—————————— A GOLDEN BUDDHA FLANKED BY two attendants gazed over the living room from the space where most people would put a TV. Mom, Dad, and I stood in our socks on the straw floor watching the abbess bow to the buddha while an ahjuma in a pink puffer struck a bulbous wooden instrument with a mallet.
The recommendation for this abbess came, of course, through one of Mom’s friends, who assured us that unlike some of the fancier temples in K-Town, this one wasn’t grubbing for donations. The temple was a brown single-family home on the edge of K-Town with a driveway. The living room was divided into the altar, where we stood, and the dining room of a middle-aged Korean woman, with its baroque wood furniture covered in doilies.
Mom soaked in the ceremony. Dad shifted his weight and glanced around the room, then shifted his weight again. In fifth grade, I’d had to ask my parents what their religion was. Dad answered, without hesitation, “Atheist.” Mom told me to check Other and write in Spiritual, to which Dad guffawed. It made sense now, given how the two shifted out of their communist days: Dad’s materialist pragmatism, Mom’s turn toward the holistic.
The abbess stood and turned to us. Her head was shaved, which forced my eyes onto her slight, impish smile, sharpened by a long jaw. She motioned for us to come over to the altar, where we’d placed a fruit basket and three platters of rice cakes. A framed photograph of Halmoni, cropped so that she was alone, stood between two candles. It was maybe fifteen years old and one of the few in which she seemed happy.
The abbess lit an incense stick that unraveled in a slow curlicue of smoke and offered a sweet, woody smell. She bowed, picked up a cup of water on the altar, and swirled it three times over the altar. She put it down and gestured for Mom to do the same. Mom knelt and picked up the cup. The abbess cleared her throat. Mom blinked in embarrassment, stood up, placed her palms together, and bowed to the buddha before kneeling. The abbess grinned and gave a thumbs-up, then gestured for me to follow.
I made eye contact with Dad but he looked as lost as me. I gave an awkward bow, then knelt. My knees crashed into the mat with a little ripple of pain. I stared at Halmoni’s image. My hands trembled as I moved the cup over the incense. I was afraid to do this wrong, this ritual I’d never seen or heard of but that suddenly felt endowed with significance. I finally had a chance to do something for Halmoni, even though she wasn’t Buddhist or Christian but believed most of all in money.
I got up, and the abbess, sensing Dad’s hesitation, gestured him forward with both hands. Dad jerked through an abrupt bow, knelt, and swerved the cup around quickly, like he was afraid to touch it for too long. He rocked back up and stood by us, face flushed.
“Good ja!” The abbess said, and gave us a little clap. She closed her eyes, sang something slow and primordial, then turned and gestured us over to the dining table. The ahjuma came over with one of the platters of rice cakes.
“Have some,” said Mom. “Dinner’s not for a little while.”
I looked down at the green and white balls, stacked in piles of concentric circles. “Aren’t these for, like, Halmoni’s spirit?”
“When did you get so religious?” Mom said, as she picked out an assortment. “We paid for them.”
I looked over to the abbess, who was sitting in the corner cross-legged, already popping a rice cake into her mouth.
Dad and I exchanged glances, then each took a few. The room was silent except for our mouths smacking against the sticky things.
The ahjuma came by and served us some pale, yellow tea. I took a sip. It was bitter and complemented the sweet cakes. The snack felt Korean and ancient, and I found this comforting, like maybe this was something Halmoni would’ve known.
The abbess stood up and disappeared behind a doorway at the other end of the room. I chewed my fourth rice cake as the ahjuma gestured for Mom to follow.
“Be right back,” said Mom.
Dad and I sat there like lost children, both of us chewing slowly so that we’d have something to do.
“It’s a good thing nothing broke,” he said finally, clearing his throat. “At the 7-Eleven. The man probably won’t press charges and it’s not worth their time to make an arrest.”
I nodded and kept chewing through the awkward quiet.
“When I was arrested, your grandfather had to pick me up from the station,” said Dad.
I paused and the rice cake jammed against my palate. I waited for him to go on.
“One of our ‘strategies’ back then was graffiti. Down with the capitalist system, things like that. We were desperate.” Dad spoke quickly, rushing out the words. “Your grandfather never looked as mortified as he did that night in the station—it was unimaginable for his generation. But he posted bail and drove me home. That’s when I learned what it is to be a parent. To be someone’s child.”
I sipped my tea and tried to integrate this mild, middle-aged person next to me with the young radical so frustrated and desperate that he spray-painted the city.
“Your grandmother, on the other hand, bought us rubber gloves so we wouldn’t get paint on our hands,” said Dad, misty-eyed. “There really are communist sympathizers everywhere,” he said to cut the seriousness.
Mom emerged from the room. Her eyes had that fresh, tender gleam from crying. She sat back down without looking at either of us and drank her tea.
