She had not been invited to the wedding, but decorum—which was really nothing more than a mask for frailty and fear—would not stop her from attending. This was her niece after all, her deceased brother’s daughter whose choice in husband, if anyone with common sense examined this misadventure, was made out of grief and panic. It was not so much that he was not Korean—he was American—it was that he had not been vetted through Suk Ja’s scrupulous methods for determining the worthiness of a mate. No matter. This child still inherited the love Suk Ja had for her brother, and she was required to attend this wedding to provide the highest offering of love for the living and the dead. That was how important this wedding was—rotted sapling of a niece notwithstanding.
Suk Ja sat reading her NIV bible at the kitchen table. Her son, who was a groomsman for Janet’s wedding, appeared in the kitchen wearing his suit.
“I’m going early,” he said.
“Of course you are going early,” she said. “Being a member of the wedding party is quite the responsibility, especially when trying to corral the Kang women into their pens.”
He sat across from Suk Ja. His leather shoes squeaked.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.
“And I am supposed to supply you with these elusive words?” she said.
Her son looked upon her in his fragile way. How the boy had been lavished with ill-treatment by his father, that coward who was now living in New York with his new bride, although Suk Ja and he had divorced some 15 years ago. It was unfortunate, the tendencies one inherits from one’s parents. In his embarrassingly earnest way, the boy plodded toward the door with his usual preoccupations—what was that boy always thinking about that was not about now?
“Stand up straight,” she said. “The suit makes you look short.”
“Call me if you need anything,” he said.
“Don’t play with such false charity,” she said.
“Why do you always…” he said, trying in his feeble way to place the perfect word onto his lips.
“Please, tell me,” she said. “Why do I always what? Tolerate mistreatment from my family?”
“None of this is my fault,” he said.
“Be specific when you speak. What is ‘this?’ And you are slouching again. Up,” she said, pushing out her chest. “You are now twenty-one. There are no excuses for poor posture or your roundabout talking. You are a man now. Go straight.”
“Do you want me to choose between you and Janet?” he said. “Being offered such a choice really reflects my great upbringing.”
“Again with your refusal to accept responsibility. You are not offered anything. You are supposed to take,” she said. “Just go.”
She said this as if to hurry and immerse herself back in the biblical texts, a tendency to wholly be inside of the moment, ignoring the grievances of the past or the causal nature of the future. According to her sisters, Suk Ja struggled with understanding that this moment actually had a consequence for a time later in life, a habit of disregard which was partly to blame for her ban from the wedding. Oh Janet, her innocent niece—she knew that Suk Ja’s three older sisters would employ lupine tactics to perform properly at the wedding, but Suk Ja would not play such games and would not hesitate to elevate a disagreement on seating arrangements into global nuclear warfare. The glowering of these feckless siblings would not be ignored, and each of their actions would be responded to with fair and equal force. It was not her fault she would not submit to the gaming of her sisters. In any case, Suk Ja would never lose.
When her son left, she pulled the pictures of her brother’s high school graduation out from the shoebox under her bed. Such handsome cheekbones. The prepossessing face that had been eroded by age and sickness. The last month of his life had been especially difficult as his cheeks, bloated from dialysis, submerged his princely eyes into the yellow folds of jaundice. Oh the sisters and their meddling! It was not Suk Ja’s fault that her brother loved her the most. But of course they poisoned her niece’s thoughts and spread rumors about Suk Ja. When her brother’s wife died ten years before his own death, Janet had been vulnerable to the influence of the sisters, who all vied with one another to take over as Janet’s mother figure. How she missed her lovely brother! The suffering he would have endured knowing his little sister was mistreated by the others. Hidden at the bottom of the shoebox was a thick envelope. Inside were the green striations of cash she would give to her niece.
She could easily persuade her oldest sister to disclose the location of the wedding. For good measure, Suk Ja revisited her favorite section of Psalms: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
She quickly changed out of her clothing. She had stopped wearing a bra after her double mastectomy. These old sutures angled downward like closed, benevolent eyes. By now the scars were just another marker of loss. She had lost count of all that had disappeared in her life. Better to live now than wait for possibilities later, as possibilities were the futile wishes of the foolish. Blink and another thing gone. She threw on the pink and blue hanbok dress she had worn for her son’s dol celebration twenty years ago. In the last moments of her brother’s life, she’d caressed his stubbled cheeks and promised she would take care of his daughter. This promise was a responsibility that none of the sisters would defile with their meddling. She would not allow it.
