1
Umma tells me that the eyes are the best part.
I watch as she leans over the dinner table, her dark hair tucked neatly behind her ears, her manicured fingers working quickly and deftly at the fish on the plate in front of her.
She’s done this so many times that by now, she could do it with her eyes closed.
First, she splits the fish in half, using her metal chopsticks to break the body open at the top, where the head meets the dorsal fins, revealing a neat row of tiny, almost invisible bones.
The flesh is still steaming hot, but my mother doesn’t seem to feel anything at all.
She tugs at the spine, which comes away whole, and sets it aside before returning her attention to the soft white flesh.
When she’s done, the fish is completely picked apart, its bones placed in a neat pile on the paper napkin next to her plate. Umma looks up at Ji-hyun and me, a smile spreading across her face. We know what she’s going to say, but still we squirm with discomfort.
“Who wants the eye?” she asks, gesturing toward the plate. The fish gapes at us, staring blankly.
Ji-hyun, my sister, is fifteen and the pickiest eater I know. She can’t even eat tomatoes without gagging; their slimy texture makes her sick. Every time our mother brings up fish eyes, Ji-hyun turns pale, a sheen of sweat forming on her forehead.
“No way.” My sister shakes her head, pushing herself from the table. “I’d rather die.”
Umma is unfazed by Ji-hyun’s response.
“Ji-won?” she asks. “What about you? Don’t you want the eye?”
I shudder. “No. I really don’t want it.”
“More for me!” Umma says cheerfully. She takes one metal chopstick between her fingers and stabs it into the fish’s head.
Next to me, Ji-hyun makes a noise that’s somewhere between a gasp and a heave.
I don’t even have to look at her to know that her mouth is hanging wide open.
Mine is frozen in the same way, our expressions mirrored.
After a few seconds, Umma takes both of her chopsticks and holds them high in the air so that Ji-hyun and I can see the small white ball positioned in between the two slender pieces of metal.
She’s triumphant, her own eyes sparkling, and before either of us can stop her, she pops the entire thing in her mouth.
“So delicious!” she exclaims, opening her mouth and showing us her tongue. The silvery fillings in her teeth glint in the light. “See? Umma isn’t lying. You guys are really missing out.”
+
The meal is tainted now. Ji-hyun and I pick around the fish, trying to avoid it, focusing our attention on the steamed rice and side dishes instead. I know the fish was dead long before my mother plucked the eyeball out of its head, but somehow this seems too extreme.
Before Umma started doing this, I never felt bad about eating fish.
Whenever we had it for dinner, I ate voraciously, sucking every remaining morsel of flesh off the bones.
Now, I can’t even look at a fish without feeling cruel.
It was once a living, breathing creature.
It could see and feel and think. It probably had a family, maybe even friends.
Oblivious to our dour moods, Umma chatters away, shoveling bites of rice and fish into her mouth.
She doesn’t stop talking, even when her mouth is full, and occasionally half-chewed pieces of rice fall onto the table.
To make matters worse, she picks up the fish skin, which is fried to a crispy brown and dripping with oil, and puts it in her mouth. It crackles between her teeth.
“It’s because you two are still young,” she says, laughing.
“When I was a child, I hated things like fish skin and fish eyes. Probably because my parents used to force me to eat them. We were poor, and they didn’t want anything to go to waste.
They would tell us that it was lucky to eat the eye, and even then, I refused.
I didn’t start liking these things until I was older, until after I came to California and met your father—”
She stops abruptly. Without her babbling, there’s an awkward and unbearable silence that hangs over us. Ji-hyun and I glance at each other through the corners of our eyes. It’s the first time Umma has mentioned our father since he suddenly left two weeks ago.
Umma sweeps her bangs away from her forehead, the corners of her lips twitching upward. Her smile is forced. She stands up, her chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor. “That was a great meal, wasn’t it?” she says. “I’m so full I might explode.”
I nod, keeping my expression neutral. “Delicious.”
She puts her dishes in the sink and turns on the faucet. Ji-hyun and I listen to the squeak of the kitchen sponge in our mother’s hand and the splash of water hitting the basin. Then, without another word, Umma disappears into her bedroom, her footsteps soft.
Our apartment is small. The kitchen and the living area are right next to each other, and once you turn the corner, there’s a short hallway and the bathroom we all share.
Past that, there are two bedrooms. The entire space is only seven hundred square feet, and you can hear everything.
Every whisper, every step, every creak, every flush.
I wait until Umma’s bedroom door is shut before standing up and picking up the plate where the fish is lying, half-eaten, a hole where its eye should be. It’s still warm.
“You don’t want any more of this, right?” I ask Ji-hyun. She tilts her head, gazing at me through narrowed eyes.
“Absolutely not.”
I walk over to the trash can and scrape the rest of the fish off the plate, the tines of the fork screeching against the ceramic.
It lands on top of the coffee grounds and curls of onion skin, where it stares up at me accusingly, as though I’m the one who has wronged it.
If Ji-hyun wasn’t here, I would’ve said, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”
Only when the lid closes do I feel some semblance of relief.