Yolk(49)

June never held her tongue. I seethed. My thoughts festered and it was a tailor-made hell that I couldn’t hide anything from her. I’d sit there at family meal, eyes downcast, cheeks ablaze, next to our parents, the cooks, the busboys, and the dishwashers, pretending I wasn’t there. Pretending I didn’t know them. June would crack on me in front of everyone the way I’d jolt when the door opened, scared that someone from school might see. “You think you’re so cool,” she’d remark, shaking her head, munching on all the broken fortune cookies, piling up the paper ribbons of fate without bothering to read them. “It’s so embarrassing.”

Her taunts stung, staying with me for days the way Mom’s did, cutting over and over. The funny thing about having an older sibling play babysitter is that you’re only vaguely aware that they’re also a child. I remember once when June had turned eleven. I was still eight and we were in the rare months where she became especially intolerable since she was three years older instead of two. Eleven was properly in the double digits. “I’m basically an adult,” she’d announce. Back then we’d walk home after dinner at the restaurant to put ourselves to bed. The worst, scariest part of the trip was the stretch of road under a patch of the Loop 410 highway, past the middle school and an enormous H-E-B grocery store. That’s where you felt most exposed to the whoosh of cars at your back. I always walked as fast as I could. Taking shallow, vigilant breaths.

June knew how much I hated that walk. The solemnity with which Mom instructed her to hold my hand. It all went straight to June’s giant melon head. She acted as if I owed her my life. At the critical expanse, she’d purposely slacken her grip on my sweaty palm. “Uh-oh,” she’d say, eyes widening dramatically.

That night she held out her backpack for me to carry.

“Take it.”

I shook my head.

“I said, ‘Take it.’?”

Again, I refused.

June dropped the bag where we stood and boldly skipped ahead. “I’m telling Mom,” she declared, sprinting into the light of the H-E-B supermarket parking lot.

I ran after her.

“Mom’s going to kill you,” she sang, grinning back at me wickedly. I knew it didn’t make sense, but June was wily with words when Mom interrogated us in Korean.

“You’d better go get it,” she yelled once she crossed the street that led to our house.

I turned around. Anyone could’ve run away with it if they wanted to.

Heart jackhammering in my chest, I ran all the way back. I could feel my bookbag banging against me. When I reached the nylon straps of hers, I heaved it up with both arms and hurtled back. My lungs burned and my feet slapped against the hard concrete as I bolted.

With each footfall June got closer and closer. Bigger and bigger.

Her head turned as her eyes widened.

Twin headlights flooded my vision as screams fill my ears. I wondered if I’d feel the pain of my body being crushed by the oncoming car. Whether I’d fly into the sky at a strange angle from the impact. But then my face and neck were hot from the engine. My eyes were shut tight. I heard a loud sustained honk and a slammed door from somewhere above me.

“What are you doing?” screamed a tall woman with huge hair as she got out of her enormous SUV. She made the sign of the cross. “I could have killed you.” She had moles all over her face, and as she leaned toward me, I could see down her flowered shirt to her cheetah-print bra.

June ran up and grabbed her bag.

“You idiot,” she said, pinching my belly and pulling hard. “We’re sorry,” June called out, waving to the lady.

I was instantly in tears. Bawling and rubbing my side where I’d been pinched. I was shocked by the near miss and outraged that my sister could be angry at me.

“I can’t believe you didn’t look,” said June, storming off. “You’re such a stupid baby.”

She left me to cry on the street. I wept and wept, hiccupping and furious. I wept about what kind of sister would be that hateful. I wept as if I were at my own funeral.

Moments later she returned, tears streaking her face, red as a busted tomato. She shouldered her bag and mine. “I’m sorry,” she moaned, hugging me hard. My face was mashed against her bony shoulder as I continued to sob. “Shhhhh,” she said again, stroking my hair so hard it hurt. “I’m sorry.” That made me cry harder. Somehow it was even sadder that I’d made June cry.

Whenever I think of my sister in that moment, it hurts my heart. How lonely she must have felt marching into the house, breath held, closing the door, leaning up against it, and bursting into tears before coming back for me.

No matter how much she resented me and however much I disliked her, it was June’s bed I climbed into every night. I was convinced that if I fell asleep before our parents came back they would die. I never had to tell her that. She knew. Back then she knew everything. And as long as I was big spoon, creeping in quietly and wrapping my small body around hers without touching, she’d pretend not to notice. I’d have to be careful to breathe softly because if I breathed out too hard or too much, according to her she’d be poisoned in her sleep from my carbon dioxide. As far as I knew, it was the only thing June was scared of.





chapter 25


Patrick’s standing at the window when I get up. It’s pouring outside.