and spicy food is refreshing, so I thought this might help. You looked dead during history today.”
“Oh,” I say, “that’s ok. My dad doesn’t like spicy stuff, and my mom-. Well she died when I was young, so I don’t actually eat much Korean food at home. Not much spicy food either.”
Sue stares at me for a moment. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know-.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t really talk about it. It was a long time ago, anyway, no big deal.” We slurp at our ramen for a bit. What a conversation killer. Now it’s awkward, and I’m sitting here, on the floor in Sue’s room, eating too-spicy ramen from a hot pot over old newspaper and not even saying anything to fix it.
She gives a little cough and sips from her Coke. “So, have you been to Korea yet?”
“What?” I say, a bit surprised that she would be the one to break the silence. “Um, yeah, Umma and Dad took me when I was really young, maybe about three, so I don’t remember it so well. I just remember it was really hot. We went to Daegu; all Umma’s relatives are there.”
“Daegu’s the hottest during summer. But you haven’t seen your relatives since you were three? Not even your 조부모님*?”
“They came for Umma’s funeral, when I was six. But I don’t think they liked Dad much, so I haven’t seen them since then.”
“이쉽네*…” she says. I can’t understand and I don’t ask her what it means. “You must miss them. I miss my family a lot, and I’ve only been here since the summer.” I’m confused. I though she moved here with her family. She gives a little laugh at my furrowed brow. “I lived with one of my aunts for the summer before I came here, since it’s not far away. My parents and the rest of my family are back in Seoul.” I feel sorry for her all of the sudden. I don’t really miss my Korean family, since I barely know them. But she’s away from everyone she loves. I wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she acts.
We spend the rest of lunch chatting about classes and the like. I leave her room fifteen minutes before class to get my books for the afternoon.
“Michelle,” she says just before I’m out the door, “you can call me Soomi if you want.”
I smile. “Ok, sure. Um. I guess you can call me Minjo…if you want. No one else really does, though,” I say with a shrug. I feel my cheeks burning a little. I’ve never told anyone here that I even have a Korean name.
“Minjo,” she says, rolling my name around in her mouth like she’s tasting it. “우리 죽마고우처럼 느껴지네*.” She smiles in a way that I can’t quite place, and even though I don’t understand the Korean, I smile back anyway.
“See you later,” I say, and head back to my dorm.
Effie sits next to me in Spanish next period and scribbles notes to me in the margins of her notebook: where were you during lunch? infirm? you should’ve just stayed & napped longer, they’ll let you if you say you’re really tired.
I wait until Señor Matthews turns to write on the board and write back: i was in sue’s room, she cooked ramen lol
seriously?, Effie writes. so asian lol
she’s nicer than i thought, I answer. Señor Matthews makes us interview each other in Spanish before we can exchange more notes.
I ask Sue to sit with Effie and me during dinner. We eat pizza and salad.
“So I’m being replaced as best friend, huh?” Effie jokes on the way back to the dorms. Sue had split up with us when we passed the library. It’s a Friday night, but she said she should work anyway.
“Yeah right,” I answer. “She’s just nice, is all. And she’s still new, you know. I mean, yeah, she studies a lot and stuff, but I think she’s pretty different from the other Asians.”
“Yeah,” Effie agrees. “Though all I ever hear from her room is Asian music. I can’t understand a bit of it!”
I get a call from Dad several weeks later. It’s almost time for final exams and, after that, winter break. I’ll be going home for Christmas, as always.
“Are you studying hard?” he asks.
“Yes, Dad. I have papers for some classes, though, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Michelle, I have some news.” He sounds worried and a bit confused. “Your grandfather,” he starts. I hear him sigh through the receiver. My chest is already starting to clench. “Your grandfather in Korea, he had a heart attack. There wasn’t anything they could do. The funeral is in a week.”
I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know him, not besides a few Christmas gifts and that visit when I was three years old. But before I can stop myself and think it over, I’ve blurted out, “Can I go?” I don’t even know why I said it. I could never go all the way to Korea, by myself, to stay with a family that I don’t know. How would I get there? But as Dad answers, my mind is always whirling around, searching for answers, explanations.
“Go?” he asks. “To the funeral? To Korea?”
“Um…yeah,” I say lamely, “I guess. Why not?”
“Why not?” he repeats. “Are you kidding? You can’t go all the way to Korea. You have exams, and Christmas, not to mention how expensive it would be to get you there. Where would you stay?”
“With family, right? And I can finish exams early; you know how lenient they are about that kind of thing here. If I tell them that halabeoji died, they wouldn’t mind, for sure.”
“That’s not the point, Michelle. We don’t have that kind of money. Your tuition is expensive, it’s just not realistic,” he sighs.
“Dad, I don’t care if you don’t get me any Christmas presents, or birthday presents, just let me go, please. I don’t know why, but this just seems important.”
“It’s out of the question, Michelle,” he says, apologetic, but firm. I know better than anyone that once he says no, it’s no.
I can feel my throat closing up, can feel those little pricks behind my eyes, and I know I’m about to cry. I can’t speak for fear of tears spilling over. I can’t even think of why I want to go so badly, why I feel like I need to go. I muster up all my courage, and speak before I give into my tears.
“You just don’t want me to go because you don’t want me to be like Mom.” I hang up before he can answer. My cheeks are wet already, my vision blurry. I think of Umma and her magpies. I remember a book that I read when I was middle school, a book of rhymes. I remember the poem about the magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a funeral, four for a birth….
I’m sitting on my bed, looking out the window at the leftover drifts of snow on the ground, when I hear the knock on my door. I wipe away the tears left over on my cheeks as the door opens. It’s Sue. Soomi.
“Hi,” I say. My voice is scratchy, like I haven’t used it in days.
“Michelle,” she says, eyes wide. “Are you ok?” She comes to sit on the end of my bed. I can tell she feels uncomfortable, now that she knows I was upset. She sits, back upright, on the very edge of my mattress. But she reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder. It’s warm and her eyes are sincere.
“My halabeoji died. Dad won’t let me go.” I don’t say where, but Soomi seems to understand. She scoots closer, sits fully on the bed.
“You’ll get there. I know you want to be there now, but you still have a long time ahead of you. You’ll get there.” She pauses and looks closely at my face, as if she’s trying to see into my brain, trying to find there, somewhere, what she should say. “Unless you drown yourself in the ocean like Edna,” she says, cracking a smile. I laugh, but it cracks a bit anyway.
“I won’t,” I say, sniffing against a fresh set of tears. “I just-. I don’t know, I had this feeling like I needed to go. I can’t explain it.”
Soomi smiles and rubs my shoulder. “I know. Even though you don’t know them, they’re your family. Your halabeoji is still connected to you. I know that feeling. But you’ll be ok.” I nod and give her a little smile. She doesn’t seem convinced.
“You know what’s funny,” she says. “Your name: Minjo. It has a meaning in Hanja, the Chinese characters. If I’m right, the ‘min’ means sky, and the ‘jo’ means bird.”
Like a magpie, I think, and I remember my mother’s words: 넌 나의 까치*. I nod. “Yeah,” I say, “I think so.”
“My name,“ she continues, “Soomi. It means ‘beautiful tree.’ See? Even we are connected. I am your tree, and you are my bird.”
*
조부모님 = grandparents
아쉽네 = that's a shame.
우리 죽마고우처럼 느껴지네 = i feel like we're old friends.
넌 나의 까치 = you are my magpie.
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