Chapter 23
Even though the crops are still TBD, that doesn’t stop Dad from prepping the field for harvest with Gavin the next day.
Which leaves me home alone with Mom. As soon as I get out of bed, Mom is chiding me for the state of the room and the laundry and everything else.
When I finish cleaning my side of the room and start a load of laundry, I reward myself by flopping onto my bed and staring up at the ceiling.
Still, Mom is unrelenting. Despite my success in making progress with Dad, I’m not making much progress with Mom.
“Come, learn how to make kimchi.” Mom motions for me to join her with a butcher knife in her hand.
Seeing as I don’t have a choice in the matter, I drag my feet to the kitchen. Along with her coveted giant bowl and a bunch of large Napa cabbages, there are ingredients spread out on the counter. Most of them are label-less, and the others have Korean writing on them.
“The first thing you have to do is cut the cabbage into quarters, keeping the core intact so it doesn’t fall apart.
” The level of confidence she has when spearing her knife into the heart of a cabbage is frightening.
But also kind of badass. “Next we have to season the cabbage. The salt will not only flavor the leaves but also soften and preserve them.” After she slips on rubber gloves that go up to her elbows, she begins rubbing coarse salt onto the cabbage, careful to get in between each leaf.
As she finishes the quartered cabbage, she submerges it in a bucket of water.
“Once we salt all the cabbages, we leave them in the water for six hours.”
“Six hours?” I shriek incredulously.
“You have somewhere you need to be?” She stares down her nose at me, and I clamp my mouth shut. As if it couldn’t get any worse, she adds, “Don’t just stand there and watch. Put the extra pair of gloves on and do what I’m doing.”
I sigh, glancing over at the ugly-as-sin pink rubber gloves.
“Unless you want your hands to prematurely age and be shriveled into prunes by the salt, then be my guest. Use your bare hands.”
That gets me to slip the gloves on and begin slathering the salt onto the leaves like she’s doing.
We lapse into silence, and the monotony of the task makes my mind wander.
The coarse salt against the cabbage reminds me of body scrubs I used to get that would leave my skin feeling like a baby seal.
Suddenly I’m deeply pining for my old life.
And I’m not talking about spa treatments, tranquil music, and plush bathrobes.
Although I wouldn’t turn those things down either.
But before Blaire, our lives kept us busy in a way that didn’t leave us any time for one another.
At least then I could blame the emotional distance between us on the physical one.
In some ways Mom understands me. She knows how much my appeareance matters to me.
Once I was photographed checking the mail in my pajamas, and a tabloid printed it with the headline Is Elena Ok O.K.
? The article was as misguided as its impossible expectations of women.
My way of dealing with an industry that scrutinizes women as harshly as the media does is by spending an ungodly amount of time on looking my best. Mom knows how to use what I care about (my appearance) to get me to do something she cares about (learning how to make kimchi).
But beyond the superficial, she doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her.
Now that we are here, we have the opportunity to get to know each other.
Be closer. Have a relationship. And this is how she chooses to spend quality time?
“Remind me again why this is important?” I ask.
“Kimchi is a staple in Korea. We eat it with everything.”
“I mean why do you think that I specifically need to learn how to make it?”
“Because,” she says, wiping her brow with the back of her glove, “I’ve let other people do things for you for too long.”
I let out a loud sigh. This again?
“It’s time for you to learn how to take care of yourself.”
That gets me to snap. Because I’ve been taking care of myself for a while now. Longer than she knows.
“You’re right, Mom.” My harsh tone makes her flinch.
“By hiring people to do everything for me, you did me a disservice. But teaching me how to cook and make kimchi is not going to make up for that.” My words seem to knock the wind out of her.
But instead of slowing down, I keep going.
I need to tell her how I feel before I lose momentum.
“After the Vogue article came out, I was humiliated. With the magazine’s circulation of 1.
2 million copies a year, when I say everyone was laughing at me, it’s not an exaggeration by any means.
And that includes Dad, Gavin…and you.” I look her in the eye.
“I was fourteen, Mom. A kid. All the hired help in the world couldn’t give me what I needed most: my family. ”
“Elena, I had no idea,” she says, genuinely shocked. “You seemed to enjoy the way the article portrayed you.”
“What choice did I have?” My voice grows defensively louder. “I had to find my way through it somehow. So I turned What’s that? into my catchphrase. I figured I couldn’t be the joke if I was in on it. Right?”
For the first time, she doesn’t disengage at the mention of my catchphrase. Instead her face falls.
“But I realize now that I was only convincing myself that the catchphrase was what I needed. Because I didn’t want Carolina to take me to this gala or Kiki to book me for that party.
Or for someone to buy me a new dress or a bag to make me forget I was sad.
I needed someone to tell me it was going to be okay and wipe my tears away.
I needed the unconditional support from my family.
I needed you, Mom.” My voice cracks as the tears well up in my eyes.
Mom’s eyes are watery too. “I’m sorry for not being there for you. I did what I thought was best. Even now I’m trying to do what I think is best before it’s too late.” She pauses. “Elena-yah,” she says, trembling.
I give her a curious look. “You haven’t called me that since I was little.”
Even she’s taken aback. She blinks, releasing the tears from her eyes.
With the kimchi gloves on, she wipes her cheeks with her shoulder.
I do the same when my tears trickle down my cheeks.
Like how the salt works to break down the toughness in the leaves of the Napa cabbage, our tears seem to break down the barrier between us.
It relieves the heaviness from before, making it possible for the gap to close between us.
