The Eyes Are the Best Part

by Monika Kim

She never dared to argue with my father, who in our home was both a king and a god. His word was law; the rest of us, his pawns, did what we were told to do.

There are some things that you can never truly escape. Not really. Maybe that’s why, even now, she’s stuck in the past, long after everyone else has moved on.

It’s like when people tell me that I should be good at math or that I’m a bad driver, just because I’m Asian. . . .” “You are a bad driver,” Ji-hyun says. I glare at her.

These four pillars are based on the year, month, day, and hour of a person’s birth. And, according to my father, these seemingly meaningless components determine whether your brief existence will be good or bad before you even have the opportunity to live.

For him, words were magic. The people who knew how to use them, who were able to bend them to their will, sat in their nice houses and ate meat with every meal.

More than anything, he hated that everything in his life served as a reminder of his failures.

It’s important that women feel safe around me. You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. They’re the ones who should be embarrassed.”

It’s strange. I can’t think of the last time somebody was this kind to me.

Our only role in this strange play, it seems, is interpreter.

How is it possible that they’ve been seeing each other all this time when they can’t even communicate? I envision them out and about together, grunting and pointing their hands at each other like cavemen.

“No spicy,” Umma says. “George can’t eat spicy.” Of course he can’t fucking eat spicy food.

Swearing on your mother’s life is something so American, so white, that neither of us can truly understand it. In our culture, swearing on your mother’s life is probably one of the worst sins you can commit. What is there that’s more important than your mother, your father, or your grandparents? It doesn’t sound like George has ever heard of filial piety.

Wok & Roll.

Put it this way: the major events in your life are predetermined, but the way you reach those events, the paths that you take? Those are shaped by your choices. Maybe your destiny is to become a doctor someday, Geoffrey, but the choices you make now determine whether it’s going to happen in ten years or thirty.”

What is it like to live freely, to live a life untethered, without having to be responsible for everyone around you?

I can’t tell you how tall he was or the shape of his face or even what he was wearing, but I can tell you for certain that his irises were the exact shade of the morning glories my father loved so much.

I feel like I am responsible for every unhappiness and injustice she has ever experienced.

“Unni! Don’t cry. Do you want me to kill him? I’ll kill him,” she says. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

I don’t own anything valuable. The only thing I have is my body, and the thought of something being done to it makes me sick.

Appa explained to me that, as a girl, I had to understand my fragility. Danger lurked on every corner. It would be easy, he said, for people to snatch me up from the sidewalk on my way home from school. For them to do terrible things to me. Yet I took no stock in his words, believing that his fears were overblown. Nobody looked at me when I walked alone. Nobody paid me any attention. I was so convinced of my invulnerability that, even when I thought about George, about what I wanted to do to him, I never considered what he could do to me. I stop dead in my tracks, my pulse quickening. What if it was George following me?

Why the fuck would you get me chopsticks? What is wrong with you?

His fear is palpable, and it is delicious.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” “You? Scare me?” he scoffs. “What’s there to be afraid of? Little Oriental girls are nothing to worry about.” “Oriental? What am I, a rug?”

In a way, it’s a good thing. She’s too preoccupied to see my unraveling.

The truth is that men like George seldom notice things unless they are directly involved in them. Men like him are stupid and oblivious, convinced of their own self-importance. That night, I could have stabbed him, dug the knife into his throat, and if I had told him it was an accident, he would have believed me.

Men like George aren’t like us. Not like me, not like Ji-hyun. Not even my father, another man, can compare because George’s power doesn’t come only from the fact that he has a penis. It comes from his whiteness. For us, that kind of certainty and self-assuredness is an impossibility. We girls are taught from an early age that we are demonstrably inferior to our male counterparts. We are smaller, weaker, stupider. When we succeed, it’s only because men allow us to. And as Asian women, we are foreign and especially powerless, with our supposedly porcelain skin, delicate physiques, “slanted pussies,” and quiet, submissive natures.

“By the way,” the man said, his hand on the door handle. “You’re in America now. You should have the decency to learn the language. If it’s such a problem, go back to your own country.”

