“Eomma, enough!” Yujun explodes. “Hara does not need this.”
“You mean you do not want this,” she snaps. “You wish to carry on an illicit affair that will result in your social ostracization and the disapprobation of your family. Your grandmother would not allow you into her home. Your cousins would close their doors to you. No Chuseok. No Seollal. No jesas.”
Yujun clamps his mouth shut. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
Don’t be greedy, Hara. Don’t be greedy. “What does this blind date entail?” I ask.
“Hara!” exclaims Yujun. “This is unnecessary. What goes on between you and me is our business and no one else’s.”
“And how would you enter her in our family registry when the law officially recognizes her as your sister. It cannot be done, Yujun. It is best that you two move on now before you hurt yourselves more.” Wansu turns to me. “Meet him for coffee. There is no commitment being made here. It is like trying on a new dress or a pair of shoes to see if they fit.”
“She already fits with someone,” Yujun interjects.
“Do you want Hara to be accepted by your friends? To not be shunned here in her mother country? Or do you want her to be the subject of hateful gossip, a trending topic on the internet forums for being a nappeun gijibae?”
Yujun fumes but he has no response. I do not want to be the subject of hateful gossip or a nappeun gijibae. I don’t know what that is, but I’m certain it’s bad. Neither do I want to be separated from Yujun. I don’t have a solution right now, so I need time. We both do.
“I’ll meet him.” I take my folder. “Set it up.”
When I walk out, I keep my eyes in front of me so I don’t see Yujun’s hurt expression.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My phone pings when I reach my room. I know it’s Yujun.
YUJUN: I heard Kim Seonpyung hates animals.
I burst out laughing, a little wildly, on the verge of hysteria, but it’s a laugh. That wasn’t in my report
YUJUN: You can’t go on a blind date with someone who hates animals
ME: I’m not! I’m pacifying your mother
YUJUN: She’s your mother too
ME: Which is the problem
YUJUN: Right
The three ellipses show up and then disappear and then reappear. And then disappear. He doesn’t know what to say and neither do I.
YUJUN: She’s kicking me out of the house. She gave me containers of banchan and told me to go to my apartment. I’m retreating for now. We can talk at work tomorrow. Don’t go on that blind date. I love you.
I rub the red silk cord between my fingers and then type back. I love you, too.
After a moment of hesitation, I pull out the blue portfolios. The top one is the animal hater. The second one, ironically, is a dog trainer, and Bomi has written in the margin Kind! Patient!
I toss them aside and face the ugly truth. I’ve been a people pleaser all my life. Ellen was right. Because I was abandoned, I have two modes: avoidance or capitulation. Either I reject you before you can reject me or I do everything I can to make you like me. Since the latter is a sad and humiliating way to live, I opted for the former most of the time.
Here, surrounded by Yujun and friends, having found my birth mother, ensconced in this beautiful modern palace, I have let my guard down and allowed people inside. I find myself wanting desperately to be liked by my coworkers because they are the ideal version of me—smart, chic, Korean. If I was accepted by these two women, then I would belong here. Until then I would be the perpetual outsider in this country in which I was born. Everyone looked like me on the outside, but there was something infinitely American about me on the inside, and that part was on display like a billboard in Times Square. Look here, in flashing letters, a gyopo—an overseas Korean who hasn’t bothered to learn the language and is pretending she fits in.
I don’t.
I will always be a girl raised in Iowa, and yet, in Iowa, I will always be the one who doesn’t look like anyone else. At least here, if I never open my mouth, I will be one of them.
What misery. I don’t need anyone’s approval. Not those girls at work and not Wansu here. I’ve been going around proclaiming I have two mothers, but I only have one, and that is Ellen. She didn’t give birth to me, but she raised me. She sat by my bedside when I had nightmares, sang songs to chase the monsters away, commiserated when I failed but pushed me back on my feet. We have laughed together and fought each other, and I know that if I don’t see her or talk to her for six months, she’ll still open her arms upon seeing me and press smacking kisses on my forehead all the while sobbing about how much she missed me.