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The city changes every day, he said. This modern, fast-moving, coffee-shop-on-every-corner, face-mask-at-every-counter society is not how it was twenty-five years ago. While the water in the Han is always there, it changes daily. It flows from the mountains and races down to the Yellow Sea, every current bringing something new.
I close my eyes and lean forward to hear the river speaking as it strikes against the base of the bridge columns that rise to my left. Did my mother ever come here to the river? Did she ask the water what to do? Did she think that if she got rid of me like the water, she could start new?
The next bite of hotteok lodges itself in my thickening throat. I should go back to imagining Yujun without clothes. Everything was sweeter then. I reach for the beer to wash it down and meet Yujun’s concerned gaze. His hand wraps around mine.
“I’m a good listener,” he reminds me.
I drop the beer onto the bench and lean my head back. There aren’t many visible stars so it’s hard to say whether the inky-dark river is reflecting the sky or whether it’s the other way around. “I’m adopted, you know.”
“Yes, you mentioned it before.”
“I came here to look for my birth parents.”
“Yes.”
I stop and twist around to stare at Yujun. “Yes? What do you mean by yes?”
“Your English is too perfect and you had no family to visit here. The pieces fit together.” He interlocks his fingers.
“What do you mean my English is too perfect?”
“Most Koreans who learn English have an accent, and even second-generation Korean Americans speak with a slight one because their parents or grandparents speak it at home. Your English is the kind that is uninfluenced by a non-native speaker. And Westerners generally don’t come here if they don’t have family. That’s changing a lot lately, but I had a feeling.” He shrugs, almost apologetic for his accuracy. “One other thing: My eomma works with adoptees. Or, not directly; she gives money to a foundation that is working to normalize it here.”
Normalize it. “Because it’s looked down on, right?”
He hesitates and then gives a terse nod.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“You didn’t seem to want to share.” He grimaces. “There is a stigma attached to it. Blood is very important to us culturally. We believe that people born in a certain year have certain characteristics. We believe that people with a certain blood type act a certain way. These beliefs are embedded in our culture like the mountains that surround us and, I suppose, an earthquake can make great changes. Until then, we can chip at its base.”
The thought that my adoptive status is an impediment the size of a mountain isn’t a comfortable one, but hadn’t I experienced some of that idiot-ology back home? From kids taunting me that I wasn’t wanted to grown adults saying I wasn’t a real child of Pat’s?
“It’s not just here,” I admit. “Back home, I once had someone tell me that they would never adopt because you never know what you’re going to get.”
He slides a hand over mine. “People will always be a surprise to others—no matter the circumstances of their birth.”
The river is so still in the early summer night that it looks like black glass. I can almost see my insecurities rippling on the surface next to the reflected neon lights of the buildings looming along the shore. “When I first came here, I would get asked why I wanted to find my biological parents, and I didn’t have any answer, but it wasn’t because I didn’t know. Rather I didn’t want to admit the reason. It’s dumb.”
“I do not believe that.”
Of course he doesn’t, but the world isn’t full of Yujuns, and I don’t know if he fully understands, but he wants to hear me. And isn’t that all I’ve ever longed for myself? To be heard and to be understood?
“Being adopted is when everyone is wearing a striped dress but all I own are polka-dotted dresses,” I find myself saying. “My mom wore a striped dress and when we went out together people would ask her why she was holding hands with a child in a polka-dotted dress. Shouldn’t the polka-dotted dress be with the other polka dots? But there aren’t any polka dots around—only stripes. You spend so much time looking at people with stripes that you start thinking you’re wearing stripes, too, until you catch a glimpse of your polka-dotted self in a store window and realize that you are not a striped person. Then you learn that there’s a place that only wears polka dots. You come to that place and you’re very excited because for once you don’t stand out. For once, you feel like you belong.
“But then you open your mouth and the polka-dot people know instantly you’re a fraud. They know you’re a stripe on the inside or, at least, not one of them. And the place where you once thought you belonged, you don’t. You’re still on the outside.” Beside me Yujun takes a breath, but I’m not finished. “Don’t tell me that’s where you can see the best. No one likes being on the outside. People say that they do because they’re trying to convince themselves that their half-full bowl fills them up. Everyone wants to belong—to someone. Somewhere.”
