Yolk(65)

Two weeks later, Mom left.

I knew it was my fault, and I didn’t tell June.

When I emerge from the bathroom, sweatshirt pressed against me, Mom’s right there. I startle. I freeze as she reaches over to finger the hem of my dress. “Is this cheap or expensive?” she asks. The truth is that it’s both. It’s from an extortionate Japanese designer. I stood in line for seventy-five minutes to buy it at a sample sale. “Cheap,” I tell her, letting out the breath I’d been holding. I know better than to get into a conversation about how I’ve gotten ripped off.

“Good,” she says. “I was going to say it looks cheap.” Mom ducks her head and licks the fabric. “See,” she says. “The way it discolors when you sweat. It’s not at all practical.” She then scrunches it into a fist to watch it wrinkle. “And it’s so hard to maintain. Is it dry-clean only?”

I have no idea. “No.”

“Because even if it is, I’d bet I could put it in the cold cycle and it would be just as good.” I make a mental note to never change out of it. I can’t give her a chance to test her theory. If it shrinks or discolors, it’ll be my fault. Once she disintegrated a bias-cut silk sundress with straps strung of semiprecious stones and she accused me of wearing clothes that were capricious, unserious. Most of Mom’s theories are like witch trials.

I follow her small shoulders and perm back into the kitchen, wondering how it would feel to be touched by my mother without bracing for criticism.

“Set the table,” she instructs in Korean.

“Thanks, Jayne. I love it,” says Dad, in English. I whip around. He’s holding what appears to be a red, cellophane-covered ceramic golf bag. I’m guessing it’s a mug.

“There are chocolate golf balls and matching tees in the bottom,” says June. I take it it’s from both of us. “Sorry we missed Father’s Day,” she continues. We don’t do Father’s Day. May fifth is Children’s Day in Korea, so we usually do something special for all of us, since Cinco de Mayo is huge in Texas. I widen my eyes at June. It’s insane to me that they don’t see right through her sentimentality.

“Jayne, please,” says Mom, regarding me with impatience. I have no clue how I’ve managed to disappoint her in the last ten seconds. “The table?” she reminds me with a sigh in her voice.

I snap the silverware drawer open. I’m confused by the lack of matching chopsticks. I search around the sink, greeted by the row of inside-out Ziploc freezer bags, handwashed and tented. Their logos have been rubbed off from reuse.

“Dishwasher,” says Dad. I reach in, remembering June’s detergent pods and half-full loads. She’s too busy talking to look at me. I grab utensils, making sure the chopsticks have mates.

Mom posts up in front of the refrigerator, pulling out an infinite number of shallow dishes, setting them on the table behind her as if there’s an assembly line of factory workers inside the appliance handing them out.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she says abruptly. When she swallows hard, I look away.



* * *



I precisely remember the day Mom left. There’s that Maya Angelou quote how people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. For a few hours, I felt my mother’s love for me in a deep and profound way, and then she was gone.

That whole morning had been dreamlike. It was the first time I skipped school, so the day’s events stuck out even before I knew it for the day it would become. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to cut class. I felt stupid that it had never occurred to me to do before. I wonder if that’s how Mom felt when she got to where she was headed. Whether she realized how arbitrary it was to stay in one place when she could just as easily be in another.

She didn’t seem surprised when I walked back into the house three hours after getting on the bus. A girl I’d newly become friends with by our mutual appreciation of thrifted Doc Martens was leaving with her boyfriend, and I’d impulsively asked for a ride. I rode in the back of the truck with my eyes closed.

I came through the front door and was entranced by the aroma of cooked food. The dining table was set, not the kitchen table or the squat, lacquered foldout we sometimes used on the floor, and it was laden with delicious treats. It was as if I were happening upon a cottage in the woods in a fairy tale. I wondered who she was expecting.

I could sense someone in the house, but the TV wasn’t on. I walked upstairs. My mother turned to face me. She looked beautiful in the late-morning light. She was dressed in a white bra and a simple gray skirt, as if she were going to work in an office. I was astonished. It was Mom, but I’d caught her in another life. A secret one. As though she played a mother in my movie, but here I was, watching her in another film entirely.

It had been so long since I’d seen her out of the wrinkle-resistant polyester slacks she bought at Costco. Her hair was pulled back in a silver clip. She even seemed to move differently.

There was an open suitcase on the bed. It was small, bright green. It usually sat on the floor of her closet. The part of the closet I wasn’t allowed in. I knew better than to ask where she was going. She wouldn’t tell me, and I longed to earn her affections for not asking.

She held up a jewel-toned silk square to the light. “Do you remember when you’d use this scarf to make a little boddari?” Even her voice seemed different. Happier somehow. Breathier. “You were always so keen to leave.”