The Eyes Are the Best Part

by Monika Kim

But the worst is when I find the little red-and-white candies that he turned to once he quit smoking. He would never be without them. Now, whenever I catch a whiff of peppermint or hear the crinkle of plastic, I feel a small zap, an electric current that runs through my entire body. A reminder that I once had a father.

You can cheat destiny once, maybe twice if you’re lucky. But as Koreans, we understand that the course of our lives is invariably determined by our palja.

“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?”

George sees himself as an alpha male. In his mind, only another man could pose any kind of threat or challenge. That’s why he behaves the way he does: ogling Ji-hyun and me and all the other women openly in front of my mother, treating us as though we are objects and not human beings. He does not fear her. He does not fear us. If anything, Umma is lucky that he chose her out of all the other Oriental women he could have chosen to save.

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.

She’s sleeping on her side, huddled over in the corner, even though the rest of the bed is empty. Perhaps it’s because she’s used to making herself small. Perhaps it’s because she’s spent a lifetime making herself inconspicuous for men like my father and George. Maybe it’s an unconscious reflex now. I feel sorry for her, and even sorrier when I study her features and see Ji-hyun and myself in them, all the pieces of us weaving in and out of her. We’re tangled together in this ball of yarn, my mother, Ji-hyun, and me.

It doesn’t surprise me that your father loved the watch more than he loved you, George. You’re greedy. Selfish. Unlovable. You pretend like you care about your father, but you don’t. You only care about what he left for you. Or in this case, what he didn’t leave behind. How many times have you complained about the house you didn’t get? Your meager inheritance? You don’t even have a single picture of him.

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