And if I could go back in time, I would pull my father aside and whisper in his ear: “Don’t give him the money; he’s full of shit. Lock the doors and call the police. I’ll get the knife.”

As later experiences would confirm, to deal with a man like that, a man like George, you have to pull the rug out from under him. Not all at once, of course; a small tug here, another one there. You don’t back down when he tries to wield his power. Instead, you trip him up by slipping him little lies. Correct him whenever you can. Confuse him. Make him feel foolish. Men like him hate being wrong, hate being embarrassed, hate not being in control. Men like him don’t know what to do when that happens, and they resort to childish displays of anger, temper tantrums, sulking. In spite of this, he won’t be able to do a single thing about it because in the end he’s the one who is weak. The only power he has is the power you are willing to give him, and you’ve given him nothing. Not a scrap. By the time you’re done with him, he’ll be begging for mercy. Who is he if he can’t control you? Is he even a man anymore? It will seem like a relief when you give him a hand, even if that hand is holding a blade. And when you take everything from him, you can say what these men say about us: He was asking for it. He was begging for it. He must have wanted it, since he didn’t fight back.

“What’s it about, then?” I ask. “Do you need the other keys?” He’s fallen into my trap, and we both know it.

What would happen if I kept poking and prodding? Would he explode? I imagine his head erupting from his shoulders, our apartment showered in bits of brain and blood. Two blue, beautiful eyeballs falling, one after the other, right into my little lap.

“Now you can do whatever it is that you do at your other apartment,” I say softly. I can’t tell if he hears me. If he does, he doesn’t turn around.

His eyes are brown like rot, hideous and unappetizing.

The man’s eyes are blue. And he is dead.

I stare at my reflection in the graffitied mirror, expecting to see a monster, a demon, a killer, but it’s me. Just me.

“When did you get home?” he asks. “Just now.” Funny, it’s not what I meant to say. What I meant to say was: I heard everything. You’re a bastard, and I’m going to make you regret every word.

I want to slit his throat in front of all of them.

I guess certain . . . body parts . . . were missing, and the man was drugged. Sleeping pills, they think.”

If you touch me like that again, I’ll break your fingers one by one.

I press my tongue against the white of his sclera. It’s salty. His tears. His sweat. I can taste it all.

“You don’t need the pepper spray,” I tell her. There’s an ant crawling on our blanket. I watch as it makes its way up on the edge of my shoe before stopping at my sock. Without thinking, I reach out and crush it between my thumb and index finger. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

George and my mother are sleeping deeply. Umma is still, but with every breath George hacks and coughs. I’ll watch as the life seeps out of him. His face will turn blue. The scene gives me so much pleasure that for a moment I run my hand over the blankets. Soon.

The tears in his eyes amplify their color. I’m doing my best to hide my excitement, but I’m quivering. Hope is a terrible thing. Hope is my mother waiting by the front door for months. Hope is a table full of banchan, side dishes, carefully prepared by hand. Hope is my sister curled in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder, asking, “Do you think he will come back?” But hope is also George, crawling on the floor, collecting pieces of glass so small they are nearly invisible.

“I am Genie,” I say. The covers lower an inch, and Ji-hyun peeks at me, teardrops clinging to her eyelashes like morning dew. “I can grant you whatever your heart desires. What is your wish?” She doesn’t hesitate. “I wish Umma and George wouldn’t get married,” she says. “Your wish is my command.”

Funny how things never change. Here I am, wide awake. My mother is crying. And once again, she is powerless.

It must be nice to be so assured of your safety that you don’t have to worry about being alone at night or getting in the wrong car.

“I know that the plant is pretty, but poison is everywhere, even in the places where you least expect it.”

If she wasn’t crying so much, I would have told her that I already have a father. And that he, like George, is just a man. I would have told her that they are to blame for all of this: Her despair. Our family’s unfolding. The killings. Everything.

I dig my nails into my palm. The pain diverts my attention. Without it, I know I would fall apart. I imagine my body breaking off into thousands of little fragments, scattering across the ground.

I’m going to ruin you.