◆
Her oldest sister lived in a warren of Korean senior citizen housing units in hanni-town just north of Wilshire Boulevard. Pouting grandchildren peered into the algae-infested fountain fronting the apartment complex. Suk Ja would rather impale herself on one of these gothic fence posts than live in such a forsaken place. She took the elevator to the top floor, where the pungent scent of stewed fish offended her, all of these aged bodies leaving their doors open for unexpected visits. This foolish display of anticipation irritated her. Let us not mistake a person’s arrival as a passive act. Your loved ones return only when you ferociously brave the weather and terrain to retrieve them.
Her sister’s closed door had a cross fastened underneath the eyehole. Suk Ja smirked and, using her own key, went inside, where her sister, also in a pastel hanbok, stood preening in front of the mirror. The sight of Suk Ja frightened her oldest sister.
“Why are you dressed?” her sister said, her body deflating.
“You look beautiful,” Suk Ja said. “Please, sit. I’ll make us some tea.”
The sister rushed to gather her phone and purse.
“I don’t know why you are here, but I must leave now,” she said.
“Let’s stop. No more games from me. I will go with you to the wedding, and I will comport myself in the proper way a younger sister should,” Suk Ja said.
“You must leave me out of it,” the sister said.
“It is true that you are always the one being left out. Let us remedy this,” she said. “We must do what is best to honor the memory of our brother.”
At the mention of their brother the older sister sat and covered her face, convulsing with sobs of self-indulgent guilt and regret that was embarrassing for Suk Ja. Such acting was a waste of energy—where had this flooding sympathy been when he was alive?
“He would have wanted the family together for this occasion,” Suk Ja said.
“Poor Janet,” the elder sister said. “Her life has been so difficult.”
Suk Ja pulled out a daisy print handkerchief from her purse and handed it to her older sister.
“We have an opportunity to make this straight,” Suk Ja said. “Let us go together as a united family and attend the wedding of our brother’s only daughter.”
Using the folded corners of the handkerchief, the older sister took to her eyes with the precision of a seamstress, seeming to dab at every glistening lash as if they were the children she had never had.
“You have caused so much pain, Suk Ja,” the oldest sister said. “It is not right that you attend. You have caused too much destruction. But it is also not right that you are banished. You are our baby sister.”
“I am not here to argue right or wrong. Love moves beyond such trifling matters,” Suk Ja said. “I am simply attending the wedding of our brother’s beautiful daughter.”
“Love? Is that what you call your insults to Janet and her fiancé?” the oldest sister said. A new fire seemed to ignite her face. The children populating the rim of her eyes fled from the blaze. “How insulting and hurtful you were!”
“What? When we were at our grandnephew’s dol, and she introduced him to me, all I said was ‘how nice.’ And it was nice. Nothing more, nothing less,” Suk Ja said.
“How could you be so cold? That was our brother’s only daughter. ‘How nice?’ And then you go back to checking your teeth using your compact? No congratulations? No affection? No joy or warmth or kindness to her fiancé? She said you were cruel to them in your silence.”
“Cruel? Our brother would be furious at the choice Janet made for a husband. I am fine with her husband being American—who knows, perhaps their baby will be beautiful. I simply speak the truth when nobody else is willing. But all that is beside the point. You and I know this fighting will never end. What is more important is that we honor our brother,” Suk Ja said.
“Stop speaking of him!”
“How about our beautiful mother? Our beloved father? Their hearts would all be broken right now from the way you and I are being treated,” Suk Ja said. “And having a half-breed baby?”
“This is why they don’t want you there,” the oldest sister said. “You don’t know when to stop!”
Of course she didn’t know when to stop. The love she received her whole life would never allow her to stop. How many times had her older brother carried her on his back through the snow drifts of Seoul battling the Siberian winds so they could visit the pond to ice skate? He only brought the youngest sister out of a deep adoration for such a sweet child. And fifty years later, when she opened her eyes after her violent surgery, a double mastectomy from stage two breast cancer, a drainage tube fixed to each blank breast, the first person she saw was her brother, the only man who had watched over her son when Suk Ja’s husband had run off. No, she would never stop, not with what she owed her brother—and she was glad to repay him even after his death. Family accounts could never be settled. She stood by the open door while her older sister stared at her toes peeping out from beneath her dress.
