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“Oh, Hara, wait,” Boyoung calls out as I’m about to disconnect.
“What is it?”
“I wouldn’t say anything about those pictures to anyone. Or why you’re here. People might view you differently if they know you are adopted. There’s nothing wrong with it, obviously, but some people are old-fashioned,” she tries to explain.
“Right. I remember.” We actually had this conversation back home. Boyoung has said that people in Korea are working to make it more acceptable, but the cultural focus on bloodlines puts adoptees somewhere on the social scale above drug dealers and sex addicts, but only by a little. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.
But the assumption is that there is something wrong with the abandoned kids, else why would they be abandoned? And even if the child isn’t flawed, the parents must be, because true, decent human beings wouldn’t give up their child, regardless of their circumstances. It’s not so different back home. I overheard one of Ellen’s friends say that Ellen was so brave to adopt because you just didn’t know what you’d get. I even read stories about adopted children being given away like animals that the adoptive parents had tired of. It was called rehoming, a hideous, awful practice that should be illegal but apparently isn’t. So was South Korea any different? It will change, Boyoung claimed, and there are even important, powerful people who are trying to make that happen. Laws had been enacted, but the government can’t change the hearts and minds of people.
Objectively, I understand this, but there’s still a pinprick of hurt. Just a pinprick, though. The friend who was loud about her opinions on adoption held no weight with my mother. The friend became an acquaintance and then a stranger in my mom’s life. Likewise, I wouldn’t be here long enough for anyone’s opinion of my adoptive state to matter. I’m going to find my biological mother and then go home. “I won’t,” I promise, omitting that I’d blurted out the details to Anna just a few moments ago.
Boyoung hangs up and the exhaustion of the past couple of days causes my knees to give out. I flop back on the bed and stare at the photos. I want to meet Boyoung now. I want to find out the identity of all five women now. I want to meet the one who is my mother now. I wonder if she knows that Lee Jonghyung has died. Maybe she’s the woman with the big black hat. Did she and the new girlfriend get into a fight and that’s why my mother didn’t stay? Is she—
I sit up. I need to move. I need to get out of my room and away from these photos so I don’t start spinning ridiculous fantasies about my birth mother like I did when I was a child. I need a distraction. Unfortunately, Anna is gone when I get downstairs. The food from my dad’s female friend is tucked into the refrigerator and there are freshly washed dishes sitting on the counter, but Anna is nowhere to be found.
The small home is suddenly both stifling and too large at the same time. I decide to explore the neighborhood instead of twiddling my thumbs. I’ll find the perfect place for lunch with Boyoung tomorrow and practice my Korean.
Armed with my phone and a small notebook where I’ve written out the Hangul characters for reference, I set out. I go up this time, which is only two flights of stairs, instead of down, because I can’t stomach walking up that hill today. At the top are more apartments, but it takes longer to find shops and restaurants. At least the terrain is flat. My calf muscles send up a silent thank-you.
My expedition is one part successful, two parts failure. The successful part is that I find dozens of places to eat. There’s a fried chicken place and coffee shop on every corner. Halfway down a small street, I discover a bakery that specializes in apple desserts. It takes me nearly a minute to type the characters into the Papago app, but I complete the task and repeat the word sagwa under my breath until I feel it slide into my regular vocabulary. I also learn that the word is the same for “apologize” and that Koreans will often give an apple along with their apology, which is adorable.
The failure part is the weariness that sets in as the sun bakes into my black hair. There are also other small stores selling electronics and shoes and beauty supplies. Everyone in the advertisements plastered on the sides of buses that zip by and in store windows sports poreless glass skin. I rub the side of my thumb against my less-than-perfect cheek. I look like I’m Korean and yet I’m not. None of this feels familiar. It isn’t merely that the signs above the stores and the advertisements in the windows are all full of Hangul characters and not English letters, but it’s the buildings wedged together, the noise of the traffic, the smell of something tangy and dry. All of it is foreign. I stop in front of a convenience store with fruit sitting in a display outside. The man tending to the fruit stand says something to me that I don’t understand. When I try to tell him that, he gives me a suspicious look like I’m mocking him. I’m not but I don’t have even enough Korean to tell him I don’t speak his language and I don’t think saying sagwa in this circumstance is useful.
