Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

The drink’s strong. And thoroughly disgusting. I feel it work immediately.

I pocket the credit card and fake ID. It’s funny how no one ever notices that the names don’t match. And that the photo isn’t my face. Partly it’s that they don’t expect criminals to look like me, an Asian art student dressed in black, but it also confirms a horrible suspicion: that no one’s ever looking at me. Really looking.

dressed like a rural Chinese person on holiday.

I find that the more I hide, the more presentable I am to the world.

She said that there was more than one type of perfectionist. And that I qualified because the kind of perfectionist I was, was the kind that abandoned everything if I wasn’t good enough at it. And that’s why I couldn’t finish tasks.

I’d rather fail outright than be imperfect.

There’s nothing more humiliating than trying so hard for everyone to see and still ending up a loser.

I also hadn’t known that certain cancers are overfunded, like breast cancer and leukemia, whereas esophageal and uterine cancers are underfunded. Even the scariest diseases aren’t immune to branding.

June looks pensive. Like a baby taking a shit.

Where everything was so flat you could feel all hundred and eighty degrees of sky at your shoulders. Where if you lay on your back looking up at the sky, it felt so heavy you couldn’t breathe. It was as if the horizon could crush you. There was nowhere to hide in wide, boundless Texas. No escape at all.

We’re not big criers in our house. Once, a long time ago, Dad burst into tears, and June and I just backed away from him as if he were plutonium. We couldn’t even make eye contact with each other for the rest of the day.

“Why would you sell a real-life, physical card if it’s not for the material world? Why are you making life so hard?” “I’m sorry,” I tell her over and over. “I don’t know why life’s so hard.”

“Why is it so dark where you are? Turn some lights on. You’ll ruin your eyes.

Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We’re pitted against each other from the moment we’re born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax.

My family thinks it’s a play for attention. My depression. The anxiety. Or as June put it, my “emotional” nature. Mom thinks anxiety is about as insufferably first world as it gets. Like lactose intolerance. She thinks it’s an idle mind searching for things to bitch about at the lack of famine or war. If you’ve got a full belly, you’ve lost your right to bellyache.

“I know what you mean,” I tell him, not knowing what he means at all.

I was picking all the breadsticks out of the Chex Mix since the rye chips were gone

“Oh, wait,” he says, turning to face me. “I know something that’s real Korean. Deeply Korean.” “What?” “My dad had bypass surgery when I was in college,” he says, running the water for the dishes. “And they didn’t tell me because I had finals.”

“Let’s see,” Mom says, inspecting us as she slips into house shoes. “Are you thinner or fatter?” She reaches over and lifts my sweatshirt to peer at my midsection. I instinctively suck in my gut and shrink back.

I follow her small shoulders and perm back into the kitchen, wondering how it would feel to be touched by my mother without bracing for criticism.

Mom takes off her apron and slings it on the back of a chair. She hands the bag to Dad as she tugs her scrunchie off and gathers the loose strands into a tighter ponytail. She wipes her hands on her thighs again and reaches for it. My heart aches when I recognize her actions for what they are. My mother felt the need to change, to be presentable, before she could receive such a fancy gift.

I touch the liquid to my lips without drinking. It’s the game we’ve always played. Later I’ll tip it down the sink and feel bad when she tells me how much it cost and how far it’s traveled.

Mom’s love language is to scrutinize and criticize all the physical attributes that you’re most sensitive about.

“It’s good that you and June are together in New York,” he continues. “Life’s too hard over there to do it by yourself.” He adds water to his mix. “Even if being together feels just as hard sometimes,” he says. “Family’s like that.” He stirs for a while and then screws the lid back on. “But they’re the ones who will help when no one else will.”

Also, grab a fish sauce, the one with the three crabs on the label, not the one with the fish.”

“Mom and Dad want to know that we’re safe. They want proof that they did a good job. Why the fuck would I tell them I got fired? Mom calling me three thousand times a day and losing sleep won’t get me a new job. I’m protecting her.

“People like capable, positive people. It has nothing to do with reality.”

“I’m just wrong,” I tell her raggedly. “I have, like, fernweh for myself. Or something.”

“Fernweh is rooted in pain, or sickness and sadness,” says Gina. “It’s directly translated as ‘far pain’ or ‘far sickness’ as opposed to ‘heimweh’ or ‘homesickness.’ But it’s also longing for the unknown, since the familiar is stifling or challenging. The foreign can seem fantastic, exalted, since its possibilities are infinite. We have no data or experience around it. But once we arrive and the faraway is known and becomes familiar, then what? You’ve got all that energy and longing and possibility that no longer has anywhere to go. It’s got nowhere to be invested, nowhere to live. Have you ever considered that it isn’t a place that will improve your life? That there is no such thing as a geographic cure?”

I know it’s spoiled and reckless, but for a moment I’m jealous of June’s cancer. There’s such powerful recognition in the diagnosis. Everybody respects cancer. Being sick with cancer would explain my sadness, my sickness, my anxiety, and the horrible suspicion that everyone in the world was born with a user’s manual or a guide to personal happiness but me. If I had cancer, Gina Lombardi would help me. I have fernweh for cancer. I’m disgusting.