The ahjuma poked her head into the room and gestured for me. I hesitated. I didn’t want to interrupt Mom’s moment to ask her what this was about. I got up and followed the woman through the door, which led to a vestibule. The ahjuma pointed to another door, and I stepped through into a room lit by a few candles. The abbess sat on a cushion in the middle of the room, and behind her was another buddha.
I sat on the cushion facing her and folded my legs in front of me, wondering if I was doing it in the proper way. The abbess was the same person as before, with the same sly smile, but in the candlelight and the darkness she appeared very still, as if she’d become a statue, too.
“Uh,” I said, “what is this?”
The abbess let out a low, raspy chuckle. “Your mother’s idea.”
I snorted. What else was new.
“Lots of pain,” she said. She grimaced and pointed to her head.
Pain. In my head. I supposed it was true. “Yeah. What do I do about that?”
“Come back here.” She pointed to her heart. “At first, more pain. Then less, less.”
I wanted to say no thanks, more pain was not so interesting to me right now, was actually the last thing I needed after condescending to everyone I cared about only for my hypocrisy to explode in my face. I placed a hand on my heart anyway. My thoughts trailed off as I became absorbed by the low, welling ache there, an oceanic force. I released my hand.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Heh, heh,” said the abbess. “Good ja.” She gave me a thumbs-up.
I laughed, disarmed. Suddenly I admired this person before me, who was somehow both an elder and a child.
“Here,” she pointed to my head, “harsh, judge, limited. Here,” she pointed to my heart, “everything allowed.”
She bowed to me and I bowed back. I stood up and floated back through the vestibule into the living room.
Mom and Dad were sitting, talking softly to each other. They stopped when I came in and Mom turned to me questioningly. I shrugged.
The abbess walked in and clapped her hands. All of us jumped up like trained animals.
Mom reached into her Goyard purse and pulled out a white envelope. The abbess brushed it away, as if it were a silly detail, and the ahjuma pointed to a wooden box with a slit by the door. Mom slipped the envelope in, then put on her sunglasses. She bowed to the abbess, which triggered a series of bows—the abbess bowed to us and Dad and I offered our clumsy bows back. The ahjuma joined in, too, starting a second round.
The abbess came outside with us. I turned to her, just as I was stepping off the porch, and said, “Thank you.” It came out as an awkward half shout. “Really.”
“Heh, heh.” She grinned and tapped her heart. “Come back.”
* * *
I sat in the back seat staring at the back of Mom’s and Dad’s heads. I wondered how many thousands of hours I’d passed this way, all the rush hours and road trips we’d spent in this little triangle. Mom and I still hadn’t spoken about our fight and it had congealed into an uneasy weight between us. But we were in that odd emotional space that opened up after a funeral, and I saw the opportunity to ask the obvious question.
“What did Halmoni think when you dropped out?”
My parents stiffened and I could feel the silent calculation pinging between them and Dad deferring to Mom’s judgment.
“She disowned me,” said Mom, without turning around.
A laugh escaped me. “Come on,” I said. “Like in the K-dramas?”
Mom’s face was a slab. “No. There was nothing dramatic about it. She just stopped talking to me. Wouldn’t pick up the phone. I think she even wrote me out of her will. Not that she had any money,” she added.
“Jesus,” I sighed. I kept wanting to weigh Halmoni on that scale of good or bad, but every new detail about her rocked the levers, making it impossible to balance.
“Half the reason she came to America was because school was free, and she would’ve never been able to afford it for us in Korea,” said Mom. “She even moved us into a better district for high school, though it was far from K-Town and harder for her to get around.” Mom exhaled angrily, as if resenting what she had to say next. “I looked down on education and all that bourgeois stuff when we were in the movement—I didn’t ask her for all that parental sacrifice bullshit. And for Halmoni it was always self-interest: if I got a good job, I could support her. But even with all that, she was doing the best she could as a mother. It took me a long time to admit that, because I wanted to stay angry.”
“No offense?” I said. “You still seem angry.”
Dad let out a guilty chuckle.
“Very funny,” said Mom. “You were the reason we reconciled, you know. She wasn’t willing to keep up the feud, not with a grandson.”
Dad twisted his head to look at me. “Halmoni loved caring for you when you were a baby,” he said, wanting to shift the tone. “I think those were some of her happiest years.”
“She wiped your butt the way others polish jewelry,” added Mom. “All of a sudden she was this kind, generous person. I was shocked, but I’m glad I got to see her that way at least once.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” I said. A swelling filled my chest, constricting my lungs. “So I was a stinky baby, and you fulfilled the Confucian mandate to have boys.”
“Aigul,” said Mom. “It’s not about that. You smiled and babbled and never lacked anything. So when she looked at you, she didn’t feel she’d failed. Get it?”