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“I’ll strive to not care what my biological grandparents think about me.”
“They’re only people,” Jules says, trying in her own way to be as encouraging as possible.
“Yeah. Just people.” I knock on the gate.
“Nah.” Jules muscles me aside. “This is rich Korea. Everything here is high-tech.” She presses a button and shoves her face close to the black electronic pad on the wall.
“It wasn’t at the last place.”
“We aren’t in the last place,” Jules retorts and then smooths her irritated expression into a pleasant one before pressing a button and saying, “Annyeonghaseyo.”
“Yeoboseyo?” comes the immediate response.
Jules waves her hand. “Hello. I’m here to see Kwon Hyeun.” Jules drags me over so that my face is now in front of the hidden security camera. “There’s someone from America here to see her.”
There’s a pause with no response.
“Do they think we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses? Do they have Jehovah’s Witnesses over here?” I wonder, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Yes, but—”
The speaker comes to life and then a voice says, “Jamkkanman gidaryeo juseyo.”
“What’d she say? What’d she say?” Hope burbles at the bottom of the empty cavern that is my heart. I clutch Jules’s arms.
“She’s home. She asked us to wait,” Jules says, a bit breathlessly. “I think she’s coming out.”
“She is?” I squeak. I didn’t expect this. I thought this was another dead end. I’m completely unprepared. I look like I was dragged through a subway tunnel attached to the end of a train. My hair is a mess. I’m sweaty as hell. Do I have time to slather on some foundation? I tug Jules away from the intercom. “Jules, how do I look?”
“Like you walked five miles in the hot Seoul sun.”
I run the back of my hand across my forehead. “That bad?”
Jules nods. “Pretty bad. Do you have some makeup? Some CC cream?”
“Tinted sunscreen.” I dig in my purse and squeeze some product into my hand. I slap it on, rubbing dirt all over my sweaty face.
“Rub it in some more. You look like you’re trying to audition for the role of Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
“Ugh, this is awful.” I dig the heels of my hands into my cheeks.
Jules hands me a tube of lipstick. “Put this on, too.”
But the gate opens before I can apply any color. The woman steps out, shutting the gate behind her. She stares at me for a long, awful, and wonderful minute. It’s the woman in the picture. The one wearing the denim skirt, wedge heels, and the white short-sleeve sweater with the pretty necklace. A shout of excitement builds at the base of my throat. In my imagination, I’m bellowing out the biggest roar of exultation, as if I’m celebrating the last-minute buzzer beater at a basketball game.
I step forward with my heart beating so loud that everyone can hear it. There’s a buzz in my ears and a pulsing sensation behind my eyes and my throat feels sore even though I’ve barely spoken today. “M-M-Mom?” Mom? Is that what came out of my mouth?
The woman tilts her head to the side. “May I see the picture, please?”
“You speak English?” I scan the woman’s face. Is this what I’ll look like when I’m twenty-some years older? The woman looks more like my sister than a mother. Speaking of sisters, do I have any? Is this my mother’s house? Is this my grandmother’s house? Who else lives here?
“I . . . A little.” She turns away from me to speak to Jules. The two carry on a conversation and I hang on every unrecognizable syllable and sound. Jules pulls the picture out and hands it to Kwon Hyeun, who studies it for a long, silent, agonizing moment. Then she shakes her head and says something to Jules.
I want Kwon Hyeun to speak English again. I want in on this conversation. I nudge Jules to the side. “Please, do you know this man? Did you have a baby twenty-five years ago?”
“She doesn’t know you and she says she doesn’t know Lee Jonghyung,” Jules interjects.
“It’s her in the picture,” I insist.
“I know, but she’s saying it’s not. That she never had a child.”
The excitement that had been buzzing before begins to turn sour. I fist my hands at my sides so I don’t take the older woman and shake her until acknowledgment comes out of her mouth. There was recognition on Kwon Hyeun’s face. The magnet was polarized. This woman knows something. “How can I have a picture with her and my dad and her not know him?”
Jules gives me a tight smile. “Single motherhood is pretty stigmatized and giving up your kid would be even worse, I guess.”
I take the picture and hold it up in front of Kwon Hyeun. “This is you.”
She shakes her head in denial.
“Here. Take this.” Jules scribbles something on a piece of paper and shoves it into the woman’s hand.
