Hungry Ghost
by Chloe Nelson, ETA ’20 Rather than face the mildly awkward experience of navigating a Korean grocery store, I decide to starve to death in my apartment. It’s not a bad place to die. Impulse purchases from Daiso litter my meagre living space—a nest of scrunchies, a tangle of fairy lights, clusters of succulents already browning at the edges. It would be easy to curl myself into the heated floor, withering away into a pile of bones and social anxiety. I have never lived alone before. I have especially never lived alone before in a country where my language abilities are roughly equivalent to a toddler’s. My every word comes out slow and stilted, and for the first time, I am aware that I have an accent. I feel its midwestern taste on my tongue—like boiled corn and cheap PBR. It punctuates every word with its hard American edges, making me indecipherable to every cashier, clerk and street vendor. More often than not I am simply rendered mute, my simple vocabulary of annyeonghaseyo, kamsahamnida and hwajangshil? never quite enough to get me through even the simplest of transactions. And so, I hunker down onto my heated floor and prepare for a long and hungry year. My solid padding of quarantine dosiraks begins to melt away, yet I still can’t seem to shake my starving, Pavlovian-animal response to knocks at my door. When I open it this time, it is only my co-teacher. He jumps when he sees my face, ravenous and foaming at the mouth. “Are you settling in okay?” he asks me. His face is sweet and perfectly round, like a souffle pancake. I tell him yes. Very well, kamsahamnida. He leaves and does not come back after that, because I am adjusting so well. … By April, my quarantine weight is long gone, and I’m growing restless in my little one-room. My calm resignation towards my death has started to wane—a primal survival instinct slowly taking its place. I pace back and forth across the tiny space. Thirteen steps from my bed to the wall. Thirteen steps from the wall to my bed. Back and forth I go, until night falls and the market ajummas outside my window begin packing up their goods. Mountains of plump, round cabbages. Long stalks of fresh green onions. Korean pears as big as a baby’s head, tucked snugly into foam wrappers. I watch as one haggard-looking ajumma loads her cart with peaches. The peaches seem to glow softly, pale pink under the moonlight. I imagine holding a peach in my hand, caressing its soft fuzz under my fingertips. Rolling it in my hand before bringing it to my lips and biting down hard. Feeling the juice run down my chin as I tear into the sweet pink flesh. Under my jaws, the peach pit crunches like a snapped neck. … Time passes, and I can feel myself hollowing out. My skin takes on a sallow, pinched appearance. Swathes of hair fall out in the shower, like an animal shedding its winter coat. The hunger in my belly grows from a dull ache to a hot knife, whittling me down piece by piece. And yet, I can’t seem to leave my apartment for anything other than work. I go as far as opening my door and gazing down the long hallway. It’s dinnertime, and the air smells like sweet and sour pork. The couple in 301 is arguing again. The baby in 303 is wailing—its muffled cries surrounding me like a dense fog. I close the door and retreat into my shelter before I suffocate. … I must look particularly wan this week, because when I come to work, there’s a cup of sliced tomatoes sitting on my desk. I sniff the air. My eyes shift side to side, illogically suspicious that these tomatoes are mine for the taking. “Ssaem!” My deskmate storms into the office, tomato bag in tow. “To-mah-to,” he says, gesturing to the cup at my desk. “Ne, tomato,” I repeat dumbly. The words come out so utterly American. To-may-to. He brings a wrinkled hand to his face and mimes eating. “Mashisoyo,” he says, gesturing again towards my cup. I spear a fat cherry tomato with a toothpick, tentatively bringing it to my mouth and taking a bite. Perfectly ripe, the skin breaks under my teeth. I chew; taste the salt, tang and sweetness all at once. Euphoric. I don’t know the Korean word to express this sentiment, so I merely repeat “Ne, mashisoyo,” as I cover my mouth with my hand. My deskmate nods, satisfied. When he leaves, I inhale my cup hungrily, greedily. Drops of tomato juice dribble down my chin and onto my mask. I wear the red spots on my chin for the rest of the day—evidence of my feast. The next day, there’s another cup of tomatoes on my desk. My deskmate is standing by the table, chopping away at a pile of them. “Ssaem!” He cries when he sees me. “To-mah-to!” He says something else in Korean that I don’t understand, but the message is clear enough. I bow my head towards him, reverent, and when I finish my cup, he refills it. My midwestern roots tell me to protest, but when I do, he just shakes his head and tells me to eat well. … Each day when I come to work there’s something on my desk. My other deskmates must have joined in, because it’s no longer just tomatoes; now, I find wedges of fruit, fizzy drinks, squat jugs of banana milk or fluffy rolls bursting with red bean paste. My coworkers eye each other, looking satisfied. Just like in quarantine, someone has come to feed me. The gifts accumulate, and I continue to eat ravenously. The sharp lines of my ribs and knobbly joints begin to smooth, my skeleton retreating from the surface of my skin. My belt buckle loosens a notch. The dense fog in my brain melts away
Lunch Box
