Yolk

by Mary H.K. Choi

“Life is fucking weird,” she says. “It is.” “Do you think it gets worse?” “Probably?”

All of this is intolerable. My chest is a too-small shoe for the blood-filled foot of my heart.

He’s so fucking okay. Just so fucking aboveboard and respectable with his stupid thoughtful gifts and his insouciantly mussed hair.

He shoots me a quick look as you would someone who says “may I.”

and I’m struck by how much I want to reach out and grab his hand. Hold it to my face like a freak.

We trudge upstairs, and I’m overcome by the urge to shake him. We’ve held hands before. He’s cooked for me. I slept in his bed. Pops! I want to scream at him.

“Fuck,” I whisper more to myself than to him.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice when your ass wore them to Trader fucking Joe’s.”

In our reflection, I think how unfair it is that men get to look the same all the time. That they don’t have to experience the rude shock of their appearance unadorned and without makeup.

He smiles self-consciously. Shyly somehow, and it endears him to me all over again.

I’ve always understood the transaction of it. That I give something up, that I endure the physical discomfort of intrusion for something in return. For him to like me. To think I’m special. Special enough that he’ll want to stick around. But this is more mysterious. The inquisition somehow mutual.

“My reaction bears no reflection on performance,” I reassure him, patting his hand, and I can tell he’s smiling even if I can’t see it.

“You know what though?” He sits on the edge of the bed. “Hmm?” “Remember the part where you used toilet paper to take off your makeup, so you didn’t smear it into my towels?” I turn my head up to him. He grins. “That was hot.”

“You look like you’ve been making kimchi in here.”

My sister’s insides are outside of her, and a flutter of panic takes hold of my heart.

When her face crumples and she starts crying noiselessly, I keep going without another word. My sister and I have been tormented by our bodies in different ways.

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.

New York is just a place. It’s the people who will become a home for you.”

I send him a heart emoji, and when he sends me one back, it feels like a blessing.

it’s too narcotic, too pleasurable, and still I can’t even tell if it tastes good.

The whole ritual feels as though I’m being run over by the slowest-moving train. I can’t get off. I vaguely want to, but it’s overruled. Because truly this is the only thing I can count on. This has never left me no matter where I am.

I’m filled with devastating pity for every single mirror

version of me, all those times before, the youngest ones making me saddest of all. Watching myself have compassion for me in the absence of anyone else makes me cry harder.

hating myself, hating the way it feels. Hating that I have to watch myself do it. Unable to tear my eyes from this horrible shadow version of me that gets its way every time.

she smiles at me with this beatific light and I feel as though I’ve been lied to. No one looks like they’re in enough pain.

she knows it will get better because it has so many times before.

I tried to blame her for everything when all she did was remind me of the ugliest parts of me.

“I was such a nerd. And you…” A plume of smoke obscures her face. “Were such a chink slut.”

June is the strangest person I know and quickly becoming my favorite.

Every time I glance over at her, I’m struck with the thought that I might never see her again.

I know from the tone in her voice and the crumpling in her face when she says “Umma?” as the door opens that I did the right thing.

Our mom’s here.

“We’re here,”

“Juju,” she says, eyes locking on me. “I love you,” I tell her. I’ve never said it to my sister before. Ever. “Fuck, same,” she says urgently, reaching for my forearms. “I love you. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you,” says Mom in Korean, holding my hand when June can’t anymore.

“I’m so glad you have each other. It lets me know that however much your father and I make mistakes, you’ll ultimately be okay.”

It was her most precious possession, and she sacrificed it for you.”

“I would have been happy with three girls, too. That would have been wonderful, to gather all of you in my arms like a bouquet. My sweet daughters with your enormous heads.”

I was haunted by thoughts of you. But Ji-soo needed me too.

I imagine her talking to her dead baby on a green hill.