I’m not a good daughter anymore.
****
No one knows this when I come for the summer. Elder Park
thinks I found a nice Korean church thirty minutes outside of
campus with long sermons and potluck lunches.
“Such a good daughter.” Because Grace Shin would never tell lies.
I know that’s what everyone was thinking the years after
Umma died. They thought they were being respectful and
quiet, but I could see it in their eyes. The way they looked at
me whenever I ran down the fellowship hall with the other
children. Pity, and anticipation, and approval. The pew is cold and hard under my hands. I used to win all of
the Sunday school memory verse contests. I played piano on
that stage for four years.
I heard all of it. “Such a nice girl.” Pastor Heo preaches, standing at the pulpit as though he
hasn’t aged a day. Appa is next to me, stoic, stiff, his stare
straight ahead.
I don’t know how it started. Maybe it was a coping mechanism
I didn’t realize I was using. Or maybe it really was in my heart
all along. I want to pay attention, I really do. Everyone else thinks I do.
But my mind is pulled in a hundred different directions, and
none of them are towards the pulpit.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? What came first, the
good daughter or the expectation that I be one? Did I smile
because I wanted to, or because I felt like I had to? It’s been a while since I’ve thought about God.
Maybe, once upon a time, I knew. But I don’t know anymore.
If only they knew, hisses a voice, airy, barely audible.
God used to be ritual, like everything else in my life. Like
homework. Like putting away the dishes after lunch. Like
saying Gwenchanayo, of course, no problem, and smiling that
same smile until my mouth hurt.
And how could I have known that as a seven-year old, anyway?
But for a while, I liked it. Being Grace Shin, the pretty girl
next door everyone liked, who was so nice and sweet despite
everything that had happened.
At least I wasn’t Grace Shin, the girl without a mom.
****
I haven’t been to church in three months.
14 Spring 2020
I wonder, more and more, if there ever was any substance to
me at all. If there is any now to salvage.
I used to think that I knew why I went to church. I used to
clasp my hands and pray earnestly to a God I thought was
listening. John 3:16, God is good all the time, all the time God
is good, He is risen He is risen indeed, Hallelujah Amen, be
lifted high. I believe in God, the Father almighty, Maker of Heaven
and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, conceived by the
Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary—