Ye-suh lay awash in the lime glow of her cat-shaped night-light, waiting. “Mom, story,” she ordered me. “Story, please.”
“Normal story?”
“Scary story.”
Ye-suh had inherited my penchant for horror. We supped on grim tales, spun golden fear out of straw.
“The lady walks the night,” I began. “Dressed in a fashionable coat and a blood-red mask, she stalks children who walk alone. This is why you shouldn’t walk alone, especially when it’s late.”
“I never walk alone,” Ye-suh countered.
“From darkness, the lady approaches the child. Peeling back her mask to reveal a mouth ripped all the way to the ears, she asks the question.”
“What question?” A tremor. Choppy bangs hid her eyes. Freckles smattered a nose that twitched with anticipation.
“Do I look pretty to you?” This, delivered in a horror voice, full of gravel and guts. My daughter squealed and dove under the sheets, emerging with a smile.
“More!”
Sometime in the early ’90s, the Korean government waged war against crime in an effort to eradicate human trafficking, kidnappings, and gang-related violence. Into these tumultuous times the Lady was born. The lore originated from Japan and was parental propaganda to push early curfews. Terrified but intrigued, we children had run with it. And now my daughter was doing the same.
“That’s creepy as hell,” said Ben, my husband, as he gathered the dishes. His large frame crowded the sink, the morning sun rendering his hair fiery red.
“You have your John Wayne Gacys and tampered-with Halloween candy. Your razor blades in Cracker Jacks and LSD buttons,” I replied. As a child, Ben had only been allowed to trick-or-treat at houses he knew.
Likewise, my brother and I had walked home together after school, despite Min’s sullen protests. If ever I’d had to walk alone, I’d carried stinky pomade or written the character dog in hanja on my palms to ward off the Lady. But that was in Korea. Ye-suh had nothing to worry about here. Ghosts couldn’t cross large bodies of water. This was why we didn’t see Busan ghosts in Lansing and vice versa.
“But what about Lansing ghosts, Mom?” my daughter asked.
“Your father is from Lansing. He’ll tell you what to do.”
When I was a girl, mothers created fantasies with hair. A competition of sorts, to see whose daughters were well cared for. My friends sported pigtails and artful curls, chignons made prominent with colorful streaks. My hair hung loose, evidence of my motherlessness. Hours of practicing on a severed Barbie head had failed to lend me that enviable touch that would enable my hair to take flight: as butterfly wings, as fishtails, as full-fledged waterfalls with ribbon-shaped fauna. Luckily, I would grow up to marry a man who would patiently sit with our daughter and an iPad open to YouTube, his hairy arms working until her locks did what mine had not. Outside, the houses were uniform, but the greenery flourished unchecked. Clumped foliage and light framed father and daughter as they sang nursery rhymes with gusto. In the suburbs of Lansing, we created our own Neverland.
“Could you dial it down with the spooky tales a little? Grace is afraid,” Ben said one day, using Ye-suh’s American name.
He was concerned about the way our daughter had barricaded her bed, lining its sides with books and stuffed animals. Gaps made by bigger plushies were filled with smaller ones. Here a monkey with spindly arms encircling a saggy blue bear. There, sandwiched between their cotton bellies, a rabbit, ears grazing the tip of a large Banana in Pyjamas.
“What’s so wrong with building a fort?” I asked.
“She doesn’t build them for fun.”
“How would you know?”
“Have you seen her at night?”
Ye-suh did cry when her night-light died. In the summer, she woke with heat rashes from refusing to expose her limbs to the elements. We’d had to buy her a thinner blanket. Going to the bathroom meant leaping off the bed to prevent monsters from grabbing at her ankles. Once, this had resulted in a nasty head wound. Perhaps it was time to dial it back.
For half a day, Ben and I sat on far ends of the sofa, immersed in our respective thoughts, playing mute until Ye-suh came scampering, demanding a story. A scary one.
“Sorry, sweetie, Mommy’s very busy today. Daddy will read you something.”
In third grade, Ye-suh’s lore became real-life horror. Her best friend turned popular, leaving Ye-suh to dine alone, to fend alone at school. Our sweet Yorkie, Pepper, suffered a blood clot and died, pink bubbles on her lips. An Amber Alert frightened every kid and parent in town; Ben and I juggled carpools, and a security guard was appointed to the north entrance of the community park. When my daughter hit puberty, a youth pastor tried to kiss her. The coffee cups marked “Yo-soy.” Servers who pretended not to understand her flawless English. Shootings. Mass shootings. War. Wars. A mugging. A hurricane. A ferry sank in the Maenggol Channel; it was full of children, 250 of them, one the brother of an old friend.
When Ye-suh reached thirteen, Mr. Park, her best friend’s father, died in a freak auto accident. Their family had just bought a house, and little Abby had gushed about how she’d finally get her own room. Mr. Park wasn’t even on the streets. The taxi jumped onto a sidewalk and erased him.
Ye-suh came to me and cried, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
After that, Ye-suh holed up in her room. Instead of going to the movies, she digested grief from all over the world. Key details were memorized and recounted at the dinner table. Do you know of Willie Pete? Children burn. Voice, hushed. Down to the bones. She developed permanent dark circles under her eyes and a craving for salt. Days went by where we didn’t hear Ye-suh’s laughter, not once.
I wished to pull her back. Shut off the TV and Wi-Fi. Pluck her from school and close the blinds. Make her understand that grief was too large a burden in any shape or form, that a single vessel had healthier ways to better the world. There’s a difference between awareness and obsession, baby, do you hear? I finally understood my husband’s concerns.
At the end of each day, we stressed in bed, discussing potential suspects. Who was to be held accountable?
“I shouldn’t have let her see Saw,” Ben admitted. “She watched half of it at Angie’s, so I let her finish.”
“I’m sure they’ve watched way worse,” I countered. “She has access to the internet. Besides, you were with her for the second half. I’d rather that.”
But, of course, his guilt inevitably led to mine. Bedtime stories were a thing of the past, yet I feared their potential timed-release effect. Had I not planted a seed of anxiety when regaling Ye-suh with tales of Old Man String-Bag, who kidnapped and feasted on naughty children? What of bunshinsaba, in which mere pen and paper could call spirits forth, some evil? What of eoduksinis, shadow people fueled by attention, growing larger and larger with every glance?
In the end, Ye-suh’s fears were eclipsed by SAT prep and AP history. Ben drove her to the local Princeton Review center. I packed double lunches. We rejoiced to see our daughter chug sugary lattes and complain of personal problems. Her love affair with horror became more of a do-you-remember, and her psyche, fond and bittersweet, grew rather tangy with age. When we purged the attic in anticipation of renovating the second floor, she suggested we donate her old Goosebumps books.
“You won’t miss them?” I asked, disappointed.
“I’m fine, really. Please give them to another kid who loves scary stories.” And with that, she walked out to receive a phone call, from a friend with numerous boy problems. I stayed behind and continued sifting. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam. Her one-time favorite and her reason not to attend camp that summer. The one about the girl who turned into a chicken. And the one where all the toys came alive but not in a lovable Pixar way. What of wax figures, evil twins, and haunted snowmen? What of the story of the child who, afraid of the dark, asked her mother to sleep with her? In the middle of the night, the child woke to a back. Darkness brought a different kind of clarity than daylight. The child froze. This back was not a familiar back. The hair was shorn tufts. The head swooped into a long neck like the stem of a flower, no petals, with just the hint of vertebrae roots under puckered skin, loose where she’d lost weight. That faint medicinal stench. How horrible it was for familiarity to turn. How distant the closeness.
I’d told my mother my fears in the morning, thoughtlessly, honestly. It broke her heart. By then, the doctor had numbered her days. Stage IV pancreatic cancer. Mom went about as she had before, splitting mangosteens and calling them sweet garlic. It was our father who told us we had four months with her at best; this was the first time I saw him cry. A school friend informed me that the number four rang close to the Chinese character 死, meaning “death.” The days following, I spent all my energy on avoiding the number. By erasing it, I was convinced the limit on her time would disappear. My school bus bore the dreaded four, so I became a truant. Eventually, a kind neighbor — an empty nester — drove me daily, but only after I checked her license plate. At school, I avoided friends whose class number was four or fourteen.
This was the one story I never told my child. That the pancreas is an elusive creature nestled in an armor of organs. Hardly noticeable, until it’s made malignant.
Early May, Ye-suh and I went to a sushi bar to celebrate her acceptance to Berkeley. I ordered delicacies and saw Ye-suh brace herself. Even in her eighteenth year, the world still presented minute horrors, such as her first bite of sea cucumber.
“Ew. How can you eat something that spits out its own guts?”
“It has a deep flavor,” I said. “And a hearty crunch.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
Her tongue was denied the sweetness of the sea. Throughout the meal, Ye-suh stole peeks at my plate, the dark ribs a mini Cthulhu in her eyes. I chewed vigorously to compensate. Are you not entertained?
Later, when the sun dipped past the skyline, we celebrated with a bottle of sparkling juice, no wine. I tipped extra, serenading the waiter — My daughter got into Berkeley!
Oh, cool, thanks.
“Mom, I’m sorry I spat it out.” Ye-suh wove her arm through mine as we walked back to the car. She slouched to accommodate my height. “We could try again.”
“It’s okay,” I answered.
“I don’t have to go to California. I know it’s far.”
Ye-suh knew about the hospital visits, but I’d stayed silent. Her bags were already packed; her tickets, booked; her heart, buoyant. Children like to say nice things to be nice.
“We can visit in the summer.”
No backsies, I heard in Ye-suh’s singsong voice.
The day before I reveal my diagnosis to Ye-suh, the one I inherited from Mother, I watch a tutorial on French braiding. My daughter has too much hair, just like me. Ponytails give her a headache, as a single band can’t possibly contain her mane. This I confirm as we spend the afternoon testing out my new skills. Ye-suh’s hips turn this way and that because my hands have claimed her torso, her glossy black locks splitting into multiple strands that run into themselves again and again under my clumsy fingers.
“Sit still,” I order.
“I am still.”
“Still.”
“Am.”
When I finish, Ye-suh jumps up and savors the feeling of the tightness at her temples. The braid is a little off-center but still magnificent. It reminds me of clasped hands, a prayer.
She squints. “Isn’t it supposed to be looser?”
The next day, she wakes to a bird’s nest but keeps the look throughout the day. We take Polaroids. I finally break the news after lunch, over cups of barley tea. Ye-suh cries. She refuses to go to college. She makes impossible demands, like children do: If she ever needs to undergo a CT scan or a biopsy, you better be there and vice versa. She is so sorry but unsure of what for. I forgive and hope for the same. I implore my maker: Let me be the one to drive her, no matter how far. To sit with her. To get a second or third opinion. To sample sea urchin. A mother should be there.
By late evening, our family falls asleep in the living room — Ben on the La-Z-Boy, Ye-suh reclined on the couch, me by her side. The remnants of the afternoon color the scene. Wisps of hair are plastered to my daughter’s cheeks, still tacky and clammy with tears. There is a bruise on the soft spot under her arm, from gesturing wildly. My husband lies crumpled on the chair, perhaps in surrender but not defeat. The movie we were watching has long ended. I rise, quietly. Peel Ben’s fingers off the remote. Put away the empty bowls of popcorn crumbs, caramel and cheddar.
The window is open to the night wind, winnowing its way through the crack, chilling the room. On the couch, Ye-suh (Grace) sleeps like a log in the river, until her legs flail like those of a newborn pony, and for a moment I worry she will fall off the couch. Though she no longer makes fortresses, she still has nightmares. Falling dreams are growing dreams, my mother used to say. Blood, excrement, pigs — all auspicious signs. We Koreans know that bad dreams mean good life.
She stays fast asleep as I lie on the couch, curl behind her folded limbs, scented skin. Placing my hand on the small of Ye-suh’s back, I trace dog in hanja where her spine begins to slope. In the bigger scheme of things, we’re all so very small — children, really.