“I’m not taking you,” the older sister said.
“I already know where the wedding is, and when I get there, I will let all of them know you told me,” Suk Ja said, trying her best to bluff. “Do you really think I would not be able to determine the location? I will die, and take all of you with me, rather than not attend the wedding.”
“This is how you honor our brother? Using threats and pathetic exaggerations?” the older sister said.
Suk Ja unhooked the cross from the open door.
“Why not the crucifix? Why only the bare cross?” Suk Ja said. “You would never know the suffering experienced on this piece of wood.”
“Use your imagination,” the older sister said. “The most important requirement of suffering.”
Suk Ja handed the cross to her older sister, sinking to both knees to pray in front of her, planting both elbows onto her older sister’s titanium knee implants, interlocking her fingers and rocking gently to whisper the words and sprinkle them over the unfulfilled life of her sister, generously proffering her sister’s barren life with the true grace that required difficulty. Her sister seemed to look upon the kneeling Suk Ja as if she were some pastel-colored abomination.
“You are offending our Lord with this performance,” the older sister said, holding the cross across her lap like a royal sword.
“I prayed deeply for you,” Suk Ja said. “In fact I pray every night for you. Losing your husband, not having children, living alone—I think of your sorrow every day. Come, let us go.”
“Stop it!” the older sister said maneuvering away from Suk Ja and struggling toward the door. She hooked the cross back onto its proper place.
Just then her older sister’s phone issued a rippling bird song. She hobbled her way to the table, fumbling through her purse until she could silence the phone. She did not answer, and this demur let Suk Ja know that it was probably one of the two sisters badgering her about her whereabouts. The second sister was probably repeating the same question, “where are you?” a thousand times, as if, like some pesky woodpecker darting its beak into a tree, repetition equated to force. It only takes one strike to get your point across. Suk Ja could teach her that simple lesson. The third sister was probably sending her a picture of a bunny rabbit or some other inane thing, using tenderness to hide her contempt for the weaker, older sister. Such an ensemble. Such mercy required.
All it took was the prayer, and the two sisters were on their way.
◆
The Oxford Hotel lobby was overrun with children screaming and twirling and instigating a sense of bedlam, Suk Ja’s nieces trying helplessly to gather these wild ones. The little girls wore puffed princess dresses and the boys wore handsome tuxedoes. How the children had aged, time pouring into them like clear water, nourishing them to grow into unruly nettles. They were jumping enthusiastically and cartwheeling without regard for their precious bodies. Of course these were offspring of Suk Ja’s family, and although she had a trace of embarrassment at such public spectacles of chaos, Suk Ja was surprised at the pleasant feeling of seeing the wild mirth on these children’s faces. 1950s Seoul to 2000s Los Angeles: the feeling had traveled well over the generations. These grandchildren were innocent of their grandmothers’ ill-doings so they deserved only the purest love that was lost on Suk Ja’s siblings.
Second and third sister each had a daughter, and when Suk Ja’s nieces saw her, they smiled dimly, bowing to her as they made their way to her, the little ones following. The third sister’s daughter, however, continued with her tasks with the children and stayed behind. We forgive the youth, as they, out of misguided filial piety, stay loyal to their elders. Suk Ja hiked her hanbok and squatted to meet these lovely creatures at eye-level.
“Hello Small Aunt,” the second sister’s daughter said, bowing to Suk Ja first. She then bowed to the older sister. “Big Aunt.”
Her niece was so lovely without the grotesque procedures with which the other nieces had savaged their faces. She was the daughter of her nemesis, the second sister, yet she had always called to wish Suk Ja a happy birthday and followed up with an envelope of crisp twenties. Such a beautiful child.
“You know you are the prettiest out of all the nieces,” Suk Ja said.
“Oh, I just inherit the family face. Your haircut is beautiful,” she said. Ah, this child is a miracle of humility even while being raised by the illiterate second sister, that brute nullifidian.
Suk Ja’s oldest sister scanned the lobby as if a stalking wolf were hidden among the grasses—how embarrassing the eldest always acted as the prey.
“Oh, stop it. I will handle them properly if they see you,” Suk Ja said. “Just try to enjoy the wedding.”
“I should explain to them why you are here,” she said.
“Nonsense. They can handle the rigors of logic. I am here out of duty.”