by Tricia Park, Open Study Researcher When I was in fourth grade, Tally McMasters came up to me and asked: “Are you Chinese?” I was waiting for my turn at double dutch. “No,” I said, eyeing the line. “Are you Japanese?” she asked, peering at me intently. “No,” I said, again. The line was getting shorter. I glanced at her face and saw confusion. She’d run out of options. “Well, then.” Tally jammed her hands against her hips. “Are you Norwegian?” ~ ~ I was one of two Asian kids at Sacred Heart Elementary School. Sally Wu was Chinese. Everyone knew what that was. Everyone liked chop suey and sweet and sour pork. And everyone liked that joke: “my mother is Chinese, my father is Japanese and I’m in-between.” Pulling the corners of their round blue eyes up, then down, then one of each, making a diagonal slant across their faces. My mother made me beautiful lunches then, packed in a Hello Kitty doshirak box. A puffy heap of white rice, surrounded by tiny mounds of side dishes that glistened like jewels. Glossy anchovies, candied in soy sauce and sugar, freckled with toasted sesame seeds; crisp bean sprouts with vibrant, yellow heads; grassy watercress, steamed bright green; a perfect stack of roasted seaweed, shiny with sesame oil and sprinkled with salt; a juicy Asian pear, cut into precise quarters. “What’s that?” Suzy Lawson stood, pointing. “It’s my lunch,” I said, covering it with my right arm, like I’d covered my math test earlier. “It looks weird,” she said. Suzy was mean and popular and never talked to me. Everyone was either afraid of her or envied her or some combination of both. Lacy Stevens and Jennifer Lewis dressed just like her in Guess jeans with zippered ankles and wore glittery, jelly bracelets but they weren’t as pretty. You always knew that Suzy was the best one. “Hey, guys.” Suzy’s voice got loud and the din of the lunchroom stopped to listen. “Look at the new girl’s weird lunch.” The scraping of chairs against linoleum and the squeaking of sneakers as a crowd gathered around my table in the corner. “Ew, look, you can see their eyes! Disgusting! What are those things, worms? Look, they have yellow heads! Seaweed? Oh, ew, seaweed feels like alien slime on your legs! Oh my god, the smell. C’mere, smell this!” Fingers poked and prodded at my lunch, over my protecting arms. The tiny, perfect compartments were extracted as they crowded in, spilling and grabbing at my lunch. I tried to get away but the table was surrounded, the laughing and jeering continuing until nothing was left. The rice was smashed onto the table, anchovies dumped on the floor, seaweed scattered like a deck of cards. Through a blur of tears, I packed up the doshirak, the small, geometric containers empty now. One of my Twin Stars chopsticks was missing. Over the weekend, I asked my mother to pack me SpaghettiO’s and Oreo cookies for my school lunch. Puzzled, she asked, “don’t you like your bap? I saw your doshirak was empty.” I pulled away from her stroking hand on my hair. “No,” I said, a new note of irritation in my voice. “I hate it. I want a normal lunch.” I’d never spoken to my mother that way. On Monday morning, I opened my book bag at the bottom of the stairs. My SpaghettiO’s were in a plaid Thermos and a stack of six Oreos was nestled in Saran Wrap. There was also, hidden under a napkin, a small container of anchovies. I crumpled the plain brown bag, zipped up my backpack, and walked to the bus stop. When I was a kid, there was this show called Stand-Up Spotlight on VH-1. Rosie O’Donnell was the host, before she had her own show. Back then, she wore dresses and her hair was permed and feathered. The nineties were early and still recovering from an eighties hangover. I wasn’t actually allowed to watch VH-1 though it would have been worse had I been watching MTV. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV at all on weekdays and certainly not in the afternoon when I was alone, sent home early from school to practice my violin. To this day, I’m not sure what my parents had to do to make it okay for me to skip school. It probably didn’t hurt that I was a good student; quiet, Asian. I was getting straight A’s, so what could they say, really. That particular afternoon, Rosie O’Donnell stood on the small stage, the black curtain behind her strung up with white holiday lights, even though it wasn’t Christmas. It was a cheap set but the logo on the corner of the screen shone like a spotlight. ‘Welcome now to the stage, a very funny woman. You’ll be hearing more from her after this, I’m sure. Put your hands together for Margaret….Cho!’ I was only half watching – my hand aloft between my mouth and the bowl of rice I was having for lunch, my chopsticks holding some of the myeolchi that my mother had made – until I heard Rosie say, Cho. A Korean name. The last name of the first boy I ever had a crush on. Now, Rosie had my full attention. I watched as she left the stage, handing the mic over to a Korean woman wearing a dark blue dress. She was ordinary looking, almost plain. But to me, she could have been a unicorn standing in our living room. That was how startling it was to see an Asian woman on TV. Not just Asian, but Korean. Like me. And she sounded like me, too. Back then, I was always a little surprised to hear an Asian adult speak unaccented English, since all the adults around me spoke English with a heavy coating of some Asian flavor. Whether it was my Japanese violin teacher’s swallowed consonants, the hard staccato of the Chinatown kids
The Pinoy Grill
