Yolk(37)

I march downtown from my sister’s, hugging myself, tears streaming down my face, mayhem in my heart. It’s freezing. My breath puffs out in little Miyazaki clouds with each step. With so many crews of people in matching costumes, I’ve never felt lonelier. I hadn’t known it was possible.

There’s no need for a mnemonic device to distinguish you from your sister when the difference is so apparent. With sisters, like twins, there’s always a better one. Around our house and certainly at church, June’s and my assets were public knowledge to be debated right in front of us. June’s grades. My hair. The paleness of my skin. June’s coding camps. My lissome limbs. Her accelerated math courses. With us, there was a smart one and a pretty one.

Except then I got ugly.

Or “healthy,” according to Mom’s church group, who’d gamely pat my love handles and pinch my cheeks. “It’s not the meals she eats at home that are the problem,” Mom would say in a stage whisper. “Texas sized means Texas thighs.” Once, one of the Theresas at church suggested that it could have to do with an unstable home and Mom looked as though she’d been slapped.

Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we’re born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax. God, how they must have wanted a boy when they tried a do-over after a dead baby girl.

A thought teases and then expands, collapsing my rib cage and wrecking my heart. June wasn’t worried when she came to the restaurant to find me. She saw me cutting class on her phone and needs me as a full-time student because of my health insurance.

I rummage at the bottom of my purse for my earbuds when I hit Broadway.

Flatiron building.

Bald man with the face of a baby, dressed like a baby.

Maleficent with a cigarette.

Sexy witch mom with a despondent preteen son.

Crosswalk.

I let myself cry. My face is instantly numb from the cold.

Whatever this feeling is, I never want to feel it again.

I hate that somewhere out there, somehow, June and I are melded into one. Even on paper. That me and June are together again in this way. I may as well be the twin that’s absorbed in the womb. I’m too scared to talk about it, but sometimes I worry that I don’t exist. That I don’t count. It’s not solely that June’s superior to me in every aspect. Or that I lack conviction, which I do. It’s that I have this awful, unshakable suspicion, an itchy, terrible belief that I’m some kind of reincarnation, the recycling of my middle sister’s spirit. That I don’t have my own personality or destiny and I’m just a do-over for someone else and that’s why my life doesn’t ever feel like it fits.

My family thinks it’s a play for attention. My depression. The anxiety. Or as June put it, my “emotional” nature. Mom thinks anxiety is about as insufferably first world as it gets. Like lactose intolerance. She thinks it’s an idle mind searching for things to bitch about at the lack of famine or war. If you’ve got a full belly, you’ve lost your right to bellyache.

I’m too terrified to ask if Mom’s dead baby was called Ji-young, but I’m convinced of it. I know it’s not unheard of that people name their younger children after dead ones. Everything about my existence feels like a costume. And losing my name to June makes this wobbly feeling stronger.

It is my greatest fear to have this horrible nonexistent, disembodied feeling I carry with me realized. I brush the tears off my face and sniff hard.

I don’t know where I’m headed, but around Union Square, I weave through the road closures and find myself swayed by the current of people heading for the L train. I pull out my compact and salvage what’s left of my makeup on the subway platform. I’m a shop-worn trope. So many girls have done exactly this before me and so many more will. It’ll be fine, I tell my tear-stained self. I observe myself as though from afar. Asian girl. Hair. Decent boots. All that tristesse. It’s easier to watch myself be sad than actually feel sad.

I reline my eyes, fix my lipstick, and put away my reflection. I allow a smile to tease at my lips, summoning someone beguiling. I imagine myself in a movie. It usually helps. I glance around for any attractive people. Male, female, old, it doesn’t matter. Someone to see myself through.

I stare at the train tracks and imagine myself falling.

I want to text Jeremy but don’t. Instead I buy a pack of gum at the newsstand, pop all the pieces into my mouth, and chew big. I really need someone to look at me.



* * *



“Vodka soda!”

I hand over June’s ID and her credit card to a genuinely frightening Pennywise and drain my drink immediately. I also still have her house keys. Her stupid $200 “do not duplicate” house keys. I get another vodka soda. Pound it. I’m instantly drunk. I take a deep breath, praying that he’ll show. I’d almost told him to come to Léon just to see what would happen, but instead I’m in a terrible bar that’s a close second to how much trouble I can get myself into in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t matter if he flakes, I tell myself. I’ll just pick a different one.

The bar’s a dive, but when the side door’s open it’s almost like a house party or a cookout. Last time we were here, Ivy and I started drinking at noon, and I loved how that felt. Like we were hiding in plain sight. Something in the mutuality of saying “fuck it” to the rest of the day made everyone behave appallingly.