“Being here is reminding me of when I grew up on the farm,” Mom says with a lingering smile. “Every fall, the women of our village would get together for kimjang. It’s when we would make enough kimchi to survive the winters.”
“Survive?” I sniff. “Was it that bad on the farm?” For some reason I imagined my parents’ farming experience to have been similar to what it’s been like here. And I definitely didn’t think hardship for them meant life-or-death.
“On the farm, losing a harvest to a harsh winter meant starving, and we relied on kimchi to survive, since it can last up to nine months. In a way kimjang symbolizes our resilience. It shows our determination to survive.” She blinks back to the present and turns to me.
“I didn’t realize until now that losing everything and moving to Blaire sent me into survival mode.
I’m sorry for putting my trauma on you.”
“Oh, Mom,” I say, overwhelmed with guilt.
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.
I was frustrated because I thought you didn’t see the value in me.
That I was always falling short of your standards.
But now I know I was wrong. It wasn’t about me.
” My head dips sheepishly. I should know by now that not everything is about me.
“But this is about you.” She motions to the cabbage.
“Kimjang is more than just making kimchi. It’s also a time for mothers to teach their daughters for the first time.
Every region has its own unique way of making kimchi, and my mom taught me to make kimchi with fresh oysters since our village was close to the ocean.
While we preserve the cabbage, we preserve our fond memories.
Every time I make kimchi, I think of my mother, and I hope one day you’ll think of me.
” She peers over at me, her eyes filled with insecurity. “You think that’s possible?”
I nod, unable to speak. Mom wanting to share this time-honored tradition with me makes me overcome with emotion. All I ever wanted was to be included in the family.
While we wait for the salted cabbage to soak in the water, she shows me how to make the paste that flavors the kimchi.
Some of the ingredients are obvious, like red pepper flakes, ginger, and garlic.
And some are a surprise to me, like pears, rice flour, and the oysters she mentioned earlier.
Making kimchi is actually kind of fun, and surprisingly it’s the one thing I don’t suck at making in the kitchen.
It isn’t long before I begin to think of someone else who would appreciate this moment more than me.
“Is it only the women who participate in kimjang?” I ask.
She gives me a knowing look. “Being on a farm was hard, especially for the women. Not only did we labor in the fields alongside the men, but we also had to take care of all the domestic duties. Cooking, cleaning, child-rearing. Men were the only ones who were given recognition, even though they had one job and women had many.” Her face hardens as she describes it.
Then she turns to me and softens. “Kimjang was intended for mothers and daughters to bond. Growing up I thought it was special. I can see now that kimjang should be for everyone.”
I nod, agreeing with her.
Mom’s childhood sounds so different from mine. I can’t begin to imagine it. “What was it like in Anbandegi?”
She starts to explain, then stops herself. “Do you really want to know? Shouldn’t we be focusing on you? I may not have been there for you before, but I want to be there for you now.”
“I appreciate that, Mom. But this is important too.” There’s been a lot we missed out on in each other’s lives.
And that goes both ways. It’s time we started getting to know each other.
So I ask her more questions about what it was like on the farm.
She tells me about how even though the farm was successful, it was always susceptible to failure due to weather, the economy, and other things outside of their control.
The instability growing up made her and my dad want to move to the United States and make a different path for themselves.
At the mention of Dad, it occurs to me that they had the same upbringing.
I understand better his obsessive devotion to work.
Knowing he had to overcome so many hurdles, that he had to work harder to prove himself.
It helps to let go of the resentment I built up, thinking he preferred work over me. Still, something about it confuses me.
“Why doesn’t Dad ever talk about his time on the farm?” I ask. “You’d think he’d be proud of his accomplishments, coming from such humble roots.” Even in his autobiography, the story of his life, he doesn’t mention it.
She sighs as if she shares my confusion. “Your father has complicated feelings about his background. Farmers were among the lowest class in Korea. When he came to America to start his own business, he felt that coming from such a low-status family hindered his credibility.”
“But this is America. There’s no class system here. At least not one that prevents people from moving up in society.”
“I know. And it’s not like that anymore in Korea either.
At least that’s what I’ve heard. But it’s not easy for him to forget about the past that made him who he is.
Even I know that. It’s why we bought this place.
” She sighs nostalgically. “It was hard, but after we got married and came to this country, we looked back on so many fond memories. Growing our own food was so rewarding, but we could never enjoy it since our livelihoods depended on it. Once we opened our first shop in the Fashion District and had enough money to live well, we planned on retiring here. We wanted to live a quiet life on a farm without the stress of being dependent on it.” She smiles at the memory.
Then it quickly turns into a frown. “At least that was the plan.” She sighs.
A flash of hurt appears for the briefest second.
“That was our mistake,” she says, coming to.
“We thought as long as we had enough money, we’d never experience loss like we did on the farm.
” She inches closer to me. “Sorry for being so hard on you. I was only trying to teach you to be self-reliant before it’s too late.
Because if you’re not careful, you might find yourself dependent on a man. ”
It occurs to me that Mom’s warning is a reflection of her feelings about the position she finds herself in now.
Dad didn’t consider Mom when he pivoted to joining the co-op, which has changed their future.
Not because Dad was uncaring or because Mom didn’t have a voice, but because it’s what they were taught about marital expectations when they got married.
And maybe it made sense then, but it doesn’t make sense to me.
“You said it’s not too late for me to learn how to be more self-reliant,” I say, the earlier edge from my tone gone. “Maybe it’s not too late for you too.”
Her head jerks back, and for a second it looks like she’s going to challenge me. Slowly she closes her mouth and doesn’t say anything.