Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

sensitivity is a superpower. And please know that there is no such thing as a bad body. Truly. Take up space, it is your birthright.

I check myself out in the strip of antique mirror behind Rae’s and Jeremy’s heads. I swear my face is wider now than it was this morning.

He pulls his sunglasses out and cleans them with my napkin. Not so long ago he was beautiful to me. Partly because he’s tall. Not even New York tall but objectively tall. Over six feet.

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.

Part of me is proud that she gets to have all this—knowing that we come from the same place and that she’s earned it. Another part of me wonders if she’s secretly Republican.

LMAOOO

June thinks anxiety is for pussies. That you can banish it with intestinal fortitude. According to her, depression is laziness that can be fixed by high-intensity interval training and caffeine.

I don’t know where the humiliation ends and the rage begins or if those two sentiments are ever unlinked.

My heart sinks. She weighs twelve pounds less than I did this morning even after I went to the bathroom.

It was fascinating that if the feeling of impending doom and dread made my limbs leaden and my head cottony, no one ever found out. You could get away with anything if no one cared enough to check.

Far away from my family for the first time, I learned that everything was profoundly optional. So I opted out. I couldn’t not.

I stare out the window. What’s the point? The planet is on fire and everything is random.

I know that attending college is like praying to God. It’s not that you believe in it; you do it just in case. Because other people are.

I don’t respond, seething. Instead I check Tinder. I swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe. It’s dazzling how disposable we all are.

It’s moments like these when I wish we could be real friends. I’ve only made her laugh out loud once, but I felt high all day.

When we first met, she said she didn’t know who Rihanna was, which made me almost walk out until I thought about what that signifies. She has no loyalties. To not know about Rihanna means she’s a total nihilist.

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.

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

There’s this whole theory that younger siblings are spoiled. That we’re enfeebled from all the mollycoddling. Soft. That by the time it was our turn to rebel, our parents had already given up.

June looks pensive. Like a baby taking a shit. There’s no telling what she’s thinking.

I want her to tell me the day, the hour, and the exact minute when she’ll die. And I want her to go away so I can start preparing for it now with zero new memories because I have enough that I’ll miss.

Cancer must feel like such betrayal, knowing that somewhere deep in your body you’re manufacturing tiny bombs that detonate and catch fire.

The totality of death is inconceivable. It’s intolerable that you’re completely, utterly, irrefutably alive, filled up with decades of inside jokes, goofy facial expressions, all the love of your family, and then not.

any news of death makes you almost immediately think of yourself. I’m determined to know how I’ll feel when June dies. I want to be able to see it, touch it, taste it so I can make sure I’ll survive.

That makes my brain itch. How babies go from gurgling lumps to spies in one day. Illiterate and then illuminated.

I don’t exist in his story. I never do.

If they show you who they are, believe them.

Thankfully, they’re not conjoined decoy book spines that are featured as an aesthetic choice in the homes of asshole people.

I’m convinced people are watching me, judging me for my breathlessness, thinking I’m out of shape.

humans compulsively categorize information because we need the illusion of control.

It’s why randomness is unacceptable. Why organized religion is a salve. It’s far more palatable to think of a divine order. Why conspiracies are easier to stomach over psychopaths making a rash decision that alters the course of history.

“It’s so fucking typical. Other people fuck up and I’m left holding the bag.”

My Ji’s not as good. It means “seed.” It’s diminutive. I’m a fleck, a crumb, a mote of something but not my own thing. It sort of reminds me of the way people are named in The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m Ofmyparents. Ofjune.

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.

I’m too scared to talk about it, but sometimes I worry that I don’t exist. That I don’t count. It’s not solely that June’s superior to me in every aspect. Or that I lack conviction, which I do. It’s that I have this awful, unshakable suspicion, an itchy, terrible belief that I’m some kind of reincarnation, the recycling of my middle sister’s spirit. That I don’t have my own personality or destiny and I’m just a do-over for someone else and that’s why my life doesn’t ever feel like it fits.

this.

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.

“As the kids of immigrants, we always have to think about that whole ‘I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams’ thing. I know my parents made sacrifices, but I also don’t understand their choices.

It’s crazy how lonely it is to be in a family.

I think just being in a family is what screws you up. I’m never going to fully understand them. And it’s fucked up because that means they’re never going to understand me.

“Morning,” I croak, opening his bedroom door and yawning, pretending like I’ve been asleep this whole time. Pretending like I didn’t set my alarm for 7:00 a.m. to remove my crusty makeup and reapply it by early windowlight and phone. I even thought about trying to poop without detection while Patrick snored softly, hugging the couch, dead asleep, but I’d rather hold it, poison my microbiome, and die slow.

The art of being a woman

He checks his phone for some work things, and while I try not to look down at his screen, I wonder what his real life is like. How I’d fit into it. If there’s any room.

It was as though I could feel my heart fasten to his like the interlocking of precision machinery. It was everything I’d imagined it would be if I’d kissed someone tailor-made for me. Someone worthy and good who would accept me for me. Who I’d see with such a deep and profound recognition that they’d never be able to leave me.

I insert myself into his future. Slot my copy of The Secret History onto his table. A scrunchie by his water glass. If I leave something—an earring, my compact, an eyelash—it would secure my safe passage back.

You’re mine, I think, wondering if he can read my mind. How else would he have known that for all my bluster, I needed a moment to breathe? That I was scared of all we stood to lose? That I wanted to know him first?

“Let me get you a car.” My heart sings. It’s such a small gesture, but I’m grateful for the offer. I shake my head. Hopefully he’ll see my refusal as I intend it. That I don’t take up too much space. That I’m agreeable, low-maintenance, chill. I decide not to leave anything on his nightstand. It wouldn’t work on a Patrick. I hope this ensures that he’ll want to see me again.

He said he wanted to see me for lunch before my flight, but I preferred to remain deeply offended yet demonstrably chill on text. “It’s work!” I’d told him zestily. “It happens!” He should have known how sad I was from the exclamation points.

As if the world is falling away all around me. It’s not just the sky. It’s the negative space of the quiet, too. I will never be found here. It seems as though there are no other cars on the road. If the world ended, we’d be the last to know. We wouldn’t even know we were lost.

Most of Mom’s theories are like witch trials.

“Jayne, please,” says Mom, regarding me with impatience. I have no clue how I’ve managed to disappoint her in the last ten seconds. “The table?” she reminds me with a sigh in her voice.

Only I knew her secret. How she ate everything and then un-ate it. Hit reset. We’d never talked about it, but I heard her. And I know she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t.

While Mom was gone, I tried rubbing my own ear and was shocked by how loud and insistent it was, how unpleasant. It never occurred to me that she might not be experiencing the exact soothing, quieting sensation I was. I hadn’t known I was a nuisance.