The older sister took out her phone and frowned at the messages. She then shoved the phone back into her purse.
“I’m always stuck in the middle,” the older sister said. “Every time it’s the same. All of you are sickening.”
The niece bowed again, performing an agile retreat.
“We will be here trying our best to act like proper mothers and watch our children,” she said, making a graceful witticism.
One of the second sister’s grandchildren recognized Suk Ja. Oh how she adored this rowdy progeny, who took a wild delight in the world as Suk Ja did. The girl squealed and ran to the squatting aunt and pronounced “grandmother” as “harmony” instead of the more precise “halmoni.” The travesty of such pronunciation only sent warm currents to her heart. The toddler ran a circle around Suk Ja with a deranged smile.
“My beautiful grandchild,” Suk Ja said. “How much you have grown!”
“I can poo by myself. I tell my poo ‘bye-bye poo-poo’ when oma flushes it!” she said, grimacing and mocking the ardent strain required for such a personal feat.
“I am so very proud of you,” Suk Ja said, looking up at her older sister. “Are you not proud of such a child? Perhaps our siblings can take lessons on such achievements.”
“I’m going to find the others,” the older sister said. “I have to prepare them.”
“Do what you need to,” Suk Ja said. “Expel a stupendous POO if you want!”
This sent both Suk Ja and the grandchild into comedic upheaval. Of course if the second sister saw Suk Ja interacting with her granddaughter, there would be the usual violence, but Suk Ja would not deprive this poor child of the wells of love she had stored for all of these grandchildren.
First sister examined her phone and muttered to herself. She made slow progress toward the conference room as she was absorbed in her phone messages, her titanium knees struggling with the burden of peacemaking while the stray arrows of family strife were unintentionally lodged into her ribs.
Suk Ja walked toward the greeting table where her son sat taking account of the gifts and making sure guests were signing the ledger. When he saw her, he shrunk back into his usual slouch and shook his head. Suk Ja pulled out her envelope and handed it to her son.
“Okay, now what am I supposed to do?” her son said.
“Make some choices,” she said. “Do not worry. The bills are new and you can count them easily.”
“How much is it?” he said.
“It is base to divulge family gifts,” she said.
He flipped through the cash and noted it on the ledger.
“You have to promise to stay by me,” he said. “Don’t wander. I have to figure this out.”
“Of course. I would love for my son to accompany me to this wedding,” she said. “Where is Janet?”
“Don’t.”
“What? I am just curious. I am sure the worker bees are close to the queen.”
The third sister’s daughter, her face etched, chiseled, and inflated to measures beyond human recognition, approached. How could Suk Ja’s gentle sister give birth to such a spiteful girl? And look at this poor girl’s face—all those trips to the Seoul face-butchers and this was the sobering result.
“What are you doing here?” she said to Suk Ja.
“Let us not start anything foolish right now,” Suk Ja said.
“You weren’t invited,” she said. “I can’t believe this.”
Suk Ja eyed her son. He understood his place.
“Hey, Ester, let’s just see what we can do,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What’s wrong with this family?” Ester said with a wicked stare at both of them, her warped facial bones and ballooned brow intensifying her menace. Her face was like a trembling blood sausage.
These were the children of her sisters, yet somehow this Ester inflicted the familiar wounds that none but her sisters had mastered, as if this child had inherited the most lethal techniques to efficiently murder this old woman’s heart. Was this how the generations were connected? Savagery?
“Please learn your place,” Suk Ja said.
“My place? Where is your invitation?” the niece said, ostentatiously jutting her hand to receive this imaginary invitation.
“Invitations are meaningless. You do not understand the power of the royal lineage running through your blood, and of course your mother never taught you properly.”
“My mother? Look what you’re teaching your son! Cause misery to everyone close to you. Disobey. Disrespect. You act so ugly.”
“Child, you are simply upset. You will regret the opportunities you have squandered,” she said, suddenly thinking of her brother. “We will be gone soon enough from your life.”
“Good!”
“Okay, Mom? Let’s go,” her son said, leading her away.
