I was a bad wife and a bad mother. Good Korean wives know to have a son first, and the best wives don’t miscarry, but my baby died. I failed. Crushing grief rolled and tossed me over waves of sadness and loss. My fear had never been that my child would leave me. That was furthest from what I conceived, but true. Someone had left me, again.
On the first visit to my in-laws home, my husband presented me to his parents and his mother glared at me as if I had somehow tricked her son into marriage. She asked in plain English, “How old?”
“Old enough,” he boomed, and it wasn’t because he’d forgotten I’d turned twenty-two just days before.
“Too young, Korean wife better,” she scolded, thin eyebrows caught in a brief spasm.
My father-in-law sat in the background watching Korean soap operas from his brown recliner, the armrests a cracked broken surface of vinyl scars. He was no help. He let her carry on, sage clouds of cigarette smoke enveloping him in his fantasy world. And I was confused by my husband who, except for that one outburst, altered slightly in their presence, posture folded, he breathed differently, his rhythms changed, from business warrior to clansman, obliging son, worshiped child. Our world shifted when we entered their home.
And on that first visit, while the men were drinking, she motioned me into the kitchen and cornered me, pointed at my stomach and asked, “Baby?” I shook my head no and she banged a dinner pot and wailed in Korean. My husband ran in and asked what I’d said to her. “Nothing,” I whispered, scared to death, not sure if I should remain where I stood, follow him out, or jump on a plane and fly back to Seattle.
I could never make that woman happy. Devoid of any understanding of their traditions, holidays, or language, I was the unperson: completely inept in the kitchen, unable to follow simple meal prep instructions, spilling anything within elbow reach in a nervousness that betrayed my lack of culinary skills. I embraced unclear career aspirations, never finished college, never held a real job, but my worst offence: object of her son’s devotion without producing an heir to the Lee family throne. I, the interloper, had stolen the crown jewels, her precious son, her only son, only child, and had given nothing back.
Our relationship continued to erode. During a cooking lesson, before my first Korean Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law chased me from her kitchen with a broom. “Bad Kerri Ann, bad wife,” she repeated, swinging that crappy, green handled stick the bristles all curled up at one end snapping at my heels. When my husband arrived he found me huddled on the steps of their gray concrete front porch with the California sun firing up the late afternoon, the heat suffocating.
“She chased me out of the house and locked the door behind me,” I tattled, as he loosened his tie.
He ran his palm over my cheek, examined his hand, and stared at my face. “Only a peasant would act like that.”
He started to run a hand through his hair, stopped, swiped his palms together, and shook his head. I literally hid behind him, hanging onto his suit jacket as I snuck back into their house. I waited to see if he would extract some explanation of her cruel treatment, but they only exchanged polite conversation, and I took my place next to him at the table and retreated into silence as they enjoyed the evening.
Later, at home, I stood in our sparse living room, hands on hips, refusing his appreciation for my feeble attempt to help. “Never again. I am never going back. I know you think I don’t mean it, but I do.”
“If you would try,” he said, and his jaw tightened, “It would help.”
“Try what? To understand how to help when they don’t use recipes for anything?”
“It can’t be that bad,” he said, oblivious to how his family appeared to an outsider, and he started to walk away.
I grabbed his jacket and made him stop. “Why is it so hard for you to understand? I exhaust myself before ever setting foot in their home. I don’t measure up to their expectations.” I released the cloth. “They hand me kitchen things as if I knew what to do with them. I don’t, and no one explains.”
Exasperation filled his eyes, “Why don’t you ask?”
“Ask what?” I curled my hands into balls, the nails biting the flesh of my palms. “If you don’t want my help why am I here?” What I really meant was—why do you make me go? But I knew that answer. Old school notions forced women into traditional roles and respect for elders was carved into behinds at an early age. No one questioned family customs.
“You make it worse than it needs to be,” he said, unschooled that a husband should defend his wife.
“No, that’s your cousins. They could easily speak English to me, but they won’t. They’re bad. Bad cousins.”
He heaved a sigh, standing at the precipice of acknowledging my grievances, but stepped away from me.
“Don’t make me go back,” I pleaded as I followed him into the bedroom. “They hate me.”
“That’s enough,” he concluded, added his jacket to the row of neatly hung clothes, glanced over his shoulder at me, and said…
The next morning Lee showed me a 3-D drawing in the paper of one of the downtown developments his company was working on. That gave me an idea. I spent weeks at the library researching and took my list to the newspaper and bought old editions, specific dates containing bird’s eye illustrations of the city’s core.
Pearl of Carol 