The congregation recites the Apostle’s Creed, and
my mouth stays shut.
****
I used to think Home is beige carpet, mottled from years of stains
that I knew why not quite cleaned up.
I went to church.
I am a nineteen-year-old pressure cooker, so it’s no surprise
that I explode.
Dinner is silent except for the clinking of chopsticks against
plates. I use them to shred the jaeyuk on my dish, slowly,
watching tears grow and stretch in the pork.
Appa sets his cup down in a sudden, sharp motion. “I don’t
understand you anymore.”
There’s a picture of Umma on the counter, just her and me,
because Appa took it ten months after I was born. She is
eternally young, and I am unrecognizable.
I don’t understand myself either, Appa. But what I do know is
that once upon a time, I used to. I used to know, before people
got in the way. Before Appa got in the way, before Elder Park
got in the way, before this whole neighborhood turned to me
and saw the girl that they needed.
And I had become that girl. But at the cost of myself.
Home is Appa crying with the door closed when
he thought I was asleep.
Home is me, eight years old, standing silent and still in the
hallway, hearing every noise.
We used to fight. He had yelled at me that day. I hadn’t eaten
dinner. I wasn’t doing my homework. Because Umma wasn’t
coming home.
I heard him crying that day. He hadn’t meant for me to hear
it. But I had heard it anyway.
He still doesn’t know that I heard him. That I had been
standing there in the hallway, pressed against the wall, and
that I had bowed my head and clasped my hands and made a
promise to God, to Umma.
I’m sorry. I’ll never make Appa cry again.
When Umma died, I didn’t cry. Because when the world
shakes like that, someone has to keep it together.
“You never did,” I say. Then again, louder. And louder. And
louder.
****
I tried, Umma. I tried to be good.
It’s been nineteen years. So when I explode, it’s messy and
there’s noise and pain and heartbreak everywhere.
****
Home is a small two-room apartment tiptoeing the border
between Maryland and Virginia. Not quite one thing or
another.
I smiled every day. I washed every dish. I did every sheet of
homework. I took care of Appa, I said thank you to everyone
at church, I tried so hard to be so good—
But I’m not good. I’m sorry.
I failed.
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