In her rush to respond, this misguided child had alighted on all possibilities simultaneously—fear and indignation and sorrow—resulting in tears and an incoherent croak in her throat that sang a lyric of pain beyond Suk Ja’s uninvited presence. It was clear that this girl had mistaken Suk Ja’s defense as a vicious attack on her vulnerable mother who had lost two husbands, one through death and one through legal means, when it was really Ester’s mother whose weakness always invited such attacks. What did this girl expect? Arm in arm with her son, Suk Ja contemplated the misfortunes of all of her nieces—poor children. They were born with these parents, and their decisions brought them to these unfortunate circumstances. So what could one do?
“You are still just a child. You stay out of what only concerns me and your aunts,” Suk Ja said. “My love for you will never wane. I love you now just as much as the day you were born.”
“You lie! You don’t love anybody! Is this love? I hope for your son’s sake you don’t love him!” Ester said.
The tears and sniveling from Suk Ja’s niece grew louder. Suk Ja’s son led her toward the lobby entrance, stopping at the concierge desk.
“Will you stop?” her son said. “You have to go outside.”
“Ester will get over it,” Suk Ja said. “She knows I love her. Please, let’s have a pleasant time today.”
“Do you want me to abandon Janet? Do you want me to ruin her ceremony because of you?” he said.
“Go back to the wedding. Keep accurate account of her gifts and stand beside her during her vows,” Suk Ja said. “I have lived many years handling affairs on my own. One more day means nothing.”
“Handling affairs on your own?” her son said. “Who drives you to the spa? Who took care of you after your surgery? Who studied all night for you getting those grades?”
“Even Ester went to Stanford,” she said.
“I did my best. I’m not a math maniac. What am I supposed to do?” he said, thinking for a moment. “I really do think you don’t know what you’re doing. Like an innocent child, you can’t help stepping on other people’s toys. You probably don’t even know what you are saying to me right now.”
“You misunderstand. I am your mother. You are my son, and this relation is enough for unbridled fulfillment, even if you went to a state school. I will be your mother until the day you die. That is correct. When I am gone, and you have your own grandchildren on your lap, I will still hover over you and protect you and tell you the distinction between right and wrong. Is that clear?” Suk Ja said.
“Why do you always go so far?” he said. “Just an ‘I love you’ would do. You always bring in that other stuff.”
“‘That other stuff’ is what you live for, son. Everything else is suffering without purpose,” she said.
Her son motioned to one of Janet’s friends to watch the table. He led Suk Ja away from the concierge desk toward the valet area outside, where the Los Angeles heat dampened the powder on her face.
“I’m staying with you, mom,” he said. “If you go back in there, this whole wedding will be an embarrassment and ruin Janet’s life.”
“I will not need to assist her with that,” Suk Ja said.
“Stop being so mean!” he said. “You always do this. Can’t you stop thinking about yourself for once?”
He was nearly in tears with frustration. This sad boy, mistaking strength for cruelty. But she must not relent, as that would be teaching him weakness.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said. “Why can’t you just get along?”
There was a time when she did get along, when her brother was alive and she knew that under any circumstance, he would protect, guide, and love her more than any of the sisters. She had given him all of her savings for him to rebuild the convenience store in El Sereno that was burnt to the ground during the riots. She would do it again. He had taken her son camping immediately after her divorce and had nurtured a relationship between her son and Janet, a type of siblinghood that at times made Suk Ja envious. It was lovely to be envious of something her son possessed that was so beautiful. How wonderful it had been to wear her brother’s cap and gown after his graduation from Seoul High School, the slick heat on her arms, the flowing tassel playing over her eyes—this was the splendor her brother felt with all of their admiration enveloping him. And during the winters, to walk with him arm in arm through the market stalls bubbling and steaming with delicious, spicy, rice cakes!
“Go back inside, son,” she said.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“I want you to fulfill your role and help Janet,” she said, tugging his lapel and sweeping lint from his shoulders.
“You’re scheming,” he said, squirming away like he did in grade school. “I’m standing right beside you.”
Through the glass doors, Suk Ja could see the commotion in the lobby, the flowing, crimson robes of her second sister at the center of it, her hands flying in the air to escape the restraints from the others. Third sister, whose hanbok was a monstrous yellow, trailed the tumult like a wounded canary struggling in the wind. The canary was carrying a bouquet with its delicate hands.
Of course second sister was looking for Suk Ja—she reserved that sort of fuss only for her dearest, youngest sister. When their eyes met, second sister pointed at Suk Ja, and although Suk Ja could not make out the words, she knew there would be the familiar childhood daggers, this insatiability for violence concentrated on those you love, or once loved, who knew. Second sister was released by the automatic doors into the heat, her strands of hair wild like charged wires.
