Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always “save ten percent of yourself.” What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. “Even from Daddy, I save,” she would add.

I developed this compulsion to clean as a sort of protection ritual performed when I felt even the slightest bit abandoned, an eventuality that tormented my young imagination.

We hung around at a punk house called the Flower Shop that was basically a glorified squat. Crust punks slept on the floors, hurled glass bottles off the roof into the street, and threw kitchen knives into the drywall when they were drunk.

“Do you think he’ll get married again?” “I think he will. Probably,” she said. She looked like she didn’t mind it, that it was something they’d discussed together before. “He’ll probably marry another Asian woman.” I cringed, particularly distressed at the thought of it being another Asian woman. It was mortifying to imagine what people might think, that he could just replace her, that he had yellow fever. It cheapened their bond. It cheapened us.

I descended, skipping a nonexistent fourth floor, which is considered bad luck because the pronunciation of the number four in Korean recalls the Chinese character for death.

Dreams about pigs, the president, or shaking hands with a celebrity were all good-luck dreams—but it was shit in particular, especially if you touched it, that was license to gamble.