by Joy Cariño, ETA ’20 The Pinoy Grill is like a restaurant in many ways. To the right of the entrance, there’s a counter with a cash register. There are two refrigerators full of drinks and a multitude of shelves selling Filipino spices and snacks like Silver Swan soy sauce, Boy Bawang and mani. At any time, people might be eating or drinking at the four tables in the center of the room. Upon entering the restaurant, especially in the height of summer, the humidity is stifling. You can smell the flavors wafting from the back kitchen—pork marinating in soy sauce, grilled chicken, and the sour tang of sinigang. At the same time, walking into the Pinoy Grill is like walking into a large family’s living room. To the left of the entrance is a tall shelf of succulents (with a sign saying DO NOT TOUCH), couches, some chairs, and a large billiards table. Behind the chairs, there’s a carpeted mini-stage with a TV showing a Netflix drama or a YouTube playlist of romantic ballads. There’s a children’s playroom in the back right corner and two smaller rooms built into the right-side wall, which serve as tiny bedrooms for napping babies, or as a storage space for children’s items. The Pinoy Grill isn’t a sit-down restaurant. If you want to order food from the menu, you have to call or text the owner at least 24 hours in advance so she can prepare. The menu has several dishes, each of which is 7,000 won. There are meat dishes, pork or beef calderetta, corned beef, hamonado, dinuguan, humba, dinakdakan, smoked pork, or adobo pata. There are noodle dishes, like sweet banana ketchup spaghetti and bihon. There are siomai and lumpia, fried rice and bananacue. My favorite soups—sinigang na bangus, sinigang na baboy, and tinola manok are there as well. When someone in the Filipino community has a birthday, a baby dedication, or any other community event, friends and visitors need only pay for the drinks. All food is on the house, and someone always brings a Paris Baguette cake to share. After eating and gossiping at the tables, visitors gather around the royal blue billiards table for a drawn-out game. These games are always interrupted by a child holding a toy car and attempting to get involved. Others retreat to a side room to drink San Miguel and take their turn on the karaoke machine. Sometimes there are two karaoke sessions running at the same time—a slow Korean ballad playing in tandem with “Country Roads.” Children run throughout the restaurant playing tag, giggling and chattering in Korean. The room fills with noise and unapologetic laughter. When I’m invited to such events, I’m reminded of the Filipino parties my family took me to in the US, where my parents would chat and gossip around the table in Filipino or Tagalog and I would hang out in the living room with the other kids—chattering in English. Now, I’m a somewhat adult, somewhat Filipino living in Korea temporarily. I’m an outsider here, but when I come to the Pinoy Grill I can feel a semblance of home. I’m always a bit shy and apprehensive before I walk through the restaurant doors. Yet, coming here is better than staying alone in my one-room on a Sunday evening, nervously anticipating the next school day. Even though I can understand when people speak to me in Tagalog (and I welcome this change of environment where I can understand all the words being said around me), I know I’m still an outsider in this community of Filipino immigrants to Korea. I’m still more American than I am Filipino. Still, there have been many moments that will make me miss this tight-knit, unexpected community. ****** One chilly October evening, I stopped by the restaurant for some dinner and the owner told me she was hosting a Halloween event on a Saturday. The Friday before the party, she texted me asking if I was free to help decorate, so I showed up. Someone else was allegedly going to come, but it ended up just being me, her partner, her children, and Netflix Pororo. When I arrived, the owner was assembling ethernet cords, another one of her many part-time jobs. She put down her work and asked what she always asked when I came in: “Kumain ka na? Kain muna tayo!” (Have you eaten? Let’s eat first!) I responded that I hadn’t eaten yet, but she was already heading to the back room to pull out her stash of last year’s Halloween decorations. She spread them across the billiards table—crumpled up cotton spider webs and tissue paper ghosts tied onto the ends of burlap rope. A “Spooky Tree” and white curtain would act as a photo station backdrop. I helped her untangle some pumpkin and skull string lights. After several iterations of “Kain muna tayo!” and contemplative discussions of potential Halloween decorations, she and her partner wrangled their two children—a two-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl—into chairs at the dinner table. I sat between the kids while large portions of rice and sabau were spooned onto their plates. I followed suit and ate at what felt like a dinner table with family. I live alone in my one-room, so this was only the third time I’d eaten a home-cooked meal in Korea. The seven-year-old refused to turn off YouTube on her tablet, and her father kept telling her to eat while she ignored him. The two-year-old screamed and rattled around in his high chair while the owner joked about how stubborn and angry he was. Her partner talked with me about his family in the United States. I listened and nodded, while eating the best fish stew I’d ever had. Again, I felt a semblance of home. Was it my home in Mississippi, at a table with my parents and two siblings? Was it the home my family left behind in the Philippines, with rice meals and salty sinigang stew?