“You little offspring of a shit!” Second sister said. “Take that wicked smile off your face!”
“You need to control yourself,” Suk Ja said. “Who did your hair by the way? A blind gorilla?”
“You were given specific instructions. Nobody wants you here,” second sister said.
“You speak for our entire family of course,” Suk Ja said. “Eldest sister, would you please hold court and settle this family matter?”
The eldest sister smiled crookedly, quite lost for words, until Suk Ja affectionately reached for her shoulder. The older sister flinched.
“The two of you are the most selfish and hurt out of all of us—the worst combination,” the eldest said. “How can I help the two of you see anything beyond your pain?”
“The supreme strength and wisdom of our older sister inspires me to courageous sacrifices for our family,” Suk Ja said.
“You always think you’re the strongest,” second sister said, her crimson dress shifting and her hair twitching. “Let’s see what you can do today. I don’t even have to lift a finger. The entire family hates you.”
The third sister, in her yellow explosion of dress, asserted her own take on the situation.
“I still have two more centerpieces to finish,” she said. “If you two don’t mind, please go to the parking lot and whip each other for the million grievances because we have a wedding in twenty minutes.” The pretty yellow bird pointed her bundle of flowers at second sister, then Suk Ja, and simply said, “Shame.”
“I won’t need to whip her,” second sister said. “Suk Ja understands she is not welcome. Now things are different. The family can openly agree on her wickedness. Our wishes and her own humiliation will set her straight.”
“If you think making someone feel welcome is a substitute for love, then of course you would not understand why your husband left you.”
“And where is your husband? You tit-less freak!”
Suk Ja realized that the sisters had not gathered like this since her brother’s funeral. There were other moments in Seoul when they were all present, mostly when they were children, when they gave an audience to Billy Graham who had arrived at Yeouido Island landing in a helicopter, or when they took the annual journey to their grandparents’ graves in Suwon—surely they must have gathered more times than this—but she could not remember. Her brother had always led these family expeditions, and today, on his daughter’s wedding day, just as on the day of his funeral, the sisters were roaming the countryside of sorrow unguided, the herd attacking one another out of grief for the shepherd. Suk Ja patted her chest. Yes, absence was her companion—Suk Ja would not have even noticed time passing unless she was reminded by what had been lost.
“Anything else you want to say?” Suk Ja said.
“If you are staying, I’m just getting started,” second sister said.
Suk Ja’s son stealthily positioned himself between the two women. The guests and the valet drivers watched. Suk Ja noticed that the children were now pressing against the lobby glass. Suk Ja and second sister in their traditional hanboks were ready to brawl. The jumbled moments of Suk Ja’s life tried to assert themselves forward as if trying to reach the front of a ration line during the civil war—the Red Cross offering one sack of rice in exchange for inoculating the children. What was Suk Ja actually doing here? American doctors swaddling her son and delivering him to her on the hospital bed. So many hospital visits for births and deaths and she could not forget the scent of flowers that, to her, always smelled of insecticide. That same smell was dancing toward her from the third sister’s bundle of flowers.
She glanced at her son, who was too afraid to openly defend his mother and instead stood like a watchful referee, trying to protect her by hovering, as he knew taking sides would be a betrayal. But how is it possible that family betray one another when blood is eternal? The days when her brother would silence these hens into proper behavior! No, this was all the problem. It was all a set piece, players running around performing their roles because what else could they do? What was left underneath the fighting? The thought terrified Suk Ja.
“Take your little act inside. People are getting bored,” Suk Ja said.
“They can watch me do this,” she said, lunging for Suk Ja. But Suk Ja’s son quickly blocked the second sister and held up her armpits as if in a primitive dance. In this moment of restraint, Suk Ja could not help but reach in and slap her older sister on the face, her hand stinging from the strike.
“Behave yourself,” Suk Ja said.
Suk Ja’s son, realizing he had placed his aunt perfectly for Suk Ja to attack, restrained his aunt with a violent embrace and by now the hotel security had arrived and taken over, two of them gripping Suk Ja’s wrists and the third speaking into the device on his shoulder. Suk Ja could see the bride and groom advancing through the lobby.
“You all witnessed her assault me,” second sister said to security. “Call the police right now. She hit an old woman.”
Janet emerged outside. How beautiful her niece was. She had inherited her father’s shapely cheekbones, the huge eyes that bloomed from her face like a pair of white calla lilies. Janet had chosen a lovely dress with a royal train, long enough that it needed a crouched bridesmaid to trail her and lift it bunched off the ground.
“I tried to keep her away,” second aunt said. “She came here looking for trouble. Ask anyone.”
Janet’s present equanimity was in such contrast to her face when she was born, the wild animal shriek and the trembling and fright at such a cold and intrusive world. She had learned quickly the futility of trying to manage the external mechanisms that controlled life events, the gears and pulleys much too powerful to stop as there was nothing she could to do prevent her orphanhood. She would never become the child again. With all that this girl had endured, she had calmly gathered her suffering into a bouquet and slipped it into celadon vase—the poise was a mystery to Suk Ja.
“I have twenty minutes to get ready,” Janet said. “I love you, komo, but you will not attend my wedding.”
“But this moment is not about me,” Suk Ja said. “Is this what your father would have wanted?”
“I’m sorry.”
The security guard let her go as the grief for her brother struck her down. She was lightheaded, her hanbok spread perfectly around her like a flower. From this lower view, she could see her favorite grandniece losing her balance while running toward the automatic doors. The girl slipped on a fold in the rug and was sent hurtling into the back of a couch. Suk Ja rose and ran back into the lobby toward the child while the crowd followed. Suk Ja knelt to the crying girl. She then slapped the couch.
“I will punish this awful couch for you,” Suk Ja said, giving the object another strike. “How dare it hurt you.”
The girl stopped with her crying, comforted that Suk Ja had both animated then struck down this upholstered beast.
Janet, with her train lackey stumbling behind her, also approached and petted this child’s beautiful head. When the child’s mother tried to scoop her up, Janet used the majestic power of her index finger to delay motherly succor and reassure her of the child’s well-being through her own adroit methods. The child’s mother smilingly obeyed.
“You’re a big, strong girl now, okay? We’re going to dance and eat cake and I will throw you flowers. Does that sound fun?” Janet said, hovering above both Suk Ja and the girl.
The girl, flatly enjoying such attention, cried louder.
Janet squatted as if skiing, fists pinned to her hips, and grimaced. She then made a cartoonish expression of astonishment as she flung a freshly served poo from behind her dress, her train lackey struggling to follow the explosive motion from behind. The little girl gave up her act and lost herself in giggles.
“You’re fine. Now go and play and have some fun, okay?” Janet said.
She addressed Suk Ja who was still crouching.
“You don’t need to hit couches, small aunt,” Janet said. “I have to get back to my wedding. My father is not here, and I have sorrow for his absence, but I am still here, as well as the rest of us. I must make sure I have a proper wedding, and despite what just happened, it’s not too late. This is what my father would have wanted.”
“My brother would have wanted more than this,” Suk Ja said.
“He is your brother, but he is my father,” Janet said.
“I understand,” Suk Ja said.
Suk Ja’s son helped her up.
When Janet’s American groom tried to console her, she waved him away, his American naked vulnerability embarrassing for all those watching. Second sister had come back inside, and all of the nieces and nephews had placed her strategically away from Suk Ja and toward the gifts, but not without the second sister hollering obscene scenarios involving Suk Ja and farm animals. At Suk Ja’s arm was her son.
“I remember when I was little and fell. You did the same thing. To get me to stop crying, you smacked the table leg,” her son said.
“I was not trying to stop you from crying. I was trying to show you love,” Suk Ja said.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” he said.
“Go back inside,” she said. “You will not have to worry about me.”
The security guard approached mother and son.
“I’m sorry, but you will have to leave the premises,” he said. “It’s the family’s wishes.”
“Their wishes are my wishes,” Suk Ja said.
The security guard would not leave her side.
“Please go back inside and guard the gifts,” she said to her son. “Remember to do your job well. Count every penny.”
“I’ll see you at home,” her son said.
He finally walked with the certainty she wanted for him, and she had not had to remind him. He strode toward the desk with his chest out, unbuttoning his suit jacket with one swipe before sitting at his ledger. The rest of the hens had made it back to the dressing room. Suk Ja waited for the cab, the hotel security guard beside her, while inside the hotel, the ceremony continued on its course, drifting forward with an immovable force.
